I've been writing all my life, and playing bass came later on, when I was about 26. What I recognized with poetry and music that I had a different voice - there were things I wanted to express that I could not as an actor or even as a director. It was another avenue of expression that my soul needs.
I never forget the first time I was on 'Top of the Pops', my bass player said: 'You've made it!' I did used to think, when I was younger, that I'd be on there one day.
You can't beat two guitars, bass, and drums.
I love the percussion. It's a right brain, left brain thing. There are different beats, but cooperating together. It's your whole body doing it, you're doing the snare drum and the high top with your hands and the bass drum with your foot. You're this whole motion machine.
I have two main bass guitars, and my main bass is a four-string 1964 Fender Jazz, and I've named it Justine.
I've always been good about interfacing with machines. But that never seemed like a gateway to being able to make music. I never made the connection that music could be made with machines - that was what drum and bass was for me.
My drummer, bass player, and guitar player sing backgrounds. They play and sing. I can sing all the harmonies, but I can't do it alone.
After two years in the songwriting world, I wrote 'All About That Bass.' L.A. Reid heard it and signed me as an artist.
It wasn't until after private lessons and learning bass lines that I even noticed bass in the music I was listening to at that age. My ears were blown wide open.
I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians. It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away. I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play.
I still don't really feel like a bass player.
I didn't grow up hunting whitetail, but I would stalk tuna and white sea bass and yellowtail.
I don't know nothing about no jungle and bass.
I was in a really crummy pop-punk band. I think we did a whole bunch of Blink-182 covers, and we were on the fringe of losers and jocks. So we invited all the cool kids to come watch us play in our bass player's brother's bedroom. And it was terrible, but everyone thought we were so cool.
My earliest memories of rap music was mixed with my earliest memories of reggae music. They were big sounds around the way, heavy bass lines, strong messages, definitely.
It would be obvious for me to do conceptual art, and I think I've done it already with smashing bass guitars and whatever - I consider that as conceptual.
Marketers have long known that a name can make all the difference when you're trying to move the merch. The kiwifruit was once the Chinese gooseberry, after all - at least until the produce peddlers wised up - and the Chilean sea bass was once the singularly unappetizing Patagonian toothfish.
I was reading an article about Kings of Leon's bass player, who said that he was directly influenced by Joy Division and by me. I was like, 'Woah!' It surprised me. It's a great compliment.
I know melody. I know rhythm; I know bass guitar; I know the piano. I know everything about music that helps build the music that go along with creating the whole art form, you know what I'm saying?
I have seven uncles, and my dad played bass, they had a band together, that was the family band. And of course as the cousins got older, including myself, we joined a family band. All the cousins played. That's my heritage.
When you listen to a symphony orchestra, and the basses don't - there's no bass part, there's not that much depth. That's why I'm attracted to the instrument, the bass. It brings depth. It's like playing in a rainforest.
Since I was a kid, I always wanted to figure out how to make a bass line that was a pendulum - like, gravity would control it, and then you could make it play different notes.
I've always been the DJ or the bass player or the drummer, somebody in the background. I don't think anybody who knows me personally would say that I'm particularly shy or introverted, but I'm definitely not like Mr. Attention.
I went to my first drum n' bass rave when I was 16 and remember being terrified. Looking around, trying to figure out how to dance to this music, watching some girl in some hot pants, trying little ways to learn her movements.
When I was 14 I would pick up my brother's bass guitar, and I would just pound on it, having no idea how to play it.
It's as if my left heel is my bass drum and my right heel is the floor tom-tom. I can get snare out of my right toe by not putting it down on the floor hard, and, if I want cymbals, I land flat on both feet, full strength on the floor.
My brother Carl taught me how to play bass. I'm a self-taught keyboard player, though - I figured out our harmonies at the piano.
A bass player has to think and play like a bass player. A drummer has to play and think like a drummer, and stay out of the way of the vocalist. The guitar player has to respect everybody else.
Lately Fish and I have been hooking up more, which is a good thing because it's just been a struggle for me as a bass player to play with someone who's so creative on the drums, and lately it's been really good, especially during sound checks.