The bass thriller

Bass god Marcus Miller is still thumping full of ideas, as AREF OMAR discovers.

MULTI-instrumentalist and renowned bassist Marcus Miller recalls taking up the electric bass guitar back in 1973, feeling instantly at home with the instrument.

“It was simply the coolest instrument for a 13-year-old boy,” says the 49-year-old with a laugh, during a phone interview from San Francisco.

The Brooklyn-born teenage Miller had his sights on a Fender Jazz bass, the weapon of choice for Motown hipsters of the time like Jermaine Jackson and Bootsy Collins.

“I got my first bass in ’75, courtesy of my mum, which I lost a couple of years later.

“I had stored my amp in my car and, of all things, drove off leaving my bass on the sidewalk,” says Miller, whose mother then took pity on her teary son and bought another bass from her savings.

“This time I left my bass in the car, went upstairs to get something and got preoccupied with a song I heard on the radio.

“When I wanted to play along, I realised I had left my two-week-old bass in the car and by the time I went to get it, it was gone,” he recalls.

“I really owe it to my dear mum for putting up with me. She got me another bass.”

Third time proved a charm, and after a discography of over 500 albums to date, the same Jazz bass is still being played by the in-demand session musician, who now also has his own signature series bass by Fender.

So even if you, by chance, haven’t heard of Marcus Miller, you’d have inevitably heard his groovy handy work for a variety of music artistes from Miles Davis and David Sanborn to Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra.

Very soon, the two-time Grammy-winner will be in Singapore for a performance with two other giants of the bass guitar — Stanley Clarke and Victor Wooten — who have pushed the instrument to the forefront.

Is the stage big enough for three gods of the low end?

“We’re all friends first and it’s our first time playing together so it’s been a very exciting experience,” he says amicably.

The collaboration ignited two years ago during Bass Player magazine’s annual Bass Day convention where Miller and Wooten were invited to present a lifetime achievement award to Clarke.

“We had a jam session later in front of 600 bass players and it was a magical moment. The three of us just clicked,” says Miller, which resulted in the trio deciding to record an album and tour.

The 13-track debut album, Thunder, was released last month and features song contributions from each musician recorded mostly in their own home studios.

Miller, Wooten and Clarke will play a one-night show in the Lion City, after stops in South Korea and Japan, before hitting the European leg of the tour.

The three bass players will keep it tight onstage, accompanied only by a drummer and keyboard player.

Each bassist will move within a specific range, all three operating in different registers, while taking turns to hold down the groove as well as to solo.

“Stanley has an aggressive approach, very percussive and quick, playing on a tenor bass which almost sounds like a guitar.

“Victor has a more mid-range sound while mine is a low, meaty sound typical of the Fender Jazz bass I play,” says Miller, who currently lives in Los Angeles with his family of four musically-inclined children.

Miller grew up surrounded by music. His father played a lot of Bach and Beethoven on the organ and piano, while his mother would play Ray Charles’ records.

“Every Sunday after service, the whole family would go down to the basement of my grandfather’s church and perform for one another.

“We were a very musical family. I didn’t know it was unusual until I experienced other people’s families,” says Miller.

While studying at the High School of Music and Art in New York, Miller discovered that he could hold his own among the many talented students there and decided then to make music his lifelong passion and career.

“I was at a crossroads there, to either take the classical route playing the clarinet or be in the jazz scene playing the bass.

“But, by the end of my studies, I was just too far gone with the bass,” he says.

Miller feels lucky to have grown up in New York, a hotbed of influences and culture that he says shaped him as a young man trying to find his footing on things.

By the time the plucky bassist was 19, he had already played in a wide kaleidoscope of bands from African and Latino to funk and jazz.

“Even a country band, you name it. It was the experience of a lifetime, which I feel made me a more authentic musician,” he says proudly.

As a solo artiste, Miller has just released his seventh album, simply entitled Marcus, early this year.

Where does a man with such extensive experience with different genres start?

“It’s simply about narrowing it down and having one particular point of view, so people can have a sense of who the artiste is.

“For me I have funk and jazz at the core. All the other elements that go in are just colouring,” he says.

Miller confesses that working with renowned trumpet player Miles Davis for a decade in the early 80s, helped to boost his creative confidence, as the master encouraged Miller to write.

Inspired by life, Miller’s tunes always start off with a spark or idea, be it a bassline, drumbeat, chord, melody or harmony.

And from there he just works on the logical answer to the initial spark and adds on to that.

“The music I make is instrumental so it’s more about emotions rather than specific events, freeing me and opening more avenues to express myself,” says Miller.

Miller is also a popular composer for TV and films, having scored over 20 films including Boomerang and House Party, as well as Chris Rock’s hit TV series Everybody Hates Chris.

“For film scoring I try to think of how the director would sound like if he were a musician and just try to help him with his vision aurally.

“I sometimes work like a maniac playing all the instruments myself if it’s a budget production,” he says with a laugh.

Not bad at all for a man, who as a scatterbrained teenager, had to lose two basses to get into his groove.

Catch SMV: The Thunder Tour on Sept 19 (8pm) at the Esplanade Theatre, Singapore. Tickets from S$58 (about RM140). Visit www.sistic.com.sg or www.esplanade.com