Billy Sheehan

Billy Sheehan in a nutshell:
Specialises in: Super-solid rock playing and jaw-dropping  solo bass pyrotechnics.
Gear Used: Yamaha Billy Sheehan Signature model Attitude 4-string bass
Essential Listening:
Solo: Compression; Cosmic Troubadour
w. David Lee Roth: Eat ‘em and Smile; Skyscraper
w. Mr Big: Lean into it; Bump Ahead; Big, Bigger, Biggest, Live in Japan
Website: www.billysheehan.com

What are you up to at the minute?
We’ve just finished the Steve Vai ‘Real Illusions’ tour – we did the first leg in America in the spring and the second here in the UK and Europe. In the meantime we did a couple of G3 tours and things like that, so I’ve actually been playing pretty steadily with Steve over the last four years. It’s been a great run, a lot of shows – gruelling, over 2 hour shows, a lot of work, learned a lot and had a lot of great, hilarious, amazing times, supreme friendship and late night bus conversations until 5 in the morning – just a great, great run. Everyone in the band – Dave Weiner, Jeremy Colson, Tony MacAlpine, Steve – we just had a tremendous time together.

What’s happening with Niacin at the minute?
Our new record, ‘Organic’ is out now. We’re booking stuff in for the summer and working hard to get something happening in the UK. I don’t know if it’s possible yet, but I’m doing everything in my powers at this point.

As you were growing up as a player, was there a particular band where you thought ‘Right. I’m starting to find my voice and define what my thing is.’?
It was an interesting time, back in Talas – we went through many changes. I played with the band for a long time and basically grew up in that band, as a player, as a person and career-wise, in many ways. I learned things playing in the bars with Talas and later on, with some degree of success, that became very useful information and experience.
There was one time onstage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when suddenly the neck of the bass became clear to me – what was actually happening, what all these notes meant and how they related to each other and that was quite an interesting moment for me. I’d garnered a little bit of attention prior to that, but from that point forward, I started to have a better foundation underneath what that attention was focused on, which helped me to accept it a little bit more and use it as a launch point to really try to improve and carry the ball as far down the field as I possibly could.

It’s funny – some players with a lot of technique perform as if it’s something athletic or some sort of dance move – the fact that their physical actions happen on a musical instrument almost seems inconsequential.
Yeah – it’s sad, and I see other examples of that now, like websites where they’re measuring the bpm on a double bass drum and seeing whoever’s fastest as the winner. In all fairness, if that’s the route you wanna take, that’s what you like and that’s your pursuit in life, fantastic – good for you.
It reminds me of a thing called a db dragster. A car’s engine is removed, inch thick glass is put on them and huge power amps and speaker systems are put inside them – the cars don’t drive and no music is really played over the system, but a microphone is placed inside the cab of the car and whoever’s car hits the highest decibel level wins. Google it – you’ll see that there’s a huge underground movement of people who are into it – I’ve even seen they had a convention, full of people towing these cars around – they can’t even drive them to their own show!

It’s a funny misconception that a lot of young players have – when they send you demos, it’s always the kind of music that you play, as if you’re gonna be inspired hearing someone else do a bad impression of you.

Yeah – it’s interesting, I’ll get a demo from someone who’s trying to do a lot of my shtick. Believe me, I’m honoured that someone looks at me that way enough to focus on that, but I will always encourage them to look around, because there were times in my life when I would try to imitate other bass players. I mean I put a Tele Bass neck on my old P-bass because of Tim Bogert, I put the Gibson pickup on my bass because of Paul Samwell-Smith, you know?
At the time that was good, but then I moved on from there. It’s great, particularly when you’re beginning to get a great influence from an artist. But now as I have been lucky enough to move on career-wise and look back I see other people doing it and I’m just afraid sometimes that they focus a little too long and a little too much on one player.
It’s good to move on, find someone else and be influenced in another way – that’s why I purposefully started to listen to non-bass players for a while – Oscar Peterson, Paco De Lucia – people like that, who weren’t bass players but still were brilliant players. There were a lot of drummers I listened to – I’m a big Billy Cobham fan and of course, Dennis Chambers – my hero. All of those things pulled me away from becoming an imitation and helped me take all the disparate parts of all these different players, mould them together, stew them on an FM bar stage for a decade or so and come up with what might be termed a style.

There was definitely a period, particularly in the world of rock where you were defining the outer-most boundaries of what bass players were doing, using so many new techniques, creating new sounds and suddenly there was a huge blast of Billy clones. Did that not bother you?
The only thing I didn’t like about it was that eventually, as with any pendulum, it made a swing back and so when people were sick and tired of seeing guys hammering away on the bass, I took all the flak for it, like it was my fault! (Laughter all round) Okay – if it is my fault, I apologise but I think that was the only downside – people would say “Oh – that Sheehan stuff, we don’t want any of that’ but in fact, everyone that I’ve played with will, I believe, back me up on this – on 90% of my playing, I’m there as an ensemble player. Yeah, I do an unaccompanied solo and yeah, I do some fancy-schmancy stuff once in a while, but I’m a real big fan of bass and bass playing, watching the bass drum and following the drummer very closely, just being an underpinning to everything else that’s going on.
I think a lot of the guys who took some of the fancier stuff that I did and ran with it, didn’t have that foundation to go with it, so they kind of gave the fancy stuff a bad name – and the fancy stuff should have a bad name if it’s not connected to what’s basically underneath it. When I first came out, some bass players were a little bit negative towards me and I believe it’s because they felt a little threatened, but in no way were they ever threatened by me, because I was their fan! Like Ian Hill from Judas Priest – I love his bass playing, he was tremendous, Cliff Williams from ACDC – great bass player. I’m a fan of Pete Lang – he’s not necessarily a technical player, but he’s up there doing his thing, looked the part, sounded the part and I was a fan.

It’s funny though – most people assume that because you play the way you do, you must spend all day listening to other guys in that style and that’s where you take your inspiration from. I read Dave Ellefson once say that rock can never grow if it’s only inspiration is rock – it just runs in a little circle getting tired.
Yeah – That’s why, when I see a young kid coming in with a Steve Vai Ibanez guitar, God bless him, good luck to him, but you know what? We’ve got it already. When I see a kid coming in with an L5, a hollow-bodied thing or a 12-string I’m like ‘Hey, this I wanna hear!’ We’ve already got a Steve.
I’ll make a conservative estimate that we have 500 – 700 people who are copying what Steve is doing note for note, maybe another 1200 – 2000 who are using it for the most part, so there’s a lot of that going on and I see hopeful kids coming up to me at the show and handing me their demo and I can see on the cover – it’s like Passion and Warfare with their head stuck on! I don’t want to discourage them and I don’t discourage them, but I’d really like to see them take a different direction.
We were in Spain playing a show and some father brought his little kid who was like 8 or 9 years old and set him up with a battery-powered amp right in front of the tour bus playing widdley-widdley, constant, ceaseless notes. I started thinking to myself  ‘Paco De Lucia – he’s from Spain, why in the world aren’t you playing that?’ Okay, he was really a little kid and he could play a lot of notes and it was probably fabulous but come on – Flamenco – I love that stuff!

Every bassist should check out Paco’s bassist – Carles Benavent. He’s unbelievable – he plays all the flamenco rhythms and melodies, with awesome technical facility on a 5-string bass!
Now that’s something I would like to see. Have you seen Oteil Burbridge play? He’s brilliant. Here’s this guy singing lines that I can’t play and he’s singing them in unison or even in harmony sometimes! That’s something I’m inspired by – after I see that I’ll always go back to playing rock but I’ll have a different flavour.
From the early days, I’d sit at home and learn a Brandenburg concerto cello solo. That night, when I went to the gig, we’d be playing Judas Priest songs, but it would have a little bit of influence on what I was doing and which note choice I was gonna go to. It would tend to skew me a little bit one way, which got me out of just doing the stock, standard, incestuous thing that we all have a tendency to do.
Most players that I know, that are accomplished and that have some degree of career success, that’s exactly what happened – most people would be surprised by what musicians listen to when they come off stage or on the tour bus  – it has nothing to do with what’s going on onstage  – they hear that 24/7!
That’s a good lesson for everybody to learn, because I’m sure there could be a lot of people who are reading this that are kinda stuck in a rut – you don’t know where to go – I always say, get Sinatra Live at the Sands, get Oscar Peterson West Side Story, get Mott the Hoople, All the Young Dudes, get Pin Ups, David Bowie, learn Sgt Pepper’s from beginning to end- you’re gonna be a better musician for it.

It can often be hard to find inspiration, when you get so deeply into an instrument. I bet you don’t listen to a lot of bass-heavy music any more.
Yeah – I wanna hear something different. On my Ipod I’ve got Sir Arnold Bax – a great English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, every Dead Can Dance cd that there is – I love them, completely. I’ve got a great collection of the Beach Boys, just about everything by the Beatles, tons of Frank Sinatra – all kinds of stuff. But sitting down with Number of the Beast, Back in Black, Point of Entry or British steel by Judas Priest – I love that stuff. I’m glad that my taste is all over the map. I grew up at a time when FM radio played everything, it wasn’t just specialised stations that played one kind of music only. They’d go right from Joni Mitchell to Black Sabbath to Pete Seger to a classical piece – all over the place!
There wasn’t this balkanisation of music, musicians and players – I’m very proud and honoured to be in a bass magazine, but I do wish we were all in the same magazine – guitar players, bass players, drummers, singers. I think it’s very important for bassists to get together with drummers and even for guitar players to get together with drummers. It’s really important for us to understand each other’s instruments, rather than having your own instrument, your own world, your own corner, your own wing of the building – you know?
The interaction of ensemble playing is for me, the most magical. Now when I do solo records – I’ve made two, and as much as I like it, I do miss playing with a bunch of guys in a room. On the second album, I used a drummer friend of mine named Ray Luzier and it was very band-like in that sense, with Ray and I putting all of the stuff together and laying down all of the bass and drum parts. It was really cool, I love playing with other musicians, it’s one of my real joys.

Solo bass playing is a very difficult career to try and sustain – most bassists out there, even the big names like Marcus and Victor tour with a band and have a full band vibe, featuring all of their musicians.
Guys that learn a lot of soloing stuff – I’ve gotta tell you, your chances of using that in a band that you get in are so few. There’s usually a singer, you’ll be playing his songs and there’s already a guitar player – the focus is not necessarily gonna be on you. I have been lucky enough that I got to be in bands where I got a little spot and I could do an unaccompanied solo – it was a gift from the gods! (Laughter all round) But building a life, a career or a playing style around that, your chances of using it are slim. That’s why I’m still preaching basic bass.

In a two-hour show, you might have only five minutes of solo playing. Do you think bassists should be splitting up their soloing vs. basic bass practice time in that kind of percentage?
That could be true, but in defence of taking a bass and doing on it whatever you feel like and just enjoying it as an instrument apart from everything else, there is a real beauty in that too. I believe that when you get into an area of career and you’re using it to earn your keep, that’s when you’ve got to start to strike a balance. But there’s certainly nothing wrong with pure research, where you go off down that road that no-one may have ever travelled before and coming up with something new – that can be amazing!

Then I suppose the most important thing is realising the context, of being firm about whether you’re onstage or in your bedroom – making the distinction between practicing and playing.
I’m a working man on bass. This is all I’ve ever done for a living. I’ve managed to have a decent career and make some cash and have a decent life, but it’s all from playing bass. I know that in itself isn’t what everyone’s goal is – some people just wanna play. They’re 17 and they don’t have to worry about rent or food and they just want to go wild – God bless them, that’s very cool.
If you wanna play like crazy, that’s great, but don’t be disappointed if you’re not making a career out of it, because it’s a very small market of people that are into that. Art is art – commerce is a different thing.
I have to say, in the defence of every widdley-widdley guy ever, to do that and to want to do that, that’s your choice and I’ll give you all the support in the world to be an artist, to explore and experiment in things. They may not sound musical to me, but I’ll defend your right to play them! I have to throw in the one caveat though, if you’re expecting to make a living or you’re disappointed that thousands of people aren’t coming to see you play, then it’s time to rethink it.

As an established legend on the bass guitar and a player that has performed on a wide variety of very challenging gigs, what do you find is still challenging for you at this stage in your career?
I assume most players would be quite guarded to let out what their weak points are, but I will be perfectly honest – I would just like to see myself be more consistent, night to night. Playing with Steve (Vai), he does the same solo in ‘For the Love of God’ every night and it’s spectacular, but it’s the same thing.
In my solo, I don’t know what I’m gonna do – I walk out there, it’s time for me to play and I have no idea what’s gonna come out, what’s gonna work and what’s not gonna work. It depends on where I’m standing near my amp, what kind of sound we’ve got, how the audience responds – so many things.
So, I would like to strike a better balance between what I do and the consistency of what Steve does – I think he can go out every night and consistently do an amazing thing, but it’s the same thing. There’s a beauty in that, and there’s a beauty in the improvisational side of it. I’d ultimately like to go out, fully improvising and still have enough vocabulary that I can always have a good night.

You have to bear in mind though, a bad night for you is still going to be Olympic strides better than most guys on the street.
I’m sure this will ring true to many musicians reading – when you’re onstage and you have a perfect night and everything works amazingly, you’ll get offstage and ask people ‘how was the show?’ and they’ll say ‘Yeah, it was okay.’ Then, you’ll have a night where everything is wrong, nothing works, it’s out of tune, monitors are feeding back, you get offstage, ready to throw the whole thing in the trash and someone will come up and say ‘That was the greatest moment of music I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life!’
That happens so much that after a while you have to say ‘I guess I do know one thing… I know that I don’t know anything!’ Before we go up onstage on the Steve tour, we have a little pre-show moment together and often we say ‘Even on our worst night, it’s still pretty good’. I think that’s the level of playing that everyone should strive for. Even when it’s all gone to hell, because there are a lot of technical things that can go wrong, a lot of ducks that you have to get in a row to play a show.
I’m my own worst critic. I’m hard on myself and if it’s not amazing, I’m disappointed. I strive to try and do something that I could watch back and be happy with and I’ve seen every move I’ve ever made, so if I can impress me, that’s a tough nut to crack! (Laughter all round) But even on my off nights and I say this without any arrogance, it’s not so bad.