A FIRESIDE CHAT WITH STEVE SWALLOW
By FRED JUNG
http://www.jazzweekly.com/interviews/swallow.htm

(...)

FJ: When did you pick up the electric bass and why didn't you just play both, acoustic and electric?

STEVE SWALLOW: Yeah, it was another one of those. You seem to have a knack for putting your finger on those kind of crossroad moments, Fred, but it was definitely one of those. I resisted the electric bass on principle for years. I refused to touch one. I had the usual jazz musician's attitude toward electric instruments and rock and roll. I was working with Gary Burton. This would have been in late 1969 and we were doing a NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) show. I guess it was an early NAMM show, all the instrument manufacturers and Gary was doing demonstrations and brought me along so he didn't have to play solo and so the two of us were playing, playing twenty minutes, taking an hour off, playing twenty minutes all day long in a giant exposition place in Chicago. Midway through the second day, I was bored to tears and I had done everything, but gone into the Fender booth and so I went over there during one of our breaks and I made sure that nobody saw me. I ditched Gary and kind of snuck over. It was really like going into a peepshow or something. I looked stealthfully around to make sure nobody saw me and then split very quickly into the Fender booth. I picked up a Fender bass and the same thing happened. My fingers sent an immediate message to my brain and saying that we liked this. We want to do this. My brain was appalled and said no, but the dye had been cast. I went to the Gibson booth and did the same thing and preferred the Gibson instrument and so I asked them if I could take it back to the hotel and they said, "Sure." I took it back to the hotel and took the instrument out of its case and played it for what I thought was about twenty minutes. I looked up and looked at the clock and a couple of hours had gone by. There was no turning back. It was a very base and physical attraction that I just couldn't deny. Luckily, Gary was very supportive of all of this and receptive to the idea of using it in the band. So I began just using it on one or two tunes a night and it just gradually grew to the point where I was using it on more tunes than I was using the acoustic bass and then I moved to California with my family for a variety of reasons, but among them, to really learn to play the electric bass. At that point, I felt that I couldn't play both the acoustic and electric any longer. There just weren't enough hours in the day. I was just constantly guilty as well, when I was playing one, I saw the other sitting in the corner looking forlorn and very conflicted and so eventually, I got rid of my acoustic bass and I haven't had one since and I haven't regretted doing that either.

FJ: Your approach to playing the electric is unique in that you play it as if it were a guitar.

STEVE SWALLOW: I think it is. You would think I would play it as if it were a bass, but I think one of the things that drew me to the instrument initially was physically, the guitar aspect of it. I loved manipulating that instrument. Initially, I played with my fingers, but fairly shortly, after I began playing the electric bass, I discovered the pick and discovered that I preferred that, that I liked the way I could articulate with the pick and I preferred the sound that I got. I was lucky to play with a succession of wonderful guitar players, starting with Jim Hall, but in the Burton band there was an endless string of them, starting with Larry Coryell and I was able to have a twenty-four hour question answering service available to me at any time and endless examples of how to manipulate the instruments. I empathized strongly with the guitaristic approach physically. On the other hand, I have also kind of insisted whenever anybody asks over the years, that it is a bass, that even though it doesn't look like an acoustic bass and sound like an acoustic bass, it is there to perform the same functions. The day before I first played the electric bass, I loved Paul Chambers and the day I first played the electric bass, I still loved Paul Chambers and nothing changed. I didn't take up the electric bass to effect a change in the idiom that I was playing. I had no desire to do that what so ever. I just wanted to bring the electric bass to the idiom that I always loved.

FJ: Will there be a time when you may return to the acoustic bass?

STEVE SWALLOW: No, I really don't, Fred. I'm so happy with the electric and learning the electric is still such a consuming and on going process that I can't imagine reaching the end of it or ever having time to divert from that course. One of the great things for me about the electric bass is that it has almost no history. There are very few people standing over your shoulder, watching you play. When I played the acoustic bass, I did feel very strongly, the presence of everybody looking over my shoulder. That history just doesn't exist with the electric bass. I have had the sense that I am plowing forward into a country that I have never been in before.


FJ: Do you find that is liberating?

STEVE SWALLOW: I think it is. I found it liberating of necessity to devise my own style and my own tactics and to look for a voice on the instrument because there weren't really any that impacted strongly on me.

(...)