Stanley Clarke: All Aboard!

For six decades, bass players have been especially fortunate to have the large hands of Stanley Clarke on their shoulders. As an artist, he took the acoustic bass and the electric bass to new heights as a Philadelphia-born virtuoso in the ’70s, expanding their role in the music and their range upward. Further, he forged a path for the bassist to be a recording solo artist, a touring bandleader, and a composer—specifically writing songs on both instruments and substantially expanding the then almost non-existent electric bass repertoire. As a sideman, he played with the giants of post-bop, rock & roll, and R&B/funk, and helped launch the fusion era as a cornerstone trailblazer. As a mentor, he has continually filled his bands with young prodigies, recalling the way he was trained by the masters. And did we mention that the multi-Grammy-winning Clarke is also a highly accomplished film composer?

Now, in a thank-you to his longtime fans, Clarke has released Last Rain to Sanity, a box set featuring 15 newly recorded tracks on vinyl and CD, a colorful book of expanded liner notes, and Notes from the Journey, a hardcover 123-page career retrospective with rare photos, clippings, reviews, and Clarke’s personal observations. The songs include interesting remakes of Clarke classics as well as bold, new compositions performed by Cory Henry, Armand Sabal-Lecco, John “JR” Robinson, Greg Phillinganes, Paul Jackson Jr., Marvin “Smitty” Smith, Will Calhoun, Ruslan Sirota, Cameron Graves, Salar Nader, Steve Sykes, Ruby Francis, and the members of Clarke’s current band, Stanley Clarke N 4EVER: saxophonist Emilio Modeste, keyboardists Beka Gochiashvili and Jahari Stampley, guitarist Colin Cook, drummer Jeremiah Collier, and violinist Evan Garr.

Having long worn the badges of “root revolutionary” and “low-end liberator,” Clarke retains a keen sense of music history from the unique perspective he has gained. Can any bassist lay claim to playing a key role in more genres and movements? Still, he remains in constant motion, pursuing new forms of expression as a performer and a composer. In our sit-down, Stanley shared surprising revelations about his incredible journey, like the time he gave up the bass and the night a rock star showed up unannounced to say that he was playing one of his songs.

“When I finished School Days, I felt like I had completed a trilogy. There was Stanley Clarke, Journey to Love, and School Days. To be quite honest, I was thinking, ‘Okay, the bass is now well planted on planet earth.’”

How did this retrospective come together?

The initial idea was to do a vinyl album just for my friends, on my own dime, away from the record business side where you have to deal with budget, deadline, and distribution. Then I had the idea to include a book with the album. I remembered that after I did Tug of War [1982] with Paul McCartney, he sent everyone who played on the record a package that included outtakes, photos, and other things. It was a very nice gesture. That inspired me to have the accompanying books, one for the music on the record and one reflecting on my career. It was a family effort: My daughter Natasha did the artwork and design, my son Chris worked on the text, and my wife Sofia was my chief creative consultant. We’re only selling the package on my website right now, and a few editions have sold out, but fans have been asking me about streaming the songs. I’ll choose and release the first single soon, and down the road we’ll make the full stream available.

Was there a concept for the record, knowing it would be part of the package?

Not really. At first, it was just going to be for my friends; I was going to do eight or nine tracks. But different music kept coming up, so we just kept recording. That led me to make it a double album. Stylistically, it covers a lot of areas, and the CD sequence is different than the vinyl sequence, which is a little more organized. But there’s no real concept; I just recorded what was on my mind at the moment. 

How were you able to compile so much historical material for the accompanying hardcover book, Notes from the Journey?

Back in the day, they had something called clipping services, and they would scour newspapers and magazines from all over the world for any mention of your name and then send them to you. This was started for me when I was about 17, and by the ’80s we had amassed about 15 gigantic books. For this project, we got the material that was in different languages translated, and we cut and cut. Notes from the Journey could have been three times the final size. We’ll probably come out with another volume next year.

One of the first revelations in the book is that even though you were known early on as a virtuoso, you leaned to the compositional side.

Yes. I was writing right away, by 15. I had a little trio with my close friend, the late great upright bassist Charles Fambrough — who married my sister — and a drummer named Darryl Brown, who later played with Weather Report and Grover Washington Jr. Charles and I each played some piano and we wrote instrumental tunes. I remember the very first song I wrote: “Do You Believe You’ve Lived Before?” in C minor. Being a composer is how I got really close with Chick Corea. The first time I met him was on a Joe Henderson gig in Philly; he came down from New York to sub because our pianist couldn’t make it. I invited him back to my little apartment afterward and all we talked about was composition, nothing about instruments. The first song we discussed was Coltrane’s “The Wise One”—the changes, and how the melody was so sad. That’s when we got the idea to put a band together where we don’t have to play standards — we’ll write our own!

You say in the book the first thing you wrote specifically for bass is “Bass Folk Song,” beginning a series that now boasts 21 bass folks songs.

The idea was to have a simple song, almost like a children’s song, that has melody, harmony, and rhythm, that doesn’t need any other instruments and sounds best on the bass. The first was “Bass Folk Song” for acoustic bass, and the second was “Lopsy Lu” for electric bass. I’ll tell you the stories behind those. 

We were working on Children of Forever [1973], which is really Chick’s album, and I had played “Bass Folk Song” for him. He said, “We have to record that tune. It’s so unusual.” I thought it would be embarrassing because it was so simple compared to the rest of the record, but he convinced me. The same thing with “Lopsy Lu” — I was working on my first record [Stanley Clarke, 1974] and I was over at Tony Williams’ place showing him the music, which had suites with strings and horns, and he says, “Yeah man, what else have you been writing?” I said I had these children’s songs for solo bass, and I played him “Lopsy Lu,” which was inspired by Larry Graham’s slapping technique. He says, “Man, we gotta do that!” I think a lot of the jazz guys back then didn’t want to play commercial music, but they welcomed something within their language that their kids or their next-door neighbor would like. In fact, the label told us to release “Lopsy Lu” as a 45 rpm single, which I still have. I went into Electric Lady Studios with Bernie Kirsh, Chick’s engineer, and we cut a 2 ½-minute version, and it was a great day for the bass. That single was everywhere. They played it on R&B stations.

That ties into a related point in the book where you say that you felt early on that there was no music written for the electric bass, so you set out to write some.

That’s right. I started on the acoustic bass at 12 in orchestra at school because nobody else picked it and it was the last instrument in the room, so I thought, why not? When I got to the electric bass at 15, I saw that there was a guitar-like quality to it, so I approached it that way. I played my share of bass lines, but I also played chords and I played in the upper register, which was unusual at the time. At that point I was playing sonatas on the acoustic bass, with a vast library to draw from. But there was nothing composed for the electric bass outside of a few method books by Carol Kaye and Mel Bay. So being compositionally minded, I focused on writing for the instrument, which led to tunes like “Lopsy Lu,” “Silly Putty,” and “School Days.”

That being said, I have to mention that the majority of my composing has been done on piano. Early songs like “Light as a Feather” and “Life Is Just a Game” [School Days, 1976], electric Return to Forever, and on through my film composing career and solo albums have all been sitting down at the piano, fleshing out the chords and the transitions, and writing it down on paper.

When I got to the electric bass at 15, I saw that there was a guitar-like quality to it, so I approached it that way. I played my share of bass lines, but I also played chords and I played in the upper register, which was unusual at the time.

That’s a point you make in the book. Return to Forever was very different than the highly improvisational focus of today’s jam bands and electric jazz bands.

For sure. It was Chick who convinced me to write for Light as a Feather, to give the band another layer and sound. I was hesitant because he was a master composer, but he was right. Once I accepted my role as a writer in the band, I loved that before we made Return to Forever records, we would take time off, go to our respective homes, get out a pen and paper, and write. This was especially true when we went electric. Chick called me and said, “We’re changing the sound of the band to all electric and we’re going to find a guitarist, so let’s meet at SIR Studios in New York on this date. Bring a song.” I brought in “After the Cosmic Rain” and Chick brought “Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy,” and when we looked at each other’s scores, we knew we were going to be unique. We took those pieces and made them work in a four-piece setting. The only time it became a jam band was when the chart would say, “solo, bar 34 to bar 54,” with the chord changes. Everything else was very ensemble oriented, with compositional interplay, like classical music. And that’s what endured us to audiences, live. They appreciated the technical expertise of each player and our solos, but the songs had an arc to them, with a gradual rise and a serious ending, and they were blown away. It was a treat for them and for us.

Another key early lesson that you mention in the book is Art Blakey teaching you about beat placement. 

I was this young kid in his band trying to swing, and I was probably all over the place. So, one day he says to me, “You know, Stanley, there are three places on a beat.” I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, “There’s in front of the beat, right on the beat, and after the beat.” I think he mentioned Tony Williams as an example of playing on top of the beat and Elvin Jones as an example of playing behind the beat. But he said, “I play dead on the beat, and if you want to stay on this bandstand, you better play dead on the beat.” That opened up a whole universe for me, and it raised my rhythmic IQ immeasurably. After that, whenever I played with a drummer I would immediately recognize whether their natural beat was ahead, right on, or behind. That gave me three places to be within the beat, depending if I wanted to lock with them or create a little rhythmic tension. I soon realized that drummers like Elvin or Bernard Purdie, who I recorded with in my New York session days, would place different parts of the kit in different places in the pocket, which made their overall beat killin’. In the process, it gave me more options for how I could shade things. Same with a rhythm section, where the guitar may be behind, while the keyboards are square on. That’s where you really make the stew. Grooves can get very interesting when you have musicians with a high rhythmic IQ.

Grooves can get very interesting when you have musicians with a high rhythmic IQ.

Let’s talk about your move to Alembic basses and how it related to the electric bass sound you heard in your head.

My early electric basses were not good. My first was a Kent my mom bought for me at the five-and-dime store for like $15. I had recorded with a Fender Precision and a Rickenbacker, and for some reason I settled on a Gibson EB-0 hollowbody, which is on some of Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy. It’s still hard for me to listen to. Believe it or not, the ideal sound I had in my head was like the tone of an Alembic, with maybe a little less high end.

What happened was that Chick, Lenny White, and I were playing a week at the Keystone Corner in San Francisco and we had guitarists coming by to audition for electric Return to Forever, and I remember Bill Connors had the best sound. One day, Rick Turner, who worked for Alembic, came down during soundcheck. He said, “Hey man, you sound great, but your bass sounds like shit [laughter].” He had one of the first Alembic basses with him, and he gave it to me to play for the show. The first thing I played on it was a fifth, A and E [on the D and G strings], and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. After the set, all the bass players and musicians who were there came up and said, “What kind of bass is that? It’s so clean and clear!” I knew we weren’t going to let him leave with that bass, so we raised some money between us and I think I gave him $1600. That was it. For me, the Alembics are the closest thing to playing an acoustic bass because they’re so alive and receptive, with the exotic woods and the stereo pickups. The sound is amazing, but you really have to control it with your hands.

Your chapter on School Days reveals one of the great unsung heroes of bass, engineer Ken Scott.

 “School Days” was done in two takes because Gerry Brown’s bass drum mic fell off during the first take. When we went back in the booth to listen to the take, the bass was blasting. I said, “Ken, the bass is too loud, turn it down!” He looked up at me and in the heaviest British accent, he said, “Oh no, Stanley, the bass is never too loud. I love it!” Soon, I got used to his bass levels on the album.

Ken was a fantastic engineer who played a big role in the sound of fusion. He engineered Billy Cobham’s Spectrum [1973] and Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Birds of Fire [1973], and that’s after having engineered classic records by the Beatles’ [The White Album and Abbey Road], David Bowie, Elton John, Jeff Beck, Lou Reed, and Supertramp. In an era where most engineers didn’t want to deal with any bass more complex than a Fender, Ken was all in on capturing the sound of the Alembic. Because it has stereo pickups, if your hand accidently hits one of the knobs it throws the bass out of phase, so Ken would have me tape down the knobs so they couldn’t move. He also taught me about tape compression because if you looked at the meters on my bass tracks, they were in the red but nothing was distorted. Ken felt that people get accustomed to certain sounds, so he was always looking for subtle ways to get a new sound. During Journey to Love  [1976], he came to me one day and said, “Stanley, I want you to try out this new Eventide Instant Flanger.” That’s why if you listen closely to the bass on “Silly Putty,” it has an interesting sound — Ken added a tiny bit of flanger, barely enough to notice, but because Alembics are so present, you feel it.

Let’s get to the new record, Last Train to Sanity. The opener, “Molimo,” has African roots and packs a big bass punch between you and Armand Sabal-Lecco.

Molimo is a secret ritual from the Mbuti people of central Africa. They believe positivity and goodness are intrinsic to human beings. When negativity takes hold, they perform specific songs and rhythms to awaken the spirit of the forest and return to sanity. That’s the ancient version of Last Train to Sanity. With this concept in mind, I called Armand, who is one of my dearest friends and collaborators, so we could stitch something together that would musically spell out that emotion. The journey begins with a lush, beautiful orchestral introduction featuring my tenor bass. All of a sudden, the tribe awakens to an unapologetic bass line and groove to keep you on the dance floor, while an eloquent conversation between tenor and piccolo basses harmonically rages on top. This song features the highest number of basses I’ve used or heard in a while on one track — we might have 11 or 12 on there.

The majority of my composing has been done on piano. Early songs like “Light as a Feather” and “Life Is Just a Game,” electric Return to Forever, and on through my film composing career and solo albums have all been sitting down at the piano, fleshing out the chords and the transitions, and writing it down on paper.

Your remake of “Silly Putty” includes a new section with a Corey Henry piano solo.

I wanted to record that song again. It first appeared on my third album, Journey to Love, and then I did it with George Duke in the band we had; I’ve done it in my bands, and I did it at the Hollywood Bowl this year. When you get that tune in front of an audience, with the horns, it’s an experience, man. It’s a kick-ass opener for a show and a great song for the bass. As for Corey, I always wanted to play with him. He came in and he’s just so funky, plus he’s a serious musician. He’s like the future of jazz piano because he has the highest harmonic IQ, combined with gospel roots. I also got to play with him live and it felt great because of the combination of those two things.

You got to play Jeff Beck’s “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” with him on tours in the late ’70s. Here, your bass has the melody with a very expressive performance that includes false harmonics. 

This was the first song I recorded for the project, not long after Jeff passed. What I had in mind was Stevie Wonder’s original version with his wife Syreeta Wright on vocals [Wonder wrote “Superstition” for Beck but Motown wanted him to keep it, so he gave Beck “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” which he recorded on his 1975 album Blow by Blow.] Stevie and Syreeta were in the process of a divorce at the time, so there’s a real sadness to the track that aligned with my feelings about Jeff’s passing. I used my Alembic tenor bass and I really like the sound we got. I played the false harmonics by fretting each note with my left hand and placing my right index finger lightly on the string an octave above the note, while plucking just behind it with my thumb. It was one of the hardest things to play on the record. 

There’s a great story in the book about Jeff showing up at your house in New York, which helped give you the confidence to become a bandleader.

I was living in Westbury, on Long Island, and one morning this stretch limo pulls up. These guys with rooster haircuts get out and ring the bell, and one of them says, “I’m Jeff Beck. I’m playing Madison Square Garden and I’m doing one of your songs,” which was “Power” from my first record. We chatted for 30 minutes, and before he left, he said, “We should record something together.” The next time I saw him was for the Journey to Love sessions, where he played on a couple of tracks. We became friends but I didn’t realize what an icon he was until a few years later when we toured Japan with Tony Hymas on keyboards and a teenage Simon Phillips on drums. We sold out three nights at the Budokan. Bands with No. 1 records like Journey were only selling out one night, and here was this instrumentalist packing the place. Jeff was one of a kind; he was an all-out, full force player and he wanted us to go for it, too.

“Sunlight” is radio ready, with a sub-hook bass line.

One fun segment of my career was producing a lot of R&B vocalists. I loved it but I don’t have much of an opportunity to do it anymore, so this track is a return to that. My son turned me onto Ruby Francis and I thought she was terrific, so I wrote the song with her and Emilio, my saxophonist. Then I called in the heavyweights, JR Robinson on drums and Paul Jackson Jr. on guitar, and we cut the track. Best of all, I got to play bass in that James Jamerson and Chuck Rainey style where the bass and the vocal are the two main voices. I may not be known for that, but it’s something I love to do and have done a lot of, especially when I first came to New York and got on the pop session scene. Creating bass lines is what bass is all about.

You re-recorded “Last Train to Sanity,” from your 2014 album Up. And you also chose it as the title of this new record.

My band wanted to do the song, and we changed the arrangement a bit — I actually think it’s better than the original. It’s a difficult tune to play, and when we do it live, people go crazy because the sampled vocals and the shredding guitar solo are so in your face. It’s best done with a string quartet. I chose it as the title of the record because it’s my little take on society at large. Whatever that train is for you, metaphorically, I think you’d better get on it. Few things make sense right now. We’re a divided nation and people just don’t have that sense that today was a good day and tomorrow will be, too.

What led you to choose “Medieval Overture” from Romantic Warrior as your Return to Forever song for the record?

The guys in my band — which I named Stanley Clarke N 4EVER in tribute to Return to Forever — were hellbent on doing a Return to Forever song, and I always wanted to re-record “Medieval Overture.” We have a slightly different arrangement, but we stayed close to Chick’s composition. The tempo is a little different; I think the bass solo is better now, and we have Emilio playing some bass clarinet — it’s actually Marcus Miller’s bass clarinet, which he brought down for Emilio. It’s a hard-ass tune to play. I had to find the charts. It reminded me of the old days, especially the sessions in Colorado for Romantic Warrior [1976], where we had to sit down and really work our way through the music. But my guys did a tremendous job getting their parts together, I was very proud. It was a true feeling of accomplishment when we finally got it done.

‘Los Manos Magicos” and “Hold on to your Dreams” are two incredible jams with your percussionist Salar Nader. They have a lot of structure for improvisations.

It’s sad to say, but so many people passed during the making of this record. One of them was my good friend Zakir Hussain. When I heard the news, I called Salar — who tours with me and was a student of Zakir’s — and I said, We’ve got to do something for Zakir. So we went into the studio, in a big room, I set up my whole rig, Salar set up his throne, we turned the lights down low, and we recorded the entire day. It was very spiritual, and both songs came out of the one take. The reason you hear structure and some recurring themes even though nothing was written down is that both Salar and I are composers, so we’re always thinking about beginnings, middles, and endings. I chose a major key because Zakir was such a kind soul. And while he loved music from his native India, he also loved jazz, rock & roll, and electric instruments, so I included those influences, too.

Your tone is so vibrant, what bass is that and what tuning is it?

That’s my Alembic Dragon bass tuned as a tenor bass [A-D-G-C]. When we did the session, I tuned the bass up by itself and I thought we were in G major but it was actually tuned to Ab [Bb-Eb-Ab-Db]. I think Alembic gave me that bass on my 50th birthday and I rarely bring it out because it’s so beautiful that I’m afraid someone will run off with it. There’s a dragon inlay in the fingerboard and other features. It’s on the heavy side, with slightly different electronics than my other Alembics. It’s super loud and very alive, so you have to control it, but it’s a killer instrument.

What’s the story behind the solo upright piece “Jymie Merritt”? 

Jymie was a legendary Philadelphia bassist who played with Max Roach and Art Blakey. Before I could even afford to buy records to hear people like Ron Carter and Charles Mingus, Jymie was the bassist I saw playing around town, like at matinees at the Showboat in Philly, when I was 14 or 15. He was also one of the very first guys to play the Ampeg Baby Bass; I’d never seen anything like that. I remember he had this tune he wrote called “Nommo” on one of Max’s records [Drums Unlimited, 1966]. It was in D minor, in 7/4, and the bass was really loud in the mix. It was one of the first hard things I had to figure out, and I thought it was so cool. Here, I started in D minor and just improvised, trying to recall how he soloed on that song. Eventually I go to another section through some implied changes, but there’s no real tempo or melody or harmony. I’m just jamming by myself with Jymie in mind.

What led you to redo “La Cancion de Sofia,” dedicated to your wife and originally put on your 2007 album Toys of Man? And why does Ron Carter get an arrangement credit?

I recorded it as a feature for Jahari Stampley, a terrific young pianist from Chicago who is in my band. He did an incredible job of bringing out the beauty and emotion of the piece. I wasn’t sure I was going to include it on the record, but when I played it for Sofia, she thought it was beautiful and needed to be part of the package. This version adds a string quartet and is extended with a solo section. That’s where Ron comes in. We were preparing to do it for our duet tour some years back and he not only suggested that we put a solo section in it, but he came up with the changes. In addition to being the greatest creator of bass lines ever, Ron is a master of chord changes. He said, Let’s put this here and that there, and it was fantastic. That’s why I gave him the arrangement credit.

You recast “Tradition,” originally an electric bass feature from your 1988 album If This Bass Could Only Talk, as a stripped down duet between piano and acoustic bass.

I wanted to have Ruslan Sirota on the record. He’s a tremendous pianist and musician who was in my bands for years. We go way back to when he first left Berklee, so I’ve seen all his growth. I called him up and suggested “Tradition,” which we used to play on tour. We slowed it down a bit, changed the key from G minor to D minor, and did it in one take.

Your rhythm-changes tune, “The Twinkle in Her Eye” is a trio piece.

That was originally going to be a duet with Emilio on tenor and me on upright, with no piano, which is how we’ve done it live. But we decided to call Marvin “Smitty” Smith to come and play drums. I wrote that during COVID and debuted it at a student showcase at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, but hadn’t recorded it. The song was written for a horse. A friend of ours has a horse farm and I got friendly with Empress. She had these big, beautiful eyes that I would look into and say, “How are you doing?” She was probably saying back, “Where are my apples?” [Laughter]

“Trust,” which appears on your 2014 album Up, is transformed here from an acoustic ensemble to an electric one.

My band dug the tune, and we decided to do it heavier. I play my Alembic and I also play my Lieber Spider Grinder Folk Bass. It has a huge body, with an Ovation-like rounded back and Fishman piezo pickups with a Fishman preamp. It’s a beautiful instrument that really cuts through. I wrote the song for my daughter when she was young, and it’s about the concept of trust, which is hard for a parent. But that’s the way the world works: You have to trust family members and friends, and they have to trust you. As you can hear in the tension of the composition, it’s a little bit of a psychological piece.

The record-closing “Faith” has an interesting rhythmic structure and Will Calhoun on drums.

Emilio came in with that song and we put the finishing touches on it. I wanted to have Will play on something on the record. There are some different meters in there, but a lot of it is written in 4/4 with shifting lines over the top. In the A section, the bass has nothing to do with 4/4; it kind of overlaps it. Will gets to step out during the sax solo.

What’s next for you?

I’ve got dates with my band throughout the year, and I’m going to do four nights of shows with Ron Carter at SFJAZZ in November, two in duet and the last two with a guitarist joining us. Next year, I’ll finally get to do my tribute to Chick. Me, Hiromi, and the PUBLIQuartet string quartet have a bunch of dates booked; I’m doing the arrangements now. I’ve been working on “Spain,” adapting the Return to Forever opening from Concierto de Aranjuez by Joaquin Rodrigo for the string quartet, and trying to capture the sadness of the original piece, which was written right after the Spanish Civil War. I’m also looking forward to the second year of the Santa Monica Jazz Festival, next May 9th to 16th, after a highly successful debut. I’m considering turning it into a bass-focused event, but we’re still working on it.

Having put together this retrospective, how do you reflect on your career? 

It’s nice to see it assembled in one place, and I’m very happy with my career. The most rewarding part for me is the steady stream of young bass players who come up to me wherever I’m performing in the world, which acknowledges to me that the bass is a serious instrument with its own community. I always remind them: Don’t look at someone like Marcus Miller as only a bass player; he has so much more going on — bass is just the instrument he plays. I see a lot of young bassists who write, produce, musical direct, or put bands together and go on tour as the frontperson, and it’s totally normal. That’s my favorite part about my adventure with the bass. It’s finally liberated.

TEN OTHER STANLEY CLARKE OBSERVATIONS

1) “When you’re young, one of your biggest advantages is having a hunger for something so strong it blocks out most of the noise, especially the unhelpful criticism people throw your way. Confidence doesn’t come from waiting for approval. It comes from doing what you believe is right, even if no one else sees it yet.”

2) “One thing I’ve noticed is that musicians who are gifted at a young age are often the ones who practice the most. You might assume these prodigies practice less because they are ‘born with it,’ but in reality, it’s often the opposite.”

3) “I never practiced the electric bass like I did the acoustic bass. Early on, I was thinking of taking a year to really sit down and study it, but I decided to just approach it naturally and each time I picked it up, whatever happened,  happened.”

4) “One of the greatest things I’ve ever experienced was watching George Martin produce Paul McCartney [on Tug of War], especially the way he really understood how to talk to Paul to get to what was in his mind and his heart.”

5) “Larry Graham gave birth to a new language on electric bass with his invention of slapping. It transformed the instrument and the rhythm section; heck, I even do it on upright. Another thing that made it so impactful is that you could take that fundamental technique, come to the front of the stage, and express yourself without having to shred like a guitarist or saxophonist.”

6) “As a film composer, it was great to be a part of the reemergence of African-American films in the early ’90s because it felt like the fusion scene in the ’70s all over again. We were creating and spearheading something new, this time in the film world.”

7) “What really brings an instrumentalist to the front of the pack is the song. It has nothing to do with how fast you can play. That’s just the icing on the cake. The most important thing is the song, and it always will be.”

8) “Believe me, I love the bass, but I could have played other instruments, too. I actually did give up the bass for a minute and switched to saxophone. I was practicing, and Lenny White came by. He said, ‘Stanley, stop!’ I said, ‘What do you mean? I’ve got a good sound.’ He said, ‘You sound terrible, man. Just play the fucking bass!’ And so I came back to bass.”

9) “I’m impressed with a lot of young bass players. Three of my favorites happen to be women: Mohini Dey from India, Kinga Głick from Poland, and Frescia Belmar from Chile.”

10) “When I finished School Days, I felt like I had completed a trilogy. There was Stanley Clarke, Journey to Love, and School Days. To be quite honest, I was thinking, ‘Okay, the bass is now well planted on planet earth.’”

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