I used to be a keyboard player in a band whose singer and composer adamantly refused to do any covers. It was his thinking that if we simply went ahead and started writing our own songs we would come up with a completely original style devoid of any foreign or local influence. We nevertheless ended up sounding like a bland mixture of every New Wave band that was aired on the radio in the 80′s. It was 1991 and I was in third year high school.

That band stumbled and died. New Wave was already nothing more than the dying echo of a delay-drenched synthesizer. The current fashion then was Grunge Rock and it arrived with the attack of a guitar amp; the gain turned all the way to 10. Everybody was either shredding or going “back to basics” on the guitar. Nobody needed a keyboard player. So I naturally shifted to the more popular instrument to get back into the action. After all, at that hormonally pumped-up age, music was simply an excuse to get attention, and rock, in all its various disguises, was the perfect circus ring.

After learning enough chords to play “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and getting blisters in all my left hand fingers, I was beginning to think that the guitar was too much work. I wanted to stay in the game and didn’t want to sweat for it. That’s when I got the bright idea that maybe the bass guitar, which only had four strings thus eliminating the necessity for chords, would be an easier instrument to manage. Like I said, my initial reason was downright stupid.

I couldn’t afford one so I borrowed one. It was the heaviest and clumsiest musical instrument anyone could carry on one’s shoulder – barring perhaps the tuba. The owner, a beginner himself but already miles ahead of me skillwise due to his far more serious attitude towards music, was kind enough to help me out. He gave me tips on fingering and plucking and some exercises to develop finger dexterity and strength. The exercises were simple enough. As soon as I was able to yank a decent sound out of the instrument, I started looking for a band to execute my pathetic ascent to rock stardom.

Wrong motivation, utter lack of discipline, head full of glitter – these were exactly the right traits one needed to end a career in music before it even began. I was out of tune and out of time. The guitarist was always pissed at me because he had to constantly shout out the notes I should play. The drummer, well he was polite, but the way he kept cringing during rehearsals was an accurate gauge of my sense of rhythm or lack of it. I was shortly kicked out of the band burdened with a bad reputation as a poser. I really was nothing more than that. After a long hard look in the mirror I decided it was time to get serious.

Of course changing one’s attitude and way of thinking was not as easy as changing one’s socks. My mind had been caught up in the web of rock and roll tinsel. There was a lot of garbage stored up in my head and I had to throw it all out if I was ever to learn the bass and become a proper musician.

The owner of the bass guitar I was borrowing suggested I take lessons and referred me to a teacher. His name was Benny, a retired bassist-journeyman. He got his formal musical study abroad and has performed as a sideman in several groups of diverse styles all over Europe, and South and North America. He was a real “been-there, done-that” kind of guy.

The first time I met him, I was struck by his complete lack of pretension. I couldn’t see any hint of the weight of his accomplishments on his face, actions or speech. In fact he was always awkward talking about them or his musical adventures abroad. To my sparkle-blinded eyes, he looked more like a jeepney driver than an accomplished veteran musician. (Later he confided that as a young boy growing up in a slum area in Manila, his biggest dream was actually to drive and operate his own public utility jeep. “Music was just a fortunate accident”, he admitted. How he got to Europe from Manila’s slums however is too long a story to tell right now.)

At our first lesson Benny asked me why I wanted to play music and the bass guitar in particular and I couldn’t give him a straight answer. None of the reasons I had could hold any substance in the piercing light of such a fundamental question. In my testosterone-induced dreams of fame and glory, I would see myself bathed in stage lights, playing the bass, jumping and headbanging while swimming in the audiences’ adoration. But in these grand delusions there wasn’t any music playing. They were just silent movie day dreams.

Benny didn’t wait for a response. He put an unlabeled cassette tape in a player and after a few seconds a low thumping pulse came out of the speakers, followed by a twanging, a rattling and tinkling, and then finally the most sorrowful voice I had ever heard sing.

“I know you’re 15 and probably wouldn’t listen to anyone who’s not wearing torn jeans and sporting long unruly hair but bear with me for a moment. Just listen and try to keep an open mind.”

I had never patronized anything other than a very limited style of rock and my teenage brain considered any music that existed before 1988 to be ancient. It was difficult for me to see the point of the exercise. Nevertheless I tried my best to do as he instructed. I shut out unnecessary thoughts and held on more determinedly to the decision I had made. I didn’t want to be a poser.

The song slowly snaked its way through my ears and into my head. The singer was moaning with a heart wrenching melody about how his woman left him after he lost his job. Punctuating the vocals were fat chords from what sounded like a beat up acoustic guitar, which sometimes slipped and slid with the singer into short melancholic lead tunes. It seemed like the guitar and the singer were having a conversation, the guitar agreeing with a sad sigh to what the singer was saying. Then underneath all that was the slow heavy shuffling beat of the drums being pushed along by the low steady throbbing pulse of the bass. The song was simple and repetitive like the downcast steps of a guy wandering around because he had no place to go home to. As it ended, I found my left foot still stomping out the rhythm.

“What you just heard is a sample of the blues. It’s an old, uncomplicated and mostly improvised form of music created by the American Negroes when they were still slaves in that country. That rock stuff you listen to actually came from that music, along with other types like jazz.”

I had never expected to be so moved by a song that if I had heard it on the radio would have promptly turned the dial to change the station. The tune was still lingering in my head and as it did so, I suddenly had a strong urge to learn how to play the whole thing. I felt that if I were to reproduce it on my own then I would somehow be able to recapture the feeling. I don’t remember ever giving a proper reply to Benny’s question but I knew I had found an answer to it.

He never taught me any techniques; he said there were enough books and instructional videos available to help me with the actual mechanics of playing the bass. Instead he taught me how to listen. He would play a different tape of some musical genre at every session, and we would just sit back and enjoy it. As I was trying to absorb the tune, he would frequently point out the significant role of the bass in the song; how it pushed or pulled the rhythm along by synchronizing with the drums or percussion, and how it supported the lead melody and other instruments by putting out the right notes that harmonized with them. Afterwards I’d bring home the tape and attempt to pick out the bass line so I could present it to him at the next session.

Learning the bass line of a tune meant breaking it apart to see how it worked then putting it back together. It was really frustrating at first and there were a lot of times I wanted to smash the bass on the cassette player and be done with it. Benny’s enlightened mentoring taught me the patience I sorely needed, and drew out a capacity for discipline I never thought I possessed. I stubbornly kept at it, most of the time just plowing through with gritted teeth. After an interminable number of sessions, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, I was already practicing consistently. What further surprised me was that I was also digging into diverse musical pieces, from Bach’s “Minuet in G” to Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”. With every lesson, what began as an insipid excuse for chasing after popularity gradually turned into something similar to love. I didn’t sleep with my bass guitar but I made sure it was always close at hand.

Benny had to relocate to the province and so the sessions stopped but by that time the glitter had been flushed out of my head and I was ready to run on my own engine. I looked for a new band to join, confident that I was no longer impaired by concerns on style or image. Before I met Benny, I wanted to play for applause (and I didn’t even get that). This time I just wanted to play.