The Tale of Franken-Bass
A Personal Journey of Self-Discovery
Once upon a time…
At 19, I went shopping for a bass guitar. I wanted something that was more than just something off the wall from a big brand store. Through some exploration, I discovered an oddball shop in Hollywood with a tatted-up salesperson, eclectic brands, and bad lighting. It was the type of place that all the “cool kids” shopped at. I spent the day there in search of a suitable instrument. It wasn’t long before I found one that “spoke” to me. After some 19-year old attempts at haggling, we agreed on a reasonable price and I walked out of the shop with a G&L 2000, (a rather popular company founded by some of the legends in guitar manufacturing). That bass ended up following me around for the next 15 years. Within a month, it became part of my voice. The cheaper instruments I had spent most of my time with until then ended up slamming into drummer’s symbols and thrown into amplifiers, as was the accepted technique of the grunge era.
I treated this new instrument differently. I had learned to communicate with it, and it had helped me established my sound. Surely, it’s the reason it stayed with me all those years and endured through the various bands, beyond my abandonment of regular practice and performance, and well past my self-inflicted exile from playing (or even listening to) music all together. That bass followed me through countless moves, relationships, most of a marriage. It lived through three careers. After a while, it mostly remained under my bed, only emerging for the occasional trip down memory lane. It was orange sunburst. It had a tricky input. It growled. I loved the feel of its teeth, and for the first few years I had it, we were best friends.
I performed with a variety of bands throughout the late 90s and early 2000s. By 2003, I had a job that I was making a decent living with, and I decided to take a break from the music scene. Right around 2005 I gave away most of my remaining musical gear and instruments because I was sick of packing them up and moving them. I had accumulated a lot of drums, recording equipment, and bass guitars, and I had stopped playing music for almost 3 years at that point. It felt like it was time to face the facts and give these possessions a better home. During what I consider ‘The Purge’, only two things survived: My acoustic guitar (because every home needs a 6-string. It’s almost not an instrument, it’s a piece of furniture), and my G&L 2000. That bass guitar continued to follow me for another 8 years.
As time passed- there were good times, and bad times, and one time, during a really bad time, I needed rent bad enough to make a really bad decision.
I sold that bass.
That bass that had given me a voice, which had taught me how to speak, that had showed me who I was.
I regretted it instantly.
To me, it meant more than just losing an old part of my past, it meant that I wasn’t a bass player anymore. It proved to be too much of a hit to my identity for me to take.
I needed a bass.
I remember that night, telling my wife (at the time) that maybe, I could find a cheap one at a garage sale and restore it. I thought maybe the Ventura Swap Meet would have something I could pick up. Perhaps, -and I remember saying this specifically-, I could find one in a trash can somewhere. I had done a lot of amateur luthier work on my old guitars as a kid, and I knew how to fix some basic issues. I even knew how to reset a fingerboard.
One thing was for sure: I needed a bass.
The next day, in my neighbor’s garbage can, I saw the neck of a bass sticking out.
This is a true story.
Coincidences happen. They do, or we wouldn’t have that word. However, this was so random and specific that I suspect my neighbors overheard the conversation. Whatever the cause, the fact remained, my wish had been granted. I pulled, from the refuse, a broken and battered 1984 Electra-Westone. The hardware was rusted out, the fingerboard was coming apart from the neck, and it had no volume knobs. This beaten and abandoned bass guitar looked like I felt. It looked like it would never play again.
But I knew what to do.
I pulled it out from the garbage, I took it inside, and I began to play- rusted strings and all. It cried and whimpered, but I knew it would work. It just needed some help.
I replaced all the hardware and spent a week resetting the neck. I found some great pick-ups, bought new electronics, and replaced the knobs (with ones that go to 11). I painted it black and re-strung it. My ex-wife called it “Franken-bass”, and today, it is still my favorite bass guitar. I began playing again with Franken-bass in 2014, and I started getting work so quickly that I decided to go back to school and get a degree (or two, or three) in music, and re-align myself with the journey of music.
I’ve recently applied to graduate school to study for a master’s degree in Musicology. More than one professor told me that the field is incredibly competitive, hardly anyone is accepted into these programs, and even after they finished degree’s the job market for the teaching profession in music is almost non-existent. I don’t know how I feel about any of that yet, but I do know that education is worth it. I’m 43-year-old as of this writing, and if I’ve learned anything, it has been that following your passions doesn’t mean life gets easier. It just gets better. And I think that its worth it. You should, too.
A few years later, in 2019, I was in a pawn shop in Ventura, and saw a white, G&L 2000, for ridiculously cheap. I played it and felt that old voice all over again. It made me feel like I had found a ghost from my past or something. I bought that bass, and I do enjoy it, very much. It is not the greatest bass in the world, however. It is just a Tribute.
If the pandemic experience has taught us anything, its probably how much we love live music. If the world always needs another bartender, surly those bartenders could use a song or two.
Here’s a video of me and Franken-bass, making sweet music. Thanks for reading!
