The Classic Interview

In every issue, we bring you a noteworthy interview from the bass vaults, from far-off times when gigs were plentiful and a virus meant no more than a day in bed. This month: Marcus Miller, interviewed in 2012

When Marcus Miller, Victor Wooten and Stanley Clarke joined forces as SMV back in 2008, it was the obvious next step in each bassist’s long career. These three guys are among the most accomplished electric musicians in the nebulous funk, soul and jazz arenas, having played with the world’s most acclaimed bandleaders between them. You’d expect a clash of egos, right? Envelope filters at dawn?

Far from it, according to Miller. “You know what?” he chuckles, talking to us between rehearsal sessions. “We just picked up our basses and started playing! I heard what Stanley was doing and what Victor was doing, and they sounded like they were playing in the high range and in the mid range, so I just jumped right into the bottom and tried to fill that part up. I’m sure they did the same thing—just reacting to the other two players in the band.”

This generally ego-free approach is typical of Miller, who is that rare thing, a man wholly devoted to his own vision (“the voice”, he calls it), but entirely tolerant of the visions of others. He’s evolved a mature opinion of the way he used to play bass, as opposed to the way he plays it today. “I was a kid when I started playing,” he enthuses, “so I played like a kid plays—with energy. Young, male energy! I played the bass, man, that was who I was, but as you get older you start playing for different reasons. You want to keep that energy, but you want to use it more judiciously.”

You’ll love it—we did—when he extends the metaphor, saying: “You want to be like that gunfighter who only shoots when he has to. Like Bruce Lee, man: You walk around saying, ‘I don’t want to fight’ and ‘I don’t want to fight’, and then finally you say, ‘Okay, now you’ve pissed me off’ and you have to kick everybody’s ass!”

Not that there’s any ass-kicking on Miller’s new album, Renaissance (unless you’re talking about his bass skills when compared to yours and mine). A quizzical, often mellow suite of songs, Renaissance delivers the expected range of bass mastery, whether it’s fingerstyle or slapped, and across the instrument’s full range. Continuing the Bruce “Don’t think... feel” Lee analogy above, Miller used a full fistful of basses this time. “There are five on the new album,” he tells us. “I used my 1977 Fender Jazz, which is my regular bass; a Sixties fretless; my Marcus Miller signature five; and I’ve got an old French acoustic that I play on a couple of songs. And there’s an acoustic-electric bass, too.”