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Billy Sheehan is to the bass guitar what Eddie Van Halen is to the electric guitar: A true pioneer. Voted “Best Rock Bass Player” 5 times in Guitar Player Magazine, Sheehan’s unorthodox style has set a new standard for rock bassists. While many have tried to emulate him, none have managed to duplicate his sound.
Sheehan has played over 4000 gigs during his 40-year career. He began in his hometown of Buffalo, NY during the early 70’s as a member of the Tweeds. They were a teenage rock trio that featured Sheehan on bass/vocals, Dave Constantino on guitar/vocals and Paul Varga on drums/vocals. A few years later, the band name was changed to Talas and they soon became the most popular local band in Buffalo. In 1978, Sheehan left the band to join up with Canadian rocker Kim Mitchell in Max Webster. That however, was short lived and Sheehan returned to his true love, Talas. Talas released their first record in 1979, the self-titled L.P. featuring “See Saw,” “My Little Girl,” and “Most People.” All three aforementioned tracks received airplay in the Buffalo and surrounding markets. The members of Van Halen were so impressed with this cd and the reputation that Talas had built up as a live band that they asked them to open on their 1980 world tour. Talas was one of the few bands that were actually able to win the Van Halen fans over.
Talas would go on to release 2 more records before Billy Sheehan would join forces with Steve Vai in the David Lee Roth Band. He would record two albums with them: ‘Eat em’ and Smile” and “Skyscraper.” But soon after, Sheehan was dismissed due to “personal” differences in 1988.
Sheehan then teamed up with Racer-x guitarist Paul Gilbert to form Mr. Big. They would go on to have one of the most popular singles of the year in 1990, with the Grammy nominated smash hit “To Be With You.” The band was also huge in Japan and dominated the charts over there.
While still a member of Mr. Big, Sheehan formed the jazz-fusion band Niacin. They developed a great reputation as one of the most accomplished groups in the genre of Jazz. Sheehan would also reform Talas and played a few well-received gigs in Buffalo.
Sheehan released two long awaited solo CD's “Compression” in 2001 and "Cosmic Troubadour" in 2005. He played almost every note and sang lead vocals as well on these two groundbreaking releases. Both were CD's for those who truly appreciate hearing a virtuoso musician at their finest. In addition, he also toured several times with the Steve Vai band as part of the G3 tour.
This brings us to 2007, in which Sheehan is currently on the BX3 tour, which also features legendary bass players Stu Hamm and Jeff Berlin.
What follows is an exclusive glammetal.com interview with rock bass legend Billy Sheehan. (intro by Thomas S. Orwat, Jr.)
Hey Billy how ya doin?
I feel good man.
How is it working with Jeff Berlin and Stu Hamm who are well-established musicians in their own right?
Well we are all very different players. We play very different kinds of music so um, that’s good, because I don’t necessarily like things to be all the same. The “sameness” of the players sometimes is something I work against. Plus the good thing also is that all of us are fans of a lot of different kinds of music. That’s how we all grew up, so as much as I don’t play jazz or I don’t play the type of music that Stu plays, more “funk-a-fied,” I love it. I don’t play it, but I appreciate it. It’s a mutual admiration thing, where we can all respect and admire what each bass player does, without necessarily having to have that be what we do.
How did you come up with the other band members to join you on this tour?
Stu put the tour together so he found a few of his friends in the Bay area, a guitar player named Jude Gold who is doing amazingly well at branching three really different styles together. He’s great it. Then a drummer by the name of John Mader similarly, for drummer it might even be a little harder, though in this case, I think it’s equally hard for both guitar and drums to play such completely different styles. Especially going from such a pure jazz thing, which Jeff does, is really different from what I do and then from what Stu does. So to bridge the gap with these two guys, John Mader and Jude Gold is really an amazing accomplishment and they do it spectacularly every night.
You obviously have a lot of respect for those two guys, as far as Bass playing goes who do you considerer an influence or inspiration to your own personal playing?
I started off listening to basic British Invasion music, so I love the Beatles and the Stones and all that when I was very young. I have an older brother and sisters so I got into a lot of music at a very early age. Ya know, I got a jump on a lot of my peers as far as that goes. I was the youngest in my family and got to hear a lot of stuff they didn’t even know about. Later on, I got into a guy named Tim Bogart of one of the first psychedelic bands called Vanilla Fudge. Since then, just anybody and everybody, especially alot of non-bass players, a lot of pianists, a lot of classical music, a lot of unusual influences from many, many different things, not just bass, which I think is really important, it kinda gives you a different favor as a bass player.
But on bass itself, though, one guy who was a big influence to me was a neighbor of mine named Joe, who lived around the corner and was a bass player. Even before I owned a bass I fully understood the function of bass in a band and how you got to follow the bass drum and lay down a solid foundation, cause that’s what he did and then he explained it to me. So, before I even owned my very first bass I had an idea on how it worked. So that was a big help to me as well.
Are there any musicians that maybe you have wanted to work with that you haven’t had the opportunity to yet?
Well I’ve been lucky enough to play with just about everyone I ever wanted to. But one guy in particular, is a flamenco guitarist named Paco Delucia who I would love to play with sometime. His techniques and his passion are second to none I believe. I’ve stolen a lot from Paco. (laughs).
What other projects besides BX3 and Niacin are you currently involved in?
Well, I’ve played a lot with Steve Vai in the last few years, I’m on my second solo record and about to start my third, that’s very important to me. At some point I’d like to go out on my own and do stuff from my solo records, Talas stuff, David Lee Roth stuff, Mr. Big stuff, etc. To do a big show would be cool at some point if I could possibly pull that off.
But, my main pursuit is just to be a better player. By exposing myself to all these different situations in Niacin, the BX3 Tour, playing with Steve, all these challenge me in different ways an I gotta come up with ways to meet those challenges and that’s where the creativeness comes in as a player.
Do you have any protégés, past or present that you may have taken under your wing that you tried to teach them some of your techniques and whatnot?
No, but I travel around and do bass clinics and seminars a lot and I freely and deliberately give away anything I know. (laughs)
Be it, as far as playing bass, how to set-up your bass, what to do with your amp, how to be in band, what to expect out of the music biz, all those things I really try to teach and guide a lot of players as a result and also via email, I get a lot of questions all the time.
I put out two recent DVDs. One basic bass for absolute beginners, and one more advanced because I can’t reach as many people as try to reach me, so to codify it and put it into a DVD and put it out, makes it a little easier, it’s hard to answer those questions via an email anyway, I have to illustrate it. But, I really try and I’ve done clinics all over the world like Bangkok Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, I got something coming up in Russia, probably around the end of the summer. I’m all over Europe and South America and North America. So, I do them everywhere and I see a lot of young players see what their doing, what their up to. I try to help them out and not necessarily to be a player “like” me. I just try to guide them towards what they think is the thing they want. Cause,
It’s not gonna do them any good to play what I play, cause I’m already playing it. I try to instill upon them, or within them rather, the idea to get experimental and grow and discover on their own.
I think it’s the best way to help out a younger player. I’m glad to see other people succeed and do well, and if I can ever be any part of it that’s a very fulfilling thing.
On that note, is there any up and comers that have caught your ear?
None that I can think of off hand, I’m always inundated with them, I don’t have a lot of time to listen to a lot of stuff, unfortunately, because I have such a busy schedule, and there are even records that I’ve played on that I haven’t even heard! (laughs). Once in awhile somebody will sneak a MP3 file through the filter on my server and I get a listen to it, and some of it’s pretty cool. MySpace.com is wonderful too, you just click on the guys space and get a listen right a way. It’s a wonderful tool for musicians these days, I
encourage everybody to get involved in it.
Given that you are so busy are there any other interests or hobbies that you are into like gardening, cooking or painting or something (laughs)?
Ironically, no. I love what I do and it’s almost my full-time thing. At home in L.A. I have my kitty-cat, Spooky, and that’s good. Really, music, playing and the pursuit bass, I’m glad that after playing bass for almost 40 years now I still get a thrill to pick the darn thing up and sit down and come up with something new, and I do every single day and while I’m warming up before a show. I ‘ll come up with something that I’ve never thought of and it’s brand new to me and it opens up a whole new world. It baffles me when people say, “yeah, I’m kind of bored with my playing,” and I say, “Well how long have you been playing?” and they say “Oh, about a year and a half.” (Laughter from all).
After decades, I still feel there are great adventures to be found. I love that. It’s very important to me.
I’m a musicologist, so to speak, I do collect and pursue songs and music by artists that I love. I have quite a spectacular collection of stuff. About 200 gigabytes of MP3’s on three hard drives it’s all backed up to. Amazing bootlegs and unauthorized recordings.
When a party breaks out at my house, it’s really amazing.
Anything you’re looking for that you can’t find?
Well, some of the things on vinyl I couldn’t find. There is a lot Buffalo stuff I’d like to get. I’d like to see a box set of all the Buffalo bands, that’d be great. Talas actually had a record that was never released, which was executive produced by Harvey Weinstein.
It was a pretty cool record. Plus, I’ve got a ton of bootlegs and live recordings.
Is it possible this may surface in the future?
That’s what I’m working on. I’ll sit down with Paul and Dave and make a list of the stuff we got someday and figure out what we want to put out in a box set. We have some video some people have probably never seen before too.
Continuing on the Talas theme, our Editor had a question about the time U2 actually opened for you guys.
A lot of people didn’t believe it, but I posted it on my website, where Bono even says so from the stage the last time U2 played in Buffalo. Somebody bootlegged the show and sent me a CD, and sure enough he says, “yeah, the first time we played Buffalo there were more people here, probably because we were opening up for a band called Talas.”
That’s a sound clip on my website. They are actually a very nice bunch of guys. They were very cool. I’m glad to see that they’ve gone on and done so well.
Okay, given you’re a Buffalo boy, this is kind of a fun question… when ordering chicken wings, is it Hot, Medium or Mild for you?
It’s suicidal hot. As hot as they can make ‘em! (laughter) I don’t know why, cause I’m Irish! Habenero peppers and jalapenos, I don’t know where that gene came from but, I’ve been a heat freak my whole life.
What’s the one thing about your hometown that you are most proud of or that you’d brag about to people you come in contact with?
I think it’s just the general tone and attitude of the folks there. Every time I go back, it’s a blast, my family’s there. Buffalo a tough town, as you know. It ain’t an easy town to survive in, even nature’s against you, (laughter) the economy is rough. As a musician that’s tough, it’s an uphill battle. The good news is it really makes you strong. It makes you survive, and it really makes you push hard. Being up against everything I was up against in Buffalo really helped me to become a better player. Most everything I know now, the seed of it all came from playing in bars in Buffalo. I tell players all the time, get in a band and start playing, get up there, if you can’t find a gig, make a gig!
One last question, we have read a lot of stories on the internet that you were asked to be the bas player for the Van Halen reunion tour. Can you comment on that?
I did get a call, we didn’t get into any formal negotiations or anything, but I did a couple of calls, but it never got to a point where I could say yes or no, but I’m kind of glad it never got there because it just kinda looks like a mess, and I feel bad for those guys. I mean, I love Van Halen, but it’s just a mess and I think it’s a mistake to be taking 15-year old kid out in that kind of environment. (Referring to Eddie’ son, Wolfgang). If I was his mom I would say, “Absolutely not.”
But, I wish them well. I love Ed. I love Dave. I love Alex and Mike too, and that’s how it should be. I did get a couple calls initially regarding it, it never turned into anything, but over the years, every couple of months a call comes through and various things are entertained, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but as far as I know now, it’s been postponed. I don’t know anything about it other than that.
Billy, thank you for taking the time to talk with us and good luck with the future of the tour.
My pleasure, hopefully you can make it out to the show.
Link Here -
Billy Sheehan is to the bass guitar what Eddie Van Halen is to the electric guitar: A true pioneer. Voted “Best Rock Bass Player” 5 times in Guitar Player Magazine, Sheehan’s unorthodox style has set a new standard for rock bassists. While many have tried to emulate him, none have managed to duplicate his sound.
Sheehan has played over 4000 gigs during his 40-year career. He began in his hometown of Buffalo, NY during the early 70’s as a member of the Tweeds. They were a teenage rock trio that featured Sheehan on bass/vocals, Dave Constantino on guitar/vocals and Paul Varga on drums/vocals. A few years later, the band name was changed to Talas and they soon became the most popular local band in Buffalo. In 1978, Sheehan left the band to join up with Canadian rocker Kim Mitchell in Max Webster. That however, was short lived and Sheehan returned to his true love, Talas. Talas released their first record in 1979, the self-titled L.P. featuring “See Saw,” “My Little Girl,” and “Most People.” All three aforementioned tracks received airplay in the Buffalo and surrounding markets. The members of Van Halen were so impressed with this cd and the reputation that Talas had built up as a live band that they asked them to open on their 1980 world tour. Talas was one of the few bands that were actually able to win the Van Halen fans over.
Talas would go on to release 2 more records before Billy Sheehan would join forces with Steve Vai in the David Lee Roth Band. He would record two albums with them: ‘Eat em’ and Smile” and “Skyscraper.” But soon after, Sheehan was dismissed due to “personal” differences in 1988.
Sheehan then teamed up with Racer-x guitarist Paul Gilbert to form Mr. Big. They would go on to have one of the most popular singles of the year in 1990, with the Grammy nominated smash hit “To Be With You.” The band was also huge in Japan and dominated the charts over there.
While still a member of Mr. Big, Sheehan formed the jazz-fusion band Niacin. They developed a great reputation as one of the most accomplished groups in the genre of Jazz. Sheehan would also reform Talas and played a few well-received gigs in Buffalo.
Sheehan released two long awaited solo CD's “Compression” in 2001 and "Cosmic Troubadour" in 2005. He played almost every note and sang lead vocals as well on these two groundbreaking releases. Both were CD's for those who truly appreciate hearing a virtuoso musician at their finest. In addition, he also toured several times with the Steve Vai band as part of the G3 tour.
This brings us to 2007, in which Sheehan is currently on the BX3 tour, which also features legendary bass players Stu Hamm and Jeff Berlin.
What follows is an exclusive glammetal.com interview with rock bass legend Billy Sheehan. (intro by Thomas S. Orwat, Jr.)
Hey Billy how ya doin?
I feel good man.
How is it working with Jeff Berlin and Stu Hamm who are well-established musicians in their own right?
Well we are all very different players. We play very different kinds of music so um, that’s good, because I don’t necessarily like things to be all the same. The “sameness” of the players sometimes is something I work against. Plus the good thing also is that all of us are fans of a lot of different kinds of music. That’s how we all grew up, so as much as I don’t play jazz or I don’t play the type of music that Stu plays, more “funk-a-fied,” I love it. I don’t play it, but I appreciate it. It’s a mutual admiration thing, where we can all respect and admire what each bass player does, without necessarily having to have that be what we do.
How did you come up with the other band members to join you on this tour?
Stu put the tour together so he found a few of his friends in the Bay area, a guitar player named Jude Gold who is doing amazingly well at branching three really different styles together. He’s great it. Then a drummer by the name of John Mader similarly, for drummer it might even be a little harder, though in this case, I think it’s equally hard for both guitar and drums to play such completely different styles. Especially going from such a pure jazz thing, which Jeff does, is really different from what I do and then from what Stu does. So to bridge the gap with these two guys, John Mader and Jude Gold is really an amazing accomplishment and they do it spectacularly every night.
You obviously have a lot of respect for those two guys, as far as Bass playing goes who do you considerer an influence or inspiration to your own personal playing?
I started off listening to basic British Invasion music, so I love the Beatles and the Stones and all that when I was very young. I have an older brother and sisters so I got into a lot of music at a very early age. Ya know, I got a jump on a lot of my peers as far as that goes. I was the youngest in my family and got to hear a lot of stuff they didn’t even know about. Later on, I got into a guy named Tim Bogart of one of the first psychedelic bands called Vanilla Fudge. Since then, just anybody and everybody, especially alot of non-bass players, a lot of pianists, a lot of classical music, a lot of unusual influences from many, many different things, not just bass, which I think is really important, it kinda gives you a different favor as a bass player.
But on bass itself, though, one guy who was a big influence to me was a neighbor of mine named Joe, who lived around the corner and was a bass player. Even before I owned a bass I fully understood the function of bass in a band and how you got to follow the bass drum and lay down a solid foundation, cause that’s what he did and then he explained it to me. So, before I even owned my very first bass I had an idea on how it worked. So that was a big help to me as well.
Are there any musicians that maybe you have wanted to work with that you haven’t had the opportunity to yet?
Well I’ve been lucky enough to play with just about everyone I ever wanted to. But one guy in particular, is a flamenco guitarist named Paco Delucia who I would love to play with sometime. His techniques and his passion are second to none I believe. I’ve stolen a lot from Paco. (laughs).
What other projects besides BX3 and Niacin are you currently involved in?
Well, I’ve played a lot with Steve Vai in the last few years, I’m on my second solo record and about to start my third, that’s very important to me. At some point I’d like to go out on my own and do stuff from my solo records, Talas stuff, David Lee Roth stuff, Mr. Big stuff, etc. To do a big show would be cool at some point if I could possibly pull that off.
But, my main pursuit is just to be a better player. By exposing myself to all these different situations in Niacin, the BX3 Tour, playing with Steve, all these challenge me in different ways an I gotta come up with ways to meet those challenges and that’s where the creativeness comes in as a player.
Do you have any protégés, past or present that you may have taken under your wing that you tried to teach them some of your techniques and whatnot?
No, but I travel around and do bass clinics and seminars a lot and I freely and deliberately give away anything I know. (laughs)
Be it, as far as playing bass, how to set-up your bass, what to do with your amp, how to be in band, what to expect out of the music biz, all those things I really try to teach and guide a lot of players as a result and also via email, I get a lot of questions all the time.
I put out two recent DVDs. One basic bass for absolute beginners, and one more advanced because I can’t reach as many people as try to reach me, so to codify it and put it into a DVD and put it out, makes it a little easier, it’s hard to answer those questions via an email anyway, I have to illustrate it. But, I really try and I’ve done clinics all over the world like Bangkok Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, I got something coming up in Russia, probably around the end of the summer. I’m all over Europe and South America and North America. So, I do them everywhere and I see a lot of young players see what their doing, what their up to. I try to help them out and not necessarily to be a player “like” me. I just try to guide them towards what they think is the thing they want. Cause,
It’s not gonna do them any good to play what I play, cause I’m already playing it. I try to instill upon them, or within them rather, the idea to get experimental and grow and discover on their own.
I think it’s the best way to help out a younger player. I’m glad to see other people succeed and do well, and if I can ever be any part of it that’s a very fulfilling thing.
On that note, is there any up and comers that have caught your ear?
None that I can think of off hand, I’m always inundated with them, I don’t have a lot of time to listen to a lot of stuff, unfortunately, because I have such a busy schedule, and there are even records that I’ve played on that I haven’t even heard! (laughs). Once in awhile somebody will sneak a MP3 file through the filter on my server and I get a listen to it, and some of it’s pretty cool. MySpace.com is wonderful too, you just click on the guys space and get a listen right a way. It’s a wonderful tool for musicians these days, I
encourage everybody to get involved in it.
Given that you are so busy are there any other interests or hobbies that you are into like gardening, cooking or painting or something (laughs)?
Ironically, no. I love what I do and it’s almost my full-time thing. At home in L.A. I have my kitty-cat, Spooky, and that’s good. Really, music, playing and the pursuit bass, I’m glad that after playing bass for almost 40 years now I still get a thrill to pick the darn thing up and sit down and come up with something new, and I do every single day and while I’m warming up before a show. I ‘ll come up with something that I’ve never thought of and it’s brand new to me and it opens up a whole new world. It baffles me when people say, “yeah, I’m kind of bored with my playing,” and I say, “Well how long have you been playing?” and they say “Oh, about a year and a half.” (Laughter from all).
After decades, I still feel there are great adventures to be found. I love that. It’s very important to me.
I’m a musicologist, so to speak, I do collect and pursue songs and music by artists that I love. I have quite a spectacular collection of stuff. About 200 gigabytes of MP3’s on three hard drives it’s all backed up to. Amazing bootlegs and unauthorized recordings.
When a party breaks out at my house, it’s really amazing.
Anything you’re looking for that you can’t find?
Well, some of the things on vinyl I couldn’t find. There is a lot Buffalo stuff I’d like to get. I’d like to see a box set of all the Buffalo bands, that’d be great. Talas actually had a record that was never released, which was executive produced by Harvey Weinstein.
It was a pretty cool record. Plus, I’ve got a ton of bootlegs and live recordings.
Is it possible this may surface in the future?
That’s what I’m working on. I’ll sit down with Paul and Dave and make a list of the stuff we got someday and figure out what we want to put out in a box set. We have some video some people have probably never seen before too.
Continuing on the Talas theme, our Editor had a question about the time U2 actually opened for you guys.
A lot of people didn’t believe it, but I posted it on my website, where Bono even says so from the stage the last time U2 played in Buffalo. Somebody bootlegged the show and sent me a CD, and sure enough he says, “yeah, the first time we played Buffalo there were more people here, probably because we were opening up for a band called Talas.”
That’s a sound clip on my website. They are actually a very nice bunch of guys. They were very cool. I’m glad to see that they’ve gone on and done so well.
Okay, given you’re a Buffalo boy, this is kind of a fun question… when ordering chicken wings, is it Hot, Medium or Mild for you?
It’s suicidal hot. As hot as they can make ‘em! (laughter) I don’t know why, cause I’m Irish! Habenero peppers and jalapenos, I don’t know where that gene came from but, I’ve been a heat freak my whole life.
What’s the one thing about your hometown that you are most proud of or that you’d brag about to people you come in contact with?
I think it’s just the general tone and attitude of the folks there. Every time I go back, it’s a blast, my family’s there. Buffalo a tough town, as you know. It ain’t an easy town to survive in, even nature’s against you, (laughter) the economy is rough. As a musician that’s tough, it’s an uphill battle. The good news is it really makes you strong. It makes you survive, and it really makes you push hard. Being up against everything I was up against in Buffalo really helped me to become a better player. Most everything I know now, the seed of it all came from playing in bars in Buffalo. I tell players all the time, get in a band and start playing, get up there, if you can’t find a gig, make a gig!
One last question, we have read a lot of stories on the internet that you were asked to be the bas player for the Van Halen reunion tour. Can you comment on that?
I did get a call, we didn’t get into any formal negotiations or anything, but I did a couple of calls, but it never got to a point where I could say yes or no, but I’m kind of glad it never got there because it just kinda looks like a mess, and I feel bad for those guys. I mean, I love Van Halen, but it’s just a mess and I think it’s a mistake to be taking 15-year old kid out in that kind of environment. (Referring to Eddie’ son, Wolfgang). If I was his mom I would say, “Absolutely not.”
But, I wish them well. I love Ed. I love Dave. I love Alex and Mike too, and that’s how it should be. I did get a couple calls initially regarding it, it never turned into anything, but over the years, every couple of months a call comes through and various things are entertained, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but as far as I know now, it’s been postponed. I don’t know anything about it other than that.
Billy, thank you for taking the time to talk with us and good luck with the future of the tour.
My pleasure, hopefully you can make it out to the show.
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