FP: Sure, I think of bass as a function more than an instrument. I think of bass not as an instrument but as a prime function of all music. Where can you develop more of a bass functiom, for instance, than Bach did in his works? This was to me the epitome of the use of bass as a function. Regardless of whether it's played on a futdella or on a B-flat tuba or on a string bass or on a bass viola. It still has the same function It still has to perform the same thing to everything that goes above it - harmonically, rythmically. To me, it's the greatest, you know.

RR:...is an electric bass an instrument you can do more with than say a stand-up bass?

FP: Well, not so much with your hands, but I find absolutely when I'm playing not only the electric bass, but my electric bass - see it gets down to thatwith my amplication - I'm playing a different instrument then let's say Duck Dunn (of Booker T and the M.G.'s)plays, he plays a different instrument. And I don't mean the difference between a Gibson and a Fender. I mean it's different because when I hit a note I have tremendous sustain, and so I think and I work my bass lines to that instrument...I'm happy with the way I'm playing now because it's the way I've always heard it.

I've always heard the function of the bass myself as a huge, ripping sound. I feel like I'm playing a hundred and fifty double basses. And it's just me and some amplifiers and my little bass, you know?

RR:...You play very melodically, do you think the melodic quality has to be present in all of rock today?

FP: It just has to be present when I'm playing bass, that's all. I don't care what anybody else does, I've sort of passed that stage. My favorite bass player alive today is Jack Bruce. And yet he plays totally different than I do. He's the most rythmic, most explosive bass player that I've ever heard. And yet he's got the harmonic subtlties, he knows harmony so well that he's just my favorite bass player. But I play...my approach is much different than Jack's.

You can see it side-by-side on Cream's "Goodbye" album where I play bass on the last cut and Jack is the bass player, of course, on the rest of the album. I approached the 5/4 thing completely different than Jack would have on "Ginger's Tune". But it worked for me. I don't know whether it worked for Cream, but it worked for me, we dug it, we enjoyed it.

RR: Do you work in relation to the drummer as the primary thing?

FP: No, it's sort of all together for me. I don't zero in on the bass drum. I like to psyche out what a drummer is doing. Like I'll listen to him first before I start bashing away. But I think I get most of the feel that I'm playing from Leslie (Leslie West, lead guitarist of Mountain) because what we have together is the fact that we can take a lick and without sitting down and messing around for three weeks we can feel that lick together, we can play it together, we can really make it cook together. And I think, in this particular band, it's the drummer's job to get into that rather than vice versa.

I'm often not functioning as a bass player but as a double lead on that particular lick. Then there are other times when I'm playing bass bass. But that's one of the things that characterizes our playing.

RR: How many instruments do you play, Felix?

FP: All that I can get my hands on!
[ A cheer from Leslie West, who is also at the interview. ]