#882 If I played bass I’d play the axe bass guitar like Gene Simmons

I recently started to learn to play guitar. I use to play bass guitar but that was many years ago. In fact it was so many years ago my amplifier had tubes in it and it took a minute to warm up before any sound came out.

I put a down payment on a Steinberger headless bass guitar in the mid eighties. These where the guitars that had the sort of rectangular bodies as opposed to the typical roundish ones. As well, this guitar had no head so there where no knobs at the end. Click that link for some pictures of people like David Bowie, Sting, Geddy Lee and Jerry Garcia playing one. But if I was going to buy a bass guitar today I would definitely save my pennies and get an axe bass like the one Gene Simmons of Kiss plays.

Gene Simmons is one of those folks I have mixed feelings about. Gene Simmons is an Israeli-born American rock bass guitarist, singer-songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, actor, and television personality. He is wildly successful yet at the time seems sort of an ass. Known by his stage persona The Demon, he is the bass guitarist/co-lead vocalist of KISS, a rock band he co-founded in the early 1970s. I met him once and I get the fact he is a big time celebrity and has people approach him all day long so I can over look him not stopping and having a long chat with me. Yet his personna on television and in his books makes him look, I dunno, like an ass.

For sure the thing I do like about him is his axe bass guitar. The axe bass is a bass guitar which is visually designed in similarity to that of an axe. Gene Simmons is to be credited with the axe bass guitar design. In 1978 Gene was searching for a new bass guitar that would either “blend in” or “stand out from” his garish make up and costume, would be a good trademark, and would show his philosophy of how a bass should be handled – like a weapon. Eventually he got Steve Carr to build the first prototype of the axe bass.

They are pricey, and why not? They are sold by Gene Simmons. If you have a bunch of cash lying around and want to get one you can order one at GeneSimmonsAxe.com

One thing is for sure. the axe bass guitar always makes me smile.

Have you ever seen the axe bass or the Steinberger? Did you ever see KISS live or meet Gene Simmons? Share your thoughts in the comments. Would love to hear from you.

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Watch Gene Simmons play his axe bass at Rock Am Ring…

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