a rolling stone waiting to be set in motion

Paul Simonon on learning how to play bass:

"It was sort of disappointing for me," smiles Paul. "I had these grand dreams of being Pete Townshend. I wanted to do this [pulls windmill shape] and smash guitars and all that stuff. So once I was handed the bass I thought, 'I'll just pretend I'm playing guitar'. Which is pretty much what I did from day one. I swung my arms around just like I was playing guitar. I just took one instrument and treated it like it was another one - not musically, but physically."

Paul also had a nice trick for learning quickly: "To simplify it for myself, I painted the notes on the neck of the guitar. So if Mick said, 'This song starts in D and then it's G and then it's F', I had it all there. I pretty much coloured the whole fretboard in. And after learning parrot fashion, it was only a matter of time before I could take the letters off."