“Bass players aren't supposed to have ideas. If you're a bass player in a rock band, you are by definition a moron”: He was Zappa’s bassist and remains a low-end enigma – but Scott Thunes has never held back on his opinions

Scott Thunes of The Mother Hips perform on stage at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California, USA on 2nd October 2011. .

Channelling punk, jazz and classical influences, Scott Thunes is an enigma of modern bass-playing history and blazed a unique trail in creating his own spiky playing style. Yet his cult status is based on his controversial tenure with Frank Zappa, which ended with him quitting music altogether.

Thunes (pronounced Too-nis) had proclaimed his unequivocal retirement from the music industry in an infamous 1997 interview with writer Thomas Wictor in his book In Cold Sweat: Interviews With Really Scary Musicians, and was working as a doorman at the time, stating: “If I’ve already played with Frank Zappa, where else is there to go?”