“Keep your mind on the music. I never thought of myself as a ‘woman’ musician at all, but a guitarist and then a bass player”: Studio bass icon Carol Kaye on why it is not about who you are, but how and what you play that defines you as a musician

Carol Kaye playing bass guitar in a Los Angeles recording studio, early 1960's.

When is a bass player not a bass player? When she's a ‘female bass player’, a term which makes great bassists like Tina Weymouth, Melissa Auf Der Maur, Kim Deal, Kim Gordon, Gail Ann Dorsey, and recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Carol Kaye roll their eyes in despair.

It's been nearly six decades since Kaye made her debut on the bass and five since Weymouth first played on the New York punk scene (where she recalled crowds staring at her as if she was, as she put it, “a performing monkey”) and we still can't quite contain our surprise when a person of the female persuasion wields a bass guitar in anger.