Music is all about wanting to be better at it.

I feel safe and comfortable to do that once I know that the song structure around the bass part is very interesting and it satisfies me in a compositional sense.

Then, once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process.

With me, satisfaction is always very fleeting with our work. I always get a little restless with it.

But, I would be naive not to recognize the number of musicians who tell me they have been influenced by me and sight me - as well as Alex and Neil - as a musician who has been a positive influence on their playing.

I'm always scouring the universe for great old instruments from the '50s and early '60s. That's really, for me, the golden age of basses, when they had just been invented within 10 years of that period and they had just started to come into their own, especially the old Fender jazz basses and old Rickenbackers and Gibsons. I'm always on the lookout. It's fun.

I would like to think that Ben and myself have begun a partnership that will take us into different areas of music that we can continue to write, enjoy and keep me involved with music other then what I do with RUSH.