12-String Bass Art

The first drawings of 12-string basses appeared very soon after the appearance of the first Hamer Quad Bass. While there are countless drawings of band members, only rarely will the instruments be accurately represented, the focus is typically on the faces of the musicians.

This front cover of the Japanese Cheap Trick fan magazine, Cheap Sweets, is the very first publication to prominently display a drawing of a 12-string bass. The fanzine seems to have been published for only a few months in 1978, being first published on March 21st of that year. This cover is from Issue 5. A competing magazine, Cheap Jack, appeared at almost exactly the same time, and perhaps the decision was made to combine the competing fan newsletters into a single publication.

The cover drawing shows a reasonably accurate representation of the Hamer Quad 12-string bass, which is being held by a Mona Lisa look-alike wearing Rick Nielsen’s baseball cap, while smoking Bun E. Carlos’ cigarette, and with Robin Zander’s hair.

The fan magazine Cheap Jack featured Tom Petersson and the Hamer Quad 12-string bass on the front cover of Volume 6. Tom seems to have a headache, or perhaps he just remembered that he left the stove on. This drawing was based upon a 1978 photo from Japan’s Music Life Magazine.

Cheap Trick - Busted Comic

To try to capitalize on the success achieved with Cheap Trick’s “Lap of Luxury” album, for the “Busted” album in 1990 Marvel Comics published this illustrated ‘history’ of how the band got together. It contains 8 pages of comics plus promotional hype and ads for Cheap Trick on the covers. Two panels in the comic show Tom Petersson playing his Hamer B12A.

Drawn by June Brigman and Ralph Cabrera.

Drawing attributed to Jeff Ament

This drawing is claimed to have been made by Jeff Ament in 1991. Here is the story as told by the person looking to sell it: “November 14th, 1991. Pearl Jam played a now famous acoustic set at Tower Records in Yonkers, New York. After the show they sat down to sign autographs for the fans. During any free time, Jeff was doodling on the paper / plastic tablecloth with a sharpie. The result was a self portrait of himself, spinning a basketball, wearing a #10 (Mookie Blaylock) Jersey, and talking about his favorite bands. As they were leaving I asked Eddie to sign it (it’s on the basketball). Yes, looking back I should have had the other three sign it also. As they left, I took the tablecloth and it has been framed and hanging up ever since.”

Oddly enough, given the sizes and positions of the tuners, this 12-string bass would have been strung Inverted, which is a string arrangement that Jeff Ament has never played. The piece measures 30” by 30” and is said to be on a pure white background although it is toned in the photo.

12-String Bass Paintings