Bill Laswell

Bill Laswell is one of those musicians who quietly redefined what a bass player can be, and I find his work genuinely fascinating. Born in Salem, Illinois in 1955, he became the connective tissue between worlds that had no business touching each other — funk, dub, jazz, ambient, world music — and somehow made it all feel inevitable. His collaborations read like a who's-who of avant-garde royalty: Herbie Hancock, Mick Jagger, Motorhead, Pharoah Sanders, Sly Dunbar. He ran his own label, Material, like a mad scientist's lab. Most producers pick a lane; Laswell treated genre boundaries as suggestions and spent decades proving them wrong. He's not a household name, but he's probably on more iconic recordings than most people you could name. That kind of invisible influence is its own kind of greatness.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Bill Laswell

Name (Japanese)

ビル・ラズウェル

Reading

びる・らずうぇる

Born

February 12, 1955 (age 71)

Origin

Salem, Illinois, United States

Occupation

jazz musician / singer / record producer / composer / musician

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aquarius / Goat

Awards & achievements

• 2013 Człowiek ze Złotym Uchem

• Official sitehttps://www.billlaswell.net/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill%20Laswell
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%93%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%83%A9%E3%82%BA%E3%82%A6%E3%82%A7%E3%83%AB
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q552511

Tags

• Illinois
• jazz musician
• singer
• record producer

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.