In a rock band, the bass player is nearly always on the left (from the audience perspective). Is there any reason for this? A technical reason, or has it just become the convention? Even in a true 3 piece, the Bass player tends to stay on the left(Nirvana). And in Cream, where Jack Bruce(bass) was also the primary vocalist, Clapton was usually to the right. Why?
I don’t know. Wild ass guess, so they can more easily communicate with the drummer (a right handed bass player has his head turned to the left when playing.)
Not so with Rush.
Not so with my band, either. I reckon there might be something to the looking at the drummer thing, but I’m thinking it’s more like what side of the bed you prefer or something.
When I’m playing bass, I’m always Stage Right (left from audience perspective) precisely so I can communicate with the drummer and keep a better eye out for “improvs” and other Arbitrary Flights of Randomness & Odysseys To The Unexpected from our wondeful, yet flightly, lead singer.
I kind of serve as an anchor point of a “V” from my position.
I think that you got it wrong. Bass players are generally the more **conservative **members of a band.
Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.
When U2 was on letterman last week, Adam Clayton was on the right.
Interesting- I was picturing my friend’s band and the bass player is always stage left (right from the audience perspective). Then I remembered that Brendan plays a left-handed bass!
Because that’s the way The Beatles did it.
Because the guitar player usually makes a lot more money. 
That’s exactly what I was going to post. I think much of this is probably attributable to the Beatles’ standard stage set-up, in particular how they were on the Sullivan show.
Since I’m a bass player with band experience, I guess I’m qualified to answer this: logistics.
The neck on a bass is hella longer than the neck on a guitar. A bass guitar is also more expensive than an electric guitar of comparable quality. So a right-handed bassist stands stage left so that the neck of his instrument is pointed toward center stage. That way, in the event the band is playing in a small club with the stage crammed into a corner, the bassist isn’t smacking the end of the neck into a wall every time he moves. And in the event of a low ceiling, where a guitarist can point the neck of his instrument up when he turns around, the bass’s longer neck is again at risk of cracking against the ceiling if the bassist tries the same thing.
Even if the band is just a garage band that doesn’t play in clubs, rehearsal space such as a basement or garage may present the same space problem, so even there the bassist will stand where he’s not cracking his instrument against a wall every time he turns around.
If a band eventually gets big enough to play on large stages without the “bass meets wall” problem, the bassist still stands on the left because that’s where the band is used to him standing.
Ironically my bass idol, Geddy Lee, stands stage right. And under the principles I’ve outlined, McCartney should have been standing stage right, since he’s left-handed. Though technically, he was often center stage, with George stage left.
I think it’s more tradition than anything else but Mister Rik makes a good point. I always wondered why the drummer was in the middle and I figured that was tradition too. But I guess being in the middle makes it easy for everyone to hear the drummer at the same volume.
I like **Mister Rik’s **reasons as good as any. And yeah, “because the Beatles did it” works for me, too. I’d like to be able to say that it depends on who the rest of the band relies on for field general-ship during the performance, but I can’t say that with absolute conviction. I set up on the right from the audience’s perspective and it makes it easy for me to turn a bit more inward and bark out changes to the rest of the band, but trust me, I would find a way to do that in any position! 
I don’t think anybody onstage has trouble hearing the drummer. 
What can be a problem, though, is the drummer hearing everybody else, so the drummer goes in between the bass and guitar and hopefully will be able to hear both sufficiently (absent a decent monitoring system). It also helps with visual signals/eye contact, I suppose.
I’ve had different bass players set up on both side of me (I played guitar and often did lead vocals), and I don’t remember there ever being a discussion about it. They just set up where they set up. I never gave it a second thought. I guess they did tend to be on my right more often than on my left. It seems to me that when we played clubs with in-house sound techs, they usually put the bass player on my right. I’ve never even noticed it happened statistically more often one way than another, but I’m not a very visually observant person. When I’m seeing bands I’m really listening more than watching.
people have mentioned “because the Beatles did it”. Thinking about it, I would say “because Zeppelin and The Who did it”.