In view of the we love Ringo thread(s), I thought I’d like to start a thread based on the idea that Paul McCartney is a virtuoso bassist. Listen to Sgt. Pepper and tell me that every bass note isn’t perfect. And he was doing it with his right hand, while he is left handed. Shades of Princess Bride indeed. Others?
Paul is technically an innovative basis - stuff like the funk on Taxman or the high fret work on Drive My Car. His work is at the tops - different from Entwistle but just as influential.
But what really sets Paul’s bass apart is the production of it. Beatles songs, to me, are the first “modern” sounding pop records - mostly because the bass was shoved up in the mix in a way we all assume is “the way it should be.” Recording bass tracks changed after the Beatles.
While knowing nothing about music from a technical perspective, that’s one of the first things that struck me about The Beatles. Paul’s bass was part of the song, not just part of the rhythm section.
“Yeah you, got that something.”
Da da dum dum dummm.
“I think you’ll understand.”
“When I, say that something.”
Da da dum dum dummm.
“I want to hold your hand!”
McCartney always topped the Playboy polls for best bassist in the 60s and 70s. Not exactly great proof – his popularity was certainly a factor – but his work is always excellent.
People joke about Ringo being a bad drummer, but no one complained about Paul’s bass.
There’s a very well-known story about Macca playing Motown singles to EMI’s mastering guys to prove that you can get a decent bass sound on vinyl without causing the needle to skip.
So, with all due respect to Sir Paul, don’t forget Jamerson, who was a huge influence on Paul’s style, and who was the first real bass god (even though nobody knew his name until later).
(And I am highly unimpressed with Carole Kaye’s latter day claims to have played many of the bass parts credited to Jamerson, but that’s another story.)
Yes, Paul has always been a master at a “melodic” bass style. It’s especially apparent on the Beatles stuff from 1968-69, but he was doing it from the start, as others have noted. You might think of it as an extension of his gift for melody in general (an aspect of which John derided as “silly love songs”, while acknowledging Paul’s “masterpieces”)…but without sacrificing the bass’s role as harmonic and rhythmic support (although George did tell Paul his bass work on “Something” was too “busy”…but that had more to do with George’s understandable insecurity in the face of the long-established *two-*man Lennon/McCartney composing team.)
Although the bass on George Bensons I Want You was always so much better and funkier than McCartneys. Thats all I got.
Oh yeah, James Jamerson is on the Mt. Rushmore of bassists. Motown’s pop songs had a lot more bass, yes, but not as much as the Beatles - but there’s no question Macca was influenced by Motown…
I recall reading an interview of Lennon when the Lennon/McCartney feud was at it’s worst. Lennon said that McCartney had always been vastly UNDERrated as a bass player.
For a long time, I really didn’t think about Paul as a bass player, I thought about him as a songwriter. Since I grew up listening to it, it just seemed that he played classic rock bass it how it “should” be played. Part of that was because I was fixated on speed, as lots of young adults are, and he played so damn slow. Now that I’ve grown up, and actually learn something other than heavy metal songs, my appreciation for him has grown by leaps and bounds. He’s probably one of the first rock players to really play bass as an accompaniment to the rest of the song. Most bass players of his era were of the variety to hit the root on the one, and collect a check. People revere him on the bass forums, but you don’t usually hear praise for him elsewhere, So, I’m happy to have seen this thread.
If you are a doubter, listen to the Abbey Road medley. When you’ve found a rock bass part that’s simultaneously as melodic, integral to the song, all over the neck, economic, tasteful, predates it, and wasn’t played by Sir Paul or someone generally ranked higher than he in the bass pantheon, get back to me. I can’t imagine any part of it without THAT bass line. Compare what Paul plays versus the milquetoast bass line used on Joe Cocker’s cover of “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window”. I could have written the bass line to Joe Cocker’s version, and you can’t tell me from shinola. The bass lines to “The Sun King” and “Golden Slumbers” are exquisitely crafted bass solos. Heck, for most of the medley, it’s the backbone of the instrumentation. The only part of it I think any generic bass player would have written is the “Love You” bass line. But, it’s a pretty generic part of the song. Any time after their initial few albums, his bass playing is as good as it is on this medley. If you’ve got an example of a phoned-in bass line from him, I’d like to hear it (really, tell me which song, I haven’t noticed).
Mind, I’m not that big of a Beatles fan, their lyrics are (fortunately intentionally) nonsense on a good day. Their solo careers are pretty mediocre (and sometimes just plain bad) in comparison to the output of the whole. But anyone who denigrates their collective ability to write and arrange a song or their individual ability to play a song is out of their mind.
Was he? Why? He played left-handed on stage. Is there some reason why he would played the other way in the Pepper sessions?
Anyway, unlike Ringo’s drumming, I do not think Paul’s quality as a bass player has ever been in much question. He was pretty clearly, by some distance, the best technical musician in the band, and there seems good reason to believe that The Beatles’ first really ‘gelled’ when Stuart Sutcliffe left and Paul took over on bass. (It may have also helped not to have three guitars competing up front any more.) Ringo brought some extra polish to the rhythm section, but, after all, it was apparent to Brian Epstein and their fans in Liverpool that they had something special, even before Ringo joined.