Just caught Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” on VH1 Classic, which got me to thinking about lead vocalists who play bass, and if this is rare, or if I just have a bad memory. All I could come up with are Lemmy and Paul McCartney. Are there many others? Are they more common than a lead vocalist who plays drums?
Geddy Lee of Rush & Sting of The Police come to mind.
Jack Bruce is another.
Tom Araya of Slayer.
Kip Winger.
Many heavy metal acts, especially in death metal have lead vocalists that play bass. Dimmu Borgir and Deicide both spring to mind.
This is the first time in recorded history that these two have been mentioned in the same thought…
Sheryl Crow often plays bass when she performs live, as well as guitar and piano.
As a rule, playing bass and singing is considered hard work - locking in on bass (a requirement) and stretching it out and emoting on vocals (also a requirement) can run counter to each other.
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd.
Greg Lake of Emerson Lake and Palmer, though Lake also played guitar.
John Entwistle of the Who also sang lead for them from time to time (on his own songs), and was a successful solo artist.
It just wouldn’t work. Take AndyPolley, our resident bass player. He’s so darned cool, a ‘poet warrior’ for pete’s sake, that he’d hardly utter more than two or three words in a whole day. How the heck can you expect that type of person, being, whatever, to sing the lyrics to some ephemeral mundane song, when what they comprehend and conceive of the cosmos is best expressed, if at all, by a primal grunt, or a flick of a sweat-daubed brow before it is wiped clean by a groupie?
Get real, man. And Paul McCartney is the friggin’ Peter Pan of bass players, dude. Leave that commercial mummy’s boy out of any genuine discussion of bona fide bassists. Yeah?
Right.
Roger Waters plays bass while singing. Colin Moulding, bassist of XTC, also sang on the numbers he wrote.
And Les Claypool.
Nick Lowe, Aimee Mann, Matthew Sweet, Laura Love, John Wetton, Chris Hillman, John Lodge.
Ok I guess the answer to my question is “not rare at all”- thanks for the responses. I guess drummers are more rare- all I can come up with are Phil Collins in Genesis, and Don Henley?
Randy Meissner, Tim Schmitt, Mike Reilly (Pure Prairie League). And I would like to add: every band I’ve played in over the course of 35 years of performing. Playing bass while singing lead is more difficult tham singing while strumming a six-string, but it is not a rare skill.
“The Band” had three lead singers: Rick Danko, their Bassist, Levon Helms (drummer) and Richard Manuel (keyboards and drums)
In “The Weight”, Levon Helms sings the first 3 verses, then Rick sings the verse “Crazy Chester followed me…”
He also sang lead on “Stage Fright” and many others.
Rob Grill of The Grass Roots
Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy
Doug Pinnick from King’s X
Suzi Quatro
Dusty Hill from ZZ Top sings quite a few of their songs
Mark Hoppus from blink-182
…to name a few…
Karen Carpenter and Ringo Starr.
Drummers who were lead vocalists:
Levon Helm of the Band, as mentioned, is a drummer.
Robert Wyatt of Soft Machine and Matching Mole.
IANAD, but I suspect this is partly because it’s hard to do the lead singer job of being a frontman and interacting with the audience from behind a drum set, and partly because it’s harder to belt out the tunes while playing drums than while playing other instruments (though sax players have it even worse).
Anyway, in addition to the many already mentioned, I can think of Michael Been (of The Call), Tony Scalzo (of Fastball), and, in the early days, Brian Wilson (of The Beach Boys) as lead vocalist/bassists, and Kelly Keagy (of Night Ranger) as another lead vocalist/drummer.
Grant Hart of Hüsker Dü drummed and sang.