I’ve never really paid specific attention to any of McCartney’s work on bass. Yet, every now and then I’ll read something from one Rock Journalist or another mentioning what a great bass player McCartney has always been.
Can you recomend a few songs for which I should pay particular attention to McCartney’s bass in order to enhance my appreciation?
.
I’ve never actually thought of him as one of the greats. He IS a very good bassist, don’t get me wrong. But he’s not what you’d call ground-breaking.
I liked the runs he tossed in on the early Beatle’s songs myself. Those accented the song and added an extra hook to catch the listeners attenion. I Want To Hold Your Hand stands out here.
Rain
bloody marvelous
Ringo’s best drumming too.
“Come Together” is good. There’s a lot of little licks scattered throughout the basic bassline.
Cool. Thanks Small Clanger and DakotaDog
Another concern is not knowing when there were guest/session musicians in the studio. In listening to the Bass on Beatles/Wings/McCartney solo songs how often might the Bass player be someone other than McCartney?
Listen, I am not a particularly big McCartney fan - I find that 25% of his songs were wonderful, 50% reflected well in the light of Lennon’s songs, and 25% were complete drivel…
…but he was (is) an excellent, innovative bassist. To my knowledge he played most, if not all of the bass on the Beatles’ recordings. Listen to anything from Drive My Car, Hard Day’s Night - pretty much anything off the Rubber Soul and Revolver era. Great, melodic basslines that fit perfectly into the song.
In terms of playing innovative bass in pop songs and opening up the range of the instrument - not including the Motown/Stax icons like James Jamerson and Duck Dunn - McCartney did more to influence and push bass playing than anyone other than maybe Entwhistle.
McCartney was always well-regarded as a bassist (not that it means that much, but he was a consistent winner of all the Playboy “best bassist” polls of the 60s). He’s not flashy, but if you listen to his bass line on anything it’s always creative and always fits perfectly in with the song.
This claim is frequently made–it’s stated in Revolution in the Head, too–but it simply isn’t true. Once the electric bass guitar became widely available around 1953, R&B groups immediately began emphasizing prominent bass lines, particularly through the influence of Jesse Stone. By the late '50s, rock and country session bassists were using it as a lead instrument. Grady Martin, for instance, had a six-string electric bass on which he played such intricate mid-range leads that an upright bass was usually brought into the studio as well, so there were in fact two basses on the recordings. The earliest use of distortion as an electronically-created effect (as opposed to the result of a torn speaker or overdriven amp) was with a bass guitar on some Marty Robbins recordings circa 1962-63. The fuzz bass there plays the same role as a lead electric guitar. McCartney was a nimble and melodic player but I can’t think of anything he did that hadn’t been done before.
I think that is the crux of it. McCartney is very subdued and melodic and had he been in a band other than the Beatles his style would have been useless. That’s why I think he is so lacking in influence. People grudgingly admit that he is a good bass player but no-one dreams of playing like McCartney. He didn’t set out to be a bass player and his piano playing shows where his bass lines come from.
His session bass player was Herbie Flowers who played with everyone. He created the bass line for Walk On The Wild Side, played with T-Rex, Bowie…
In pop songs? I would submit that Larry Graham’s “popping” bass, no pun intended, was at least as influential as anything these guys did. It was practically the blueprint for an entire new brand of pop–disco–and even after disco was dead, the style of playing Graham introduced brought the bass player to the forefront in R & B. (The style was also copied by rock guys.) I guess I don’t know why you exclude the Motown/Stax players… Billboard classifications and strict radio formatting aside, that stuff was some of the greatest pop music of its era.
On which albums?
The only one I recall that he was credited on is Give My Regards To Broad Street.
His bass work always draws my attention every time I hear I Saw Her Standing There.
Actually if you look here you’ll find he has used lots of bass players on different albums.
For pure McCartney low frequency bliss, listen to the Abbey Road album. Great, great, great bass playing.
No, he isn’t flashy, but so what? David Gilmour comes to mind as another awesome melodist who is not flashy. Give me melody over speed any day.
I think he is the THE bass player of the “I-don’t-give-a-damn-where-the-bass-drum-is-falling” school. He doesn’t play at all over the bass drum pattern, as 99% of rock/pop bass players do. Don’t get me wrong, there are great songs where the bass is right on top of the bass drum, but McCartney broke that “rule” with marvelous results.
Damn! “I think he is THE bass player”…
Wow - LBE!, you seem to really know your bass stuff. I see where you are going with your argument and agree - specific innovations were done by others before Mr. McCartney. My point is that he, for want of a better term, honored that type of innovative bass playing and did it in a band that achieved the greatest popularity known, thereby influencing a ton of bass players. In a pop band, sophisticated, innovative bass playing was the exception.
It might be like Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk - I am sure many other break-dancing types did this move long before MJ did, but him doing it on the world stage at that Motown Special right when Thriller was released made the move his and influenced teenage dance moves for years (for better or for worse, I will let you decide).
Other players did finger tapping and tapped harmonics before Eddie Van Halen, but nobody did it within the context of such a popular band, so those are techniques associated with him to this day. And, for waves of kids growing up in the early 80’s - and I was one - those were Eddie’s moves. After sticking with guitar for a long time and studying more, I have come across the Lenny Breaus, Danny Gattons, and others who did these moves, too - so he was a gateway to that style. So it is with Paul McCartney - he was a gateway to those other players and was incredibly influencial as a bassist because he did a lot of those techniques.
Moody Bastard - I didn’t include Jamerson and Dunn - let along the Master, Larry Graham - simply on a arbitrary basis. I don’t think of Brit Invasion pop as being influenced by R&B and funk during the mid-60’s, but I am open to being shown otherwise…
" I don’t think of Brit Invasion pop as being influenced by R&B and funk during the mid-60’s, but I am open to being shown otherwise…"
You’re serious? Well, let me show you otherwise then…
Even the late period Beatles were massively influenced by R&B and soul. E.g. “Got To Get You Into My Life” is a Motown homage (the Beatles were big Motown fans), “Don’t Let Me Down” is a soul tune, “Oh, Darling!” a 50s R&B tribute, etc.
And in the early days of the British Invasion the R&B flavor was even more pronounced. Indeed, the invaders were arguably more influenced by R&B than by the blues, or for that matter, by white rockers like Elvis or black ones like Chuck Berry.
Let’s look at the debut albums of a few Brit groups of the day and see how many songs are covers of American R&B tunes. Original artists in parenthesis…
-The Beatles. “Anna” (orig. Arthur Alexander), “Chains” (Cookies), “Boys” (Shirelles), “Baby, It’s You” (Shirelles), “Twist and Shout” (Isley Brothers).
-The Rolling Stones. “Route 66” (Nat Cole), “You Can Make It If You Try” (Gene Allison), “Can I Get A Witness” (Marvin Gaye), “Walking the Dog” (Rufus Thomas). Plus covers of blues tunes “Honest I Do” (Jimmy Reed) and “I’m a King Bee” (Slim Harpo) and black rock tunes “Mona” (Bo Diddley) and “Oh Carol” (Chuck Berry).
-The Who. “I Don’t Mind” and “Please Please Please” (Both James Brown)
-Herman’s Hermits. “I’m Into Something Good” (Earl-Jean), “Sea Cruise” (Frankie Ford), “Mother-In-Law” (Ernie K. Doe)
-Moody Blues. “I Go Crazy” (James Brown), “Go Now” (Bessie Banks), “It’s Easy Child” (Freddie King), “Can’t Nobody Love You” (Solomon Burke), “I Don’t Wanna Go On Without You” (Drifters), plus the blues tune “Bye Bye Bird” (Sonny Boy Williamson).
-Zombies. “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me” (Miracles) and “Can’t Nobody Love You” (Solomon Burke) plus Muddy Water’s blues tune, “I Got My Mojo Working”
-Searchers (actually their 2nd album). “Sweets for My Sweet” (Drifters), “Love Potion Number 9” (Coasters), “Stand By Me” (Ben E. King), “Money” (Barrett Strong), “Twist and Shout” (Isley Brothers)
Only the Kinks avoided any R&B covers as such, sticking to either blues, Bo Diddley, or Chuck Berry.
I assume then that pointing out the number of Motown & other R&B covers done by the Beatles, Stones, and Who during the 60s would be sufficient to establish the R&B influence on them at least (funk wasn’t really around as a style until the late 60s/early 70s, with the possible exception of some of James Brown’s work, which I tend to group with R&B).
Beatles: [ul]
[li]Money (That’s What I Want)[/li][li]Twist and Shout[/li][li]You Really Got a Hold On Me[/li][li]Please Mr. Postman[/ul][/li]
Stones: (leaving out the pure blues stuff)[ul]
[li]Can I Get a Witness[/li][li]Walking the Dog[/li][li]It’s All Over Now[/li][li]Everybody Needs Somebody to Love[/li][li]That’s How Strong My Love Is[/li][li]She Said Yeah[/li][li]You Better Move On[/li][li]I’ve Been Loving You Too Long[/ul][/li]
Who:[ul]
[li]I Don’t Mind[/li][li]Please, Please, Please[/ul][/li]
Moreover, both Paul McCartney and John Entwhistle appear in Allan Slutsky’s book on James Jamerson, Standing in the Shadows of Motown to talk about the influence of Motown and Jamerson in particular on their music.