Huh, that reminds me that Deal did an interview with Bass Player that I read as I was a fan of her more generally. The one I read was online and there were a lot of comments tearing her down as not a worthy of being interviewed and dumping on her distaste for stuff like the blues. All seemed rather snobby to me, which I guess is par for the course for a niche aficionado magazine .
But I agree her playing worked just fine for the band in a way that, say, Jaco Pastorius absolutely wouldn’t.
I saw something similar bagging on D’arcy Wretzky just recently, but while you hear the occasional wrong note when she plays live I rather like that sloppiness in live music and even if what she was doing was simple, D’arcy seemed to play just fine to me. At least for what the band needed.
Yeah, there’s this odd belief among some that musicality is somehow proportional to technical proficiency or something like that. For the styles of music I usually listen to, showing off chops too much is a huge turn-off for me and suggests to me the musician isn’t actually listening to the music or their fellow musicians. I do love watching some of those Youtube drummers overplay on pop songs from time to time, but, Good Lord, it does sound like hot garbage musically. But a fun party trick to enjoy from time to time.
Oh god I hate drum solos and drummer show-offs. How nice that you can play 160 bpm on every part of your kit, especially if it has a double bass drum, six cymbals and eight toms. Pretentious and boring. Give me Ringo or Charlie (Watts) instead anytime.
Like I said, sounds like hot garbage in most contexts, yet I find myself mesmerized from time to time. Like there’s this dude from Spain, I think, who does all this crazy one-handed and one-footed “double bass” stuff that boggles the mind that a human could do this, but all I want to do is head him play a a simple line with some “air” to it. Still, I’d have him in my black metal band were I of that bent.
Yeah, I understand that and I can also appreciate the skills of those monster drummers, but as I said it bores me to death. The most boring Led Zep song? “Moby Dick”. The most boring Cream song? Yeah, you guessed it, “Toad”. And I like Bonham and Baker.
The Pixies and Nirvana are in an entirely different universe than “hair/metal” bands like Whitesnake, Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Poison…
Several of those guys got to enjoy a “rockstar lifestyle” with quite limited talent. But - I guess since I have such a low opinion of those bands as a whole, I guess it doesn’t really fit the OP to describe one player as the “luckiest, least substantial.”
When Manfred Mann was transitioning from a Modern Jazz outfit to a Blues/Pop band they had to dump their bass player, Dave Richmond, who wanted to be the next Charles Mingus. When interviewing candidates for his replacement, the band asked exactly one question: "“Are you willing to play simple parts?”. That’s how a guitarist who had never played bass before, Tom McGuinness, got the job.
I despise the type of drum solos to which you refer, and I’m a drummer. Having said that, when it comes to jazz, some of the solos from the likes of Max Roach and Tony Williams were complex musical compositions in their own right. “The Drum Also Waltzes” by Max Roach on his 1965 album, Drums Unlimited, is a thing of beauty.
Rudy Sarzo who played with Quiet Riot, Whitesnake, Ozzy (as well as many others) is up there when it comes to great bassists. You don’t get those kinds of gigs if you’re a schulb. I would say Mark Mendoza of Twisted Sister is pretty darned solid, too. Rick Savage of Def Leppard was great in his role. I would call these all solidly above average, especially Rudy, if not necessarily flashy (depending on the player.)
I remember seeing Danny Kortchmar (guitarist for many singer/songwriters in the 70s) interviewed about his solo album.
The only thing that stuck with me was that his drummer friends were too good. He wanted someone that was so happy to be pounding those drums that they didn’t care about technique. “A simple beat, but it’s clearly the best the drummer can do!” … So he played them himself on the album.
Point, though, was that she wasn’t inconsequential. A quick peek at wikipedia kind of shows that Josie, herself, was the weak link.
///Of the songs that were broadcast, Patrice Holloway sang lead on the series’ theme song, “You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby”, “Voodoo”, “It’s All Right With Me”, “The Handclapping Song”, “Stop, Look And Listen”, “Clock On The Wall” and “Every Beat Of My Heart”. Holloway was the primary lead vocalist on “Roadrunner” which also features verses sung by Kathleen Dougherty and Cheryl Ladd. Ladd sang lead on “Inside, Outside, Upside-Down”, “Dream Maker”, “I Wanna Make You Happy”, “The Time To Love”, “I Love You Too Much”, “Lie! Lie! Lie!” and “Dreaming”. According to songwriter/vocal arranger Sue Sheridan (known as Sue Steward at the time), Dougherty felt she was stronger on harmony than lead and ceded her spotlight to Ladd. Essentially then, Josie was the group leader but Valerie and Melody provided the trio with its singing voices. ///
There are cases where musicians are told to dumb it down. Bill Bruford for example is a former drummer for Yes and considered on a par with other drum gods like Neil Peart, but when he drummed for King Crimson, Robert Fripp handed him a list of things not to do.
Though I’m not claiming he was the weak link, J. Geils was neither the lead singer nor the principal songwriter for the J. Geils Band. And neither Fleetwood nor Mac had such a role in Fleetwood Mac.
However, I can’t think of any (other) examples of bands whose names fit the “[Person] and the [Band]” pattern where the Person is not the main vocalist, unless you count Hootie and the Blowfish.
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