All about the bass

When I read Flea calling Macca the best rock bass player of all time I almost spit out my coffee.  He was sharing his thoughts on a podcast with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson that was quickly picked up by social media.  The Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist isn't very articulate, resorting to "amazing" too many times, but he got the approval of Ted and Woody.  

Flea grew up in the 70s, just like I did, and there were plenty of great bass players.  Bootsy Collins is the first name to come to my mind.  He laid down the rhythms for Parliament, Funkadelic and his own Bootsy's Rubber Band.  Some more greats ones from that era were Geddy Lee of Rush, Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, and Donald "Duck" Dunn who moonlighted with The Blues Brothers.  I would think these guys all had more influence on Flea growing up than did Sir Macca.  But, no, Flea places the Beatles' bassist at the top of his pantheon, singling out his work on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

All these accolades that Macca is receiving are getting tiresome. I understand that he is venerated for having been the biggest influence on pop music but was he really a great musician?  Certainly his fellow musicians at the time didn't think so.  Pete Townshend was particularly harsh on the Beatles but then you say Pete is harsh on everyone, even his own band.  Out of curiosity I searched for other naysayers and found quite a few, including Quincy Jones, who worked with Macca on that godawful "We Are the World" song.  He called Macca "the worst bass player of all time!"  This led to a highly publicized squabble in 2018.  Quincy felt bad afterward and apologized saying "bad mouthing is inexcusable," but he voiced what many have long felt of McCartney's heralded musicianship.

My biggest problem with the Beatles is calling them a rock band.  They were never a rock band.  If you need any evidence of this, listen to how easily their songs translate into Muzak with a very interesting twangy guitar that sounds more country than rock and roll.  Very few of their songs extended over three minutes at a time most rock bands were expanding their songs to fill out whole sides of long-play albums, venturing into guitar, bass and drum solos much like the jazz heros they idolized.  

The late 60s was a major turning point in rock music.  It went from what was essentially a corporate directed radio medium to an all out assault on the senses with "walls of sound," epitomized by The Grateful Dead, who would play for hours to stoned audiences often engaged in acid trips.  The Beatles tried to tie into this drug-induced culture when they rented Zsa Zsa Gabor's house in Laurel Canyon in the summer of 1965.  They hung out with Peter Fonda and The Byrds, among others.  Frank Zappa was a local resident at the time and was not impressed but no matter.  The Beatles soaked up the vibes and released Revolver the following year to rave reviews, but was it psychedelica?  Certainly not on the same wavelength as White Rabbit, which was released in 1967 on Surrealistic Pillow, perhaps the greatest psychedelic album of all time.  Grace Slick had this song kicking around in her head since 1965, making Alice's Adventures into Wonderland far more trippy.

As for bass, where is it?  It might be worth noting that Paul's original bass guitar was recently found after 51 years.  I can only imagine the price it will fetch at auction.  But, you listen to the Beatles' early songs and it is pretty hard to spot the bass.

Admittedly you can hear it on later songs, like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band, which came out in 1967.  This is a more trippy album than Revolver but still not all that trippy.  Paul and John are singing louder over an imaginary crowd, as they no longer played live audiences, but at barely over two minutes it is nothing more than a tease.  The whole album is a tease, laden with tantalizing songs all of which end shortly after they get going.  They did break the three-minute mark on two songs on Side B, but otherwise these are songs that easily fit on 45's.

As Zappa said, "they were a good commercial group." Their entire discography was perfectly suited for mainstream radio and selling 45's with maybe a handful of exceptions.  Zappa singled out Paperback Writer, Strawberry Fields Forever and I Am the Walrus.  The rest meh.

You often see George and Ringo at the top of greatest guitarist and drummer lists, but Paul has been getting an inordinate amount of attention recently.  He even climbed into the Top Ten on Rolling Stone's list of 50 Greatest Bassists.  That's pretty amazing considering he edges out Ron Carter, the greatest living jazz bassist.  I'd be very curious what Quincy thinks of this.

Of course, these lists don't mean much but Paul's been getting a lot of praise from his peers as well.  Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead also put Paul at the top along with John Entwistle.  Lemmy liked Abba too, so go figure.  All this comes out post mortem (Lemmy died in 2015) in Far Out magazine articles that pop up on my facebook timeline.

Even Pete Townshend seems repentant these days, saying he "wasn't crazy impressed with the Beatles, but I loved them."  For years he loved to bash them and often accused Paul and John of stealing his songs.

So, what gives?  Where is all this newfound love coming from?  Were the Beatles really that good or do we simply acknowledge them because there is no way to shake their music from our heads?  It is virtually impossible to escape the Beatles these days despite it being more than 50 years since their infamous break up.

However, anyone who says Paul is the greatest rock bassist of all time is overlooking a hell of a lot of great bassists who have made a far bigger impact on the genre.  You don't listen to the Beatles and say, "Oh, Paul is such a great bassist!"  In fact you have a pretty hard time even hearing the bass on many of their songs.  It's nothing like the bass-heavy funk songs of the 70s or the punk scene that emerged in the same era, which I would think Flea beholden to.  But, whatever, Sir Macca is now 82 so lets shower even more false praise on him.