Caught in the Carousel

Bass Man

By Kevin Griffin

When I started playing bass guitar in 1964 there weren't many role models. My friend Brian asked me to join his band, The Squiers, and told me that the four strings on a bass were the same as the bottom four on a guitar. He'd teach me how to play (although, of course, he had no better idea than I did). I was fourteen and had been playing acoustic folk guitar for two years. I listened to two albums to learn bass lines: the Rolling Stones' first album and Herman's Hermits' first album.

The electric bass had only been invented a dozen years before. Most of the rock players were converted guitarists like me—the rest were converted jazz musicians. Most bass lines followed one of three basic riffs: the walking or swing bass line that followed the notes of the triad with either a sixth or seventh note added—rockabilly, Chuck Berry and many others used this; a blues figure that revolved around playing the root, the octave, the seventh and the fifth—a great example of this is James Brown's "Night Train"; and the two-beat country figure which is just a one-five "boom, chicka, boom, chicka."

Phil Lesh

If you listen to most bass lines from that time, they don't necessarily fit tightly with the drum figure, particularly the bass drum. Because so many of us were guitar players, we were listening to the guitar and the harmonies and thinking about that part of the music instead of the bottom where we belonged. The epitome of this kind of bass playing is the Phil Lesh, Jack Cassady style from San Francisco. These guys were so good, though, that they could make this approach work. Someone like me, basically a frustrated lead guitarist, just wound up playing cluttered riffs that didn't help to hold the music together. Ironically, the two most distinctive bass lines from the Stones—"Sympathy for the Devil" and "Live with Me"—were conceived and played by Keith Richards. Perhaps the fact that he wasn't a frustrated lead guitarist let him focus on what worked best for the song as opposed to what was fun to play. (I can't say much about Bill Wyman who I think got in the band because he had a van.)

Of course there was some solid bottom coming out of soul and R&B recordings, but even there, when I listen back, I'll hear some pretty loose bass playing at times. While there are some funky lines, they can get awfully busy. You can hear the potential for what was to come, but in a way, they're still struggling to find the essence.

Larry Graham

Of course the sixties were the decade of the guitar—Clapton, Beck, Page, and of course Hendrix. The seventies, though, were the decade of the bass. Suddenly—I don't know how it happened—bass players were playing tight, locked down lines. The bass was fitted exactly to the bass drum. This came out of the rise of funk, and it spread to rock pretty quickly. The first time I heard a bass line like this was on Sly's "Thank You," Larry Graham playing the first popping bass line I ever heard. Graham was a bass genius, and maybe the most important bass player of that era.

Now, I want to distinguish between what I call a great bass player and a great musician who plays the bass. I recently saw someone's list of best rock bass players, and they were people like Yes's Chris Squire, who had great chops and whose parts were great for their music, but I'd hate to hear him try to play anything outside that symphonic, progressive rock. He'd ruin it. Great bass players are often hidden or unknown.

The seventies brought disco, which was bass player-driven music. Many of the foundation riffs of today's rock bass players originated as disco riffs, the octave rocking back and forth, the double-stops, the pops and all the rest. Thelma Houston's "Don't Leave Me This Way" with its incredible rocking vamp, epitomizes the emergence of the bass guitar as the central instrument of the era. The riff shows all bass players how they can both hold down the bottom and be a kind of lead instrument without cluttering the music. Pure genius.

Aston Barrett

This era also saw the rise of reggae, which, along with funk, was the most important and influential bass style after the basics of rock. With reggae bass lines we got a whole new view of where bass notes could land in a measure. Instead of always starting on the one, you could leave space and pick out odd places to emphasize. This gave the loping, stuttering feel that songs like Marley's "Get Up Stand Up" created. By not playing, the bass was drawing attention to itself. Now it was the rhythm guitar and keyboard that were playing the repetitive, grounding part, while the bass was creating suspense and color.

The eighties was the decade of keyboards. So, naturally the keyboard players started playing bass. This created a whole new set of problems. Synth bass can be great when played by someone like Stevie Wonder, but a lot of keyboard players were as clueless as the earlier guitarists. It could fall into mushiness and a lot of fills. Today your bass part is made up by a computer, so I guess we can blame the programmers for whatever comes out.

Jared Followill

What got me thinking about bass players was Kings of Leon. I don't hear enough new music, but a friend lent me the Only By The Night CD and I loaded it on my iPod (I promise to purchase one of their albums next). As I was listening casually, I suddenly caught Jared Followill's bass line on "Be Somebody." It made the song, as his low notes dropped down the scale against a repeated riff in the high octave. This was great bass playing, solid, funky and melodic all at once. Without being intrusive or busy, he was driving the song and creating a hook. This was a guy who'd listened to a lot of bass players, who understood the potential and was fitting to the songs perfectly. Listening to "Crawl" is almost frightening—a fuzz bass. (A rare enough occurrence that I can only remember Paul McCartney's "Think For Yourself" bass line as another example.) Not many musicians could not only make that work, but make it the center of the song, a riff so driving and insistent that your adrenaline kicks in with the first notes.

Hearing someone like Jared Followill gives me faith in the evolution of music and musicians. Once I converted back to my preferred guitar, I got to play with a lot of different styles of bass players: a Lesh wannabe; a Top 40 guy who played with precision and taste (but didn't quite have the natural funk feel); a guy who played like a classic sixties bassist (which was good, since we were playing oldies), but didn't really care about being a bass player and just wanted to play the songs. I've never played with anyone who lived up to my ideal on bass, whereas I've played with half-a-dozen drummers who I adored. It's a strange instrument—you have to be willing to play the same thing over and over and mean it; you have to have a special connection with rhythm and with the undertow of music; you should know music theory but rarely use it and you should love drummers.

Zzebra

I probably learned the most about bass from a Nigerian saxophonist/percussionist I played with named Lofty Amao. Lofty was the only person I ever knew who started his songwriting with a bass line. Most songwriters work with piano or guitar—or lyrics. Lofty didn't play a chordal instrument, so he'd start by blatting out a bass line on his bari-sax. He showed me how building a song on a bass line gave it a special flavor. It's like building the foundation of a building first. Although I still write my songs on the guitar, when I arrange them for recording, I write the bass line first, often throwing out my original rhythm guitar part if it doesn't fit with bass. When you build a song in this way, the bass drum figure is laid down for you and the whole rhythmic structure of the song is defined much more clearly than with the typical keyboard or guitar figure. Of course, most great bass parts are "felt but not heard."

The casual listener rarely notices the bass part on a song. In fact, I've found that oftentimes people can't even hear the bass part unless it's explicitly pointed out to them. But the bass part isn't some esoteric piece of music trivia—it's what drives the music. Seeing the White Stripes perform live made this point explicit for me. As entertaining as they were, with no bass their music felt groundless and directionless. There's a reason why the name of the instrument is a homonym for a physical foundation. The evolution of the bass guitar is key to the congruity and integrity of modern rock.