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Cliff Burton or Rex Brown?

#22
Rex. Learn some of his lines. Many are not easy and they rock hard. Rex's Pantera lines are not conventional and he always seems to have something interesting and creative going on. For an example, learn the bass line for the guitar solo section of Walk - and that's one of the easier ones. Cliff was really good though. Even though he got buried on their albums, like all Metallica bass players.
 
#31
In the context of musicians - both were really good as bass players for the bands they were in. Rex had A LOT of room to play in Pantera (just Dimebag) and he was damn good at it. Cliff had to fight through two wild guitarists during the guitar driven rock of the 80's. Both did some excellent bass lines and hearing Rex's distorted Spector live in 2001, was just awesome!

As for who is better - maybe if we compared their playing styles in the 80's......Pantera was one of those hair-metal bands back in '89 and I think earlier.....look up their album "Power Metal"
 
#34
i'm going to go with rex just cause he stands out in the mix more, plus he's very jazz oriented; he actually sounds like he's playing bass rather than a guitar. and he sounds like he actually eq'ed his bass as to where cliff's playing sounds like farty distored lows, hold his kill em' all tone. i would be kicking myself for saying this a few years back cause i used to love cliff way more than rex, but i feel i like rex better as i've matured a bit more..
 
#35
chanson said:
Cliff was just as much in the pocket as Rex was, in my opinion. Listen to some isolated bass tracks of Cliff and you'll be impressed. People always label him as a flashy lead player, but in truth there were only a couple songs where he played like this. The rest of the time he was laying down the low end and doing a good job at it.
Click to expand...

I stand by my original statement. Listen to basically any Burton era Metallica song besides Orion, Call of Ktulu, any Anesthesia and you'll see how in the pocket Cliff was.
 
#36
chanson said:
Cliff was just as much in the pocket as Rex was, in my opinion. Listen to some isolated bass tracks of Cliff and you'll be impressed. People always label him as a flashy lead player, but in truth there were only a couple songs where he played like this. The rest of the time he was laying down the low end and doing a good job at it.
Click to expand...

Really? After listening to the isolated tracks I`ve become a lot less impressed with him. He sense of time seemed very loose to say the least :hiding:
 
#37
jmattbassplaya said:
Really? After listening to the isolated tracks I`ve become a lot less impressed with him. He sense of time seemed very loose to say the least :hiding:
Click to expand...

Yup, the isolated stuff isn't impressive at all...

I mean I like Burton, but, he really needed to be in a band where he could flex his chops more, like Entwhisle.

Laying down lows in the mix wasn't his strong suit.

All IMHO, of course.
 
#38
Gotta keep in mind that Cliff was only 24 when he died in '86, and the Pantera stuff from those days was pretty basic normal 80's metal stuff. Rex was AWESOME in 1990! Cliff, had he lived, in 1990? He would've been a monster on the bass, IMO.
 

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