Not a Beatles fan by any means, but I think that helps me make sense of his playing a bit.
He knows his name. He said the biggest influence on his bass playing was James Jamerson.
I believe I remember JPJ once said he was influenced by JJ’s playing.
Jack Bruce was also very influenced by Jamerson:
Interview: Jack Bruce Talks Cream, Ornette Coleman & Self-Expression | Bacon's Archive
Did you know it was James Jamerson?
Not then. Nobody knew then. I met James, in fact. We became very firm friends in 1974. And I miss him. The time I did spend with him was wonderful. He gave me some of his Motown sessions in LA when he couldn't do them. I've got a track on that new book project—I did a few, but I don't know which one they ended up using. It was good fun to do. [The 1989 package of
Standing In The Shadows Of Motown by Allan Slutsky, a.k.a. Dr. Licks, included Jack's take on Smokey Robinson's "Come 'Round Here (I'm The One You Need)."].
I started to hear James and started developing my bass playing in that direction. Then Marvin Gaye came over here. He'd just had his first few hits, must have been '65. Graham Bond got the job of putting the band together to do a TV show with Marvin, we were playing things like "How Sweet It Is," and I was going [
sings busy Jamerson-like bassline], so he asked me to join, but unfortunately—unfortunately? Fortunately, I was getting married [
laughs], and I couldn't go.
But that did encourage me that I was on the right track, because I was having a lot of problems, specially from Ginger who thought my bass playing was becoming too busy. It was just that he could hear me now. Suddenly there was a bass, and I was playing melody.
I've always thought that good music is not a melody and a block and boom-boom. To me good music is all melody—the drums should be playing tunes, the bass should be playing tunes, it should be counterpoint. I like to be able to listen to a lot of things going on, as opposed to one block—unless that's what you want. I like moving parts, and that's what a lot of the great Stax and Tamla things are. A lot of great soul music is very contrapuntal. So James Jamerson to me was Tamla Motown, as much as any of the great singers. He's what made it great, this bass player.
How was James when you met?
He was a heroin addict. The poor guy was shattered. He was a broken man, even then in '74. Because his home was Detroit, he felt, in the same way as I felt about some of the situations I've been in, that you've put your heart and your soul and your health into making something great, and when you're not wanted anymore you're just tossed aside.
That's exactly what had happened with him. A lot of the time I spent with him, he was crying. He was a very emotionally disturbed person—he'd lost his home, his way of life, he'd never had the recognition he deserved. Nobody knew who he was, apart from the people who took the trouble to find out. Very sad.
I suppose the best we can say is we have the music.
We have the music, but we don't have James. [
Jamerson died in 1983 at the age of 47.] And James should be living. It's very difficult for me to talk about—being a musician, obviously I'm very much on the side of the musician. I don't mean the rock 'n' roll star, necessarily, and I certainly don't mean the accountants.
I do know that, for instance, Coleman Hawkins ended up his life playing in smoke-filled clubs, when possibly he should have been professor in some beautiful university, living the life that Von Karajan or somebody could have chosen to live. You know, a quiet life with no financial problems and not having to go out and earn his bread by playing in clubs at an age when he wasn't up for it. He should have been revered, that's my feeling on it.
