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Your Top 5 McCartney Bass Lines

#61
Aussie Player said:
The biggest Mac was definitely a major influence on me taking up bass but there a few Beatle songs that stand out more so, in that they are rarely covered by bands probably because of the vocals too are also exceptional for the rock market. My 5 are:

Dear Prudence
Rain
Don't Let me Down
Something
Helter Skelter

And, there are obviously more than that but.........
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Something might have the best bass line ever. I love playing that song.

John
 
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#67
boggus said:
John played Fender Bass VI only on three rehearsal ("slow") takes of it. First official release of those was on Anthology 2. He just played quarter notes E for minutes.


That song has 'bassline' composed and played by George Harrison on his Fender Rosewood Telecaster.


The only bass track Paul rerecorded was John's playing in Let It Be (song).

The Helter Skelter outtakes (Take 17 plus You're so Square jam) and studio chat (more of it in Beatles Rock Band videogame) point to Paul playing his left-handed Fender Jazz Bass, and that it was not an overdub. Lennon is heard in the outtake when Paul is directing the band how the sections of the song should go, so I assume he played the guitar - the only guitar on the basic take.


No, album version was Paul on Fender Jazz Bass.


That said, Paul plays it differently live, he is not playing 16th notes but rather 8ths, but maybe that's the age/live thing. The whole confusion of "John played bass" on this song came from Melody Maker interview or article in 1968 with quotes by/from Mal Evans, who must've been talking about the three early slow rehearsal takes where John indeed "played" Fender VI. Since there was no other audio or outtakes of this until 2009, this was parroted and reprinted for decades, in the same way as "Clapton came in and overdubbed the Gently Weeps solo" was (when turns out Clapton played with them together on every take of that song).


The only Abbey Road song that has Hofner is I Want You (She's So Heavy). Something was played on Rickenbacker, which Paul at that time had also strung with black nylon tapewound strings.
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Thanks, there's so much misinformation out there that gets repeated over and over again, it's obvious it was Paul on Helter skelter. I wasn't sure about Something, there's even a myth floating around that George played that bass in Something :laugh:.
 
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#68
Les Fret said:
Some strange filtering on the bass! I wonder why they did that.
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Not sure if it's the case here but Paul often muted his Rick, usually with the onboard stock mute but other times muted with his palm while playing with the pick or more likely It was recorded on a 4 track and perhaps the way it was extracted digitally did that too depending on what was going on around it. There are just two guesses. It actually sounds a little different on the full recording.
 
#76
who is MacCarney?
never 'heared' of he or she.
lol

but kidding aside

Something: The bass line on Something is a masterful study on being busy and yet it all fits. Lots of 16th notes in that one. And the melodic lines are wonderful.

Don't Let Me Down: The bridge or B section of Don't let me down is worth studying.
Paul uses an inverted pedal point there where he pedals the upper E note and works down from the upper E note through the whole scale excluding the 4th scale degree and then when the chord changes to a B7 he does a great job of working around the arpeggio including the flat seventh (A note). Fantastic Musicianship!

Paul was the genius of the Beatles to me.

I heard that he liked to play busy on songs that were primarily written by the other three guys and then played more simply on the songs that he wrote. Don't know for sure if that can be documented.
He would go into the studio and work and work on his lines concepts til he liked what he had.
 
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#77
bobyoung53 said:
there's even a myth floating around that George played that bass in Something
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Haven't heard that one, maybe it stems from the fact that George complained that the bass line in Something was "too busy" and kept telling Paul to simplify it? On Abbey Road George played Fender Jazz Bass in Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Golden Slumbers and Carry That Weight, as well as Fender Bass VI in Oh! Darling.

Evets1987 said:
2. Oh darling
3. Back in the USSR
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Oh! Darling has bass playing by George on Fender VI. Back in the USSR has two bass tracks on Fender Bass VI, which I assume are John and George.
 
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#78
boggus said:
Haven't heard that one, maybe it stems from the fact that George complained that the bass line in Something was "too busy" and kept telling Paul to simplify it? On Abbey Road George played Fender Jazz Bass in Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Golden Slumbers and Carry That Weight, as well as Fender Bass VI in Oh! Darling.


Oh! Darling has bass playing by George on Fender VI. Back in the USSR has two bass tracks on Fender Bass VI, which I assume are John and George.
Click to expand...

I was listening to isolated bass on Oh Darling! last night and remembered how McCartney had said that he stayed up late and screamed to get his voice rough to sing that song and wondered if he had done something similar to make the bass sound bad in it too :laugh:.

I had heard Harrison played bass in Maxwell's Silver Hammer and always thought it had to be Paul as it was so good. He plays some really fast lines near the end. I wonder how much input Paul had on the line as it sounds very McCartney-ish.

 

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