Exploring the appeal of Paul McCartney as a bassist

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• a die-hard Beatles fanWada Shinji
  From Osaka Prefecture. I’ve been a Beatles fan for decades. I’ve tried many hobbies, but this is the only one that has stayed with me. As a storyteller of the Beatles, I want to pass on their greatness to future generations. A blog that explains the Beatles in a way anyone can understand.

Why am I not appreciated as a bassist?

John Lennon once said this.

Paul’s bass and Ringo’s drumming deserve more recognition. They are top‑class musicians who can hold their own anywhere.

He also said this.

Most of Paul’s talent as a bassist was built during his time with the Beatles.

In other words, John also held Paul in high regard as a bassist.

However, because the image of him having created mega-classics like Yesterday, Hey Jude, and Let It Be is so overwhelmingly strong, it feels like Paul McCartney isn’t widely appreciated by the general public as a bassist.

Founder of Melodious (Melodic) Bass

If I were to describe Paul’s bass playing in a single phrase, it would be “melodic bass.”

In other words, it means playing the bass as if a guitar were carrying the melody.

In the first place, the bass works together with the drums to form the rhythm section in a band, playing the role of creating the foundation of the sound.

If we compare it to a building, it would be the part that corresponds to the foundation.

Until then, the primary role of the bass was to faithfully play the note called the root (fundamental).

In a sense, the bass might be the most low-key position in a band.

Drums also play a behind-the-scenes, supporting role, but in the case of drums, there’s still the privilege of being able to do solo performances.

By comparison, the bass—without flashy solo performances like the drums—tends to end up being a rather unassuming presence.

Revolutionized the rock bass

However, Paul devised a playing style called the melodic bass that fundamentally changed the very nature of rock bass.

In fact, a bassist named Paul Chambers was playing melodic bass before Paul.

However, he,JazzHe specialized in it, and the instrument he used was the double bass.

Paul overturned conventional wisdom and devised a style of bass running on a fretted electric bass that sounded as if he were playing a guitar.

If we limit it to rock, I think he might be the founder of melodic bass.

I was originally a guitarist.

Since the Beatles’ early days, Paul had been playing in a band with John Lennon and George Harrison, but his role was either piano or guitar.

This is him with a guitar.

There was a bassist named Stuart Sutcliffe (the person on the far right in the photo), but since he left the Beatles, someone had to take over on bass.

And that's how the baton ended up being passed to Paul.

However, since this later became the catalyst for the birth of his uniquely brilliant base running, you never know what will turn out to be a blessing in life.

If he hadn’t come from a guitarist background, such a revolutionary playing technique might never have been born.

They were doing something difficult with ease.

This is a song called “I Saw Her Standing There,” which the Beatles had been performing even before their major debut, and Paul delivers some excellent bass runs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtXrbGR06nE

As bassists will know, the bass is heavier than a guitar, so playing it while standing can be quite challenging.

On top of that, the strings are thick, the neck is long, and the frets are wide, so you have to stretch your fingers and press down firmly.

And since Paul plays that kind of bass melodically, almost like a guitar, that alone makes him quite a skilled technician.

This is a bass cover of the song from earlier, but the left-hand movement is as busy as a guitar’s.

On top of that, without ever looking at his hands, he faced forward with a beaming smile, vigorously moving his right fingers (he’s left-handed), while taking the lead vocal at times and adding harmonies at others.

As you know, the bass line is completely different from the melody line.

Singing lead vocals while playing that is quite a challenging task.

Since the Höfner 500/1 violin bass he used was small and lightweight, it was probably significant that he could handle it almost like a guitar.

You don’t know how the actual performance will be?

Now then, let’s examine his superb bass technique through specific works.

Notably, in their later period the Beatles stopped performing live altogether, and only a small amount of footage remains, so we cannot know precisely how they actually performed.

So we have no choice but to listen to their records and CDs and refer to footage from when they were still performing live.

Since later bassists also perform the bass parts according to their own interpretations, please consider the following as reference only.

Taxman

This is GeorgeEric ClaptonThis is an image from when they held a concert tour in Japan.

Innovative baseline

This is something that covers the base.

Among Paul's bass lines in the Beatles, this might be his most distinctive work.

In a sense, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it the pinnacle of his melodic bass.

Once you really perk up your ears to the bass, the repeated phrase that goes 'bon-bo-bo-bo-bohn' sticks in your head and won’t go away.

It completely deviates from conventional traditional baselines, but the Beatles never cared about traditional rules in the first place—they’re the ones who created new rules.

It may be a simple repetition of a pattern, but

The bassline in the A section is essentially a repetition of a fairly simple pattern.

The first pattern of the bassline starts on the root note D at the 5th fret, then jumps to the octave D on the 7th fret of the G string.

Then, add a hammer-on on the D string (strike the string with the fretting finger) to move from G to A, return to the high C, and finish.

This pattern can be continued by having Paul start on A to naturally match the chorus, then lowering it to G for the second chorus.

So you're double-picking the high D note in the riff, right?

It’s an innovative technique that didn’t exist on bass before, and while it’s simple, I think actually playing it is quite challenging.

something

Overdoing it?

It’s no exaggeration to say that this features a superbly melodious bass line that stands shoulder to shoulder with the aforementioned “Taxman.”

This is what you get when you extract only the bass line.

Some people claim that this is the finest example of his bass playing from his Beatles era.

Even though George is playing a wonderful melody, both vocally and on guitar, I'm hitting it with a boldly melodic bass line.

It's as if the bass is playing a solo throughout the entire track, weaving back and forth like writhing code.

Even George complained, saying, “Too busy (that’s overdoing it).”

But the fact that it becomes such a wonderful accent is precisely what makes Paul who he is.

A distinctive groove

He adds a crescendo on the second sixteenth-note beat of the C and C7 chords in the A verse.

This creates a dramatic effect, like percussion—similar to an orchestra’s timpani.

Throughout the song, Paul doesn’t stick to a standard bass pattern, and even his sense of rhythm isn’t consistent.

He is playing along with quarter notes, dotted quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes.

I mostly put the sixteenth notes on beats one and two.

He tends to leave a little space on the third and fourth beats.

A lot of ad-libbing?

What frustrates many bassists is that Paul plays like this seemingly at random, creating a distinctive sense of groove.

That's why it's pretty hard to make a perfect copy.

Even though the chords stay the same throughout the song, the bass line is different each time—he’s probably playing based on how he feels in the moment.

He clearly inserts sixteenth notes every two to four bars to mark off phrases, and he sustains half or whole notes that are distinctly different from the delicately coordinated guitar parts played by John and George.

Distort the sound

Paul had the ability to bend or wobble the chords and choose different notes to create rhythmic contrasts with the other instruments.

In the chorus, the first thing that catches the ear is the busy, roaming bassline compared to the more relaxed guitar.

One particularly intriguing example is how the bass leads the musicality in line with the chord progression composed by George.

In the chorus, Paul used accents effectively to emphasize the sound.

They make extensive use of techniques such as slides, hammer-ons, and octave jumps.

Lastly

There are also people who criticize, saying things like, “Using a pick on bass is wrong,” and “It’s too noisy.”

However, I would like you to remember that he never got in the way of the lead vocals or guitar, and remained completely devoted to his role as a bassist.