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Introduction

 How Did He Become An Icon? 1966 Post Beatles
Thanks Pre-1963

1967

 Five String Taste
Influential Bass Players of the '60s 1963

1968

 Driving Rain
Large Scale vs. Small Scale Basses 1964/1965

1969

 What Do Others Say?
contact the author Bibliography

 

HOW DID HE BECOME AN ICON?

To become the icon of bass players that Paul McCartney became, it must be then that he was born a bass player - ready from the beginning to go out and buy his first bass. Of course this wasn't the case. The Beatles' bass player, Stu Sutcliffe, stayed on in Hamburg after one of their seasons there and they needed someone to replace him. By default, it became Paul.

. . . he (Stu Sutcliffe, the Beatles' original bass player)  left when we finished the gig in Hamburg, he decided to go back to art college. At that point, Paul was still playing the guitar and I remember us saying "Well, one of us has got to be the bass player", and I remember saying "it's not me, I'm not doing it" and John saying "I'm not doing it either". He. . .went for it and he became the bass player from that point on. So then we were a four piece band.--George Harrison3 

Stu said he was going to stay in Hamburg. He'd met a girl and was going to stay there with her and paint. So it was like, Uh-oh, we haven't got a bass player. And everyone sort of turned 'round and looked at me. I was a bit lumbered with it, really-it was like, 'Well... it'd better be you, then.' I don't think you would have caught John doing it; he would have said: 'No, you're kidding. I've got a nice new Rickenbacker!' I was playing piano and didn't even have a guitar at the time, so I couldn't really say that I wanted to be a guitarist.--Paul McCartney 2

 

Thanks to this stubbornness, the Beatles sound began at that time to take the direction that would bring them the fame that no group of artists has before or since known.

In the very early days, Paul played with the style that most guitar players-turned-bass players employ. It's a bouncy style that is caused generally by hammering the pick down to the string on each note. The Rolling Stones' Bill Wyman employed this style for years.

Combining this style with a hollow body bass made, at times, for a very 'round' and punchy sound, a sound easy to visualize. If, for example, Disney were to animate Please Please Me (as in the first part of Fantasia) the bass would probably be pictured in round dark blotches that would quickly fade away - bop bop bop bop bop bop, etc. While it definitely works and the song put them over the top worldwide, what would have the Beatles sounded like in the '63-'65 days if Paul had gone with a solid body bass? Very different, indeed.

To "Pre 1963"