INTRODUCTION (updated 9/1/08)

These days, bass players are out there, up front. There are so many lead singers who are bass players now that it's hard to realize that when McCartney became the bass player for the Beatles, he was taking over an instrument that was usually handed to the least talented (or - in Paul's case - the least objectionable) guitarist in the newly forming ensemble. It's difficult to over-emphasize this point. It was sort of a bass player stigma. "I'm just the goofy guy so I'll play bass" while the pushiest guys, the ones who wanted to be the star up front, never mind how much talent they actually had, these were the guitar players.

I may be wrong about this, but I can not think of a bass player who was really a front person for a band before Paul McCartney became one of the two fronters for the Beatles. There certainly were a very few well-known bass players. Becoming a star bass player really triggered an absolute major change in the rock music scene around the world and McCartney was right at the forefront of that change. I'm not saying Paul McCartney was the first great rock bass player or even the first interesting one (Jet Harris, Willie Dixon, Bill Black and others did some great stuff). When the Beatles exploded onto the scene, though, there was that violin shaped Hofner right up front and in the hands of a guy who made bass playing look like fun and wasn't that a big part of the Beatles' influence. Wow, you'd say to yourself, that looks like a good job. To emphasize that point, if there's one thing Paul McCartney brought to we neophyte and fledgling bass players it was that bass playing can be fun. He (and those who followed) also showed playing bass can be interesting and even intellectual, but damn it sure seems to me that McCartney had fun playing all those great Beatles bass parts. Well, I have a lot of fun listening to what he did and had a lot of fun writing this website.

• Speaking of opinions of the author, did I mention I hate books like Revolution in the Head? No? It was gratifying to read a interview with McCartney (Uncut, July 2004) where, on page 60, the interviewer plays up the book as if it's a great work, saying: "the late great pop scholar and Uncut contributor Ian MacDonald. A hugely compelling read by any yardstick.". I was hoping like hell McCartney would trash the thing and he did, sort of. "Well, it might be compelling reading for you. But not for me it isn't. Because I keep finding all the mistakes in it. "McCartney did this because of that..." And I'm sitting there thinking, "No, I didn't". Or, "John Lennon was out of his head on this when he wrote that." No he wasn't. I should1 know because I was fucking there. It's all this received wisdom shit." That was almost, but not quite, as good as that scene in Annie Hall where the loud mouth know-it-all is spewing off about some author and Woody Allen pulls the author from behind a plant, and the author is saying "You know nothing of my work". Well, neither Ian MacDonald or I were there when the Beatles were doing it and I'll at least be man enough to say "I'm only guessing".

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