A Brief History of How the Bass Guitar Came to Prominence
Paul McCartney, bassist of the Beatles, felt as though he "was lumbered" into playing the bass because he didn’t have a decent guitar. "I really didn’t want to do it. The fat boy in the back was the bass player. And who wanted to be him?... We all wanted to be guitar players". At the beginning there just wasn’t much respect for bass players. At best they were considered barely competent musicians. In the 60’s many of McCartney’s biggest fans probably assumed he was playing a guitar, but today every Primus fan knows that Les Claypool plays an array of exotic bass guitars. As The Ultimate Guitar Book notes succinctly, "Bass players have now established a strong identity for their instrument, and the myth of the bass being played by someone not good enough for six-string duties is clearly outdated". Bass players are no longer thought of as people who couldn’t play anything else. One of the newest musical instruments, the bass has quickly gained prominence as an important instrument through such players as Paul McCartney, Jaco Pastorius, Jeff Berlin, and Les Claypool, who developed their own styles and inspired others by their musical genius.The bass guitar is a very recent invention. The bass guitar was invented only after the development of the electric guitar, which had begun to emerge in the 1930's. No one has been credited for the invention of the electric guitar because it just evolved, with many musicians and technicians adding improvements. In the earlier acoustic guitar, any strings could be used that would resonate well, because the hollow body would amplify any sound. Unlike the earlier acoustic guitar, al l the strings on a electric guitar are metal and in a revolutionary change the body was made solid. The bridge of the acoustic guitar is used both to hold the pitches of the guitar and to force the body of the guitar to resonate with the strings to ampli fy the sound, but the solid body electric guitar uses the bridge only to hold the pitches. The electric guitar is barely audible by itself. Magnetic or electro-magnetic pick ups are used to convert electro-magnetic waves into a weak electric signal, which is then amplified and sent through a speaker. The strings put the body of the electric guitar under so much pressure that the neck on electric models must be reinforced by a steel rod called the truss rod.The electronic principles are basically the same in the bass guitar, but the range and overtones that give the instrument its character are different. Leo Fender, who earlier marketed the first solid body electric guitar, invented the bass guitar in 1951 and named it the Precision Electric Bass Guitar. Even Leo Fender apparently thought his electric bass was a second choice instrument. He originally designed it so that "his out-of-work, guitar-playing friends could easily master" the four-stringed instrument. However, Fender got a lot more than he had bargained for. His bass guitar has an even more unique sound than his solid body guitar had.Fender had seen the obvious need for a louder, more portable instrument with a more precise pitch. The 1951 Fender Precision Bass Guitar got its name from this new more precise pitch. In 1960 the Fender Jazz Bass Guitar was released, featuring a slimmer neck and a broader range of sounds. The electric bass, like the guitar, was an adaptation of an acoustic instrument, but the electric bass was more than just a bass that was electric. As the well-respected jazz bassist Steve Swallow notes, "They're two completely different instruments. It takes finesse and discretion to play the electric bass and strength and determination to play acoustic bass".Paul McCartney would have liked to play a Fender but in the early years he couldn't even afford a decent guitar. Perhaps McCartney's biggest contribution to the bass movement was that he played the bass in the influential band of the twentieth century. When the Beatles formed, McCartney was playing an instrument less than a decade old. His first influences were Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Fats Domino, none of whom were bass players. Paul McCartney, one of the first notable musicians to play the bass, became an important influence for future musicians. McCartney chose a 1962 Hofner "violin bass" because it was cheap, about the equivalent of seventy dollars today. Also, he was left handed, and explained that the Hofner bass was "violin-shaped and symmetric, so being left-handed didn't look so stupid". After the Beatles were famous, the maker of the Rickenbocker Bass gave him a bass that would record better. It had a fatter neck and was more stable so it kept in tune better and played in tune all the way up, whereas the Hofner would be out of tune near the top.A big part of McCartney's fame came from his compositions. Although the Beatles were unable to read music, McCartney and John Lennon composed almost all of the Beatles' music. McCartney's abilities grew as with experience, and "as time passed, Paul's song writing and playing evolved dramatically, becoming practically a genre unto themselves, almost as far removed from Chuck Berry as from Beethoven or Bach". McCartney, even today at the age of 54, is still known as an avid song writer and music enthusiast. McCartney was one of the first bass players to do more than play roots of chords and help keep time. He played melodic bass lines and sometimes even the lead melody on bass. He was the writer of some of the catchiest and most influential bass lines in pop music. While McCartney is an influential bass player primarily because of his fame as a Beatle, Jaco Pastorius became famous solely because of his extraordinary talent as a bassist. Jaco Pastorius, born in 1951 and probably the finest contributor to the bass movement, is frequently called "the World's Greatest Bass Player." The son of jazz drummer Jack Pastorius, Jaco began as a drummer, too. However, he was unable to play the drums after a football-related injury because his wrists no longer had sufficient flexibility. His experience on drums probably contributed to his perfect sense of rhythm and time. A friend who recognized his musical talent asked him to play bass at a gig, even though Jaco had never played the instrument before. He immediately took to the instrument and his bass career took off.Only a few months after the release of Jaco Pastorius, he was known by all bassists everywhere. Jaco was exceptional in Jazz, Rock, and Big Band. He blended these various styles and played some of most soulful lines ever heard on bass. Jaco played the bass with an athletic agility that brought new attention to an instrument that had generally been known only as part of the back-up rhythm section. He is famous for his transcription of Charlie Parker's "Donna Lee," an extremely fast and challenging piece that no one had ever dreamed could be played by a bass player. Jaco was one of the first bassists to play chords on bass. Jaco was also famous for his second-hand, homemade fretless Fender Jazz Bass, from which the previous owner had removed the frets. Jaco put on a few coats of epoxy to keep the roundwound strings from eating away the fret board. The most memorable song in which he used his homemade fretless bass was probably "Portrait of Tracy," a piece consisting of almost all harmonics. Up until "Portrait of Tracy," bass players were only using harmonics to tune their instrument. After this Fender began to manufacture a fretless Jazz Bass and playing fretless bass became a fad.Although Jaco was known as one of the greatest musicians of all time, he had big problems. A manic-depressive alcoholic, he died at the age of thirty-five in a bar fight. One can only imagine what more he could have given to the world if things had turned out differently.Jeff Berlin, one of the best rock bass players today, was born in Queens in 1953. With his father an opera singer and mother was a pianist, his childhood was filled with classical music. A prize-winning child prodigy on the violin, he carried around a small statue of Beethoven. When he wanted to play drums his mother insisted that he play a more musical instrument, and he chose the bass guitar.Berlin went to Berklee College of Music, where he learned a lot about jazz, and he later agreed to teach classes there. At Berklee people urged him, as an electric bass player, to start playing the acoustic bass. Berlin looks back on his period of play ing the upright as a waste of time. In apparent agreement with Steve Swallow, Berlin found the instruments to be very different. Berlin loved playing his 1966 Fender Precision Bass with a modified neck and custom made pick-ups and his 1962 Fender Jazz Bass, but he found the upright bass just wasn't for him. Berlin finds it especially important for bass players to retain a musical identity for themselves, since it is so easy to get caught in a rut of unoriginality. Berlin avoids this quagmire by making it a point not to listen to other bassist too closely. He practices by transcribing and playing a lot of music written for other instruments. Most of the time he studies trombone music because it is so lyrical. Berlin tells his students that the most important part of dev eloping their style is to express their own feelings on the instrument and keep their own sound. Berlin was not interested in the common bass lines he heard when he started. He broke the mold with his aggressive style, playing mo re complicated rhythms and chord voicings. Often caring the melody, his pulsating walking bass lines provide an exuberant combination of rock and Jazz.Berlin has also helped to popularize the sound of bass by playing for commercial advertisements for such companies as 7-Up, TWA, Lee Jeans, and K-mart. Although pop music is notorious for not having decent bass, today most TV commercials are greatly enhanced by the bass guitar. Once in a while the bass is the only instrument in a commercial. This is true in the McDonald's Egg Mc Muffin and the 7-Up Spot Commercials. The new respect for bass is well demonstrated in commercials.While it is must have been a considerable challenge to gain respect as a member of a group whose slogan is Primus Sucks, bassist Les Claypool is admired for his very eccentric style and composition. His style is an incorporation of the flamenco picking (Swing 1) commonly used in Spanish guitar, slapping and popping, muting, sliding and percussive strumming and even playing chords -- in essence, everything except the expected. All of these things put together make the unique style that is easily identifiable and all Claypool's own. As the front man of Primus, Claypool has been one of the biggest contributors to the popularity of bass, and he is the first bass player of really exceptional bass skill to have a large popular audience. His extremely active bass lines travel all over the neck and are often the sole carrier of the melody. He has made bass soloing a far more appreciated activity. Claypool came from a modest family. His father was a mechanic, his uncles were mechanics, and even his grandfather was a mechanic. Les started playing bass at fifteen. He thought since it only had four strings that it would be the easiest to learn. He claims to have started out just fooling around while watching TV. Les’s biggest inspirations were Residents, Rush, Larry Graham, and Tony Levin. At eighteen he was playing at a lot of biker bars with a bunch of different groups. After a while he felt that none of the bands were really getting anywhere, so he decided to form his own band Primate, and later Primus. Les took some voice lessons to build his confidence so he could belt out the lyrics himself (Kot 16). Always an innovator, Claypool plays a six string fretted bass, six string fretless bass, a four string bass with a whammy bar, and the only bass banjo in the world (McReavy). Les has set up his own label, Prong Song, so that bands that have strange new ideas can get signed and be heard (Kot 16).Because of the talent of the extraordinary players/composers Paul McCartney, Jaco Pastorius, Jeff Berlin, and Les Claypool the bass guitar is now known as a respectable instrument. In its fifth decade of existence, the electric bass guitar is no longer thought of as an instrument for mediocre musicians to hide behind. The instrument itself has been improved by the artists, Jaco with his makeshift fretless, Berlin with his addition of special pickups and customized neck, and Claypool with his arsen al of custom-made Carl Thompson basses. There is much diversity among these four influential bassists. McCartney and Claypool grew up in blue-collar households, while Jaco and Berlin grew up with musician parents. McCartney couldn't even read music, while Jeff Berlin had been well trained in classical music as a child and attended music school. McCartney and Claypool were both in extremely popular groups that made the bass a well-known and appreciated instrument, while it is usually only Jazz fans w ho know and appreciate the extraordinary talents of Jaco Pastorius. What these artists all had in common was their exceptional talent and unyielding creative spirit, which brought the bass to prominence.