Quick. Name as many famous guitar players as
you can.
All right, now name as many famous bass players as you can. And Paul McCartney doesn’t count.
Substantially more difficult, right? I bet a few of you were able to squeeze out John Entwistle or Les Claypool. Maybe some of you music majors blurted out Victor Wooten. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. By and large, there is a huge fame gap between bass players and the rest of the players in a modern rock quartet.
The lead singer gets attention because he or she is the natural focal point, the lead guitarist has mystique and the showiest instrumental parts, and the drummer demonstrates the most physicality traditionally when playing (Charlie Watts excepted). So what about the bass player?
Whatever the factors may be for the more widespread fame of other instruments, it is clear that the bass player comes dead last in terms of celebration and notoriety. So much so, that it’s almost a cliche. The brilliant Canadian comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall astutely declared in a sketch, “No one invites the bass player to the party after the show.”
Despite the fact that the archetype of the bass player is the continual Charlie Brown of rock music: ignored, trampled and unappreciated, they are often the badass beating heart of many classic bands.
That raw thump, the bottom end is what punches you in your sternum when you’re too close to a speaker array at a concert. The bassline is what makes your rearview mirror rattle when you’re rollin’ and bumpin’ down your block. This isn’t to say that a bassless array can’t work (see Yeah Yeah Yeahs, White Stripes, early Doors), but while a guitar can slash and cut, nothing thumps and bludgeons like bass. To continue this violent metaphor in a medieval fashion, think of a guitar as a sword, and a bass as the megaton hammer from Zelda 64.
But I digress. I can rhapsodize at length about the theoretical awesomeness of the bass, but what about practice? Now there are clearly bass virtuosos that pop up quickly like the aforementioned Claypool and Wooten, the often celebrated/maligned Geddy Lee, or even the living cartoon character Bootsy Collins. But there are some unsung bass heroes. Bass players that don’t punch you in the face with their talent but play their role in the band while still providing much needed propulsion.
So in celebration of the unsung heroes of an unsung instrument, here are, in no particular order, the top five underrated bass players.
First, Gary “Mani” Mounfield.
Good. Lord. If you want to hear the definition of how nasty, how funky, how junkyard dog-like a bass can sound, look no further than Mounfield’s work on Primal Scream’s seminal album “XTRMNTR.” Constantly fed through a wall of dense distortion, Mounfield’s white-boy funk absolutely drives songs like “Kill All Hippies” and the title track. Mounfield attacks each track with repetitive and unrelenting grooves that drive the harmonic structure of nearly every song.
Secondly, continuing the UK theme, is none other than Paul Simonon of the only band that matters, The Clash. The most thrilling part about the beginning of the song “London Calling” isn’t the guitars at the beginning, it’s when that first bass note slides in. While his arguably more famous contemporaries, like Sid Vicious, could barely play their instrument, Simonon brought actual technique and dub reggae influence to his dancing notes that balanced the clanging chords of his bandmates. The bassline from “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” illustrates Simonon’s Kingston punk style perfectly, and his work on “This Is The Radio Clash” gave birth to punk funk in one fell swoop.
Speaking of punk funk, another UK punk vet that a lot of bands today owe a debt of gratitude is Dave Allen of the seminal post-punk group Gang of Four. Dave Allen was the foundation of the band’s sound, which gave guitarist Andy Gill the freedom to develop his trademark slash and burn free-form guitar sound. Allen cut his teeth in disco bands and brought his danceable sensibility to GOF’s agit-funk, laying down classic lines like the meandering and trebly verse part in “Damaged Goods,” as well as “Natural’s Not In It.” Without this guy and his band, the Rapture and Bloc Party would never have been born.
Fourth, we have a musician who took the bassists’ rights struggle to it’s logical conclusion and formed a drum and bass only duo, Jesse Keeler of Death From Above 1979. Although they disbanded in 2006, while they were active they laid some of the absolute bass heaviest indie thrash ever blasted into unsuspecting cochlea. With a tone chunkier than most asphalt, Keeler filled the spot of both the bassist and guitarist by playing warp-speed punk funk lines with unforgiving distortion that perfectly accented drummer Sebastien Grainger’s howl.
Last but not least, a man who could probably be seated at the top five most underrated of any instrument besides guitar, considering he played all of the instruments on a good deal of his albums. This is of course, the Purple One, Prince Rogers Nelson. Prince’s first two albums are small miracles of synth-funk, with all instruments commandeered by him. The slap bass on “Sexy Dancer” rules, and the later period synth bassline of “Kiss” deserves a funk Nobel prize. Prince is such a master of the bass, that he knows exactly when not to play. Namely for the entirety of “When Doves Cry.” According to rock lore, at the last minute in the studio, Prince muted the bassline, and it went on to become a massive hit without one.
This is only a shortlist of those four-string felons that do the thankless job of bringing in the low end. So the next time you’re making fun of Michael Anthony in a Van Halen video, think for a second: when you want to bump your jams in your car, do you turn up the guitar dial, or the bass dial?
Trick question, there isn’t a guitar dial, and that ain’t Lake Minnetonka.
If you want to be the respected lead vocalist to Ayres’ underappreciated bass player, then e-mail him at jayres@media.ucla.edu.