It’s safe to say that Paul McCartney never really wanted to be introduced as the bassist for The Beatles.
As a musician, he was so much more than a one-instrument man, but more crucially, there was a humility to being a bass player that McCartney was keen to escape. Because while we music fans know it not to be true, there’s a narrative around bass players being the more forgetful of the band, subtly existing in the background of the song and allowing the more charismatic members to take the limelight.
“We couldn’t have three guitars and no bass. Nobody wanted to be the bass player in those days because it was always the fat guy playing bass,” McCartney explained in his book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present. “There seemed to be some sort of stigma attached to it.”
Everything about McCartney was the opposite of that. Being one of the premier songwriters and singers in the band, he was a charismatic figurehead through which the band’s songs flowed. If anything, it’s somewhat ironic that McCartney drew the short straw and played bass in the band, because he is likely the best melody writer in the history of contemporary music.
But despite the hesitancy, it didn’t take long for him to own the instrument and start to understand the value in it as a performer. As the band’s discography continued to evolve with the times, McCartney’s understanding of how this instrument could facilitate that became clearer. The band were no longer interested in playing blues-rock in nothing but 4:4 timings, they wanted to experiment, and the bass guitar would be at the heart of that.
McCartney began to learn how his melodic skills could marry with the bass guitar, and cited two major musicians as influences in that realisation. When asked to name his influences, he quickly answered, “James Jamerson just because he was so good and melodic, and Brian [Wilson] because he went to very unusual places.”
He continued, “If you were playing in C he might stay on the G a lot, just to hold it all back, and again, I started to realise the power you had within the band, not actually vengeful power, just that even though the whole band is going in A you could go in E, and they’d go ‘Let us off the hook!’ You’re actually in control then, an amazing thing.”
Ultimately, as the 1960s rolled on, it was control that various members of the band were wrestling for. Upon realising that through his bass lines, McCartney could subtly direct the band into whatever angle he saw best, the bass guitar became a more beloved ally for the musician and ultimately the band’s music benefited from it.
But beneath the thinly veiled statements about seizing control was a musician developing his style under the stewardship of some of the instrument’s greatest players. The walking basslines that McCartney became so renowned for on tracks like ‘Lovely Rita’ and ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ can be traced back to the soulful roots of Jamerson in particular, a player who never let the bass guitar fade into the background of a song.
