The Last Bass Outpost

When it comes to the Eagles, despite liking the bass and everything else, it was really the vocals that I mostly focused on.  In my early years, I did a lot of vocals in bands, too, besides playing bass.  I'd often sing along to Eagles songs at home as a vocal exercise to keep my voice in shape for high notes.  In time, I became much less interested in singing and much more interested in bass.  Still, it doesn't hurt to sing an Eagles song from time to time, although the high notes aren't as easy as they used to be.  

There is also, of course, the obvious Linda Ronstadt-Eagles connection that can be noted.  I think that may be Leland Sklar playing on some of those
Linda Ronstadt songs, maybe even on the studio version of "Desperado."  As much as I appreciate Linda Ronstadt (I even saw her in concert once,) it's hard to beat the Eagles, though.

Here is one from Cedar Street a few months back.  The guitarist had a camera on his headstock.  I know you guys like looking at hot women.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0_hnfJRSpQ&feature=plcp

Nice

Okay here's Dutch pride Golden Earring performing their biggest hit Radar Love on a TV show a few years ago.

Rinus rarely plays the EB3, but for this occasion he brought the EB3. The original recording in 1973 was also done on a Gibson EB3

Thanks for that.  I had to go and watch the "Twilight Zone" video a few times, too, even if it has no Gibson EB-3 basses. 

Give DJ a break, that's a looped fusion solo at a clinic, it's not how he plays with The Stones at all! In fact, with The Stones, he plays like a lot of bassists "better than rock" play if they have to play rock, rather ploddingly and unimaginatively. It's like they take on a second identity or wish to merge into an archaic jungle tribe, "I better pretend to not know how to read and write now so I fit in". Sometimes, people at the limit of their capabilities come up with the more original stuff. Wyman's forte was of course that he played where 90% of other bassists would not and refrained from playing where 90% of other bassists would play. In contrast, with The Stones, DJ plays stadium rock bass - he wouldn't have to adapt this adopted style if he played for, say, Journey. Since Wyman has left, the Stones have lost some of their rhythm section idiosyncracy. Not that 99% of the Stones audience hear the dif or give a crap.

Something that you've said there resonates with me.  The part about sometimes people at the limit of their capabilities come up with the more original stuff.  Just because of the way things have worked out, I've found myself around people that I would consider real pros.  Most of the time they've been formally trained, too.  Sometimes I'll hear comments that what I'm doing is creative, original, etc.  I think more often than not, what is really happening is that I may have pushed myself to the limit and I honestly don't know how to come up with anything else.  Actually, this isn't doing anything for my ego or confidence to think that this may be true, though.  The only solution--if there actually is one--is to continue attempts to get better. 

I liked Noel Redding much better than Billy Cox for the same reason I like Bill Wyman much better than Darryl Jones.

This is certainly not my cup of tea.  But if you take a poll, you would probably have more that like it than dislike it. 

To be honest, I came late to the Hendrix party.  I liked a lot of the first album, and still do, but I've never been a big fan of either Axis or EL.  I just found them too trippy.  I perked up for Band of Gypsys, but not for "Machine Gun".  It was the shorter, and more structured songs.  The album that I always loved, if you hadn't figured it out, was Cry of Love.  It was cleaner, more intricate, more soulful and better structured.

My understanding of the real phenomenon of Hendrix was his ability to remember every solo and part he wrote, to the point where he could play them backwards perfectly.  I seem to recall an interview with Eddie Kramer that talked about recording songs like that to invert to sound envelope.

That's true; he could play the solos backwards in his head.  Kramer, of all people, would know about that. 

I've never subscribed to the "white guys with Hendrix didn't know how to play and had no groove"-thesis. People tend to forget that part of Hendrix' initial appeal was that he and the Experience did not sound black. That is why you hear Hendrix today still on rock radio stations while black radio stations have always been on the verge of disowning/ignoring him. The guy had been playing black RnB for years in the circuit, going nowhere. So it was his outlandish look, dress sense and exuberant playing that made the Experience kickstart a new era in rock, but all of that on the back of Mitchell's and Redding's "white boy groove, firmly Brit Beat entrenched playing". Had Hendrix released his debut with a couple of Motown or Stax black studio cracks, I'm sure the success wouldn't have been the same. The timing might have been neater, the grooves tighter, the whole rhythmically more adventurous, but it would not have hit as hard commercially.

If you ever find yourself in the midst of Hendrix fans, you may find that there is still an unusual emphasis on the part of some on the post-Electric Ladyland music.  At first, this really baffled me and still does.  I had always been under the impression that Are You Experienced, Axis:  Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland were the three landmark albums.  Not so with many people, evidently.  They'll focus on Band of Gypsys songs, or songs from the Isle of Wight concert, whatever.  Not too long ago I was having a "discussion" with someone who informed me that Noel Redding would not have been able to play the bass to "Ezy Ryder" the way it really should be played.  Then the guitarist friend I mentioned came along and pointed out (and proved) that the song was actually built on a proto-Ezy Ryder song that Noel Redding himself had written.  As you have said, it was that big break in the UK that really got everything started for Jimi Hendrix.  That was with Redding and Mitchell as his British sidemen, and with the Beatles, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, and others in the audience.  I also question how famous Hendrix would have become or even if he would have become famous at all if Chas Chandler had not taken him to the UK. 

Macca was and is rhythmically meat and potatoes (all in all, he probably doesn't have more than 10 rhythmic variations) and not very fast (neither am I), but he was harmonically and melodically in the sixties already lightyears ahead of what 95% of all bassists do today. Sometime in the midseventies - advent of disco? though I would hate to blame it for dumbing down bass playing as regards melody - there was a cut as regards the development of melodic and harmonically adventurous bass playing and the root note reigned for evermore, the bass enslaved by the bass drum. Since then, bass playing has become rhythmically more complex, but melodically and harmonically more simplistic. The advent of the 5-string didn't help things either, now bass players would just play a low D where before they had to play an F or an F# for the lowest notes to go with a D, the result was a harmonic loss - many bass players get harmonically complacent with a 5-string in their hands. McCartney's approach to bass playing (when he was still hungry) is more akin to playing cello in a classical orchestra than to traditional double bass.

Hendrix to me, otoh, was never a technically breathtaking player, but all about feel, tone and innovation. I don't believe he was obsessed with his left- or right hand technique at all. He had huge hands which did enable him to do some adventurous voicings, but that was more "because I can do it without discomfort" than consciously I believe.

You've pinpointed exactly what I tend to dislike about modern bass playing, the rhythmic being advanced at the expense of the melodic and harmonic.  It's timing which has always been what I've been best at.  I hate to say it, but I probably would have made a better drummer than a bassist.  Being rhythmic has never been something mysterious to me.  But being able to come up with those beautiful melodies the way McCartney and a few others have done, that's what's impressive to me.  Sometimes the lack of melody I hear in modern music makes for very frustrating listening on my part.  This doesn't just apply to bass, either.  Speaking of Hendrix, in an interview which comes at the end of Disc 4 on the Winterland box set, he does very briefly discuss how he feels about the melodic in music.  I've been meaning to go back and listen to that again.