Just to keep up the tradition of changing the direction of a thread, I'd like to bring up some good songs with bad bass lines. I was driving home from a jam session last Saturday night and on the radio they were playing some tapes of old BBC live broacasts, all of which I had never heard before. They played a couple of tunes of what was possibly the first Rolling Stones gig , in any event very early stuff. It was announced that the name Rolling Stones was only a couple weeks old at that time and Mick Jaeger was quoted as saying he thought his band was "about ready to do a gig " .
The only tune that I was familiar with was Reelin' and Rockin' , but they played a few others too. Mick Jaegers' voice sounded as good or better than anything I've ever heard him do, the guitar was very raw, as was just about anything rock and roll of that era, but it was good. Bill Wymans' bass playing was abso -freakin-lutely pathetic
. He had no idea of what he was doing. Nothing even close to a walking bass line, most of the time he could find the root note(but not always), once in a while he would find another note or two in the proper scale(but not always) and part of the time he would hit a note on the beat(but not always).
I find it hard to believe this guys musical career didn't end that night or at least end with the Stones. But as luck would have it, he goes on to have one of the most successful careers that any musician could dream of, and acheives godlike status......WTF
Has anyone else heard any of this stuff?? Was Bill Wyman really that bad?? Am I just growing into a bitter old sourpuss?? Will Lassie find a way to get Timmy out of the well??..................... So many questions
Rick
