Sheehan Bassics

[nofi]

nothing special here except for the part where he talks about gear changes.

[uwe]

I have one of those! Non-descript looking as it is, it is a good bass and a well thought out instrument.

[Alanko]

Sheehan always interests me. He is a well spoken and measured musician, who clearly puts a lot of thought into what he plays. It is good that he pushes for bass basics; learn other people's material and don't overthink your gear. Great stuff, but because he is such a flashy player it is quite easy to get drawn into the speed and shredding side of his playing. On top of that a player with such a bespoke, idiosyncratic rig telling us not to focus too much on the neck and pickups when both are custom appointments on his bass? Dream on! He built his rig from the ground up around dual outputs and obscure preamps, with a Frankenbass driving the whole thing.

I tried an Attitude in Paris. An interesting bass, short on aesthetics but definitely engineered with precision (no pun intended) where it counts. It seemed a bit bland really, or more like a blank canvas. A more overtly Fender bass inspires a certain style of playing, a T-bird another, a Rickenbacker another. The thing had a great P-bass tone, though I'm not sure the pickups interact very well in mono mode. A simple buffered circuit would have probably not gone a miss, and the inclusion of the choke circuit seemed unnecessary. The satin finish on the neck felt like a far cheaper instrument and the action was surprisingly high. I didn't have a problem with the chunky neck, but I imagine some would.

In short, Sheehan prefers all these bespoke appointments but the Attitude is hardly a Swiss Army bass. The heart of it is a great aggressive P bass, but only have the additional features seem practical. How many of us can honestly say we've encountered sound engineers who would entertain the notion of a bassist running a stereo rig? Great if you are the headline act, or you know the sound engineer well.

On top of that, some of the videos I've seen of him with the Winery Dogs suggest he uses an inappropriately driven, chorus'd tone for even slow ballads and he has a tendency to feverishly overplay on slower songs. He also relies a bit heavily on compression for my tastes. Perhaps the snobs on Talkbass have a point?

[uwe]

Yup, the Attitide is a hypher-aggressive P with a little Gibson ooomph added. The phat neck (I'm fine with it, but John Fertig wasn't, which is why he sold it to me) adds to the massive sound. Maybe they also tried to compensate the neck mass lost to the scalloped positions?

Sheehan is an excellent player and can also groove, probably more so than someone like, say, JAE could (The Who always sounded a little stiff and very white in their groove to me, but that might also have to do with Townshend's choppy and sometimes angular rhythm playing, Nile Rodgers he was definitely not, nor Keith Richards). What grates a little in Sheehan's style is that by now he has so much strength in his fingers (and the scalloped neck adds to that of course) he leaves literally no note unbent/unmodulated, it's like he is playing with a constant vibrato effect. Jack Bruce in his latter day playing was guilty of that too. You can tire of that sound quickly (and you end up wishing he'd leave just one note unmodulated for once!) though I have to admit that my playing has become pretty vibrato-drenched too: It's the old story, the longer bass you play, the lighter the touch of your right hand becomes while the left hand gains strength (and inevitably employs it too).

[Basvarken]

I have one of those! Non-descript looking as it is, it is a good bass and a well thought out instrument.

I don't find it non-descript at all. It is very recognisable. The headstock shape, the two outputs, the position markers.
Those are great basses.
The only disadvantage for me would be people sort of expect you to play Sheehan style, when you're on stage with a bass like this. Or is that a silly thought?

[Psycho Bass Guy]

I've played a couple of Attitudes. If it hasn't sold, there's a pink one signed by Sheehan in 93 NOS (unless you count 22 years of shelfwear) locally. They're nice, but nowhere near as versatile as the setup would suggest. They truly are one-trick ponies that simply vary the trick. Unless you like midrange heavy gainy distortion mixed in with a normal Precision tone, you're not going to agree with the Attitude. Dimarzio's hidden (early models hid the pickup under pearloid pg material) Sidewinder copy is much too thin for my taste. The necks are OK; nothing special. I don't "get" the scalloping, but I dislike overuse of vibrato in any instrument.

[Alanko]

Sheehan is an excellent player and can also groove, probably more so than someone like, say, JAE could (The Who always sounded a little stiff and very white in their groove to me, but that might also have to do with Townshend's choppy and sometimes angular rhythm playing.

This I can agree with. I don't feel JAE ever grooved. Nobody in The Who did. That seems to tie in with their fundamental premise, even right back to the Mod days. Charging up to the beat like 18 year olds on pills, rather than play it safe. Oddly, the Motown and Surf stuff that inspired them did have a groove to it.  The Who seemed to try and synthesise something different, and by the time you get to Tommy it is almost like electric chamber music. Great when it all worked out onstage but a bit miserable to listen to when it didn't.

I'm a big fan of both The Who and JAE, but I feel John was never this harmonically complex musician that people seem to suggest he was. His overplaying tended to fall into one of a few different boxes, and he clearly phoned it in during some live performances, including the cherished Shepperton footage. I've listened to the isolated clips of Wont Get Fooled many times, and there is nothing harmonically interesting going on in there, just lots of little stunts and flicky runs. 

I found a video this afternoon of Mr Sheehan getting grilled on his Scientologist views  by ex Scientologists. Great fun for all the family.

[Bionic-Joe]

Billy is by far the nicest guy I ever hung out with 4 nights in a row. I got to play his Attitude...not sure if it is the green bass pictured or the blue one. And Guess what??? He even gave me his last beer!!! Just a genuine awesome guy.

[uwe]

This I can agree with. I don't feel JAE ever grooved. Nobody in The Who did.

Oh my, where may I kiss you first? I've been saying that for years here and the best I get is blushed silence, sort of like "Uwe just said again that the emperor has no clothes on, hush, hush ...". Not praising JAE as the bass wonder god is tantamount to sacrilege here. Of course the guy was a fine player with an idiosyncratic style, but I never thought that his bass playing structured and anchored the music of The Who the way Chris Squire's likewise hardly sparse and very upfront playing did it with Yes. The explanation is, however, most likely that JAE was largely playing Pete's music while Squire largely his own compositions.

I found a video this afternoon of Mr Sheehan getting grilled on his Scientologist views  by ex Scientologists. Great fun for all the family.

Yup, that is always hard to swallow. Imagine my disappointment when I found out that my favourite TV series lesbian Alex



is a card-carrying "Operating Thetan"  Couldn't she just have been a lesbian in real life too? I prefer raging lesbianism to Scientology, really. "As we all know", lesbianism is just an illusion driven by bad experiences, while Scientology is a serious mental illness. 

[uwe]

I don't find it non-descript at all. It is very recognisable. The headstock shape, the two outputs, the position markers.
Those are great basses.
The only disadvantage for me would be people sort of expect you to play Sheehan style, when you're on stage with a bass like this. Or is that a silly thought?

Silly thought +++! Outside a miniscule circle of bassists who care for Billy Sheehan and still own Talas vinyl, nobody gives a damn. Besides, you're good enough, I've seen and heard you play.

[Alanko]

Oh my, where may I kiss you first? I've been saying that for years here and the best I get is blushed silence, sort of like "Uwe just said again that the emperor has no clothes on, hush, hush ...". Not praising JAE as the bass wonder god is tantamount to sacrilege here. Of course the guy was a fine player with an idiosyncratic style, but I never thought that his bass playing structured and anchored the music of The Who the way Chris Squire's likewise hardly sparse and very upfront playing did it with Yes. The explanation is, however, most likely that JAE was largely playing Pete's music while Squire largely his own compositions.

Nae need to get slobbery. 

I admire JAE a lot. He fought a difficult corner in a band full of massive egos. He had no stage presence to speak of, but the layman non-bassists remember him. Perhaps Pete found his multi-instrumental credentials a little intimidating? There is a character, wit and dark humour to John's music that come out in spades, and I really admire that. If nothing else, you hear two notes of his playing and you know it is him.

Having said that, I feel his gear choices and technique took a dive starting in the mid '70s. He was always oldschool enough to roll down the volume on his bass to about half way, which seems at odds with his space-age rigs, and he was oldschool enough to refer to treble as 'top', which has its charm. I think he became an increasingly bored musician, both with and without The Who. There are clips of his band from the mid '80s, playing ancient '50s rock covers. His '90s tone, with the extended guitar-range treble and cheesy modulation effects seems to have allowed a sloppiness into his playing. That imprecise 'typewriter' style does nothing for me, doesn't sound good and seems like a cheats way of getting speed into the playing mix. I dunno.

As I said before, The Who have an interesting 'chamber rock' approach when it all works out. Pete clearly saw the band as a vehicle for his own obscure ideas and philosophies. The band still relied, to a degree, on being London hard nuts (even if Keith Moon came from an affluent area and Pete was a bit art school wanky). The band dabbled in psychedelia, long-form compositions, synthesisers... I guess you just accept them wholesale for what they are, rather than an example of genre X or Y.

[uwe]

 



"That imprecise 'typewriter' style does nothing for me, doesn't sound good and seems like a cheats way of getting speed into the playing mix. I dunno."


What a daring and perceptive young man you are. It was really good knowing you, Alan. 



While I was well-versed with their studio albums (my favorite one is "Who by Numbers", strange choice, I know, but I always liked that album's melancholy) I only heard the legendary "Live at Leeds" comparatively recently in full, but then intently. And my thought was: This was 1970, yes, but compared to other bands of that era that are regularly perceived as "lesser bands" in comparison to The Who such as, say, Purple, Heep, Zep, Humble Pie or even Grand Funk Railroad (never a band with a groove issue, what good things growing up in Motown does to ...), Roger, Pete, John & Keith sounded dated even for 1970. A decidedly 60ies band playing its 60ies singles loud. With a bad lead guitarist, I'm sorry to say. In my ears The Who really only arrived in the 7Oies (but then admittedly with aplomb) with Who's Next. They were quite unlike The Stones in that context who always sound(ed) current for their time irrespective whether you hear a 60ies, 70ies, 80ies, 90ies or a more recent live recording of theirs. That is part of their magic.

[Alanko]

Risks can be rewarding, right? I'm not sold on Geddy Lee's playing and musicianship either.  Great tone, some of the time, and all that....

[uwe]

Hey, you're a real riot! 

Geddy is angular in his playing, always was, always will, it's part of his style and shapes the Rush sound too which is constructed and layered and devoid of any - and I mean any - sex. I'm no Rushologist, but can enjoy their music in an analytic way, it's like reading a math book with no pictures. It's nothing that grips me emotionally, but I can enjoy "analytical listening" too.

[Alanko]

Like ELP then?