Quote:
Originally Posted by martifingers
Interesting discussion. I would want to mention Victor Wooten. As a guitarist myself I would say his playing comes from a whole other sensibility. And very magnificent it is too.
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I have no doubt that with their level of proficiency Mr Wooten and others of his ilk are more than capable of playing great rhythm section bass per se but to my mind what he does mostly is play high level lead guitar on a bass. After 50 years playing bass guitar pretty well I can't do that but then I can't play lead guitar either. There is a skill in playing rock bass that treads a line between driving the band and holding it together, playing continuous bass solos does't do it. Just my two penn'orth.
Macartney, Entwistle and other early 1960s bass beginners, including yours truly, had many musical influences available to us and we took those influences and patterns and made them our own because there was no-one around to say we couldn't. Few of us in the UK at that time could be arsed to take instruction from the Musician's Union dance band or jazz types as to us they were clueless old farts who mainly hated rock and kids who wanted to play their own thing instead of reading someone else's dots. So we pretty well taught ourselves and developed our styles as we saw fit. It has to be remembered that the bass guitar in 1960 was a relatively new instrument. Jeez, music shops were selling felt plectra for them! Strings were total crap until Rotosounds appeared and amplification was just as bad, we just had to work with what we could get and get on with it. Now everyone is a Berklee alumnus and the rock music world is not necessarily a better place for it IMHO.