The 1967 song Phil Collins said had “the most incredible basslines of Motown ever”
Phil Collins didn’t want to have rock and roll as his calling card for the rest of his career.
He liked the idea of making the best music that he could, and since he fashioned himself as a progressive musician, it was always up to him to move his music into new realms that most people would have been scared of back in the day. And while prog rock usually meant stretching out someone’s musical capabilities at every opportunity, Collins’s definition of the genre usually meant toying with what rock and rollers were allowed to make every time they walked into the studio.
Everyone expected him to start making long, drawn-out solos throughout his solo career, but when you look through a lot of his greatest hits, a lot of them take advantage of the old-school pop hits he grew up listening to. Collins wasn’t ashamed of his status as a pop star, and when looking through a lot of his older songs, there was a distinct R&B flair that was always present. His background was already in listening to Motown, and he felt that The Funk Brothers were always what he needed to hear on those classics.
The entire sound of R&B was already being shaped by people like Ray Charles before Hitsville was an idea, but with the help of the Motown backing group, almost every single record from around that time sounded phenomenal. Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye were the ones writing some of the greatest singles of the time, but Collins was always going to focus on the rhythm section of those tunes.
And while Gaye wasn’t too bad of a drummer himself, the biggest part of making those tunes came down to how the basslines moved. James Jamerson was a God-given genius whenever he made those early Motown basslines, but even after his untimely passing, Bob Babbitt’s role on some of those Motown hits was enough to get Collins absolutely giddy when he was able to work with him.
Most people wouldn’t have had that kind of attraction to bands that had been retired for decades, but Collins felt that working with Babbitt on ‘Tears of a Clown’ reminded him of why those songs sounded so good when he was little, saying, “This is one of the most incredible basslines of Motown ever, and he played it. And I’m sitting there thinking, ‘This is a dream, right?’ I’ve been singing this riff all my life, now he’s playing it on my record.”
But a lot of what Babbitt does might not be the most flashy thing in the world, but it always works in the context of Motown’s classics. He was never going to get away with outright copying Jamerson, but being able to work on a song like ‘Tears of A Clown’ is a masterclass in how to support the band while still being able to throw in some sophisticated lines here and there whenever you perform.
What’s even crazier is that this song was just a drop in the bucket of what Babbitt could do when working on the right song. ‘Signed Sealed Delivered’ is always going to be one of Stevie Wonder’s greatest R&B masterpieces, but when you listen to the original mix of the song with Babbitt in the back of your mind, it’s hard to imagine the track holding together at all without his bass cutting through the mix like a knife every single time he performs.
Then again, it’s not a shock to see that Collins would go back to this kind of riff before anything else. All good drummers are always looking out for their rhythmic brothers on the bandstand, and Babbitt was the one who was going to provide the perfect compliment to whatever drummer he was working with was playing.
