Brian Wilson names “the greatest bass player in the world”
Anyone who ever worked with Brian Wilson needed to be an expert in their field. While working with The Beach Boys, Wilson was on the verge of musical perfection, creating mini symphonies that culminated in the brilliant playing heard on albums like Pet Sounds. Although every member of the various session bands Wilson used was a brilliant player, he thought one bassist was the master of the low end.
Granted, Wilson always had a particular ear for what the bass would be doing throughout the mix. Having turned in time on the road as the bass player for the band, Wilson knew the nimble tightrope walk that went into creating a good bass line, often playing around the chord changes rather than holding down the root of the chord.
As a bass player, one also has a unique position that no other guitarist can do. Since the four-string keeps everything rooted to the ground, the root note often defines what the chord will sound like in the context of the band, leading to many bassists going outside the confines of basic chords to create eccentric melodic lines for their songs.
Amid all of the prospective bass players that would play on The Beach Boys’ records, though, Carol Kaye would become a mainstay of the studio. Having turned in time behind the guitar first, Kaye had already been a fixture of the studio scene, eventually playing guitar for theme songs to shows like The Brady Bunch. When it came time to record with Wilson, The Beach Boys mastermind knew she could do no wrong on the bass.
When initially putting together classics like ‘Good Vibrations’, Wilson would consider Kaye one of the greatest to work with in the studio, saying, “Carol played on ‘Good Vibrations’ and ‘California Girls’, and she was the star of the show. She was the greatest bass player in the world. She was way ahead of her time”.
Even though Kaye had been around the block with various jazz musicians, she was still knocked out the first time she heard ‘Good Vibrations’. Since most bass players at the time were known to keep the track together, Kaye was surprised that she was asked to take centre stage during the song’s intro.
Recalling the session, Kaye remembered being reminded of various jazz players when she was playing the iconic bass line, explaining, “He definitely wrote out some neat lines on the bass. For instance, [the intro]…I would have never thought to play something like that. That’s a jazz walking line. You knew that this kid was onto something really great”.
For the rest of the Pet Sounds sessions, Wilson would prove that he was just getting started, creating the most complex chord progressions and putting melodies on top of them that were enough to break your heart on tracks like ‘You Still Believe In Me’ and ‘God Only Knows’. Wilson may have been the brains behind The Beach Boys’ greatest hits, but it took the mind-bending playing of Carol Kaye to make the songs truly come alive.
