“Tuned everything to low D”: Kim Deal names her coolest bassline
Bassists are rarely presented with the same reverence or endless praise as their six-stringed cousins, at least within the world of rock and roll. The guitar is so often viewed as the definitive weapon of rock, but it is the rhythm section where the pounding appeal of the genre lies. What’s more, there have been countless legendary bassists over the years, each earning their own place in the pages of rock history with infectious basslines and infallible attitudes. Kim Deal is certainly among those legendary bass stars.
Growing up in the 1970s, on a healthy diet of hard rock, punk, and folk, Deal immersed herself in music from a very young age. Originally, it was the acoustic guitar that provided her path into songwriting and performance. Even today, Deal is still fond of plugging an acoustic guitar through a Marshall stack and letting loose but for the vast majority of listeners, Deal arrived on the scene as the bassist for Pixies.
When Deal answered the ad to be Pixies’ bassist in 1986, she borrowed a bass from her sister, having focused largely on the six-string up until that point. Over the next few years, however, she would establish herself among the definitive bass players of alternative rock. After all, the Boston outfit came to define the late 1980s for the slackers and outcasts of the United States, and Deal’s basslines were a key part of the band’s appeal. However, internal tensions between the bassist and Black Francis soon spurred Deal to form her own group, The Breeders.
Originally intended as a side project, The Breeders soon grew to become titans of 1990s alternative rock in their own right. Their 1993 sophomore record Last Splash still stands out among the greatest releases of that era, and Deal’s prolific songwriting and performance style endeared millions of fans towards the defiant new group. For the majority of The Breeders’ material, Deal reverted back to her love of rhythm and lead guitar, but her knack for crafting incredible basslines never truly dissipated.
During the 2010s, Deal began to release solo material away from The Breeders. Among that early string of singles, the songwriter crafted some truly innovative and insanely cool basslines. In fact, when Vulture asked Deal to select her coolest bassline last year, the response was immediate: “‘Biker Gone,’ with Britt [Walford] on drums,” she revealed.
Tragically overlooked within her personal discography, ‘Biker Gone’ is a captivating single, and its dissonant bassline is at the heart of its appeal. Explaining how she landed upon such an original sound, Deal shared, “I was using the Ostrich tuning, which tunes the strings to the same note. ‘Venus in Furs’ by Velvet Underground does it. They had a bad guitar, so they tuned everything to low D. Why? Who the fuck knows why anybody would do that if they weren’t high,” she said, adding: “But, I really like that bass line.”
Her solo work, such as last year’s Nobody Loves You More, gives Deal a chance to flex her artistic muscles with unwavering freedom. Namely, working solo allows the songwriter to return to experimenting with the bass. “I’m primarily a rhythm guitar player, and have been playing since I was 13,” she revealed. “But I love playing bass. I also love recording and microphone porn. I have some beautiful mics that I cherish.”
Deal’s adoration of the bass is clear in many of her recordings, including those early triumphs alongside Pixies, but ‘Biker Gone’ seems to summarise her quality and inventiveness better than most. She certainly has no shortage of ‘cool’ sounds in her repertoire, but it is difficult to argue against the 2014 single being one of her finest moments.
