The solo that changed bass playing, according to Lemmy: “And that was in 1964!”
The bass is an incredibly underrated instrument. A lot of the time, when you look at the job of an instrumentalist, their role is simple. The lead guitarist needs to shred and make enticing riffs. Lead singers need to sing, scream or produce something borderline chaotic. Drummers need to keep rhythm and ensure everyone stays on time. When you look at the range of bass players from rock bands like The Who to Led Zeppelin to Motörhead, it’s clear that the function of a bass player can vary, and that function remains pivotal to the final sound of a band.
Consider Led Zeppelin for a moment. A lot of people believed that John Paul Jones was the only member who didn’t sell his soul to the devil because his sound flew so subtly under the radar; however, he was one of the most important members of the band. Amid the madness that was Led Zeppelin’s sound, you had Jones, who was responsible for holding everything together.
“The thing that held the whole thing down was John Paul Jones’ bass playing,” Geddy Lee once said (another great bass player) when talking about the secret to Led Zeppelin’s success, “So if you listen to ‘How Many More Times’, I mean, no matter how wild that song gets at times, there’s John Paul Jones just holding it all down in such a fluid way.”
However, when you look at bands like Motörhead, the bass player’s job shifts; it’s no longer their role to hold sounds together; instead, they become the driving force behind the band. Lemmy Kilmister was responsible for creating an over-the-top, distortion-heavy sound that could tear amps apart and keep the stiffest of audiences headbanging.
He wasn’t the most technically efficient bass player in the world, but he developed an open-string style that created the iconic heavy metal sound that Motörhead championed for decades. “It was based on guitar,” he said when discussing his bass playing style, “I found out about drone strings, where you let the A or the D string ring and play the melody on the G. It falls in very well behind the guitar. I used a lot of chords, too.”
Of course, even icons like Lemmy have icons. While the Motörhead lead was responsible for creating an exciting sound, he always wanted to be like The Who bassist John Entwistle, admitting that the reason he created such an innovative style was because if he didn’t do something unique, he would have wound up just copying Entwistle.
“I think I’m original, at least,” he said, “I think I play like nobody else does. I always wanted to be John Entwistle, but since that place was taken, I became a lesser version.” There is one bass solo in particular that Lemmy references when talking about how much of an influence Entwistle had.
“He was the best for me, no contest. He was so in command of his instrument,” said Lemmy, “You never saw him flicker. Never a bum note that I ever heard. And he was so fast, both hands going like hell. The bass solo in ‘My Generation’, you still tie yourself in knots trying to do it now. You can work it out, but it was another thing thinking it up. And that was back in 1964!”
