The greatest bass moment Klaus Voorman ever played
Throughout rock history, the bass player always seems slightly overlooked compared to everyone else. Despite holding down the groove and locking in with the drummer at every opportunity, everyone will always see the low-end players as those who tried their best to play the guitar but weren’t quite good enough yet. Granted, even many skilled guitarists could probably never come close to what Klaus Voorman did in the intro to this iconic 1970s sing-along.
Before even getting his performance, Voorman might still be one of the most overlooked musicians in all of rock music. Aside from hanging out with The Beatles in their formative years and designing the cover for Revolver, his work on the solo albums of nearly all of the Fab Four helped them stand out from being solely singer-songwriters on each project.
Take his work with John Lennon, for example. Most of Plastic Ono Band was made as a trio with Voorman, Lennon, and Ringo Starr, so that meant he had to make up for a lot of dead space by playing chords on ‘Hold On’ or later flying up and down his fretboard when working on the Imagine track ‘I Don’t Want To Be a Soldier Mama’.
While Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’ was a much more straightforward song than what any Beatle had to offer, Voorman’s opening is so quick that it almost sounds like a sequencer. When looking at him playing it in real time, though, most bass players would have to take years before playing it at lightning speed as he did.
As soon as he hit that iconic break, Simon’s shock at his skills actually wound up on the final recording of the tune, saying, “I don’t know whether he’d just been noodling on his bass, but he started playing this [sings intro] and I said, ‘Son of a gun’ in reaction to his playing. It had nothing to do with the song.”
But from a musician’s perspective, it’s a lot easier to see what he was going for. While that strumming pattern doesn’t make any sense for a bassist, it’s far more common in someone who has played rolls on the banjo in the past. So it’s possible that Voorman may have had experience with banjo; however, playing at that speed on the thick strings of a bass is the work of someone with superhuman hand strength.
Outside of Simon’s off-hand remark about being in awe of his playing, it works perfectly in the confines of the tune, too. The whole track is about telling off someone who thinks that they are God’s gift to Earth and hearing the sound of Voorman’s bass could easily symbolise the kind of pent-up anger that everyone feels after being taken for a fool by someone who could have cared less about their feelings.
So, while many people might try to get this tune under their fingers at random bar gigs, giving it a little bit of time might be worth it if someone is subbing in on bass. Because if no one is prepared for it, the line might have the potential to kill someone’s fingers if they aren’t careful.
