Watch Bootsy Collins demo his iconic funk bass technique
There are bass players, and then there is the mercurial talent of Bootsy Collins. What the American musician has done for the discipline of modern bass playing cannot be understated, with many of the most important techniques that we see ubiquitous with the instrument today credited to his unique style.
Notably, he first broke through as a member of James Brown’s band, before he moonlighted and reached new artistic heights as a member of Parliament-Funkadelic, which saw him emerge from the background and flourish beneath the spotlight.
An innovator of the four-string, musicians from all walks of life, ranging from dance to rock, are acutely aware of his talents, with heroes of the instrument such as Flea and Les Claypool greatly influenced by his colourful oeuvre. It’s a testament to Collins’s work that his list of bass credits includes songs such as James Brown’s ‘Super Bad’ and ‘Get Up’, as well as other moments such ‘Bootzilla’.
Before all else, Collins is hailed as one of the ultimate pioneers of the funk genre. “Funk just brings people together, from the ground up,” He told The Guardian in 2020. “It doesn’t have nothing to do with colour. It has nothing to do with status. It just brings you to ‘the one’, and the one thing that we all have in common is that we all just want to live. That’s what it’s really all about. It’s making something from nothing, like me.”
Then, he discussed what it was like to swap James Brown’s band for his time with George Clinton in the pioneering Parliament-Funkadelic, which he explained “was just total freedom”. The bass player then added: “It was like being finally accepted. We could play whatever we wanted and fully express ourselves in whatever we wanted to wear, too. There were no walls between us and the sky, you could just keep reaching and reaching.”
During this period with Parliament-Funkadelic, Collins entered a new realm and became one of the most game-changing bassists out there. Famously, his formula revolves around playing the note of the first beat of a bar, and then adding funky licks in the space around the one. This idea drove all of his best efforts and inspired countless others to pick up the bass in the process, including Flea and Thundercat.
Luckily for us, Collins once demonstrated his technique from the studio. Showing it to be relatively simple, using an uncomplicated 4/4 backing track, he showed us all that we, too, can be funk masters; we just have to get this technique down. To him, the key is space, and this notion helped to change bass playing forever.
