Welcome to the second in my series of Style Files. A working bassist must have a grasp of different styles in order to accept various gigs and keep that rent paid! Every issue, I’ll present a popular style, addressing a little history, bass sounds and some authentic lines to get you sounding confident and ready for the gig.

A Brief History of Rock Music

Rock as we know it began in America during the mid 50’s from the Boogie-Woogie and Rock & Roll Styles played by artists like Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley. The Sax was originally the lead instrument, but was replaced by the electric guitar in the late 50’s.

By 1959, Buddy Holly had died, Chuck Berry was in jail and Elvis was in the army. Rock & Roll was fading out of popularity in the US, replaced by crooners like Neil Sedaka and the California sound of the Beach boys.

In Britain, Cliff Richard and the Drifters emerged in 1958 with a lead guitarist (Hank Marvin) and an electric bass guitar. The rock band was born and had begun to pave the way for Beatlemania.

During the 60’s and 70’s, the UK was the main source of innovation in Rock, with bands and artists like Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, ELP, Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols helping to create the sub-genres of Glam Rock, Prog Rock, Heavy Metal and Punk.

Essential Rock Bassists:

Classic Rock:

John Alec Entwistle (9 October 1944 – 27 June 2002) was an English bass guitarist, songwriter, singer, and horn player, who was best known as the bass guitarist for the rock band The Who. His aggressive lead sound influenced many rock bass players. He is known as one of the greatest bassists in the history of rock. Entwistle’s lead instrument approach used pentatonic lead lines, and a then-unusual trebly sound created by roundwound RotoSound steel bass strings.

He had a collection of over 200 instruments by the time of his death, reflecting the different brands he used over his career: Fender and Rickenbacker basses in the 1960s, Alembic‘s basses in the 1970s, Warwick in the 1980s, and Status all-graphite basses in the 1990s.

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.John Paul Jones (born John Baldwin on 3 January 1946) is an English musician, composer, arranger, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist musician. Best known as the bassist, keyboardist, and mandolin player for English rock band Led Zeppelin, Jones has since developed a solo career and is widely respected as both a musician and a producer.

A versatile musician, Jones also plays guitar, koto, lap steel guitars, autoharp, ukulele, sitar, cello, continuum and the three over-dubbed recorder parts heard on Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven“.

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Roger Glover (born 30 November 1945 in Brecon) is a Welsh bassist, keyboardist, songwriter, and record producer. Glover is best known as the bassist and songwriter for rock band Deep Purple.

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Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath) Terence Michael Joseph “Geezer” Butler (born 17 July 1949, Aston, Birmingham, England) is the English founding bassist for the heavy metal band Black Sabbath. He is currently involved in Heaven and Hell.

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John Deacon (born 19 August 1950), also known as Deacon John, is a retired British musician, best known as the bass guitarist for the rock band Queen. Of the four members of the band, he was the last to join and also the youngest, being only 19 years old when he joined. Deacon wrote a number of Queen’s hit singles, including “You’re My Best Friend“, “Spread Your Wings“, “Back Chat“, “I Want to Break Free” and the band’s biggest selling single in the United States, “Another One Bites the Dust“, as well as a number of album tracks. He also played rhythm and acoustic guitars on several albums as well as occasional keyboards, synthesizer and programming. He frequently provided backing vocals during live shows.

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Progressive Rock:

.Geedy Lee OC (born Gary Lee Weinrib; July 29, 1953) is a Canadian musician best known as the lead vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the Canadian rock group Rush. Lee joined Rush in September 1968 at the request of his childhood friend Alex Lifeson in order to replace frontman Jeff Jones. An award-winning musician, Lee’s style, technique, and skill on the bass guitar have proven very influential in the rock and heavy metal genres. In addition to his composing, arranging, and performing duties for Rush, Lee has produced albums for various other bands, including Rocket Science. Lee’s first solo effort, My Favourite Headache, was released in 2000.

Along with his Rush bandmates—Lifeson and drummer Neil Peart—Lee was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on May 9, 1996. The trio was the first rock band to be so honored, as a group.

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.Chris Squire (born 4 March 1948), is an English musician best known as the bass guitarist and backing vocalist for the progressive rock group Yes. He is the only member of the group to appear on every album (with the exception of the Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe material.) He is well known for his technical virtuosity and a “Bach/Baroque” sound on melodies.

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.Tony Levin (born June 6, 1946, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American bass guitarist. Levin is best-known^[1] for his work with progressive rock pioneers King Crimson and Peter Gabriel. Has also been a member of Bruford Levin Upper Extremities, Liquid Tension Experiment and leads his own Tony Levin Band. A prolific session musician since the 1970s, Levin has played on five hundred albums, including those of Cher, Alice Cooper, John Lennon, Sarah McLachlan, Stevie Nicks, Pink Floyd, Lou Reed, Buddy Rich, The Roches, Todd Rundgren, Seal, and Yes.

Additionally, he has toured with artists including Paul Simon (with whom Tony appeared in Simon’s 1980 film One Trick Pony), Gary Burton, James Taylor, Herbie Mann, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, Peter Frampton, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, Tim Finn, Richie Sambora, and Claudio Baglioni.

Levin helped to popularize the Chapman Stick and the NS upright bass. He has also created “funk fingers“, a device for mimicking the sound of hitting the strings with drumsticks (which sounds similar to slap style bass). Levin is also one of the first^[2] bloggers, as he began sharing his tour experiences in a diary way as early as in 1996, one year before the terms “weblog” and “blog” were coined.

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.John Wetton (born 12 June 1949) is an English bassist, guitarist, keyboardist, singer and songwriter. He was born in Willington, Derbyshire and grew up in Bournemouth, Dorset. He has been a professional musician since the late 1960s. His initially rose to fame in progressive rock with bands such as Mogul Thrash, Family, King Crimson, Roxy Music/[[Bryan Ferry], Uriah Heep, UK, and Wishbone Ash. His biggest commercial success came was the frontman and principal songwriter of poprock band ASIA. Their self-titled debut album sold 8 million copies worldwide and was Billboard magazine‘s #1 album of 1982. Multi-talented, Wetton is best known for his rich baritone vocals.

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.John Myung (pronounced /ˈmaɪ.əŋ/) (born on January 24, 1967 in Chicago, Illinois) is a bassist and a founding member of the progressive metal group Dream Theater.

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Rock:

Duff Mc Kagan (born February 5, 1964), is an American musician who is best known for his thirteen-year tenure in the hard rock band Guns N’ Roses. He is currently the bassist for the hard rock band Velvet Revolver, lead vocalist and guitarist for his own solo punk rock project Duff McKagan’s Loaded, and a weekly columnist for SeattleWeekly.com^[1]. He also writes a weekly financial column for Playboy.com called Duffonomics.

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Tom Hamilton (born December 31, 1951, in Colorado Springs, Colorado) is an American musician, best known as the bassist of the band Aerosmith. He co-wrote two of Aerosmith’s hits, “Sweet Emotion” and “Janie’s Got a Gun“. Hamilton occasionally plays guitar and sings backing vocals.

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Billy Sheehan has changed the way bass guitar is played. Rising to cult status in the 80′s with his Buffalo, NY based band Talas, Billy was recruited by David Lee Roth when Roth left Van Halen in ’85. He recorded two platinum selling albums with the former Van Halen front man before setting out on his own. Forming Mr. Big in 1989, the band achieved a Billboard #1 single in the US and 14 other countries with “To Be With You” from their 2nd Atlantic Records album release “Lean Into It”. While developing his trademark style of playing he has performed over 4000 live gigs on every continent except Africa and Antarctica.

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Michael Anthony (born June 20, 1954), known professionally as Michael Anthony, is an American musician who is currently the bass player in the rock supergroup Chickenfoot. Previously, Anthony played bass in the hard rock band Van Halen, of which he was a founding member.

Anthony is known for his stage antics, his effects-laden live solos, and his number of custom-made bass guitars including a Jack Daniel’s model shaped like a whiskey bottle. He also has a signature Yamaha bass guitar series. In total, Anthony is known to have in excess of 150 bass guitars.

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Cliff Williams (born 14 December 1949) is an English bassist, best known for his membership in the Australian hard rock band AC/DC since June 1977, and was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2003 along with the other members of AC/DC.^[1] He moved with his family to Liverpool when he was nine, where he spent the first two working years of his life as an engineer before joining his first band, Home. Like his bandmate Brian Johnson, he now lives in southwest Florida.

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Steve Harris (born 12 March 1956) is an English musician, best known as the bassist, band leader and primary songwriter of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden. In addition, he plays keyboards, and sings backing vocals. He founded the band as a teenager in 1975. He and Dave Murray are the only members of the band to have appeared on all of the band’s albums, and as Murray left the band for a few months prior to the first album to join Urchin, Harris is the only member to have remained in the band throughout its duration.

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Metal:

Cliff Burton (February 10, 1962 – September 27, 1986) was an American bassist best known as the bass player of American thrash metal band Metallica. As a bassist he made heavy use of distortion and effects (several of which are usually associated with non-bass guitars), best exemplified on his signature piece, “(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth“.

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.Jason Newsted (born March 4, 1963 in Battle Creek, Michigan) is an American bassist best known as the former bassist of Metallica. To this day, with more than fourteen years, he has the longest tenure as Metallica’s bassist. After he left Metallica, he continued with his project Echobrain, played with Ozzy Osbourne and joined heavy metal band Voivod. Newsted uses the pseudonym Jasonic, which serves as both his alias in Voivod and the name of his music publishing company. He is also the founder of the Chophouse Records studio and label based in California.

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Robert Trujillo (Spanish pronunciation: [roˈβerto tɾuˈxiʎo]) (born Roberto Agustín Miguel Santiago Samuel Trujillo Veracruz on October 23, 1964^[1]) is a Mexican-American bassist who is currently in Metallica, but has also played with Suicidal Tendencies, Infectious Grooves, Black Label Society, Jerry Cantrell, and Ozzy Osbourne‘s band.

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Rex Brown (born July 27, 1964 in Graham, Texas) is an American heavy metal bassist. Currently a member of Down, he is most famous as the longtime bassist for the Grammy-nominated, platinum-selling band Pantera.

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Dave Ellefson (born November 12, 1964 in Jackson, Minnesota) is a bass guitar player who is best known as one of the founding members of American thrash metal band Megadeth in which he played from 1983-2002. He currently resides in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is currently a member of Temple of Brutality, F5 and Killing Machine.

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Fieldy  (born November 2, 1969 in Bakersfield, California) is the bass guitar player for the band Korn.

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Steve Digiorgio (Death)

Steve DiGiorgio (born November 7, 1967, Waukegan, Illinois) is an American bassist and musician.

DiGiorgio has played bass guitar in heavy metal bands such as Death, Autopsy, Control Denied, Testament, Vintersorg, Iced Earth, Sebastian Bach and is a founding member of Sadus. He is widely renowned for his technical skills, and he is one of the very few bass players in the metal scene who plays a fretless bass. He is also a founding member of the jazz-band Dark Hall and was also the bass player for the Futures End band. Along with his bass duties in Sadus he also plays keyboards.

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Sean Malone (Cynic)

Sean Malone is an American musician who plays fretless bass guitar and Chapman Stick. Malone also plays piano, keyboards, and guitar. He was born in Delran, New Jersey and currently plays for Gordian Knot and Cynic.

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Strange but em…true?:

• Rock has more mythology surrounding it than any other modern music style. Apparently….
• Paul Mc Cartney died in 1966,
• Elvis is alive and well,
• Keith Richards had his entire blood supply replaced
• Gene Simmons had a tongue transplant from a cow.
• And let’s not even mention Ozzy biting a bat’s head off…

Getting Sounds

Rock and metal guitarists tend to turn up the bass and treble and scoop out their mids, so it can be a good idea to put in low mids rather than bass – this means our sound stays big, but cuts through the mix better. If you like to hear the sound of your strings clanging, stick on a bit of treble. New roundwound strings can help bring out that sizzle and if you have two pickups, go dead centre and crank em up full!

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But real rock =.

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Using a pick or fingers are both good options, but I’d avoid plucking near the neck – get your hand more in the centre or toward the bridge to get more definition and help your lines cut through. Lots of rock bassists also use a bit of overdrive or distortion to add extra dirt and bite to their lines.

Depending on your brand of rock, lots of different basses look and sound appropriate. Prog guys love 6 strings, punks love P-Basses and most rockers love a good Fender or Gibson. Remember – If you want to make the scene, look the part!

Rock Bass lesson 2