Hanging by a string
With several rising bands forgoing the bass, the instrument's rock profile is hitting a low
By Nick Marino, Globe Correspondent, 7/6/2003
After decades of thumping away on the upright, jazz and blues players laid their tender fingers on the first electric bass guitar, the Fender Precision, in the early 1950s.
Since then, rock bands have discovered any number of uses for the instrument. The electric bass can pop or hum. It can be slapped or plucked. It can anchor the low end with steady timekeeping or step out front for a solo. It can conjure a feeling of menace or provide sensual warmth.
Or, as several of today's hottest bands have discovered, the bass can play nothing at all.
From the White Stripes to the Black Keys, a much-hyped cadre of bassless bands has emerged at the vanguard of rock. White Stripes drummer Meg White has said that her two-piece band is ''not against the bass,'' a sentiment the other artists hasten to echo.
Still, one way or another, the leading bassless bands have figured out a way to get low-end sound without one of rock's core instruments. These bands may not be against the bass, but they say they don't really need one, either.
In the past, the bass has played a role in most rock bands of any consequence. Music history has given us legendary bassists from Paul McCartney and Sting to Geddy Lee, from Bootsy Collins to Chris Squire.
But guitarmen like John Lee Hooker and Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain have always had a far easier time becoming musical royalty.
Even the massively influential Who bassist John Entwistle wasn't irreplaceable. When he died last year on the eve of his band's national tour, the Who simply carried on with a session man. Moreover, the bass itself has seldom been as romanticized as rock's signature instrument, the six-string guitar.
''Jean designers and lead guitarists rule the world,'' says Matthew Johnson, head of the Mississippi blues label Fat Possum Records. ''We all know that.''
With a few notable exceptions, rock bassists tend to stand dutifully in the shadows; that's the nature of their instrument and, stereotypically, the nature of their personalities.
''It does take a special kind of person to be that person in the band who is willing to play their part and provide support and make everyone sound better, which is kind of the bass player's role,'' says Bill Leigh, the editor of Bass Player magazine. Lately, though, that special person has moved from the shadows to a position entirely off the stage.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Black Keys, and Kills have already established themselves as viable bassless bands, and such bassless acts as the Modey Lemon and Boston's Mr. Airplane Man are poised to break through with their next records.
The White Stripes, who will perform July 19 in Providence and July 20 in Boston, appear to be in a league of their own. Their faces have graced the covers of Spin, Blender, and CMJ. Their 2003 album, ''Elephant,'' has gone gold. And their successful stripped-down configuration has not only paved the way for the rest of the bassless bands, it's raised a question: Can it be that the electric bass, so long underappreciated, is now being phased out of rock?
Thanks in part to the influence of such bass-driven bands as Primus and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, since the 1990s a parade of nu-metal bands has ridden hard-hitting rhythms to the top of the charts. Prominent basslines (coupled with thunderous drums and, often, a DJ) gave bands such as Korn and Limp Bizkit a skull-rattling sonic punch. Now, however, the cultural pendulum has swung toward streamlined garage rock and punk-blues, where less is more and pronounced bass is harder to find.
Stripped-down band configurations have obvious aesthetic appeal for any raw garage band or primal blues act. A bassless sound is a wild sound. If the bass is a connective instrument, then a bassless band is quite literally unhinged.
Eliminating the bass creates a liberating space in the music. Guitars have a panoramic sweep with fewer instruments in the picture. Drums swing freely.
Playing bassless also has a practical appeal. Simply put, fewer people in the band means fewer personalities to clash with and less gear to haul. And in a tight economy, musicians would rather split their paychecks among two or three members than four or five.
Of course, as Leigh says, ''these bands that don't have bass players, they do have to make some accommodation'' to make their music sound complete. Without any low end, a band runs the risk of shrillness.
Mindful of this, Mr. Airplane Man's Tara McManus gets her bass and texture from vintage Radio King drums.
''They're just really big,'' she said. ''They just have tons of tones, lots of overtones. They're really boomy and ringy. They're just beautiful. I love those drums. I purposely don't put much muting on there at all.''
Modey Lemon singer/guitarist Phil Boyd compensates for his band's lack of bass by using an octave pedal, which adds a lower register to his fuzzed-out guitar tone. ''We like low end,'' Boyd said. ''But we've just been able to pull off the stuff we like to do in other ways.''
Basslessness does have historical precedents, from the B-52's song ''Rock Lobster'' to Prince's ''When Doves Cry'' to the electric blues music from the Fat Possum label that influenced many of today's hot bass-free bands. Based in Oxford, Miss., Fat Possum Records has made a name for itself by releasing the music of such elderly guitarists as R.L. Burnside and T-Model Ford, who hail from the Mississippi hill country and embody that region's rough blues sound.
''We started to go see Fat Possum blues bands live,'' says Modey Lemon's Boyd, ''and those shows would just consist of T-Model Ford or someone like that, and a drummer backing him up. It wasn't the fullest sound, but it was like, hey, we could probably pull something like that off, too.''
To many of the grizzled bluesmen that Fat Possum founder Johnson admired, the bass was an instrument for musicians who weren't good enough to play the guitar. And anyway, guitarists like Ford didn't need a bassist in the band. Their hypnotic playing covered both the basslines and the melodies.
''Those hill country guys did it all,'' Johnson says. Johnson's favorite artists may have kept erratic timing, but in a bassless band, erratic timing is beside the point. Rather, the focus is on such intangibles as energy and soul, two things Fat Possum artists have always emphasized over technical proficiency.
Singer and guitarist Jon Spencer latched onto those same ideals in the 1980s thanks to two entirely different kinds of music -- no wave and hip-hop -- which were coming out of New York City.
''They were both broken down in a way, and angular, and using bits and pieces. It wasn't like if you were in a band it had to include this instrument and that instrument,'' Spencer says. ''It was all about taking things apart and putting them back together.''
Among no wave, hip-hop, and the Detroit garage rock of the Gories, Spencer had enough inspiration to form two of the most prominent bassless bands of the last 15 years, the now-defunct Pussy Galore and the still-running Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a major influence on both the Modey Lemon and Mr. Airplane Man. Spencer says the Blues Explosion's bassless configuration happened organically, but Pussy Galore was built with basslessness in mind from the beginning.
''The coolest thing was the electric guitar,'' Spencer says. ''Who would want to play the bass? If you had a choice between playing the bass and the electric guitar, you would always choose the electric guitar.''
Bass Player editor Leigh has heard that sort of thing before. Nevertheless, he cautions against equating the rise of the bassless band with the death of the bass guitarist. ''My overarching feeling is that it's a trend,'' he says. ''Different trends are always going to come and go in music. I don't think there's any reason for bass players to be threatened by this. I hear just as much music with lots of bass.''
Among frontman and bass titan Les Claypool agrees.
Between Primus and his other bands Oysterhead and the Frog Brigade, Claypool has led some of the most bass-forward lineups in the last decade of popular music, something he doesn't see changing because of a few trendy two- and three-piece acts that don't use the bass.
''I'm not real worried about my job,'' Claypool says.
Indeed, it seems that if the new bassless bands have killed anything, it's the notion that rock bands have to play in traditional configurations.
''Don't think of the bass as an obsolete instrument, because there's plenty you can do with the bass,'' says Boyd. ''But maybe don't think of bass, or music itself, as something that's predicated on some convention -- because it never has been.''
