Going further down the rabbit hole of bass-intro gems in rock history.
Last month, I lamented over guitarists having a seemingly endless supply of recognizable, classic intros to choose from. With the simple beginning of a song, they can make an entire house party crack a grin of recognition within the first three seconds of picking up an acoustic. Truly memorable bass intros are in shorter supply, but they’re definitely out there, so I shared some of my favorite classic bass intros in my previous column. To keep the theme of song-starting goodness from the world of rock bass going, the following are a few more riffs that sit atop my list of favorites.
“No More Tears” – Ozzy Osbourne
This is an open-D-string riff that starts with a hammer-on from the whole step below the upper octave, and then goes back to the open string. That’s it! Mike Inez is credited with “bass inspiration,” since he wrote the bass line and is a writer on the song, but the riff is played by Bob Daisley on the album.
You can hear the heavy compression on the bass track, which helps the simple, picked riff feel urgent and aggressive without the use of distortion. Making this riff feel good and heavy on its own, in spite of not being in the lower register of the instrument, is a lot of fun.
“Peace Sells” – Megadeth
Those of you who also grew up on MTV will likely recognize this bass line. During the channel’s heyday, this hooky riff was played often with the network’s logo to go in and out of commercial breaks. The line is up-tempo and busy, and has a few interesting and noteworthy features.
First of all, it’s only two measures long, so it flies by at its tempo. Secondly, it makes for a solid string-skipping exercise for pick players and fingerstyle players alike. On a technical level, it’s playable with different fingerings. I’ve found that using the 10th fret of the 4th string for the second note and then keeping the entire riff in that higher position on the neck makes the riff more fluid, which is notthe way Megadeth bassist Dave Ellefson executes it. Ellefson, however, plays the riff with precision and incredible evenness. Because the tone has lots of musical information in the upper frequencies, the riff sounds punchy and clear, even through tiny cellphone or laptop speakers.
Along with his attack, Ellefson’s use of a pick and active pickups enables this riff to really cut through. I also like that the tone is clean. A common trap for heavier bands is to heavily distort the bass when played solo to make it sound “tougher,” and then dial the distortion out once the guitars kick in for more clarity in the mix.
“Badge” – Cream
While exceptionally simple from a technical standpoint, Jack Bruce’s riff in “Badge” has a sexy flair, and the trick to keeping it that way is to not rush the eighth-notes at the beginning of measure two. These four staccato notes are quite the stylistic break in a blues scenario, where a fluid, legato feel is more common. The beginning of the riff is simply an Em triad (E–G–B)—the very foundation of a lot of rock music.
Bruce’s intent and execution of this triad, and the use of a distorted tone that sounds like it comes from a miked amp, is what makes the line interesting. However, this simple, classic riff gets the bulk of its attitude from the two slides. Yet another standout is that there is no drumbeat, shaker, or hi-hat to establish time. It’s simply muted rhythm chords on guitar to support the bass riff, which is stunningly effective.
“Would” – Alice In Chains
To my ears, this bass line sounds exactly like a snake slithering in the grass. To get more technical, the line manages to effectively sound “mean” withoutbeing in your face. That’s truly a great musical statement for a bassist or drummer to be able to make. The magic of the starting whole-step hammer-on from the Ebto F gives the line its greasy feel, initially.
The second measure of the riff starts with a b3—Gb in this case—which is the same note measure one ends on. This makes the measure line feel very fluid, which helps add to the riff’s mystique. And the drums accentuate this fluidity by playing a tom pattern rather than a traditional backbeat.
Some of these lines are very simple to the ear, but as bassists our job in many modern genres of music is to analyze the seemingly simple and make it brilliant. And make a riff that “anyone can play” sound like a professional bassist executed it. Happy riffing!
Bassists don’t often handle song intros, but there have been some very memorable ones in rock history.
Rock guitar players have it good. They can walk into any party and turn heads by playing the first few notes of a song—from what seems to be a million-song catalog with recognizable guitar intros. Just the first two or three seconds of an opening riff can transport a listener into a world of memories, while at the same time give the player instant gratification for being the instigator of boundless joy.
When it comes to bass, there is a wealth of great, iconic intros in the R&B realm. In the rock world, however, we stand in the shadow of our guitar-playing brethren for intro glory.
It seems to me that many of the best-known bass intros in rock history start off songs that are not necessarily the loudest, most high-energy numbers, but rather more mysterious or laid-back affairs.
The following list includes what I think are some of the great bass intros in rock history. And most can be easily played by a beginner or intermediate player, which makes them even better! There are some obvious ones like “Another One Bites the Dust” or “Livin’ on a Prayer” that were excluded, only because I feel they’ve already received their time in the sun.
“Dancing in the Moonlight” – Thin Lizzy
The poetry and effortless sexy cool of lead singer/songwriter/bass legend Phil Lynott goes way beyond the singing and classic rock-star swagger of his powerful stage performances. Lynott’s bass playing is filled with authority and creative ways to approach tried-and-true rock ’n’ roll concepts. The bass intro for “Dancing in the Moonlight” is a simple, mostly pentatonic hook in the key of G that takes us from Em to C to G.
“New Year’s Day” – U2
From the band known for some of the most iconic, arena-filling, delay-soaked guitar intros in rock history comes a song with a very somber bass intro. The chord outline of the riff is Abm, B, and Ebm. And Adam Clayton is simply outlining the chords by playing the first four eighth notes of each measure using the following pattern on all the chords: root, root, 3, root.
As we all sit in our studios and bedrooms trying to come up with the next great opening bass line worthy of an arena, it’s a humbling lesson to hear how haunting and blindingly effective the harmonic and rhythmic simplicity of this line is. The dull sound of the not-so-bright strings played with a pick—through what sounds like a miked Ampeg—is full of soul.
“Naughty Naughty” – Danger Danger
Unless you were a fan of commercial, melodic hard rock in the late ’80s, this 1989 gem from Danger Danger may have slipped past you. The opening track on the band’s debut album starts with a great bass hook that’s not even accompanied by drums—just a clean-sounding Spector played with a pick and without much processing.
The band’s leader, principal songwriter and bassist, Bruno Ravel, separated Danger Danger’s musicality from a lot of their contemporaries with this great opening statement. The riff is basically a Gm idea that moves through Bb to land on C, where Bruno uses a major third to almost give the line a mischievous, playful feel. As the song goes on, the bass line is doubled by rhythm guitar in order to reinforce the commercial appeal of the riff. This slinky and fun bass riff is one I often break out at soundchecks to test my gear, and it usually turns a head or makes someone crack a grin.
“Keep the Faith” – Bon Jovi
This song always lives in the shadow of “Livin’ on a Prayer,” one of the best-known bass-intro riffs in rock history from the same band, but this riff absolutely deserves to be heard and learned on its own merits. Like many of bassist Hugh McDonald’s lines, it is rooted in a bouncy, Motown-style of playing.
The line is in Gm and has a similar movement to “Naughty Naughty” by moving to Bb and C while repeating the top notes of the pattern between every chord change. This riff makes for a great dexterity and string-skipping exercise as well.
Stay tuned for more iconic bass intro riffs next month, and please be sure to comment with your own favorites!
Do yourself a favor and reconnect with the reason you started playing bass in the first place.
With so many genres, variations, uses, and definitions contained in just five letters, the word “music” is one of the most all-encompassing in the English language While wandering the halls of the NAMM show this year, the entire spectrum of the word was on display. Even though the convention is mostly about commerce, the thing that really hit me is that people who play music seem to get fulfillment, satisfaction, and excitement from doing things very differently from each other.
This diversity of expression is especially on display while walking through the bass section of NAMM. Bass gets heard in convention halls in ways you would rarely experience the instrument out in the wild, so to speak. But despite the convention having strict decibel limits and hundreds of musicians making noise in your immediate vicinity, you can experience how differently we bassists truly are in just a few minutes.
I believe everybody who plays bass does so for slightly different reasons. Everyone has his or her own why. I also believe those same reasons are sometimes very obvious in somebody’s playing, similar to the way influences can be obvious in playing. I’m currently taking my first year off from being a full-time touring bassist in 22 years, so I’ve been giving plenty of thought to my own “why” lately. Why do I want to go back to playing, and are the reasons the same ones I had when I was a kid?
What was your bass why? When everyone else in the band was fighting over who got to be the lead singer or lead guitarist, you had something that made you chose bass instead. I’m well aware that some people started playing bass because the band had too many guitar players, or because they received a hand-me-down bass from an uncle, and it was the cheapest way to go. But many of us were drawn to the bass for some other reason. Was it the mystique of the low notes you can feel and sometimes not hear? Was it the fact that the bass looks mightier than its 6-string little brother? Whatever the reason was for you, it’s good to reconnect with it as often as possible.
Many bassists I know fell in love with the bass as a solo voice. When they are not playing in some kind of ensemble, they take any chance they get to make bass-solo arrangements. On the other end of the spectrum, I have friends who are accomplished multi-instrumentalists and producers who perform their own bass tracks unless the music is too technically involved. Their why may be strictly for the sake of convenience—to avoid having to call a bassist or because they want to be able to record an idea the very moment they have it.
My own initial love affair with the instrument was largely due to the synth-pop wave of the mid ’80s. As a preteen, I was listening to artists like Depeche Mode, Howard Jones, and Alphaville. The simple but very singable synth-bass lines had my ear, and I formed a trio with two friends in which we all played cheap Casio keyboards. We took turns playing the synth-bass lines in that little trio, but when the decision was made to buy “real” instruments after a year of only playing keyboards, I chose the bass. I wanted to continue playing those simple yet amazing sub hooks. That’s how I picked the bass at the age of 12. There is, however, one more integral part of my why for playing bass.
I grew up with a father who was a home-stereo fanatic (aka audiophile). I was practically trained how to sit in front of a stereo and actively listen to the music, rather than just having music on as a distraction in the background. Closing my eyes and disappearing into the music was a high for me like no other, and I think it kept me out of a lot of trouble. My whyis that high I only get from being in the middle of the music. I started playing bass so I could be right in the middle of the speakers, figuratively speaking, but on a more intense level than being a music fan in the middle of the stereo sound field wearing a great set of headphones. Some people’s why is from a creative spark. My why was to create the ultimate fan experience.
The way I see it, we bassists get the opportunity to truly feel that middle in a fantastic way when playing live in a band. We get to be part of the rhythmical aspect of music with the drummer, and simultaneously connect to the melodic aspect of the music with the other instruments.
Whether a person is playing polkas on a trumpet or programming keyboard parts through drawing notes in their DAW instead of actually playing them, they both have reasons for doing exactly what they are doing. And at the end of the day, all that truly matters is whatever musical expression puts a smile on your face.