“He’s hands and feet above the other guys”: Gene Simmons names Paul McCartney as his biggest bass influence
When it comes to other bass players, Kiss’s Gene Simmons is vocal about what he likes and what he doesn’t. He recently lumped some thinly veiled criticism on Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, saying he “can’t remember” anything he plays.
Now, he’s taken things to the other side of the spectrum, naming his biggest influence ever as Beatles legend Paul McCartney.
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“The biggest compliment I can give Paul McCartney is that you can pick the vast majority of Beatles songs and you’ll remember what the bass was playing,” he tells Guitar World.
He adds that there’s “not a lot of movement” in McCartney’s bass parts in The Beatles. “The bass locks in with the drums, and that’s the railroad track on top of which the train goes. AC/DC do it probably better than anybody in that style and genre – but Paul McCartney and The Beatles were closer to a string quartet, where the violin and the cello have their own melody.
“While the instruments were doing melodies, the bass was, too. It wasn’t tied to the drums. I got inspiration for songs that were hopefully so memorable that it inferred, ‘Well, maybe the guitars should double up and play those bass parts.’
“With all these beautiful songs, you remember the basslines because McCartney’s not sticking to the root. He’s moving around the fretboard and coming up with his own melodies, which is a lot harder to do because you’ve got to be creative and still stay within the harmonic confines of the song.
Simmons concludes that “McCartney is hands and feet above the other guys”, adding: “He’s a triple threat – he wrote songs that were unmatched, became the most successful songwriter of all time, and he wrote them by himself.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
