by Of all the bass lines on all the Beatles records, there’s one that’s VERY contentious.
Some die-hard Beatles fans really don’t like it.
In fact, some people absolutely HATE it!
At the time, some critics thought it was SO bad, they called it musical sabotage.
And the funny thing is – it wasn’t even Paul McCartney playing bass on this particular song.
It was John Lennon.
So today, I want to kick off an entire Beatles SEASON by looking at the most contentious Beatles bass line and figuring out:
- Why this bass line gets so much hate
- Whether it deserves the hate it gets
- What we can do to ‘fix’ the bass line
And of course, we’ll try to figure out if John was actually trying to sabotage the Beatles with his bass playing.
Check out the lesson here:
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FREE - Download the tabs and track for this song
Get Lennon's original bass line in tabs and notation, the 'improved' version of the line, plus the bass-less practice track.
After you’ve checked it out, tell me what you think in the comments.
Was John out of line to play the way he did on that song?
Do you think he deliberately undermined the Beatles with his bass playing?
Or do you think people just blew it way out of proportion?
I’ll be in the comments of the video, reading and responding, so I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Good luck with the lesson and happy playing!
Cheers,
To be honest Luke, we’ll never know what possessed him to play the wrong notes. Maybe that’s the mad genius of John Lennon.
Not being a musician, I don’t have the musical theory to figure out what it was,
but now that you demonstrate it, i understand the discomfort I always had when listening to it.
The only “mistakes” that I liked were the slides, which gave a distinctive style to this song, as it is never played like this anywhere, because McCartney would have never done it like that.
Hi Luke,
I really liked your video and I also do not think John sabotaged the bass line. We all know he was an amazing musician, composer, and singer but playing the bass wasn’t his strength.
I think your changes would have been more like how Paul
would have played the bass line on his own song.
Your changes make Lennon’s bass line sound better.
Thanks Steven, and I think you’re right. If you listen to the way Paul plays this song live these days, his bass players largely avoid the issues I mention in the video. Here’s a live version from a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFNaOm6U5n8