Out of the three Beatles guitarists, John Lennon was by far the most reluctant to try his hand at the bass version of the instrument. While he could certainly hold his own with six strings, he wasn’t as technically proficient or agile on the guitar as George Harrison or Paul McCartney, meaning that switching to four strings and a different technique altogether didn’t come to him as easily.
When McCartney took over as the band’s bassist in 1961, he quickly mastered the art of creating counter-rhythms and harmonies on the instrument, which complemented song melodies and guitar parts. It was his profound understanding of song structures, developed through the repertoire of English music hall favourites he was asked to play on the piano at family gatherings as a child, which allowed him to fill in the harmonic and rhythmic gap left by the instruments and vocals at the higher end of a composition.
Lennon, on the other hand, was an instinctive melodist who worked out the structure of a song, using a few premeditated formulas to fall back on. This approach allowed him to come up with some highly unusual and complex melodies involving seldom-heard key shifts and harmonic patterns, most notably on the 1967 songs ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and ‘I Am the Walrus’. But it also meant he was bound to struggle with working out a bassline to underscore a song written by one of his bandmates.
His shortcomings as a makeshift bassist are horribly exposed on the final version of ‘The Long and Winding Road’ which ended up being released as a single, as well as on the album Let It Be in 1970. He took on the track’s bass part while McCartney sang and played the piano, and Harrison stuck to his customary role as lead guitarist. Lennon makes a complete mess of his bassline, often playing out of key and sustaining notes in unexpected places while cutting others short out of time. In fairness to him, he offered up a far superior performance in another take of the song, which Let It Be producer Phil Spector inexplicably ignored for the album’s final mix.
Yet his woeful contribution to the version of the track that Spector did use demonstrates why he so rarely picked up a bass guitar during his time with The Beatles. Harrison was the band’s preferred backup when McCartney was occupied with other instruments, and Lennon contributed far more effectively as a guitarist. When, on occasion, he played the lead guitar part in a song, he invariably executed it with aplomb.
So, how many bass parts did he play?
Given his discomfort with the instrument, Lennon didn’t play a single bass part on a Beatles song until 1968. Then came ‘Helter Skelter’, a madcap jam conceived by McCartney in a conscious attempt to invent heavy metal. The song’s composer took on lead guitar duties alongside Harrison, leaving Lennon to play the bottom part on the six-string Fender Bass VI he used for all of his Beatles basslines.
He played the instrument on two other songs included on the band’s so-called White Album, both of which were also penned by McCartney. There was the cod-country ditty ‘Rocky Raccoon’ before Lennon switched to bass on ‘Back in the USSR’ with McCartney drumming in place of Ringo Starr, who’d briefly quit the group.
Aside from ‘The Long and Winding Road’, his only additional appearance as a bassist in the band’s back catalogue is on the improvised fragment of a song listed on Let It Be as ‘Dig It’. And so, Lennon played just five basslines in total for The Beatles across two of the three albums they recorded between 1968 and 1969.
Every Beatles song with John Lennon playing bass:
Given his discomfort with the instrument, Lennon didn’t play a single bass part on a Beatles song until 1968. Then came ‘Helter Skelter’, a madcap jam conceived by McCartney in a conscious attempt to invent heavy metal. The song’s composer took on lead guitar duties alongside Harrison, leaving Lennon to play the bottom part on the six-string Fender Bass VI he used for all of his Beatles basslines.
He played the instrument on two other songs included on the band’s so-called White Album, both of which were also penned by McCartney. There was the cod-country ditty ‘Rocky Raccoon’ before Lennon switched to bass on ‘Back in the USSR’ with McCartney drumming in place of Ringo Starr, who’d briefly quit the group.
Aside from ‘The Long and Winding Road’, his only additional appearance as a bassist in the band’s back catalogue is on the improvised fragment of a song listed on Let It Be as ‘Dig It’. And so, Lennon played just five basslines in total for The Beatles across two of the three albums they recorded between 1968 and 1969.
Every Beatles song with John Lennon playing bass:
‘Back in the USSR’
‘Dig It’
‘Helter Skelter’
‘The Long and Winding Road’
‘Rocky Raccoon’ (with George Harrison)
