After the massive drama that went into the final years of The Beatles, it would be understandable if none of them wanted to play music together ever again. They had already been drifting apart creatively, but having Paul McCartney go to war against his bandmates had to have rubbed salt in the wound whenever they tried to soothe things in the 1970s. While Ringo Starr didn’t really deserve to have his friends at each other’s throats, he never lost respect for the genius McCartney could deliver on bass.
Because when you think about it, the bass player and the drummer, more often than not, need to be soulmates in a band. Regardless of how much flash each of them wants to put into a song, it’s all about trying to keep everything steady whenever they try to hunker down a groove on a track.
No matter what the guitar does on any song, chances are things will fall apart if the rhythm section is not in sync. While it might not have been easy for Starr to settle in when being hired on a whim after firing Pete Best, McCartney proved to be the perfect foil for him whenever he entered the studio.
Despite everyone and their mother making jabs at Starr for not being able to write songs like the rest of them, half of the reason he works so well in the band is how he developed as a musician. Throughout every facet of his career, Starr could keep up with his mates by providing a nice pulse or the kind of rough-and-tumble groove that left most in shambles like on ‘Helter Skelter’.
Starr could hold everything down, but McCartney wasn’t completely satisfied playing root notes. He wanted to express himself however he could, and some of his greatest basslines came from going outside the conventional low-end structure. Compared to the other standard bass players of the time, how often would people hear a bass hook like ‘Dear Prudence’ or how Macca coloured the chords on George Harrison’s ‘Something’?
While McCartney would fall out with all of his mates after being hung up in court with manager Allen Klein, he ended up indirectly targeting Starr in the years since. Once Starr had to tell McCartney they were going to court with him, the bassist was so frustrated that he kicked Starr out of his house.
Then again, not many people would take kindly to having their best mate come over just to punch them in the gut. It took a few years for that dust to settle, but even with those years apart, Starr thought no other bassist played better than McCartney, telling Rolling Stone, “If he’s in L.A., and I’m making a record, he’s on a track. He’s still, for me, the finest, most melodic bass player in the world, and I love what he does. But, you see, this is when you realize I’ve said that for forty years”.
It’s difficult for anyone to find their voice on their respective instruments, but McCartney managed to take his four-string, which was meant to anchor the band, all the way up to the front of the bandstand over the course of his career. People may pay attention to his voice more often, but next time you’re listening to classics like Abbey Road, there are some interesting things lying underneath the surface if you decide to listen to the low end.
