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00:00What is a bass line?
00:07What is a bass line?
00:09No, a bass line to me is something that has groove
00:12and that carries the song that makes you want to dance.
00:17A bass line is one note that leads to another note
00:21that creates perfect painting.
00:24I'm in the right place at the right time.
00:27The bass is the flavor, it's the juice, it's the seasoning, right?
00:33It's a melody down low.
00:35It's the roots from which the part of the song grows.
00:41If you were from space and you wanted to know what a bass line was...
00:45It's the hands on the wheel of the car.
00:48Sexy, rude, low notes.
00:52Bass is a physical thing.
00:54It kind of hits you in the gut.
00:57My puns are shaking, my nose is tickling.
01:01I say yes.
01:02I like that.
01:04Fog horns.
01:05This big...
01:07Booms and it carries for miles.
01:09Well, if I didn't bass, I don't know what is.
01:11It's all about the groove, baby.
01:13I'm Peter Hook, the bass player from Joy Division and New Order.
01:19Peter Hook was a seminal influence.
01:23Peter Hook, the master of melodies with a pig.
01:29Talking about Peter Hook, what he does with Joy Division, it's like nothing else.
01:37All I've ever wanted to do is just keep playing the music I made back in the 80s and 90s with three other lads from Manchester.
01:45Basically, just doing my day job.
01:48Do you like being a rock star?
01:49I am a fucking rock star.
01:51What are you on about?
01:52What's he on about?
01:53Cheeky bastard.
01:55So, 50 years on, I'm still on the road playing with my new band, The Light.
02:00There's a noise for Peter Hook.
02:03There's something incredibly powerful in those arrangements of notes that reaches deep inside audiences.
02:09And together with a motley crew of other bass merchants, I'm gonna deep dive into what makes this instrument so special.
02:19And let you in on the story behind some of my own signature bass lines.
02:26Typical Japanese, it comes all this way, it's still in tune.
02:30And why they have stood the test of time.
02:34Listen, I'm not gonna put myself down.
02:36I've written some fantastic bass lines.
02:47Manchester is my spiritual home.
02:49Always has been and always will be.
02:51And my music couldn't have come from anywhere else.
02:57Growing up in Salford in the 70s.
03:00I had a lot of friends.
03:01It was great fun.
03:03I seem to remember I had a great time.
03:06I've been waiting for a guy to come and take me by the hand.
03:10It was a working class existence.
03:14Two up, two down, outside toilets.
03:17I had an outside toilet till I was 19.
03:20I was a little bit of a naughty boy and I got into trouble with the police a couple of times.
03:28Nothing to be proud of.
03:31I certainly wasn't proud of it.
03:33In the end, I saw an advert in the evening news in Manchester.
03:3750p, Sex Pistols.
03:40Phoned Barney up.
03:41I said, oh, that group I was telling you about are on.
03:43We should go and see them.
03:45Yes, I'm talking about that legendary Sex Pistols gig that thousands of Manx claim to have been at.
03:54Most of them weren't, but me and my best mate from school, Barney, were there.
04:01And for us, it was literally life-changing.
04:06I was spellbound.
04:08The energy in it was absolutely amazing.
04:12It was just a wail of feedback.
04:13It was so distorted.
04:18Screaming.
04:20You were just like, oh my God, what the hell?
04:24It made the biggest impression on me.
04:27It was young kids telling you to fuck off.
04:29It's exactly what I wanted to do to the world.
04:32And simply, I just thought, do you know what?
04:36I can tell everyone to fuck off as well.
04:39Teenage me, found being sworn at by Johnny Rotten, bizarrely inspiring.
04:44But little did I realize at the time that I was also under the spell of the Pistols' deceptively nonchalant bass player, Glenn Matlock.
04:52My artisanship is playing bass, and it's in service of the songs that I've written or the people that you're playing with.
05:00And it's to make the song work.
05:02I'm not into particularly fancy bass playing, but I don't mind a twiddly bit or two, but not three.
05:08When you first hear, never mind the bollocks, there's the Sex Pistols, it's a game changer of a record.
05:22And you listen to it now, and it sounds still phenomenal.
05:29You know, everyone used to say about punk only can't play and all that.
05:33I beg to differ.
05:35Glenn Matlock could play.
05:38I think one of the most important things in my kind of bass playing is when to change the octave.
05:46You know, because you can...
05:48You know, maybe go crescendo, or you can...
05:55When we're just doing anarchy in the UK.
05:58And when you're in the three-piece bands, you just want the bass to stick out because you want to be important, right?
06:04But if the key is, like, quite low, you can't nearly really hear it.
06:10With all the murk of the guitar and the drum battering away.
06:13So that was a bit low, and I thought, well, you can hear that, but it's got not enough oomph to it.
06:19Hold the cues, guy.
06:35I am an anti-coaster.
06:39I am an anti-coaster.
06:42I see bass playing a bit like being a plumber or a carpenter.
06:45Well, can you put some bass on this? Yeah, that's...
06:47It cost you.
06:53I mean, it was an amazing learning curve.
06:58From walking out of the Sex Pistols gig, and I suggested we formed a band.
07:02The Sex Pistols just showed me a way out of what we considered to be the drudgery of our everyday lives.
07:19Barney said to me, you need to get a bass, because I've got a guitar.
07:22I said, right.
07:25And went to the shop the next day, Maisel's in Piccadilly.
07:29I must admit, I borrowed 35 quid off me mum.
07:32God rest her soul.
07:34Best 35 quid she ever spent.
07:36Me and Bernard Sumner, or Barney as I call him, became obsessed and set out in search of more members to fill our line up.
07:43We became avid punk gig goers, and we kept seeing Ian at all the gigs.
07:49And he'd be telling us about his band, and we'd be telling him about our band.
07:54And it was only, funnily enough, when his drummer left that the guitarist gave up and Ian was on his own.
08:01So he joined us.
08:02So, Joy Division became me on bass, Barney on guitar and keys, Steve Morris on drums, and Ian Curtis up front.
08:12And we went to work.
08:20When you've got no songs, it's dead easy to write them.
08:23We jammed, more or less non-stop, and everything that we wrote came from jams.
08:38We were rehearsing for two hours on a Wednesday, and three hours on a Sunday afternoon,
08:45because it was all we could afford to chip in and get, £1.15 an hour.
08:49And we'd do a song every time we got together.
08:54Yeah, I mean, and we were so prolific as Joy Division.
08:59We were writing these songs at 20, 21.
09:05When we were together in the group, we were very serious about what we were doing.
09:09But when we weren't, we were the biggest bunch of piss-head dickhead you've ever met in your life.
09:17And the thing is, is that we never took ourselves too seriously until we played.
09:23And then when we played, it was like, it was, it was very serious.
09:28But the rate at which we grew as musicians, it seemed like we'd been playing forever.
09:35When we got to Shadow Play, and when we got to She's Lost Control.
09:41We'd been playing for ages, and it was in fact, it was less than a year, 18 months at the most.
09:47And how did we do it? I haven't got a bleeding clue.
09:52All we did was we just kept at it, and we kept doing it.
09:56Knowing Peter, he would have seen his contribution as being absolutely equal to anyone else in the band.
10:04I think that was the great thing about, you know, that era of music.
10:09There was a democratic attitude to how the instruments were dealt with and how the individuals were dealt with.
10:16I was never the type to sit in the background just keeping time.
10:22So I made the bass as loud as possible, melodic and up front.
10:25And if I was going to play it, you were bloody well going to hear it.
10:28It's one of the hardest things is to have an identifiable sound.
10:34You know, how do you go about doing that?
10:36Giving it all that, you know, top line stuff that he's playing.
10:41Well, he's playing the bass line in there, but it ain't the low stuff.
10:44Peter Hook's kind of carrying the tune.
10:49I took a few things from Peter Hook where I would have a vibrating string.
10:54Those sorts of things that, you know, Peter was doing.
11:11Peter's style is so unlike anything else.
11:14There is a guy who has got a sound and you can put your finger on it.
11:18You know, whereas I can't put my finger on what I do.
11:20You can with Pete.
11:21My style came about simply because Barney had copped for a wonderful amplifier,
11:28which was a UD-30 Vox combo.
11:33And it sounded, oh my God, it was just wonderful.
11:37It was absolutely fantastic.
11:38Now, unfortunately, I ended up with a £10 bass cabinet
11:42and a Sound City 120 amp head that was shit.
11:51So you couldn't hear the bass at all.
11:55But the only way I could get to hear it was if I went high up on the strings.
11:58So whenever I played high, Ian would literally go.
12:02And he'd go, play high, Ockie, play high.
12:07You know, you're looking at she's lost control.
12:13God, all the classic Joy Divisions were through him shouting at me to play high.
12:18Starting off in the band, right, we just had the instruments.
12:22We had no fancy pedals.
12:24We had no fancy amps.
12:25The music had to come somehow from there.
12:27I remember reading something about Peter Hook saying,
12:29I was trying to hear myself over the noise in the rehearsal room.
12:32So I started playing higher up the neck.
12:35And I tried it and it actually works.
12:37God, my style.
12:38It always seems really weird to even talk about it.
12:40And the weird thing is, is that this hand plays rhythm
12:44and this one plays melodies.
12:46And they're completely separate.
12:49And I don't even play with four fingers.
12:51I play with three fingers.
12:52Three fingers.
13:01Three fingered bass player.
13:03Tone deaf, three fingered bass player.
13:10There's a brutality to it.
13:11There's an aggressiveness to the discord that he's working with.
13:16That's, that's what a torturer would do.
13:27And that's a lot of what Hookie was doing on that initial album.
13:31This was just, come on you fuckers, take notice of the bass.
13:39The fierce energy of punk had lit the fuse.
13:43But for us, post-punks, it was more about the music and the sound.
13:48Bands like the Stranglers and their bassist, John Jack Spinell,
13:51had so much more to offer.
13:55There was a thing that happened in the eighties,
13:57you know, when it, you know, bass was the thing to do.
14:04The first time you heard Peaches, it was amazing.
14:08It was such a big deal when the bass line was it.
14:19There are times where you just want to strut something like Jean-Jacques Bonnell,
14:25and you know, you can't get more masculine than him.
14:30And I just remember hearing...
14:32And it was like a whole world opened up for me.
14:40And I listened to that record.
14:42And for years, I went, how do you get that sound?
14:46Walking on the beaches, looking at the beaches.
14:50My new bass hero was John Jacks because of the way his bass sounded.
14:55I went to see him at Bingley Hall in Stafford,
14:58and I was just absolutely mesmerized.
15:01And I actually stayed till the end, nearly had a fight with the bouncers,
15:05so that I could look at his gear and write it all down to get it.
15:10And I did. I actually did get his gear.
15:13I got a Hiwatt 100, which was what he was using,
15:17and a 2x15 Vox cab.
15:21Sonically, Peaches is about as fat as they come,
15:27but it's that loping, swaggering timing that makes it a truly great bass line.
15:32I think Jean-Jacques would say it comes from reggae.
15:37I think it might have been a reggae track first.
15:40What was interesting about some of those early British bass players,
15:44particularly if they were London-based,
15:46was they did have this understanding of reggae.
15:52Reggae came in with punk.
15:55Don Letts at the Vortex would be playing reggae and all that,
15:59so it really was stood side by side.
16:03I liked the culture of reggae.
16:05It was warm-hearted.
16:09It had a spiritual sort of dimension to it as well.
16:12I remember in 1976 hearing Catch a Fire for the first time,
16:23and again, realising that bass is a physical thing.
16:28It kind of hits you in the gut.
16:30This idea that the guitar was just clicking,
16:38and there was just so much room for the bass.
16:41Let's still it up.
16:43There's many things I love about reggae bass, but it's melodic.
16:47And you can sing those bass parts, you know what I mean?
16:49So if I go...
17:05See, look, if the camera people are shaking their heads,
17:09everything else is gravy.
17:10You can't have reggae without bass. Not gonna happen.
17:18Believe it or not, I actually lived in Jamaica for a few years when I was a kid.
17:23And Bob Marley was, of course, like a patron saint of the island, and still is.
17:28But his bass man, Aston Family Man Barrett, holds a special place in the hearts of bass players the world over.
17:36Aston Family Man Barrett really had a pulse and a groove, but it was very musical.
17:41So a lot of Bob Marley songs are sort of major keys.
17:45But you can hear his lines, you can hear the very melodic lines.
17:54Satisfy my soul.
17:56Oh, please.
18:00Oh.
18:04You hear that name? Family Man.
18:06That bass.
18:08Keeping the family together, man. Rocking.
18:11You should know.
18:14Oh, oh, oh.
18:17I like it, I like it.
18:19The vibration of this island is mystical.
18:22The early Africans that give to this generation a foundation to stand on.
18:27They brought something with them that just can't change.
18:31And that defines the sound of the island.
18:37Bob Marley and the Whalers brought reggae to the world.
18:39But its African roots echo deepest in this monumental Abyssinian's bass line from Leroy Sibbles.
18:45Sata Massagon is a song of message.
18:46It's about black people, repatriation, relating to the motherland.
18:48It was all about Africa.
18:51So I had to get in there now, you know, and write my parts to complement Africa too.
18:57You know?
18:58You know?
18:59And the baseline now, I wanted a Rastaman baseline.
19:03Biblical in its feel and African in its sound.
19:04You know?
19:05You know?
19:06Sata Massagon is a song of music.
19:07Sata Massagon.
19:08Sata Massagon.
19:09Sata Massagon.
19:10Sata Massagon.
19:11Sata Massagon.
19:12Sata Massagon went on to become a cornerstone of root with a true anthem of the movement.
19:14Africa too, you know. And the bass line now, I wanted a Rastaman bass line.
19:24Biblical in its feel and African in its sound, you know.
19:33Originally recorded in 1969, Sata Massagana went on to become a cornerstone of Roots Reggae,
19:39a true anthem of the movement.
19:41And through the decades, it's been reversioned by many great reggae artists.
19:48It worked. There is more Sata version than any other reggae song in the history of reggae music.
19:56They call it reggae anthem.
20:01What can I say? I'm telling you.
20:04Hey!
20:11In all the bands that I've played in, there has never been a band like Joy Division.
20:21It was rock solid. Each member put so much equally into it. And that has never happened since.
20:31I was so happy when Ian would pick some of the melodies out from the bass guitar to use as the vocal.
20:42Love Will Tears Apart, we wrote it on a Wednesday night. And we left. And he said,
20:54Oh, you know what? I'm going to write some lyrics to that. I think it's going to be a good song, that one.
20:59And he came back on Sunday. And we finished it off on Sunday. So it took like five hours, four hours.
21:05And he said, I've got some words here. Love Will Tears Apart. Do you mind if I sing the bass line?
21:09I said, mind? I said, I'm over the frickin' moon, man.
21:21A lot of people got confused. They were like listening to Love Will Tears Apart and go, I love that guitar part, you know.
21:27But actually, it's a bass.
21:33Love Will Tears Apart.
21:35It was just literally me and Steve, we came up with this bit first.
21:48That was the first bit. And then...
21:50Ian said, why don't we put those two bits together? And so the song was that.
22:12Maybe it started some people on their bass journeys of playing bass, hearing that a bass could do something like that, you know.
22:16I know I was really inspired by that myself. You know, you hear something like...
22:21Like, it's just got so much to it, you know. It's got melody. It's got rhythm. It's got, it holds that root down of the music as well. And it's so melancholy as well. It's got so much emotion to it.
22:39You know, and it's so raw as well.
22:40You know, and it's so raw as well.
22:42What I love about Love Will Tears Apart, it's a heartbreaking song, lyrically played as if it was the happiest song in the world.
22:49What I love about Love Will Tears Apart, it's a heartbreaking song, lyrically played as if it was the happiest song in the world.
23:10When you listen to the words, they are the death of a relationship and it's heartbreaking. And you listen to the music and it's just such a contradiction, such a contrast.
23:35It is one of the strangest songs that we ever did. The melancholy of it is a power. And that power to be able to reach into people's souls with words and music is, by God, it's invaluable. It's earth shattering.
23:53Love Will Tears Apart
23:58This song about the pain Ian was feeling became Joy Division's enduring anthem. And it's a cruel irony that just a month before it was released, we lost him.
24:09It was very gradual. His illness started very gradually. He was his own worst enemy. He would not give in. He fought it. He fought it on stage. He fought it everywhere.
24:32It shouldn't have been a shock. But we were kids. We were 21, 22. I think we were 23 when he died. We didn't know our arse for our elbow, so we didn't know what to do.
24:43It kills me now when kids come up to me. And 18-year-old kids, 16-year-old kids, and they go, what was Ian like? And I'm thinking, he was just like you.
24:58He was no different. He was just a normal person that was able to do something that was truly extraordinary.
25:05There could be no Joy Division without Ian. But when we found ourselves assembled at the usual rehearsal space on the Monday after his funeral, it was clear we had to carry on.
25:22We renamed ourselves New Order. And just as the world around us was changing fast, so would our music.
25:29This wonderful newfound wealth and brightness that we found in the 80s did change our music.
25:46To us, it felt like the world was brighter. The music did get poppier.
25:52And at the dawn of the 80s, pop meant synths, samplers, sequencers, and all manner of other machines.
26:04We started incorporating electronic elements. Barney had his synthesizer.
26:11We invested in a DR-55, which was a Boss Doctor Rhythm.
26:16And then we bought a Arp Omni string machine, and we started experimenting with that.
26:23Everything you needed to make a fantastic cocktail, which was what Blue Mundy was.
26:36Just that drum beat that it starts with, that's such a hook.
26:39The drum machine, the riff, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
26:46We nicked off a Donna Summer B-side.
26:49Our love
26:52The kick drum came from Our Love by Donna Summer, produced by Giorgio Amaroda, where he put a delay on the kick drum, so it went dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
27:01The beat was pure Giorgio Amaroda, but the inspiration for the bass line itself came from another very famous Italian composer.
27:13We were listening to a lot of Ennio Morricone, and we were watching the films in Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
27:19It just came from that, me doing that.
27:26And then it became...
27:31Still gives me goosebumps, that song.
27:39It has an impact that has not waned to now.
27:45How does it feel?
27:48It's incredible, I mean, it's still so popular.
27:51There was a poll in Mixmag with DJs.
27:56So if it's all going downhill, you can't get anyone dancing, what song do you put on?
27:59And it was Blue Monday.
28:01By a thousand votes out of a thousand.
28:05And you were like, wow.
28:07Blue Monday is still the best-selling 12-inch single of all time.
28:11And much of the proceeds back in 1982 were ploughed into the building of the music haven in central Manchester, the wonderful Hacienda.
28:19The grand vision of Factory Records founder, Tony Wilson.
28:24Tony wanted to open a place like an orphanage where we could all get together and be together, all the little, all those little weirdos that came out of punk.
28:35Well, we're ready.
28:38I probably was on the cusp of being sax a few times, come for air, being in the Hacienda.
28:44I would just say I was out studying grooves.
28:47The original house thing and it's all your programmed 808 and whatever machines and that was the bass at its zenith, you know, it really does, when bass lines are really carrying tunes.
29:02There was one machine that changed basses in dance video forever.
29:08And it's this strange little thing, the Roland TB-303 bass line, which was invented for guitarists and singer-songwriters to use a drum machine and a programmed bass line so they didn't have to pay for a backing band.
29:21It's got a lovely resonant low end until you tweak the resonance and then it does that acid noises.
29:29This changed the way that the sequence bass lines sounded more than anything.
29:35The bass line in modern dance music is still the basis of the groove.
29:41It's normally the thing that you latch onto first.
29:44It's the thing that drives the song and it's the conduit between the drums and the melody.
29:50It just sits in the middle, dependable, sexy, like all bass players.
29:55It just, you know, fulfills that role in the middle and you've got the twinkly stuff at the top and you've got the thump of the drums at the bottom.
30:02But in, I mean, some of my favorite dance records are just a, you know, they're just a bass line.
30:11Listen to this.
30:16A little bit of percussion for a tickle.
30:20Four on the floor.
30:23I could dance to that all night.
30:28And the big bit is it just breaks down to just the bass.
30:30There's something in bass culture that it does, it doesn't scream at you, it's the thing that you're dancing to.
30:40You think you're, you're listening to the, to the top line or you're listening to the guitar solo, but in fact, what you're dancing to is the bass.
30:46So in the kind of dance music that I play as a DJ, it is absolutely paramount.
30:54DJing is really about feeding the crowd.
30:56In electronic music, bass is like one of the most important parts.
31:01So when there's like a strong bass drop, you really see the crowd's reaction.
31:09DJing is such a different thing from playing in a band, but at the same time, there are some common factors.
31:14You can really see the crowd's reaction because they're not looking at the show.
31:20They're just there to dance.
31:21So I think the focus is completely on the music.
31:27It's really simple, but very hooky.
31:28Whether or not you're a musician or a DJ, you're still looking for things that people will identify with it, things that will move them, things that will resonate with them.
31:40You know, a groove that they're going to latch onto.
31:45New Order already had one foot in the indie chart and one on the dance floor.
31:49But when Ecstasy took off and turbocharged clubbing at the beginning of the nineties, we found ourselves in the eye of a perfect storm.
31:56New Order went to clubs in Ibiza and heard that sound.
32:01That's where Manchester rock bands met disco.
32:06We went to Ibiza and saw the impact that Ecstasy had on people in those clubs.
32:14And you watched it grow and change.
32:16This eclectic mix of music of where you had an indie tune and a dance tune and then a rap tune and all this lot put together.
32:24Suddenly everyone was on Ecstasy and they danced all the time.
32:33And then by the time we got back from Ibiza and Ecstasy had landed in England, the same thing happened in England.
32:39In 1987, when we came back from Ibiza, the Hacienda was a completely different animal.
32:48It was sold out constantly. It was riddled with drugs. The atmosphere was crazy. It was absolutely fucking nuts.
33:00They do say that drum machines were invented so the singer doesn't have to talk to the drummer.
33:10Play!
33:11Oh man!
33:12It's amazing!
33:13If you imagine a little fellow with eight arms in there, it's got a lot of practical implication.
33:19And they say that bass synthesizers were invented so the singer didn't have to talk to the bass player.
33:26And I think most lead singers would probably agree.
33:28Just loads of different sounds. You've got 120 sounds in it.
33:31Are you a computer programmer or a musician?
33:38Neither.
33:39Neither.
33:40Looking back now, I realize how quickly things changed as we got the new equipment.
33:45The more machinery you got, the more Barney was able to layer the songs up.
33:52And then every time he put a new layer on, your window started to close.
34:00You'd be going, oh, should we just play now? Should we just play on it now?
34:04So yeah, it became a bit of a bone of contention.
34:08I knew the bass was important to Joy Division. I knew the bass was important to New Order.
34:14And I remember when them three turned round for the first time and asked me not to play on a track.
34:19I was like, you fucking cheeky bastards.
34:24That is something I would never do to anybody.
34:29Oh God, I was aghast.
34:32And I ended up playing on the fucking track anyway, because I wouldn't say no for an answer.
34:35Fuck off.
34:37I suppose I should have known then what was coming.
34:44I was like a place I could come upon.
34:47Regret was the last song that New Order wrote together.
34:52Because afterwards Bernard decided that he wanted to write on his own.
34:58And it was very sad at the time.
35:01Look at me, I'm not you.
35:22Yeah, it was a weird song to finish on.
35:27Because it was so good.
35:31One, two, three, four.
35:44The beauty of a great bass line isn't what you play but how you play it.
35:48And also knowing when not to play.
35:50That's what we call feel.
35:52And the man who influenced us all was one of the masters of Motown's bass lines, James Jameson.
35:59If you listen to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On album.
36:02And how he's playing so funky and beautiful.
36:06It's not about the bass line per se.
36:08It's about how he's walking around it and controlling and using the roots with the fists.
36:15Like, it's just so beautiful, complex, simple, creating riffs that make people want to dance.
36:24Oh, what's going on?
36:27What's going on?
36:29Yeah, what's going on?
36:31There have been a few bass revolutions.
36:34I would say that James Jameson maybe was the first electric bass revolution.
36:38Maybe he taught us that bass didn't just have to be this thing in the back.
36:43It could be, like, really fanciful and melodic.
36:48As long as you found a way to keep the music grooving while you did that.
36:52And so I think we all came from him, in a way.
36:57Oh, what's going on?
36:59What's going on?
37:01James Jameson is in my top three of bass players of all time.
37:06Just the amount of groove he pulled out.
37:10You know, he's probably played on virtually 90-odd percent of all Motown records.
37:14And not necessarily in the most complex of grooves, but he's on the money every time.
37:19I'd kill for one-tenth of that guy's talent. I really, really would.
37:23If you listen to the isolated bass part of what's going on, any of James Jameson's isolated bass parts,
37:30and you just listen to the complexity of the rhythm and the subtlety of the notes and the harmony,
37:36he's an absolute master who created the history of great bass parts.
37:43He's the sound of Motown for me. He's just incredible.
37:50And some of the stuff's, like, ultra-complicated.
37:53And then you get Papa is a Rolling Stone, which is, like, the simplest bass riff,
37:57but probably one of the greatest bass riffs of all time for me, anyway.
38:03Because it was like, oh, I can play that.
38:06And that's all it is.
38:12Like...
38:17It's almost like a...
38:21Like, as simple as that.
38:23James Jameson's influence is omnipresent in bass, spanning decades and genres.
38:30Listen carefully and you'll hear it in heavy metal, pop, punk, and reggae.
38:38James Jameson's great influence.
38:42After fact, I use one of his licks in Ziggy Marley's album.
38:49The song is cosmic.
38:51It's one drop, but kind of ska tempo.
39:00But the lick is what I'm talking about.
39:08That's a Jameson lick.
39:10Anyone who plays bass and know Jameson can say,
39:13Ah, that's a Jameson lick.
39:15That bass player is amazing.
39:17There was a song that I...
39:18A Bowie song that I did on the Next Day album called The Stars Are Out Tonight.
39:23And that's that same kind of Motown pattern.
39:25It has that rolling bass line.
39:28So it's kind of a...
39:30It's like once you jump on, this one is like you're on the train.
39:33And it's just going and it's nice and it's steady.
39:38And everything else is kind of floating around that.
39:48But that's just like kind of the chugging of the train.
39:51And it just plows ahead.
39:54Those are kind of my favorite bass lines.
39:56And that's very Motown.
40:00Managee in the UK.
40:02So that's kind of the groove of the song.
40:04But then, last verse...
40:06Gotta jazz it up a little bit.
40:07Ah.
40:08How about something that's a bit James Jameson?
40:12Let's start with the second middle eight.
40:19Ah, here's the James Jameson bit.
40:21Yes, even the Sex Pistols biggest hit borrowed from Jameson.
40:33For a little extra flair amongst the fury.
40:39James Jameson's Motown bass line sound as good now as they did a half century ago.
40:43And I knew there was a new audience who were hungry to hear Joy Division and New Order's Classics played live instead of in those little earpods.
40:53So when Barney and Steve quit playing live, there was only one thing to do.
40:58I had to start my own band, but that gave me a problem.
41:03Sadly, I can't sing and play bass at the same time.
41:07If only there was a way to clone yourself.
41:13Do you want tea, darling?
41:14Yes, please.
41:19I never pushed it on you, did I?
41:21No, they were just...
41:22Well, we had a load in the house, didn't we?
41:24Yeah, yeah.
41:25That just pretty natural.
41:27I remember you saying you weren't going to teach me, because you shouldn't teach me because you'll just end up sounding like me, which is what you said.
41:36Now you do.
41:37And then the hilarious thing was that for the last 15 years, it's been my exact job to sound like you.
41:42It's not traditional bass playing, I guess.
41:46It's very unique.
41:48And it's almost like you're the sort of lead guitar player, which not a lot of bass players get to experience.
41:56My favourite moment on stage is when you walk on, and you get your smattering of applause or whatever, and you stand there, and I look round to look at my son and go, yeah, chip off the old block, wonderful.
42:09And to look round and then think, fucking hell, in a minute we're going to take your fucking head off.
42:13And it's just an amazing moment. That's why it's so bloody addictive.
42:26And I think that we play the light more or less the same as Joy Division did, because I insisted on it, because that's what makes me happy.
42:42To see that move people to tears.
42:50It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to do.
42:53And Ian's greatest wish was for Joy Division to be big all over the world.
42:58And he used to say to me, okay, we're going to be big in Brazil, we're going to be big in Portugal, we're going to be big in Peru.
43:06And he never made it to any of them.
43:11And that is the wonderful thing now for me to be able to go to Mexico and see the way the music is appreciated and goes down.
43:20And how much love there is for him and our music.
43:25That is the best thing in the world and all I did.
43:40Just play.
43:41Just play.
43:44Just play.
43:48Just play.
43:55Just play.
43:59God bless you.
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