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Fri, Mar 29, 2024

Geddy Lee picks his ten favorite bassists in new Rolling Stone interview

Thu, Jul 2, 2020@2:38PM | comments

Rolling Stone magazine recently spoke with Geddy Lee to ask him to list off his ten favorite bass players, and say a few words about each one. The feature was published in conjunction with the magazine's list of the 50 Greatest Bassists of All Time, where they had Geddy coming at #24. The bassists on Geddy's list include John Entwistle, Chris Squire, Les Claypool, John Paul Jones and many others. Here's what Geddy had to say about John Entwistle:

He was one of the first gods to me. Gods of rock. [Laughs] Ever since I first heard "My Generation," it's like, "Who is that?" That was a name you needed to know. And I still rank him as the greatest rock bassist of all time, in one sense. First of all, he was ferocious, and he had a sound that dared to encroach upon the domain of the guitar player. So he had a very loud, very aggressive tone. And to hear that on pop radio - I mean, "My Generation" didn't get as much play over here as it did in the U.K., but it was a pop hit with a bass solo in it, no less. So I was drawn to, first of all, his tone, secondly, his audacity and thirdly, his dexterity. I mean, he had incredible dexterity, and just moved across the strings in such a fluid manner with such ease, and yet, sounded so tremendously ferocious at the same time. We all tried [early on] to play "My Generation" and failed miserably, but you do your crappy version of it. ... I would say [Who songs] were harder to do than, say, a cover of "Road Runner," by Junior Walker and the Allstars, where you can transform that into sort of a rock bass [line] without too much trouble. But yeah, the Who were much tougher.

You can read Geddy's complete list online at this location, and also check out Rolling Stone's list of the 50 Greatest Bassists of All Time.

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