For four decades, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea has stood at the forefront of rock music, bringing funky lines to an ever-accessible alt-rock sound. The band’s creative outlook has developed over time, with Flea and singer Anthony Kiedis joined by a shuffling cast of musicians, including Hillel Slovak, Jack Irons, Josh Klinghoffer, and John Frusciante, but Flea’s innovative rhythms have remained a solid constant.
Besides his magnetic stage persona, which has seen him strip naked behind his bass guitar on more than one occasion, Flea is a devoted and highly talented musician. His most iconic and impressive basslines include those heard in ‘Nobody Weird Like Me’, ‘Give It Away’ and ‘Higher Ground’.
Naturally, Flea has been inspired by a whole host of bassists over the years, from John Paul Jones to Thundercat. In a recent appearance on Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson’s podcast, Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Flea picked out who he deemed to be the greatest rock bassist of all time.
While he previously praised Thundercat as the “best bassist on the planet”, Flea named The Beatles’ Paul McCartney as the greatest rock bassist. “I think Paul’s the greatest rock bass player,” he said. “There are so many guys that are great in different ways, but Paul’s bass playing is so lyrical and melodic, and it’s just so beautiful. One of the things I’ve heard is that he puts the bass on after.”
Regarding complexity and speed, one might place John Entwistle or Geddy Lee above McCartney, but as a songwriter and singer, first and foremost, it is hard to overlook McCartney’s impressive knack for dynamic and innovative basslines, says faroutmagazine.
Intriguingly, McCartney has never really seen himself as a bassist and was initially reluctant to take on the role in Stuart Sutcliffe’s stead. “Nobody wants to play bass, or nobody did in those days,” McCartney noted in Many Years From Now. “Bass was the thing that the fat boys got lumbered with and were asked to stand at the back and play… So I definitely didn’t want to do it, but Stuart left, and I got lumbered with it. Later, I was quite happy”.
McCartney initially played on six strings and remained loyal to the instrument as a songwriting conduit. He later incorporated the piano into his songwriting sessions, though he claims to have never used the bass as his primary songwriting tool. “In a band like mine, a lot of songs start with basslines… or the music comes first,” Flea continued. “Whereas I think Paul and John and George, they wrote songs and [then] Paul would do the bass… So then he’s doing, like, a counter melody, so the bass is like a melody as opposed to just rhythm, and that’s amazing.”
As F;ea’s comments made a ripple on social media, the bassist took to his Twitter/X account to reveal his favourite female singer of all time in a simple sentence, “Chrissie Hynde is the greatest female rock singer of all time.” Hynde rose to fame in the late 1970s as the singer of The Pretenders, with who she continues to tour to this day, keeping fans satisfied with faithful renditions of classic hits like ‘Brass in Pocket’ and ‘Don’t Get Me Wrong’.