How J.K. Rowling Plotted Harry Potter with a Hand-Drawn Spreadsheet

in Books, Writing | July 1st, 2014

At the height of the Har­ry Pot­ter nov­els’ pop­u­lar­i­ty, I asked a num­ber of peo­ple why those books in par­tic­u­lar enjoyed such a devot­ed read­er­ship. Every­one gave almost the same answer: that author J.K. Rowl­ing “tells a good sto­ry.” The response at once clar­i­fied every­thing and noth­ing; of course a “good sto­ry” can draw a large, enthu­si­as­tic (and, at that time, impa­tient) read­er­ship, but what does it take to actu­al­ly tell a good sto­ry? Peo­ple have prob­a­bly made more mon­ey attempt­ing, ques­tion­ably, to pin down, define, and teach the best prac­tices of sto­ry­telling, but at the top of this post, we have a reveal­ing scrap of Rowl­ing’s own process. And I do, almost lit­er­al­ly, mean a scrap: this piece of lined paper con­tains part of the hand­writ­ten plot spread­sheet she used to write the fifth Har­ry Pot­ter nov­el, Har­ry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix.

This par­tic­u­lar page (click to view it in a larg­er for­mat) cov­ers chap­ters 13 through 24, dur­ing which even more hap­pens than you may now remem­ber. It may have amount­ed to more than Rowl­ing, too, could remem­ber, hence the spread­sheet itself. End­pa­per explains some of her sto­ry notes as fol­lows:

• “Prophe­cy”: A sub­plot about the prophe­cy Har­ry finds him­self con­cerned about all through the book
• “Cho/Ginny”: The book’s roman­tic sub­plot
• “D.A.”: What’s hap­pen­ing with the resis­tance army, or “Dumbledore’s Army”
• “O of P”: What’s hap­pen­ing with the “Order of the Phoenix” group
• “Snape/Harry”: What’s hap­pen­ing with Snape and Har­ry
• “Hagrid and Grawp”: What’s hap­pen­ing with Hagrid and Grawp

“If you think about Har­ry Pot­ter and the Order of the Phoenix, that’s it,” writes /Film’s Ger­main Lussier. “Those columns pret­ty much encom­pass the whole sto­ry.” Rowl­ing, of course, hard­ly counts as the only nov­el­ist to write with such tech­niques, and based on this exam­ple, hers don’t get near­ly as elab­o­rate as some. (I recall once read­ing that Vikram Chan­dra had to bust out Microsoft Project to keep track of the com­pli­ca­tions of Sacred Games, his 900-page nov­el about the Mum­bai under­world.) But Rowl­ing must cer­tain­ly rank as the most famous nov­el­ist to, quite lit­er­al­ly, draw up spread­sheets like this. I sup­pose it does leave her books even more exposed to accu­sa­tions of over­plot­ting than before, but some­thing tells me it won’t both­er her.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Two Har­ry Pot­ter Audio Books for Free (and Get the Rest of the Series for Cheap)

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

The Quan­tum Physics of Har­ry Pot­ter, Bro­ken Down By a Physi­cist and a Magi­cian

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Ele­ments.

Har­ry Pot­ter Pre­quel Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, High School Wrestling Team Captain, Invented a Physics-Based Wrestling Move

in Physics, Sports | July 1st, 2014

We know that Neil deGrasse Tyson was some­thing of a wun­derkind dur­ing his high school years. If you’re an OC reg­u­lar, you’ve read all about how Carl Sagan per­son­al­ly recruit­ed Tyson to study with him at Cor­nell. Deft­ly, polite­ly, the young Tyson declined and went to Har­vard.

There’s per­haps anoth­er side of the pre­co­cious Tyson you might not know as much about. The ath­let­ic side. While a stu­dent at The Bronx High School of Sci­ence, Tyson (class of 1976) wore bas­ket­ball sneak­ers belong­ing to the Knick­’s Walt “Clyde” Fra­zier. He ran an impres­sive 4:25 mile. And he cap­tained the school’s wrestling team, dur­ing which time he con­jured up a new-fan­gled wrestling move. In pro­fes­sion­al wrestling, Ric Flair had the dread­ed Fig­ure Four Leg Lock, and Jim­my Snu­ka, a dev­as­tat­ing Super­fly Splash. Tyson? He had the feared “Dou­ble Tidal Lock.” He explains and demon­strates the physics-based move in the video below, orig­i­nal­ly record­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Indi­anapo­lis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Samuel Beck­ett Drove Young André the Giant to School: A True Sto­ry

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

The Ulti­mate War­rior, Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestler & Philoso­pher, Cre­at­ed a Glos­sary of World Philoso­phies

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Stephen Fry Reads the Legendary British Shipping Forecast

in Comedy, Radio | June 30th, 2014

If you live in Eng­land, you’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with the Ship­ping Fore­cast, a night­ly BBC radio broad­cast that details the weath­er con­di­tions for the seas sur­round­ing Britain. The broad­cast has been on the air­waves since 1911. And many Brits will tell you that the fore­cast, always read in a soporif­ic voice, can lull you to sleep quick­er than a dose of Ambi­en. The broad­cast has a strict for­mat. It can’t exceed 350 words, and it always begins: “And now the Ship­ping Fore­cast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Mar­itime and Coast­guard Agency at [fill in the time] today.” Below y0u can lis­ten to a record­ing of actu­al fore­casts. (Or catch the one from 6/29/2014 here.) Don’t lis­ten to it while dri­ving, or oper­at­ing heavy machin­ery. A primer that decodes the unfa­mil­iar ter­mi­nol­o­gy in the radio trans­mis­sion can be found here.

All of this gives you just enough con­text to appre­ci­ate Stephen Fry’s par­o­dy read­ing of the Ship­ping Fore­cast. It was record­ed in 1988, for the first episode of his radio show Sat­ur­day Night Fry. (Full episode here.) You can read along with the tran­script, while lis­ten­ing to the clip up top:

And now, before the news and weath­er, here is the Ship­ping Fore­cast issued by the Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Office at 1400 hours Green­wich Mean Time.
Fin­is­terre, Dog­ger, Rock­all, Bai­ley: no.
Wednes­day, vari­able, immi­nent, super.
South Utsire, North Utsire, Sheer­ness, Foul­ness, Eliot Ness:
If you will, often, emi­nent, 447, 22 yards, touch­down, stu­pid­ly.
Malin, Hebrides, Shet­land, Jer­sey, Fair Isle, Tur­tle-Neck, Tank Top, Courtelle:
Blowy, quite misty, sea sick­ness. Not many fish around, come home, veer­ing sug­ges­tive­ly.
That was the Ship­ping Fore­cast for 1700 hours, Wednes­day 18 August.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry Pro­files Six Russ­ian Writ­ers in the New Doc­u­men­tary Russia’s Open Book

Watch 1990s Video of Sacha Baron Cohen Playing Christo, the Proto Borat (NSFW)

in Comedy, Film, Television | June 27th, 2014

In 2005, a hir­sute Kaza­kh jour­nal­ist named Borat Sagdiyev ven­tured to Amer­i­ca to make a doc­u­men­tary about “the Great­est Coun­try in the World.” Along the way, he had extreme­ly awk­ward con­ver­sa­tions with politi­cians Bob Barr and Alan Keyes, unwit­ting­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Gay Pride parade, and acci­den­tal­ly destroyed a gift shop filled with Con­fed­er­a­cy mem­o­ra­bil­ia. When he vis­it­ed a Vir­ginia rodeo, he near­ly caused a riot. Pri­or to the event, he praised the War on Ter­ror — which got cheers — and then wished that “George W. Bush will drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq,” which got few­er cheers. He then sang the lyrics of the Kaza­kh nation­al anthem to the tune of the “Star Span­gle Ban­ner.” That got boos.

Borat is, of course, a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter played by British come­di­an Sacha Baron Cohen, made famous in his huge­ly suc­cess­ful 2006 movie Borat: Cul­tur­al Learn­ings of Amer­i­ca for Make Ben­e­fit Glo­ri­ous Nation of Kaza­khstan. While his brand of gonzo com­e­dy might not be everybody’s cup of tea, you have to admit he’s brave and weird­ly ded­i­cat­ed to his craft. The cops were called over 90 times dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of Borat and Baron Cohen nev­er broke char­ac­ter once.

Of all of Baron Cohen’s char­ac­ters – the dim-wit­ted wannabe gang­ster Ali G and the equal­ly obliv­i­ous gay fash­ion­ista Bruno, Borat is per­haps his most like­able, and there­fore his most dan­ger­ous, char­ac­ter. He’s so naive­ly igno­rant, so benight­ed by provin­cial prej­u­dices that he evokes a tone of kind­ly con­de­scen­sion from just about every­one he encoun­ters – at least before they call the cops on him. And that con­de­scen­sion can prove to be a trap. Borat’s casu­al, jar­ring­ly overt homo­pho­bia, sex­ism and anti-Semi­tism can often lead inter­vie­wees to say things out loud that they wouldn’t nor­mal­ly say in front of a cam­era. When Borat stat­ed, “We hang homo­sex­u­als in my coun­try!” Bob­by Rowe, the pro­duc­er of that rodeo quipped: “That’s what we’re try­ing to do here.”

The first incar­na­tion of Borat was a Mol­da­vian jour­nal­ist named Alexi who appeared on the Grana­da TV show F2F in the mid-90s. For the BBC Two show Com­e­dy Nation, Baron Cohen turned Alexi into Chris­to from Alba­nia. You can see a cou­ple of his ear­ly skits as Chris­to. In the one up top, he tries the patience of famed socialite Lady Col­in Camp­bell by insist­ing on car­ry­ing the train of her haute cou­ture dress. Below that, Chris­to stum­bles uncom­pre­hend­ing­ly into the world of S&M. Both videos, as you might expect, are NSFW.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ali G at Har­vard; or How Sacha Baron Cohen Got Blessed by America’s Cul­tur­al Estab­lish­ment

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

Lenny Bruce Riffs and Rants on Injus­tice and Hypocrisy in One of His Final Per­for­mances (NSFW)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Hardware Wars: The Mother of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Profitable Short Film Ever Made)

in Film | June 26th, 2014

Back in 1977, San Fran­cis­co film­mak­er Ernie Fos­selius had the brain­wave to make a spoof of a movie that had just come out. It was a risky move. Nobody had any sense that Star Wars would become the world­wide cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non that it did. And just as George Lucas’s space opera earned stag­ger­ing amounts of mon­ey, so did Fosselius’s par­o­dy, Hard­ware Wars. You can watch it above. Made for a mere eight grand, the 13-minute movie became a pre-inter­net viral hit and a sta­ple on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit, ulti­mate­ly earn­ing over $1,000,000 – an unheard of haul for a short film. In fact, in terms of mon­ey spent ver­sus mon­ey earned, Hard­ware Wars end­ed up being far more prof­itable than Star Wars. And it’s con­sid­ered the most prof­itable short film ever made.

“I think a lot of the charm of that movie is the fact that we didn’t real­ly know what we were doing,” said Scott Math­ews, who donned a blonde wig to play the movie’s lead, Fluke Star­buck­er. The movie’s pro­duc­tion is so glee­ful­ly cheap and half-assed that you can’t help but be charmed by it. Irons, toast­ers, and tape play­ers are used in place of space­ships.

A can­is­ter vac­u­um clean­er stands in for R2D2, and Chew­bac­ca appears to be a Cook­ie Mon­ster pup­pet dyed brown. At one point, while on a desert plan­et of Tatooine, you see a beach-goer saun­ter­ing in the back­ground. And Star Wars’s famous can­ti­na scene is in this movie sim­ply a stroll through a crowd­ed tav­ern. If you know any­thing about the bar scene in 1970s San Fran­cis­co, you know that it was at least as weird as any­thing George Lucas man­aged to put up on the screen.

The often liti­gious Lucas report­ed­ly real­ly liked the movie, called it “cute.” He even invit­ed Fos­selius to voice the incon­solable sobs of Jab­ba the Hut­t’s ani­mal train­er after his beloved Ran­cor gets killed by Luke Sky­walk­er in Return of the Jedi.

Hard­ware Wars end­ed up launch­ing an entire sub­genre of movie – the Star Wars fan film. And with the advent of Youtube and dig­i­tal film­mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy, the abil­i­ty of nerds and mavens to make increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed takes on Lucas’s uni­verse became eas­i­er and eas­i­er. One of the bet­ter, and old­er, ones is Troops. A mash up of Star Wars and the real­i­ty TV series Cops, the short shows the chal­lenges and the strug­gles of being an Impe­r­i­al Stormtroop­er. Check it out below.

via Film­mak­erIQ

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Frei­heit, George Lucas’ Short Stu­dent Film About a Fatal Run from Com­mu­nism (1966)

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Hear the Earliest Known Talking Heads Recordings (1975)

in Music | June 23rd, 2014

We’ve fea­tured a fair few ear­ly Talk­ing Heads per­for­mances, from Dort­mund and Rome in 1980 to Syra­cuse in 1978 all the way back to CBGB in 1975. But you haven’t real­ly heard ear­ly Talk­ing Heads until you’ve heard the ear­li­est Talk­ing Heads. The same year of that CBGB show (one of many they played after their debut there open­ing for the Ramones), the trio of David Byrne, Chris Frantz, and Tina Wey­mouth record­ed a series of demos at CBS stu­dios. Still unsigned and in their ear­ly twen­ties, this first con­fig­u­ra­tion of the Heads (after the band, new­ly arrived in New York, shed their iden­ti­ty as “The Artis­tics” from their days togeth­er at the Rhode Island School of Design) laid down the very first known record­ed ver­sions of such notable tracks as “Psy­cho Killer” above, “Thank You for Send­ing Me an Angel” below, and “I’m Not in Love” below.

You can find a fuller playlist, which includes more songs from these CBS ses­sions like “I Wish You Would­n’t Say That,” “Ten­ta­tive Deci­sions,” and “Stay Hun­gry,” here. We often hear these songs described as the defin­ing mate­r­i­al of a pio­neer­ing “post-punk” band like Talk­ing Heads, so the fact that all these tracks come from 1975 make them per­haps the first exam­ples of the genre ever record­ed. This way of play­ing slight­ly ahead of their time may actu­al­ly have kept the group from find­ing a label to sign them until 1977, when Sire picked up the now-quar­tet (with the addi­tion of mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Jer­ry Har­ri­son) and put out the immor­tal pair of LPs Talk­ing Heads: 77 and More Songs About Build­ings and Food. Yes, even though they’d record­ed these demos at CBS stu­dios, CBS Records passed up the chance to take them on. Sure­ly they lived it down more quick­ly than did Dec­ca Records after hav­ing reject­ed The Bea­t­les, but still, nobody every stayed atop the zeit­geist by turn­ing their back to the Talk­ing Heads.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play Live in Dort­mund, Ger­many Dur­ing Their Hey­day (1980)

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play a Vin­tage Con­cert in Syra­cuse (1978)

Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Discover the Lost Films of Orson Welles

in Film | June 23rd, 2014

To know an artist, you must know all the work they ever made pub­lic. But to tru­ly, thor­ough­ly know an artist, you must also know all the work they nev­er made pub­lic. This notion, in our age of DVD delet­ed scenes, ded­i­cat­ed uni­ver­si­ty cours­es, and oth­er aids to com­pletist enthu­si­asm, has gained quite a lot of trac­tion. But how many cre­ators work­ing today give you the sense of only see­ing the tip of their pro­duc­tive ice­berg than did Orson Welles, whose rumored unseen or nev­er ful­ly devel­oped works some­times seem even to out­num­ber those in his impres­sive and (in the main) high­ly acclaimed canon? Sure, the man made War of the Worlds and Cit­i­zen Kane, but every­one knows those. What about The Dream­ers, The Deep, The Oth­er Side of the Wind — seen any of those? Now, thanks to Cinephil­ia and Beyond, you can see them, or at least parts of them, in 1995’s Orson Welles: The One-Man Band by Ger­man film­mak­er and seri­ous Welles fan Vas­sili Silovic.

In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the auteur’s long­time com­pan­ion Oda Kojar, Silovic digs into the Welles archives and bring to light evi­dence of all sorts of projects unre­al­ized, unfin­ished, or sim­ply unre­leased. The New York Times’ Stephen Hold­en writes that Silovic’s film “offers tan­ta­liz­ing excerpts from Welles’s lat­er works along with rem­i­nis­cences by Ms. Kodar of their nomadic life togeth­er. As Welles dashed about the globe pur­su­ing act­ing jobs and financ­ing for his projects, he tot­ed around a 16-mil­lime­ter edit­ing table and a giant suit­case of equip­ment that made him the film-mak­ing equiv­a­lent of a one-man band. Many of his small­er projects might be described as ambi­tious home movies filmed on the spot wher­ev­er he hap­pened to be.” We see bits and pieces of an incom­plete thriller, a clip from the pilot for a pro­posed tele­vi­sion talk show, some of “the sto­ry of an aging, fero­cious­ly inde­pen­dent film direc­tor (played by John Hus­ton) wrestling with the Hol­ly­wood estab­lish­ment to com­plete an icon­o­clas­tic work.” We even get a glimpse, as if you still need­ed evi­dence that Welles led a sto­ried life, of a chat he had with the Mup­pets.

You can find some icon­ic, com­plete films by Welles in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Cinephil­ia and Beyond

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch The Tri­al (1962), Orson Welles’ Worst or Best Film, Adapt­ed From Kafka’s Clas­sic Work

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Eddie Vedder Sings Disney’s “Let It Go” at Pearl Jam Concert in Italy

in Music | June 22nd, 2014

If you’re a par­ent of young girls, you can’t escape “Let It Go,” the song from Dis­ney’s 2013 ani­mat­ed film, Frozen. Not even Eddie Ved­der (father of daugh­ters born in 2004 and 2008) can shake it. Just wit­ness what hap­pened on Fri­day night when Ved­der per­formed Pearl Jam’s 1993 hit, “Daugh­ter,” live in Milan, Italy. You appar­ent­ly can’t think “Daugh­ter” with­out think­ing “Let It Go.” A longer ver­sion of the Pearl Jam per­for­mance can be viewed here.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Spring­steen Plays Lorde’s “Roy­als” & AC/DC’s “High­way to Hell” in Down Under Con­certs

Bill Mur­ray Croons a Soul­ful Cov­er of “The House of the Ris­ing Sun”

Mavis Staples and The Band Sing “The Weight” In Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz (1978)

in Music | June 21st, 2014

It’s a tough choice, but I think the moment above may be one of my favorites from the 1978 Mar­tin Scors­ese-filmed farewell con­cert for The Band, The Last Waltz. In this clip from the film, The Band per­forms one of their sig­na­ture songs, “The Weight,” with soul and gospel leg­ends The Sta­ples Singers. Sta­ples patri­arch and gui­tarist Roe­buck sings some lead vocals, as does, of course, the group’s star Mavis. “As the song fin­ish­es up,” writes Elon Green at The New York­er, “Mavis, clos­est to the cam­era, throws her head back, leans toward the mic, and says, almost inaudi­bly, ‘Beau­ti­ful.’” It’s a beau­ti­ful moment, for sure, and a great sto­ry that Mavis tells in full on Green’s “Cul­ture Desk” post (excerpt below).

It was so beau­ti­ful to me. I was sur­prised that was caught on tape, you know, because I thought I was whis­per­ing. It wasn’t rehearsed to go like that. It was just a feel­ing that brought that on. The excite­ment of being with our friends—Levon and Danko and those guys were such good friends of ours—to be singing with them, and know­ing that this is going to be on the big screen, the sil­ver screen, it was just a moment in time for me. You could prob­a­bly, had you been there, you would have heard my heart pound­ing.

Despite its roots in Amer­i­can coun­try and Appalachi­an folk, like so much of The Band’s music—and so much Americana—“The Weight” lends itself equal­ly to soul and R&B inter­pre­ta­tions. The song’s been cov­ered by The Supremes and The Temp­ta­tions (singing togeth­er), Aretha Franklin record­ed a funky, soul­ful ver­sion, and it’s long been a part of Mavis Sta­ples’ live set. “The Weight” is also one of those great songs that brings black and white artists togeth­er; it’s tes­ta­ment to The Band’s keen appre­ci­a­tion for Amer­i­can roots music (which they learned by heart as back­ing band for rock­a­bil­ly star Ron­nie Hawkins and lat­er Bob Dylan). Below, see Wilco, Nick Lowe, and Mavis Sta­ples rehearse the song back­stage at the Civic Opera House in Chica­go in 2011.

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Bob Dylan Plays First Live Per­for­mance of “Hur­ri­cane,” His Song Defend­ing Rubin “Hur­ri­cane” Carter (RIP) in 1975

The Queen of Soul Con­quers Europe: Aretha Franklin in Ams­ter­dam, 1968

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hear Isolated Tracks From Five Great Rock Bassists: McCartney, Sting, Deacon, Jones & Lee

in Music | June 20th, 2014

Last week we sparked some heat­ed debate (and some typ­i­cal inter­net vit­ri­ol) with a post fea­tur­ing iso­lat­ed drum tracks from six of rock’s best drum­mers. Well, here we go again, this time with iso­lat­ed bass tracks…. Bear in mind that the bassists fea­tured here are some of the top play­ers in rock who actu­al­ly have bass tracks avail­able online. There are many more I’d love to hear out of the mix—and no short­age of jazz, reg­gae, funk, and soul bassists I deeply dig. If you don’t see your favorite play­er here… real­ly, don’t take it per­son­al­ly.

The bass gui­tar tends to be a for­got­ten instru­ment, some­times not even missed when it’s gone (think Black Keys, The Doors), but despite the suc­cess of the rare bass-less band, it’s hard to imag­ine some of the songs rep­re­sent­ed here with­out the fun­da­men­tal thump and groove of well-played basslines. We begin with John Deacon’s bassline for Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pres­sure,” above. As we men­tioned in a recent post on that song’s evo­lu­tion, Sty­lus named this the #1 bassline of all time.

I don’t know what that acco­lade is worth, but the bassline is at least one of the most rec­og­niz­able, thanks in no small part to Vanil­la Ice. In the con­text of Queen, Deacon’s per­haps best known for the pound­ing stomp of “Anoth­er One Bites the Dust,” one of many songs he wrote for the band. He has very delib­er­ate­ly dis­ap­peared from the spot­light since Fred­die Mercury’s death, but his taste­ful, melod­ic play­ing is in no dan­ger of being for­got­ten.

Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, on the oth­er hand, refus­es to leave the stage, for which the sev­er­al dozen musi­cians he’s toured and record­ed with since Zeppelin’s demise are all grate­ful. Cur­rent­ly one-third of super­group Them Crooked Vul­tures (with Dave Grohl and Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme), Jones also plays man­dolin (on Zep’s “Going to Cal­i­for­nia,” for exam­ple), lap steel, and this triple-necked mon­ster. For all his con­tin­ued rel­e­vance into the 21st cen­tu­ry, Jones’s some­times smooth, some­times burly basslines for Led Zep­pelin, such as the unfor­get­table “Ram­ble On” riff above, will be his endur­ing lega­cy. One would have to be a hell of a bass play­er to keep up with John Bon­ham, and John Paul Jones is exact­ly that. He got his start play­ing jazz at age 15, and while still a teenag­er, played in a jazz-rock col­lec­tive that includ­ed John McLaugh­lin (whom Jeff Beck has called “the best gui­tarist alive”). Want to learn how Jones does it? Check out this bass les­son with the mas­ter him­self.

When the sub­ject of rock bassists aris­es, Ged­dy Lee’s name will invari­ably come up. Like his band­mate Neil Peart, Lee’s musi­cian­ship astounds, his prog-rock stylings seem inim­itable, except per­haps by Primus’ Les Clay­pool (who Lee names as one of his favorites). Bass mag­a­zine No Tre­ble calls Rush’s “YYZ” (above) “one of the great­est bass lines of all time.” It’s not exact­ly my cup of tea, but I do know at least one bass play­er who left for Berklee Col­lege of Music hat­ing Rush, then came back lis­ten­ing to this song over and over in hushed awe. Not every­one loves Lee’s over-the-top high pitched vocals, but one has to admire the fact that he plays basslines like this while singing some of the most philo­soph­i­cal lyrics in rock, cour­tesy of drum­mer Peart.

The last two bass tracks fea­ture bassists who, like Lee, are also singers. No one pulls that off with more grace and style than Paul McCart­ney. In the bassline to The Bea­t­les “Come Togeth­er” (above), you can hear the deep, res­o­nant tone of McCartney’s semi-hol­low Hofn­er vio­lin bass (many of which have been “nicked” over the years). Of McCartney’s play­ing, John Lennon once said, “Paul was one of the most inno­v­a­tive bass play­ers ever. And half the stuff that is going on now is direct­ly ripped off from his Bea­t­les peri­od.” In my own bass-play­ing days, I cer­tain­ly stole my share of ideas from McCartney—or more prob­a­bly, his basslines were etched into my music brain, and my fin­gers auto­mat­i­cal­ly plucked out McCart­ney-style pat­terns. Music Radar puts “Come Togeth­er” at the top of a list of “Paul McCartney’s 12 great­est Bea­t­les bass per­for­mances,” for the “spooky, sin­u­ous, throb­bing and groovy” track above, “as orig­i­nal as it gets.”

Our iso­lat­ed drum tracks post hap­pened to fea­ture the oth­er rhyth­mic halves of every play­er on this list except John Dea­con, and while this wasn’t exact­ly by design, it’s no sur­prise to me that’s how it worked out. A great rhythm sec­tion works as a close­ly-aligned team, find­ing locked grooves, cre­at­ing empha­sis and punc­tu­a­tion, build­ing struc­tures and spaces for lead play­ers to fill. A drum­mer like the Police’s Stew­art Copeland need­ed a bassist as pre­cise yet pas­sion­ate as Sting. Very few oth­er bands have suc­cess­ful­ly fused punk, jazz, and reg­gae rhythms into a greater whole, a feat accom­plished in part because of Sting’s ver­sa­til­i­ty as a play­er. From the mut­ed “train engine” punk of “Next to You” to the left-field pop of “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” (above), Sting’s aggres­sive play­ing, often fret­less, most­ly finger-picked—to quote that rep­utable source Uncy­clo­pe­dia—“makes him bet­ter than all oth­er musi­cians com­bined by 12 orders of mag­ni­tude, and that’s a pop fact.”

But seri­ous­ly, he’s good, and so are dozens of oth­er rock bassists who don’t appear above. Name your favorites, and if you find their bass tracks online, share ‘em! Alright, let the bass slugfest begin, and be sure to check out No Tre­ble’s “Iso­lat­ed Bass Track Week” posts, with tracks from undis­put­ed mas­ters of the instru­ment like James Jamer­son and Jaco Pas­to­ri­ous.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

The Sto­ry of the Bass: New Video Gives Us 500 Years of Music His­to­ry in 8 Min­utes

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness