Holding it Down- Punk’s wild gift to Bass John Doe
It’s easy to hold bassists who shred in high regard. Bass players who dance around the fretboard instead of simply walking it. Bass players who know and use all the possible combinations of thirds, fifths, inversions, octaves, and whatever the hell Michael Manring is thinking about when he plays. We all love them. The bass players who don’t get enough credit are the workmen and women who hold it down. Those without whom songs are merely guitar players showing off, singers howling and growling, and drummers counting to four under their breath. This series is for them- The bassists who hold it down so everyone else can fly.
credit- https://images.app.goo.gl/BZWJhugyFk211Cpx7
The only reason I’m not going to assert that X is the greatest punk band of all time is because I’m a giant Henry Rollins fanboy so I’ll always go to Black Flag first, Nick Cave’s The Birthday Party was more post-punk than punk, and X made their impression on me before The Clash did.* There’s a reason Penelope Spheeris decided to start The Decline of Western Civilization Pt. 1 with an X performance. X was and is again Excene Cervanka on vocals and poetry, Billy Zoom on smiles and guitar, DJ Bonebrake on clever names and drums, and our focus of today, John Doe on bass and vocals.
Bass player and singer John Doe formed X with Zoom in 1977 and John brought then-girlfriend Excene to their practices. John and Excene had met in a poetry class and before long she was holding a microphone and unknowingly setting the bar for dual singers in a rock band. Harmony isn’t the right word for the way their voices blended, but at the same time it’s the best word we have. Together they also set the gold standard for lyric writing in their scene and any other. I’m not going to bother arguing with you about this. Listen to this instead.
This means that when someone talks about John Doe’s contributions to music they’re going to talk about his voice and his words. That he holds the low end down for X is something of a footnote. Oh yeah, he’s also the bass player. But in a band that, for most of its life, was the classic guitar/bass/drums arrangement, that’s one third of the instruments and the only link between the beat and the melody. In a genre not known for its playing as much as its attitude and ethos, X was able to capture both because of the talents of Zoom and Doe.
From the Decline of Western Civilization- Don’t skip the minute of Excene talking at the top because it says a lot that the band is worried about a $6 ticket sending the wrong message to their fans.
Play the root, find some passing notes and, oh yeah, hold the song together by being rock solid and on the button. When you think about a pocket we’re not supposed to think about punk players. A lot of that, I’d imagine, is because when most people think of punk they think of the Sex Pistols and Sid couldn’t even tune his bass, let alone play it. Holding It Down isn’t about flash and fancy. That’s not what this kind of music is about. Hell, if you can see X live and count on one hand how many true guitar solos Zoom takes why would we expect the bass lines to be any more than they need to be? Look up X tab, and there’s a disturbing lack of it online, and you’ll see that Doe’s parts follow the rock and roll tradition of '“You’ll need these two strings, you might need that third string, and I don’t really know why that fourth string is even there.”
Rather than continue to talk about John Doe and all the reasons bassists should hold him up as one of the best of us and a foundational player for rock and roll bass, I’m going to tell a story then link to two of my favorite X songs. Listen to Doe play. He’s doing the work. He’s holding the song together. To learn more about him, aside from listening to All The Music, find his book Under the Big Black Sun.
I discovered X through Rollins. He talks about Excene in some of his older journals, and then in 2006 X took the original Rollins Band line-up on tour, along with a band all of you should listen to called The Riverboat Gamblers. I bought the ticket for Rollins, and then did my music nerd research to find out how excited I should be for the other two band. The Gamblers were easy, I fell right in love. That’s my kind of rock and roll. X I didn’t get. Excene’s voice and how it melded with Doe sounded off to me. I wasn’t into punk yet aside from Rollins. My CDs were Henry and then as much thrash metal as I could buy. I thought I knew what Punk sounded like, and X doesn’t sound like that. I spun Wild Gift and Live In Los Angeles and spun it and spun it. Henry likes them, they must be good. I started to feel it. The concert came. The Gamblers are a hell of a live band and immediately made the ticket price worth it. Rollins destroyed, as he does. (I’ll have to write one of these about both bass players for the Rollins band at some point.) And then X came on and I got it. You know those bands that you like but you don’t appreciate until you see it happen in front of you, surrounded by the converted? X was that kind of band for me. They don’t move around too much, there’s no pyro or posing or even much stage banter. They just get on stage and do punk rock at you for ninety minutes until your mental picture of what punk rock is and can be has been altered at a molecular level. That’s X live. That’s John Doe on slamming his pick against the strings of his bass and singing his ass off.
If you don’t know X and you don’t get it from the videos here, listen again. Let it inside you. It’s that kind of music. And the bass is driving.
X (Johnny hit and run Paulene) LIVE**
*waits for the argument about definitions that have been argued about for 40 years. I will say that one of the reasons X is a Top 3 punk band is because they embodied the punk idea that there was no Look or Sound or Uniform. Billy Zoom does not look “punk” which is what makes them punk. X’s albums have actual production value and they could play and sing.
** I fucking love Billy Zoom’s stage everything. Shiny guitar, wide stance, smile. Dude looked like that for the entire show when I saw them. I don’t think his feet moved and I don’t think she stopped smiling out at the crowd. It is freaking weird and so contrary to “a show” and it’s great.
Doug Robertson is the editor of The Bass Blog, the blog component of The Bass Channel, your one stop YouTube channel for all things bass. His number one is a Mexican Geddy Lee Signature Jazz and his boomer is a BEAD tuned T-Bird. Find books by Doug here. If you’re interested in contributing to The Bass Blog please reach out to Doug at doug@thebasschannel.net. We would love to hear from you.
