Bass players often bear the brunt of playful jokes, such as the old line, “those who can’t play guitar, play bass.” Even Paul McCartney, the legendary bassist of The Beatles, wasn’t immune to feeling like he was relegated to the instrument. (As a bassist myself, I don’t entirely agree with this stereotype, though I can’t help but find it amusing.)
There were many reasons behind McCartney’s move to bass, one being the departure of Stu Sutcliffe from the band in 1961. However, some might argue that the seeds were planted much earlier, during McCartney’s first gig with the Quarrymen on October 18, 1957.
McCartney first encountered the Quarrymen, led by John Lennon, in July 1957. He and his friend Ivan Vaughan attended the Woolton Village Fête to watch a skiffle band perform. The band played a half-improvised rendition of the Del-Vikings’ “Come Go With Me,” with Lennon adding blues lines between the refrain. “I thought that was good, and he was singing well,” McCartney recalled in Anthology.
After the band’s first set, McCartney found himself backstage. Wanting to impress the older teenagers, including Lennon, he drank some beer and eventually sat at the piano. McCartney caught the attention of the group by performing Little Richard covers and then took up a guitar to play “Twenty Flight Rock” upside down. His impressive feat led the Quarrymen to ask him to join the band.
One day, while McCartney was biking around Woolton, he ran into Pete Shotton, a member of the Quarrymen. “He said, ‘Hey, Paul, it was good the other day, and we’ve been having a talk. Would you like to join the group?’ I said, ‘I’ll have to think about it.’ But I was quite excited by the offer. I agreed to join.”
Ahead of McCartney’s first gig with the Quarrymen, the group was rehearsing “Guitar Boogie” by Arthur Smith and His Cracker-Jacks. “I was given a guitar solo,” McCartney said. “I could play it easily in rehearsal, so they elected that I should do it as my solo. Things were going fine. But when the moment came in the performance, I got sticky fingers. I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ I was just too frightened.”
“It was too big a moment with everyone looking at the guitar player,” he continued. “I couldn’t do it. That’s why George [Harrison] was brought in.” Harrison, too, had a similar experience. “George could play ‘Raunchy’ so well it really sounded like the record. We were all on the top of an empty bus one night, and I said, ‘Go on, George.’ He got his guitar out and sure enough, he could play it. Everyone agreed, ‘You’re in. You’ve done it.’”
Harrison quickly claimed his spot as the band’s lead guitarist, except for a few Chuck Berry-style solos performed by John Lennon. McCartney remained the rhythm guitarist in the band’s early days until bassist Stu Sutcliffe left in 1961. After Sutcliffe’s departure, McCartney switched to bass, a role that would eventually make him internationally famous.
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