Led Zep - Heartbreaker - Bass

Totally agree.

 

And on the same album, that very cool walking bass line during the verses of "Bring It On Home". It really drives the song along.

 

He's not playing triplets on the high hat, it's studio echo added afterwards. If you get the LZ II companion disc you can hear how it was played originally.

That sound had bugged me for years as well.

 

You're starting to give yourself away here. Admit it, you just want to get a reaction from us!

 

Tremolo, perhaps?

 

That was done with high passed tape delay, Bonham didn’t actually play it that way.

 

LZ II is rock music at its very best and when rock is at it's very best this generally means someone is pushing the envelope. And that usually means things don't always sound like we would expect them to, it is hard to define, but for me the best rock music is when it sounds like this - distorted, slightly out of tune? Not sure, something I can't quite put my finger on. Closest I can get is by saying 'on the edge'.
Page and Jones sure knew what they were doing though, they didn't want the nice clean sound that they had to have for all those sessions they had to endure. They wanted something mean and dirty, something which grabs the attention and kicks some butt whilst doing so. The bass on this whole album sounds amazing to these ears.

 

I have a flawless RL vinyl rip burned to CDR. The bass is just massive, no CD version does it justice, not even the Diament.

The Lemon Song is the coolest bass solo based on blues progression ever, in the context of a hard rock song. I personally think 2 has the best production values of all the studio albums. Bass out of tune?
Don't know or care.

 

Heartbreaker bass guitar is JPJ through a cranked Leslie amp. It's the only time he used a Leslie amp for bass and it paid off beautifully.

For everyone saying its a mixture of the variamp and fuzz on the Acoustic 360 preamp -- it's not. JPJ never used the fuzz function on that. If you have ever played one you know why.

Not trying to start a war here or even much of a debate, but it seems like guitar players regard themselves as "righteous" if they vocalize how bad and sloppy Page's playing on the Heartbreaker solo break is. I would suggest to those folks why don't they try and learn that solo and play it themselves? Or perhaps what Page is doing there is a little beyond your vision of what an unaccompanied guitar solo should be?

I don't hear anything other than Jimmy Page doing exactly what he meant to do. If you personally don't like it, then that's another thing entirely.

 

I have heard the sloppy comment for 30 years from guitarists I jammed with in cover bands. My response was always the same: OK, then create a song that's going to be known by anyone who has listened to FM radio for the last 45 years.

 

Wow that guitar solo is iconic best part of the song. Seen Page do it live twice. It's a shame you don't get it?

 

Absolutely none of the people who adopt the "sloppy" theme can even play the solo.

I still stand by the theory that it's a bit beyond their vision of what a guitar solo ought to sound like. So they write it off and don't give it a chance. It's like it doesn't compute in their brain.

 

Must have been something to see.

 

My lord.

Maybe Steven Wilson could "fix" it in a hypothetical 5.1 remix, and make sure nothing else on the track goes into the red.

And while he's at it, he could make all the little flubs in Jimmy's unaccompanied solo go away.

 

Absolutely right on. Page knew precisely what he was doing. If he had wanted to do a nice clean sounding solo like he had done countless times on all the sessions he had done in the past then he could have very easily done so. He was moving light years away from all that though with Led Zeppelin and he had 100% clarity on what he wanted to achieve on those first 2 albums. These were a statement to the world that this is how great rock music should be played and recorded.

 

There's an obvious flutter to the sound on the recording, even when he's not playing.

 

There is modulation of some kind. Vibrato, tremolo or leslie.

You can even hear the air gently going fefefefe from the effect.

 

Heartbreaker is perfection, a glorious mess of all that is great about rock music.

 

If you listen to the isolated bass track, you can hear what presumably is a Leslie going in the background all the time, even during pauses in JPJ’s playing. Though it seems like he did turn it on and off during certain points in the song.