Department of Music Lecture: Paul McCartney’s Evolution as a Bass Player: From Emulation to Innovation

Brian Wright, Associate Professor of Music History at University of North Texas

Title

Paul McCartney’s Evolution as a Bass Player: From Emulation to Innovation

Abstract

The Beatles’ global popularity was the single most significant development in popular music of the mid-to-late 1960s, so much so that it is difficult to fully convey the immensity of their impact. Over the course of their short career, they had seventeen No. 1 hits in the UK and twenty in the US. Millions and millions of young people bought their records, and their commercial success was so vast and unprecedented that it fundamentally altered the direction of both the British and American music industries. To this day, fans and historians continue to obsess over the trajectory and significance of the Beatles’ career. Yet relatively few have specifically explored Paul McCartney’s development as a bass player.

Building on the work of Jack Hamilton and Andy Babiuk, this presentation chronicles the wider cultural, social, and technological factors that shaped McCartney’s bass playing across the Beatles’ recorded output, from their early days in Hamburg up through Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). It contextualizes McCartney as part of a wider generation of young British musicians who were drawn to the perceived rebelliousness of American popular music, especially African American music. It then charts how McCartney evolved from imitating American pop styles to developing his own melodic approach to bass playing—a process that Andrew Kellett describes as “adoption, emulation, creativity.” Ultimately, this presentation highlights both McCartney’s musical ingenuity and the inherent complexities of his cross-cultural borrowings, revealing the process through which he became the most famous bass player of the 1960s.

Biography

Brian F. Wright is Associate Professor of Music History at the University of North Texas, where he specializes in the history of American popular music. He holds a Ph.D. in historical musicology from Case Western Reserve University and is a former research assistant for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Library and Archive. His book-length history of the electric bass, The Bastard Instrument, received the 2025 ASCAP Deems Taylor / Virgil Thomson Book Award, and his work has appeared in the Journal of the Society for American Music and the Journal of Popular Music Studies, as well as in Vintage Guitar and Bass Player Magazine.