Rick Rubin says Paul McCartney is the “best of all bass players”
Rick Rubin has said Paul McCartney is the “best of all bass players” in a new interview.
Speaking to MOJO magazine, Rubin said he thought McCartney was the best bass player of all time and was surprised by the “simplest” approach he takes to songwriting. Rubin previously teamed up with McCartney on the 2021 mini series, McCartney 3, 2, 1.
“I thought about how everything I’ve seen, Beatles-related, is either about the songwriting or Beatlemania,” Rubin told the magazine. “Paul McCartney the bass player, or Paul McCartney the musician, because he plays everything – that’s a little story told.
“You just think of him as Beatle Paul, yet in my opinion, he is the best of all bass players, he’s number one.”
The producer went on to see how amazed he was that the 80-year-old music icon has the “simplest” approach to writing mega-hits.
He continued: “What blew my mind was when he sat at the piano and he started showing me how to write a song.
“He was saying, ‘See, you could it like this’, and what he was showing me was the simplest thing, but then he starts moving his fingers around slightly, and all of a sudden it evolves into ‘Hey Jude’ or ‘Let It Be’. He’s using this technique that any child could do, then it morphs into one of the greatest songs of all time!”
Recently, it was revealed that McCartney was almost hit by a car while recreating the iconic artwork for The Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ album.
The incident happened while McCartney was filming for his daughter’s Abbey Road documentary If These Walls Could Talk.
Speaking about the incident earlier this year, Mary McCartney said: “The bit where the car nearly ran him over on the zebra crossing, that was so funny. As we were leaving [the studio], I said, ‘I’ll film you [on the crossing],’ and he went over and this car totally didn’t stop for him.”
If These Walls Could Talk is out now on Disney+ and charts the long history of the iconic London studio. The documentary features interviews with McCartney and fellow Beatle Ringo Starr, alongside Elton John, Nile Rodgers, Noel and Liam Gallagher, Roger Waters, Celeste, George Lucas and more.
“It was quite a complicated documentary to put together, because it’s not about a person or a life story. It’s about a building,” Mary McCartney told NME. “You can tell people really care about Abbey Road, but it’s like, ‘Why do they care about Abbey Road?’ And I think that’s the thing that I wanted to explore.”
The photographer and director also went on to reveal that “because of my surname, I almost shied away from doing the project”.
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Elizabeth Aubrey
NME
