Paul McCartney earned himself a name as a great bassist however, he also has a huge interest in guitar, in fact, he never intended to become a bass player, he only started to play bass after Stuart Sutcliffe, the original bassist of the Beatles left the band. Just like everyone else he was more interested to play guitar because they thought that bass is for someone from the band that stays in the back and some who can’t pull any birds.
Moreover, Paul has occasionally talked about his favorite guitarists and he never forgets to mention Jimi Hendrix. McCartney even insists that no one has even come close to Hendrix’s level of guitar playing. Hendrix is indeed one of a kind, however, there are several guitarists who are from the early times that Macca considers his guitar heroes. So who are the early guitarists that Paul really admires? we will find out in this article.
Early guitarists Paul McCartney admires
It is no secret that The Beatles were highly inspired by the father of rock and roll, Chuck Berry, and during their early stage, they were also popular for covering Berry’s songs. However, Berry was not the only guitarist who amazed Paul, he also loved Scotty Moore, which he revealed in an interview with Classic Rock Magazine.
Furthermore, in the same interview, Macca mentioned several early guitarists who he thought fantastic, he said, “Well, my interest in fingerpicking came from Chet Atkins, I remember a lot of us tried to learn ‘Trambone’, an instrumental that’s on an album of his called Down Home. Otherwise, I loved Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and [skiffle legend] Lonnie Donegan’s guitarist, Denny Wright, who was fantastic. I liked acoustic folk playing by Woody Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.”
Along with Berry, Atkins also seems to have inspired Paul to create music or song. He revealed that it was Atkins who inspired The Beatles’ song, Michelle. This song was from the band’s sixth studio album Rubber Soul which was released back in 1965.
These are the early guitarists who Macca considers his heroes. Moreover, as mentioned above, Paul never had any interest or intention to become a bass player. Paul once mentioned in an interview with the 1990 issue of Guitar Player that he has a problem with George Harrison’s book where Harrison made it sound like Paul wanted to become the bassist of the band but the truth was McCartney never wanted to be the bassist. He said, “We all wanted to be guitar players.”
Moreover, in an interview with Bass Player magazine in 1995 McCartney said, “None of us wanted to be the bass player.” However, with time Paul’s point of view on bass started changing and he started to love playing bass guitar. However, Paul not only started to love playing bass but also worked hard and become a great bassist he started inspiring other bass players. According to Led Zeppelin’s bassist John Paul Jones, Paul is the perfect bassist. He said, “I think he’s perfect, He’s improved so much since the early Beatles days, and everything is still right.”
