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BassPlayer.com >> This Month >> Elvis Costello & The Attractions’ “pump It Up”
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Elvis Costello & The Attractions’ “Pump It Up”| September, 2007 Van Halen’s David Lee Roth once asserted that rock critics like Elvis Costello because rock critics look like Elvis Costello. While Diamond Dave might have been on to something, there’s certainly more to the story. For one, Costello managed to recruit some of the baddest players around for his backing band, the Attractions. Between 1978 and 1987, Bruce Thomas’s fat, dubby bass tone, ebullient lines, and slick fills formed the core of Costello’s sound. On tracks such as “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea,” “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding,” and “Every Day I Write the Book,” Thomas pledged allegiance to the boogie and swagger of early rock & roll while referencing reggae, R&B, and disco. Thomas found his groove early on, setting the tone for his tenure as Costello’s low-end foil with his angular subhook on “Pump It Up” [This Year’s Model, Columbia, 1978]. On the good-time party anthem, Thomas’s steady hand brings depth and stability to Costello’s edgy jitter. The boogie-woogie bass lines of yesteryear were all about the 6th and 7th, the scale degrees that kick off the “Pump It Up” intro [Ex. 1]. Add Bruce’s greasy chromatic approach in beat four—playing the minor and then the major 3rd—and you have a bass line that’s dead sexy. Ex. 2, which comes from what could be called the “pre-verse,” moves between the root and the 7th of the B7 chord. Beat four of the second bar contains a signature Thomas move: a subtle rhythmic stutter that breaks up the phrase and gives the groove a little tweak. Ex. 3 shows Thomas’s line from the verse through the chorus. Look familiar? The verse is just like the intro groove, only up a 4th. In the chorus, Thomas dances around within E7, leaping between the 3rd (C#) and the octave. Once you’ve got this one under your fingers, check out some other Elvis Costello and dig on Thomas’s bass brilliance. It’ll get you pumped! Where’s the Sheet Music?!Much of the sheet music that Bass Player publishes is copyrighted material, licensed from the artists to run only in the printed version of the magazine. Bass Player continues to offer the explanatory text of these lessons online, but in order to get the complete song transcriptions and other bits of licensed sheet music, you need to have a copy of the magazine. Sure, you could run down to the local music shop or corner store and pick up the latest issue of Bass Player, but why not subscribe today? It's easy, cheap and you'll never miss another lesson!
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