THE FREEWHEELING INTERNATIONAL journey of Phil Chen began in 1964 when he took a banana boat from his Kingston, Jamaica, birthplace to London to promote the earliest forms of what we now call “ska” music. He landed smack dab in the middle of the heaviest scene in the formative years of rock. For the next ten years he played same-night gigs, shared venue stages, and just generally hung out with larger-than-life acts like the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, the Who, you name it. Like any freelance musician working it fulltime, he had some great gigs and some heart-stopping near misses; on one occasion, he missed a call to join Rod Stewart and the Faces because he was tracking an album in Jamaica, and many of his close friends were already in rock’s biggest acts.
But finally, in October 1974, while Chen was playing with Robbie Krieger and John Densmore of the Doors in what they called the Butts Band, Chen’s years of toiling paid off handsomely in the form of a call from keyboardist Max Middleton. Guitarist Jeff Beck was making an instrumental jazz/rock fusion album, and they needed a bassist. Nine classic tracks and five months later, the record came out, went gold in 1976, and went on to become one of the seminal fusion albums of the decade, if not the entire genre.
The sound of Blow By Blow isn’t one of laser-like precision. It’s loose, grooving, greasy, and jammy. The rhythm section would settle into grooves and vamp on them indefinitely, the time would push and pull organically, and Chen’s thick, raunchy ’62 P-Bass pumped out simple, catchy lines that bands would be rocking out on for years. As to why this record stuck so hard, Chen puts it simply: “We were able to capture the spontaneous groove in a few takes, and a great melody never dies.”
An examination of three cuts from Blow By Blow reveals a triumph of tone and groove over form and complication for both Beck and Chen. On the classic rock-shuffle anthem “Freeway Jam” (Ex. 1), Chen and drummer Richard Bailey spend over a minute doing nothing but grooving, with Chen pedaling the G, before launching into the bass line shown here. Note how it constantly returns to the low G; Phil defies the temptation to stay up high and play licks. This line occupies the majority of the tune, and Chen’s only fills are down low, with a few well-placed climbs up to the root from the low E.
“‘Freeway Jam’ was, as the name suggests, a jam with a rough framework for the bridge section,” Chen recalls. “I can’t remember how many takes … two or three, maybe. My lack of perfect pitch was the key element as I copied [Miles Davis bassist] Michael Henderson’s bass line, ‘mistakes’ and all, but made it mine and put my own stamp on it. Inspired by Richard’s hypnotic groove, I guess you could say the bass line was a Chen/Henderson/ Bailey groove thang!”
The main riff in “AIR Blower” (Ex. 2) is busier and funkier, with a 16th-note pulse for the first two beats before a clipped highlow series of E’s. Once again, this part of the tune is just a one-bar groove, with Chen relentlessly pushing forward as the main driving force underneath Beck’s screaming lead.
Taking this concept a step further, the bass line from “Constipated Duck” (Ex. 3) is the greasiest of the three, and requires some right-hand dexterity to make it bounce correctly. Check out how everything from the first ghost-note E to the last tied note of beat three is played on the A string, but the D in beat four is played on the D string for a more smooth skip up to the chromatic climb on the G string just before the repeat.
Not that Phil Chen spent a lot of time thinking about that when he laid it down. By his own admission, he’s a feel player. “Playing arranger’s parts was not my forte, but making them groove was. I would call the guitarist on the session and ask him to show up early so he could play the bass parts while I memorized them and made them my own, and lunch was on me. Out went the music and in came the groove while a hit was being created. Sorry mate—50 gold and platinum LPs and I still can’t read! Ha!”
Legendary producer George Martin achieved Chen’s sound simply with a DI and a miked Ampeg B-15. In perhaps the ultimate homage to the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Chen’s P-Bass has been his one and only main axe for as long as he’s been playing, and it’s had the same La Bella .052–.110 strings on it for—wait for it—45 years. “It’s still sounding amazing and still going strong,” he proclaims.
Those strings may or may not make it another 45 years, but Phil Chen’s work on Blow By Blow is guaranteed to last that long, and probably longer.