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The Yardbirds’ “Lost Woman”
Paul Samwell-Smith’s Complete Bass Line
By Stevie Glasgow | Michael ocHs Archives / Getty Images
While the Yardbirds are rightly famed for having kickstarted
the careers of three British guitar legends—Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck,
and Jimmy Page—the band was far more than a mere nursery for six-string
superstars. Their freewheeling mid-song interludes (dubbed “rave-ups”), deft
combination of blues and harder-edged sensibilities, and willingness to engage
with non-mainstream ideas such as Gregorian chant exerted a powerful influence
on their mid-’60s contemporaries and presaged many developments in
the worlds of experimental and heavy rock. In its heyday, the group enjoyed
success on both sides of the Pond with such hits as “For Your Love,” “Heart
Full of Soul,” “Shapes of Things,” and “Over Under Sideways Down.”
Like many other low-enders, the band’s founding bassist, Paul Samwell-
Smith, started out as a guitarist. “When the Yardbirds started, under the
name of the Metropolis Blues Quartet, [Yardbirds vocalist/harmonicist] Keith
Relf was playing guitar, and playing rather well, so I volunteered to play the
bass—well, someone had to!” he says. The Surrey, England-born musician
cites Ricky Fenson of the Cyril Davies Band as an early influence. “He blew my
mind when I watched them play … I copied much of his style, as did others,
including Bill Wyman.”
The Yardbirds’ first studio album, Yardbirds [1966, Columbia]—a.k.a. Roger
the Engineer and released in the States as Over Under Sideways Down—opens
with “Lost Woman,” a lively, riff-based number that features a prime example
of the band’s celebrated rave-up style. Samwell-Smith recalls: “I used my
Epiphone Rivoli bass, a short-scale model which I used for everything, and
which made it easier to play chords. In fact, I found it easier all around to reach
the notes—those long-scale Fender Jazz models sounded fantastic, but they
scared the shit out of me. I used black nylon tapewound strings to reduce the
friction, as I played a lot of chords and slid up and down the fretboard a lot.
I found with wire-wound strings I’d wear my fingers down.” Paul—who also
served as the album’s co-producer—believes the song was likely recorded live
in one take, with the bass sound captured using a miked Marshall rig comprising
an amp and a four-speaker unit.
Following a hi-hat countoff, the bass announces the song’s foundational
hook: a bobbing pick-plucked riff built around the G minor pentatonic scale.
This riff continues through the guitar-free intro and verse (letter A), accompanied
by drummer Jim McCarty’s throbbing tom-tom ostinato and Relf’s vocals.
Samwell-Smith changes tack for the chorus at B, deploying root-5th power
chords (enlivened by an occasional 6th) throughout
bars 10–12, while adding beat four color to the
C and D chords with a minor-3rd-to-major-3rd halfstep.
“These are the classic Jimmy Reed-type blues
chords, which I used a lot,” he notes.
Following a repeat of the verse (C) and chorus
(D), the song segues into the rave-up section at letter
E via the pivotal D7#9 chord in bar 25. Here, the
bass, harmonica, and a single guitar hammer out
a snappy unison line. Dig how Paul duplicates the
bluesy bends of the guitar and harmonica throughout
this section. “That was me just trying to be a
guitar player, yet again.” The unison line continues
through F, this time bolstered by guitarist Chris
Dreja’s 16th-note G’s. At letter G, Paul drops to a
low, 3rd-fret G, heralding a slow, whole-note climb
up the G minor pentatonic scale that extends into
bar 53 under Relf’s wailing harp solo and Jeff Beck’s
off-the-cuff axe-work. The momentum builds further
through section H, which features a doubletime
cousin of the two-bar unison phrase heard
in E and F. Samwell-Smith takes over Dreja’s hypnotic
16th-note G’s at letter I, gradually adding in
the 5th and octave above, as the rave-up—now a
thick morass of crashing guitars, feedback, wailing
harmonica, and throbbing bass—careens toward
an abrupt climax in bar 83. This is followed by a
return to the main riff at J, and a recap of the verse
(K) and chorus (L) before closing out over a raucous
G9 chord in bars 97–98.
Regarding the band’s celebrated, slow-build
interludes, Samwell-Smith explains: “It was something
we always did in our live performances, so it
was easy to agree on the basic shape of the improvised
part and make it up on the spot. It all relied
on eye contact to indicate when the rave should
56 bassplayer.com / march2017