When did Steve really start playing power chords so much

The Flash said:
I think everyone does. Bass loses its magic when its only purpose is to beef up the guitar sound. The prevelance of that approach in modern metal productions annoys me quite a bit.

Shame 'Arry went that route as his career progressed as well. No stand out basslines from him in the Reunion era.
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Well he has had his moments. I quite like the bass work on The Longest Day or the little details he adds to Empire of the Clouds, to name just two examples.
 
The Flash said:
Killers is Steve's finest hour as a bassist. Nowhere near his finest as a songwriter, but Steve and Clive's performances make the album a worthwhile listen for me.

The Number of the Beast probably has his best combination of basslines and songwriting.
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Absolutely... Although my favorite Maiden bass line is by far Invaders. It almost makes me forget that awful chorus... (almost). Stuff like Killers, Innocent Exile, Wrathchild, Purgatory or MITRM are atonishing bass compositions as well.
 
GhostofCain said:
Well he has had his moments. I quite like the bass work on The Longest Day or the little details he adds to Empire of the Clouds, to name just two examples.
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Longest Day just follows the guitars though. Nothing special going on in the bassline. The intro sounds cool, though it's just 'Arry gallopping an E note on the A string, the most common fixture of all Maiden basslines.

karljant said:
Absolutely... Although my favorite Maiden bass line is by far Invaders. It almost makes me forget that awful chorus... (almost). Stuff like Killers, Innocent Exile, Wrathchild, Purgatory or MITRM are atonishing bass compositions as well.
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Invaders is one of my favorite basslines of his as well. Weird considering how weak the song is. A great bassline by itself can't salvage a badly written song, clearly.
 
I was just listening to the middle four tracks of Powerslave, and I have to say that I don't think those songs would be half as good without the amazing work Steve put in on the basslines. They definitely elevate the otherwise rather by the numbers tracks and it makes me a little sad because I think some of the weaker reunion era tracks might've been lifted by a similar attention being paid to the basslines.

I do agree that a good bassline can't fix a crappy song (Invaders is like the poster child for this) but I do think it helps, if nothing else. It's kind of a shame Steve almost entirely altered his approach in the 90s and onward. I think I actually heard somewhere that he had a very specific, meticulous way of writing the basslines up until FotD, after which he decided to just wing it a lot more? Don't quote me on that, but I wanna say it was actually mentioned in some documentary somewhere.
 
So it turns out "Childhoods End" could be the real start of Arry playing whole songs with bass chords. He would go on to do this a lot on X Factor and beyond..

Found this interview all these years later

"I've always played with my fingers. There's only been a couple of occasions when I played with a pick, when I wanted to play something really outrageous—doubling up rhythm, say. On the new album [Fear Of The Dark, 1992], on "Childhood's End," there's like a chord thing where I play single notes on one bit and I overdubbed a bass chord as well. I started using a pick at first, but then I got rid of that, didn't like it, and I played it with four fingernails, almost like a scratchboard, which got the sound I wanted.

It almost sounded like a pick, but actually I was playing downstrokes across all four strings, strumming with my four fingernails. That was mixed in—playing like that, obviously I'm not gonna get so much weight on it, so I actually put single notes on played with fingers, and mixed them together, during the choruses.

If we do that song live, I don't know what I'm gonna do [laughs]. I'll probably have to play the part with the fingernails. I've found over the last few albums I've been playing more bass chords than ever, to get the weight. Like when the guitars break out into a harmony-guitar section, it leaves things open, so to get the weight I tend to play a lot of bass chords, usually barre chords, like strumming downstrokes, playing the four strings."

 
Great thread and fascinating information. Thanks for sharing the interview!

Seems I'm in the minority (again :P ) but I quite like how Steve uses power chords. Of course, his work on the 80s albums is amazing and a joy to listen to, but variety is always a good thing. Elaborate lines with multiple fills is preferred, but if he's just following the root note I'd rather he use power chords for emphasis when changing chords, for example. That's better than just playing the root note the whole time.
 
Vaenyr said:
Great thread and fascinating information. Thanks for sharing the interview!

Seems I'm in the minority (again :P ) but I quite like how Steve uses power chords. Of course, his work on the 80s albums is amazing and a joy to listen to, but variety is always a good thing. Elaborate lines with multiple fills is preferred, but if he's just following the root note I'd rather he use power chords for emphasis when changing chords, for example. That's better than just playing the root note the whole time.
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Bass chords are pretty fun to play too
 
naranja said:
So it turns out "Childhoods End" could be the real start of Arry playing whole songs with bass chords. He would go on to do this a lot on X Factor and beyond..

Found this interview all these years later

"I've always played with my fingers. There's only been a couple of occasions when I played with a pick, when I wanted to play something really outrageous—doubling up rhythm, say. On the new album [Fear Of The Dark, 1992], on "Childhood's End," there's like a chord thing where I play single notes on one bit and I overdubbed a bass chord as well. I started using a pick at first, but then I got rid of that, didn't like it, and I played it with four fingernails, almost like a scratchboard, which got the sound I wanted.

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I think the most interesting part about this is not the chord-playing but Steve admitting to playing with a pick a few times. What? I've literally never heard of this before and now I'm immediately wondering where on the albums those incidents might've been.
 
Ruflux said:
I think the most interesting part about this is not the chord-playing but Steve admitting to playing with a pick a few times. What? I've literally never heard of this before and now I'm immediately wondering where on the albums those incidents might've been.
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I think he might be saying he tried to record the bass chords with a pick before deciding on using his fingernails like he does now
 
Yeah, Steve's approach to writing and playing changed in the mid-90's, but for an album I want a variety of both. Power chords and ''elaborate'' lines and fills. More playing like in Celts or Book Of Souls. His bass playing on the first 8 albums is just something else. Maybe he changed his approach because of the 3 guitars? Obviously not in 1995 though.

As a side note, I really want to know why Maiden haven't put in a lot of guitar harmonies or put more emphasis on them since the early Reunion (especially since 2010), even though live they used harmonies for some of the parts. I'm thinking about DOTR concert. That's very curious.
 
Yeah Steve is a wonderful bass player obviously but sometimes when you read casual articles about Maiden or reviews about the newer albums they make it sound like he's still flying all over the fretboard every song when he's been pretty much root note for thirty years. Not that there's anything wrong with that..
 
I’m listening to Childhood’s End now. The chords aren’t even that prominent. They’re in the harmony pre-solo section and under the solos. I have no idea why he made a big deal out this song when he was playing really prominent chords all the way through Holy Smoke on the previous album. You can even see him replicating it in the music video almost every time there’s a shot of him with a bass.
 
BludBrutha said:
Holy Smoke predates Childhood’s End and there are bass chords all over it.
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Yes I am aware of there being chords in that song. Also songs like Seventh Son and Evil that Men Do have the occasional chord, either for big stops or for the first note of a bar where he plays a chord and then goes back to fingers.
However songs like Holy Smoke etc were when he was really starting this chord at the start of the bar type, but playing the rest with fingers deal like below.


G|—9————————|
D|—9————————|
A|—7-777777777—|
E|——————————|

From Fear of the Dark and into the X Factor on was when we really started to see tons of something more akin to below. Harris playing often near full songs, especially if it's mid paced in strummed chords. Chords played with his nails and you see his hand strumming by the neck.

G|—99999—|
D|—99999—|
A|—77777—|
E|——————|

Afraid to Shoot Strangers,Edge of Darkness, Angel and the Gambler, Look for the Truth, Lightning Strikes Twice, Fortunes of War, the verses of Blood Brothers, the middle of the aftermath, vast swathes of Blood on the world's hands, nearly all of Journeyman after the intro, the start of The Red and the Black and other portions of it etc
 
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