“I was never a huge Led Zeppelin fan, but I always loved that song, and the open strings just set it up for bass”: Watch Stuart Hamm’s bass arrangement of Led Zeppelin’s Going to California

Hailed as one of the modern virtuosos of the bass guitar, Stuart Hamm has enjoyed a lengthy career involving top sideman jobs with guitarists Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, burning trio sessions with GHS, acclaimed instructional videos, and a string of bass-intensive solo albums.

A highlight from his fifth studio outing, Just Outside Of Normal, came in the form of a cover of Led Zeppelin’s Going To California. “That was a song I played at a benefit concert with my buddy Jude Gold and this top 40 band,” Hamm told Bass Player. 

“At one point I was just messing around with some different harmonics on it, and then the open strings just set it up so that I could play the melody. I was never a huge Led Zeppelin fan, but I always loved that song. So I started working it up, and playing it in my clinics. It always reminds me of home when I’m travelling.” 

Stu Hamm Band plays "Going to California" on EMGtv - YouTube

Watch On

After a couple of years of playing it live, Hamm decided to include a band arrangement on his next album.

“Again, I wanted something different, so I got Alan Hertz to play drums because I knew he would have the right vibe, and he nailed it in just one take; he just had the perfect feel for that. Then I got Mark McGee, who had played on the song Remember from my record Outbound, to come in and play slide guitar. I know so many great musicians and it’s just great to be able to call someone up who you know will have the right spark for it.”

Compositionally, the album also takes in a range of genres, from Dixieland jazz to polka and rock boogie.

“There’s some different stuff on there compositionally, but there’s some ripping stuff, too.” The first track, The Obligatory Boogie, opens with a trademark Stuart Hamm slap figure which later develops into a series of blistering solo lines, while the The Clarinet Polka features the intensive fingerstyle passages and tapping runs that have made him a bass icon.

However, it’s Big Roller that stands out as the most stylistically diverse track on the album. This quick-paced Dixieland tune features a lilting soprano sax melody and a supple swing groove supplied by drummer Stanton Moore.

“That was something I wrote for a show called Teatro Zinzanni that I did in San Francisco for three years. It was like Cirque du Soleil meets dinner theatre, and I ended up writing a bunch of music for the band. 

“I originally wrote it with a Gene Krupa-style hi-hat pattern. Then I sent it to Stanton Moore and he did two versions, one that was straight-ahead swing like I wanted, but he also did his own thing with it.

“Originally it was hard for me to hear because it wasn’t the way I wrote the song, but the more I listened to it the more I liked it. That’s great because I like to write for the musicians that I have – why have Stanton Moore and not have him do his thing on it, right?”

Big Roller - YouTube

Watch On

Asked if he feels that he is improving as a bass player, Hamm told BP: “Compositionally I'm really pleased with the way I'm going. There's no competition among bass players: we're a band of brothers, but as you get older, taste kicks in a little bit and you don't feel the need to show off any more. And it's good to be able to inspire someone by explaining you were just a guy who worked hard and stuck with it. 

”I remember working in McDonald's in Boston, I was broke and hungry and in a couple of great bands doing gigs where no-one turned up. I'd decided to go and work in my mom's shoe store, when the phone rang. It was Steve Vai, he'd just left Zappa's band and wanted me over in California to record an album. Not exactly a difficult choice to make!”