Similar to a weight-guesser at a fair, your age can probably be approximated based on which bass lines you recognize. For example, here are some notable bass riffs, in chronological order:
1958
If you recognize Peggy Lee’s smoldering song Fever, you were either around in the 1950s or your parents or grandparents were and still played the “oldies but goodies”:
Note: If you want to hear the bass “in context” for any of these (not just isolated snippets), google “youtube [name of artist or band] [name of song]” such as “youtube Peggy Lee Fever”
1964
Oh pretty much everybody living (in the US, anyway) knows this song about an unnamed woman — either the original by Roy Orbison or a cover, such as the one by Van Halen:
1967
Sunshine of Your Love was the first hard rock song I remember; when I first heard this super cool roof-raiser from the psychedelic blues power trio Cream, I listened to it over and over and over again for weeks on end (yes, I can be easily amused at times).
1968
Here’s one that personifies the psychedelic 1960s, In-a-Gadda-da-Vida by Iron Butterfly:
By the way, there are two interesting stories about that song. The first is that the band was sharing living quarters, as they were “struggling musicians/starving artists”; while the others had day jobs contributing to the local economy (their household), one of their number, bassist Lee Dorman, had no outside job. The rest of his bandmates (including 17-year-old guitarist Erik Brann) were irritated with Lee one day after coming in from working at pizza parlors and the like, to find him relaxing with a jug of wine. They challenged him about what he had done with his leisure time that day (“slacker!”). Dorman told them he had written a song. The song was In-a-Gadda-da-Vida which, as rumor has it, was his drunken pronunciation of “In the Garden of Eden” as he demonstrated it to them.
The second story is that when they went into the studio to record, they were rehearsing it and had gone through all seventeen minutes of it and felt ready to record, but looked in vain for the producer. “Where did he go?” He then stuck his head out of a window above them and said, “That’s it, boys! We’ve got it!” One take for a mega-hit.
By the way, the epic 17-minute-plus song was released on AM radio as a single with an attention-deficit-disorder-friendly length of 2 minutes and 52 seconds.
1969
Come Together by the Beatles was the first bass line I heard that was so cool that I thought it was some kind of magic. I didn’t know what instrument it was, but I knew that whatever it was, it was the epitome of cool — not just the bass part, but Ringo’s drumming, too (remember, drums and bass are a team), and also the “Sh!,” the keyboards, the guitar fills, and the lyrics — they were a “gas”: mindticklingly nonsensical!
1977
Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain, as played by John McVie (the “Mac” part of Fleetwood Mac, the other part being John’s partner in rhythm, drummer Mick Fleetwood).
In the 1970s, Fleetwood Mac (featuring Peter Green on guitar) got tired of being just another blues band from England and morphed, like REO Speedwagon on steroids, into a pop band/top singles machine with new members Lindsay Buckingham Palace and Stevie Nicks becoming the front man/woman team. Fleetwood and McVie remained the heart and soul of the outfit, though (along with John’s then-wife Christine on keyboards and vocals).
1979
If you were around in the late 1970s, you could not have escaped My Sharona by The Knack (and you may have also heard Weird Al Jankovic’s take on it, “My Balogna”)
1980
Queen Victoria (or was it Elizabeth?) had the ultimate bass classic of the 1980s, Another One Bites the Dust:
1981
Rick James funked it up in 1981 with Superfreak:
1982
Michael Jackson had a million mega-hits in the 1980s, one of which was Beat It:
1992
In 1992, Green Day came out with Longview:
2005
Gorillaz released the song Feel Good, Inc. Yes, the name of the band sounds more like a song title, and the song title sounds more like a band name. Kids these daze.
2014
Meghan Trainor’s song All About That Bass is not really about bass, as the bass plays an integral but relatively subdued part in it. Here it is sans vocals or anything else to obscure it:
Not only do styles or “fashions” in playing the bass change with the times, but naturally between musical genres there are marked differences, too. We’ll explore some of those in Part 3 (stay tuned for some examples of rock, funk, jazz, blues, Motown, soul, reggae, and pop bass playing).
Bass Chronicles Part 1 (“Bassics of the Bass”) can be found here.