If anyone who has watched Lap of the Gods "medley" live at the Rainbow.... the infamous scene where the camera zooms in on Deacy humming those high notes on the Bass before going straight back to low notes, not too long after Rogers screams.... was that a little prelude to a cliff Burton style lead bass solo...? If so long... could you say that John Deacon can add lead bass as one of his many styles that he had or... one of the first to um... pioneer lead bass albeit without the pedals that Cliff used on his bass solos..... Listen to Someday one day and you can almost hear a lead bass part too.... but it's most likely Brians red special doing the real low notes during the supposedly "three guitars" in the instrumental section....
Interesting but I don't think that was his style as a whole. Deacy fitted in as he was the stability factor needed for Brian's solos and Roger's (at the time) exuberant drumming. That being said there are those moments where John has that melodic freedom to do his thing (The improv's in Son and Daughter and Father to Son come to mind). I find that he is at his best when he breaks away from the basic guitar riffs (Yes Someday One Day or Loser in the End {the fade out}) or in the ballads, particularly Freddie's, or Teo Toriatte and Sail Away Sweet Sister (at the end). Extravagant solos were not his thing, they had Brian for that.
That is so true.
Queen, being a band full of distinctive individual sound. Brians guitar, Freddie's vocals and Rogers drumming.... could one say the same thing too with Deacy's bass..? And what he brought to queen as being something distinctive and typically Queen sounding individual brilliance to their sound..? Something where you hear a bass line and you are like... .. "that can only be a typical four strings and bare finger playing intridict John Deacon on bass there"
Definitely not his style but it dose sound like a very primitive bass solo at its very primitive.... even if it's by accident.... possibly something Cliff Burton saw and was like holy shit that has given me an idea..?
Deacon's style is the best of both worlds - unobtrusive enough to hold down the song without standing out, yet when you listen more closely there's loads of intricacies and 'lead' bass lines and lyrical melodies that are far from the 'plodding' root note approach of many rock and blues bands.