SBL Monthly Special Edition - Remembering Rocco

By Jonathan Herrera
Photo by Paul Haggard

Like so many bass players and funk fans, the team at Scott’s Bass Lessons was devastated to hear the news of Francis “Rocco” Prestia Jr.’s recent passing. In a year filled with tragedy, the loss of yet another icon hits even harder; our emotional resources already feel depleted. Personally, Rocco’s death prompted an insatiable desire to saturate myself in his band, Tower of Power. Not merely a coping mechanism, the last several days of focused listening have offered me a comforting insight: Rocco was a genius, able to channel the joyful, liberated energy that powers the best funk with singular creativity and endurance. Simply put, it’s hard to stay sad when faced with the exuberant and fascinatingly complex art that Rocco left us.

Rocco’s talent for delivering some of bass history’s most scintillating and intricate lines is especially fascinating to those of us fortunate to have met him. He was a quiet and retiring man, with a soft and gravelly voice from decades of smoking and hard life on the road. Rocco was humble and shy in the same way I’ve observed in other naturally brilliant savants. There was no pretense in his art. When pressed to describe some technical facet of his playing, he’d most often claim ignorance, give credit to his long-time rhythm section partner drummer David Garibaldi, or if a bass was handy, prefer to show rather than tell. For Rocco, pioneering the relentlessly funky and syncopated music he most loved was as organic as breathing is for the rest of us.

Perhaps some of you are only now becoming aware of this towering bass icon. Like other deities in the bass firmament, Rocco is a “one-namer.” Like Jaco, Stanley, Victor, Marcus, Pino, and Anthony, Rocco earned this honorific through the strength and individuality of his instrumental voice. He forever expanded the bass’s vocabulary, pointing us mere mortals in an entirely new direction. In Rocco’s case, that direction was an extreme level of rhythmic intricacy and precision in funk bass playing. Born in the same fertile California Bay Area “East Bay Grease” scene that gave birth to the Headhunters and Cold Blood, Rocco and his Tower of Power bandmates developed a uniquely complex 16th-note-dense style of horn-driven funk that sounds like peak James Brown if he had access to Lance Armstrong’s collection of performance enhancing drugs. Don’t believe me? Check this out:

And if you’re curious about the late-‘60s/early-‘70s Bay Area scene that cultivated so much deeply grooving music, why not learn about it from one of the guys who was there? Head over to SBL and check out If This Bass Could Only Talk!, SBL’s Behind the Player Profile with Bay Area funk legend Bobby Vega.

Perhaps the most notable feature of Rocco’s style was the improbable efficiency and stamina of his technique. Bass great Will Lee describes Rocco’s approach as “constant,” rather than “busy.” Indeed, only Jaco (who often quoted Rocco as a major influence) seemed as capable of doling out perfectly placed 16th notes with such a relentlessly consistent pocket. Every serious bass player at some point tries to tackle Tower’s biggest hit, “What is Hip?” only to discover the near impossibility of duplicating Rocco’s unflappable stability and inhuman string crossing. If you haven’t given it a try, start with SBL’s must-see Bass Line Analysis:

Unlike Jaco, though, whose articulate one-finger-per-fret left-hand technique became a definitive approach for bass players seeking to develop virtuosic fluency, Rocco’s left-hand looked like it was permanently stuck on “oven mitt.” In order to deliver the staccato, ghost-note-rich sound that fit best with Tower’s concept, Rocco’s left hand evolved into a dual-purpose fretting/muting machine of uncanny accuracy. He would lay his hand flat over the fingerboard, using his first and second fingers to fret while his third and fourth fingers dampened the strings. Says current Tower of Power bassist Marc “VW” van Wageningen, who permanently joined Tower in 2018 as Rocco’s health declined, “Rocco’s unusual technique used two fingers for fretting and two to dampen the strings. There have been few bass players in the history of the instrument that have made a real difference in its development and Rocco is on the short list. Of course, he was famous for his 16th notes, but it’s more than that. He and David Garibaldi would play many ghost notes that would contribute to the feel and groove.” Ready to dive deep into Rocco’s unique fretting-hand technique? Don’t miss SBL faculty Danny Mo of Berklee College of Music putting it to use in Session 1 of his Masterclass in Bass Line Creation and R&B Bass at SBL.

The relationship between the bass player and drummer is arguably the most important in any band, but in Tower, Rocco and Garibaldi developed a connection so symbiotic, it was like they were one multi-limbed organism. Garibaldi, a formally trained and technically fluent drummer with a restless penchant for rhythmic experimentation was the perfect counterpoint to Rocco’s more intuitive, less academically informed approach. Together, they forged grooves so devilishly tricky that Rocco would sometimes reveal that he still hadn’t played them quite right, even after decades of crushing the tunes on gigs. Rocco and Garibaldi are a prime example of the essential process of rhythm-section development and collaboration in a band. To dive deep into that process, check out SBL Faculty Ian Allison’s latest course, Rhythm Section Development. In it, Allison partners with A-list session drummer Steve Goold to supercharge your rhythm section awareness.

The last few years of Rocco’s life were marked by declining health due to a 2002 liver transplant and chronic kidney problems. When I last spoke with Rocco he was living in Las Vegas, on the hiatus from Tower that would turn permanent a few years later. He seemed frail and careworn about his health and the stresses of balancing family and musician life. He alluded to his financial stress and yearned to be back out on the road, earning for his family. To Rocco, Tower was a job first and foremost. Reminiscing about that time and revisiting Rocco’s genius over the last few days, I’m reminded of the injustice that finds our art form’s greatest practitioners struggling with their financial, physical, and emotional health in their later years. May his passing remind us that we’re privileged to share the planet with genius and inspire us to fight for a music industry that offers our greatest artists the comfort and compassion they’ve earned.

Ultimately, Rocco was an enigma. His style is emulated by thousands, but impossible to duplicate completely. He possessed that intangible quality found in only a few musicians each century. As Will Lee so perfectly put it to me:

“Rocco had so much soul, he almost sounded like a machine, which is the opposite of what you’d think of soul as being. I guess you could say he was a “soul machine.” A truly unique individual. It’s funny. There should be a science in which you can trace a person’s ancestry, DNA, character traits, and origins, etc., by what they do or play when a bass is in their hands. Perhaps in the future scientists or computers will analyze Rocco’s note choices, lengths, placement, consistency, variations, and relation to the drums, and find out what made this genius tick. Until then, we remain curiously mystified, but gratefully funkifized. Francis “Rocco” Prestia, RIP.

Remembering Rocco - Spotify Playlist