“I never wanted to”: The bass legend Prince never wanted to emulate
There aren’t many instruments that Prince could manage to dominate during his lifetime. Even though most people see him as an all-star frontman every time they watch old footage of him in Purple Rain, ‘The Purple One’s unique genius whenever he came into the studio normally came from him sculpting pop marvels from scratch, usually playing every instrument himself. Then again, even someone who had ascended to the realm of musical god knew there were some artists he didn’t dare to touch on.
But Prince was always more than his voice and his guitar. Despite knowing how to make a six-string cry, he was equally as capable of tugging on someone’s heartstrings at the piano, whether that was hearing him testing out a few tracks on his posthumous Piano and a Microphone 1983 or letting his ballads sprawl like on ‘Sometimes It Snows In April’. If he was playing funk, though, he knew that everything starts with the bass.
You have to remember that every good funk groove is based around a killer bassline. The drums are the one thing that sets up the foundation, but everyone from Funkadelic to Sly and the Family Stone knew that if there was a bass layer underneath everything, they could have crowds dancing for hours on end. But leave it to Prince to take one of his funkiest songs and take out the bass.
Listening back to tunes like ‘When Doves Cry’ and ‘Kiss,’ the bass is nowhere to be found, usually letting most of the song rely on his guitar, drums, and voice. That might have been a conscious choice on Prince’s part during his prime, but that might be based on his knowledge of serving the song rather than trying to play something intricate just because he can.
When Prince was first cutting his teeth, though, the biggest names in bass were already teaching clinics on how to show off. While not every one of their songs was bound to get on the radio, Jaco Pastorius was already turning into the Jimi Hendrix of bass guitar, playing lines that left most people dumbfounded and making bold innovations for jazz and fusion that left musicians wanting to learn every single one of his licks.
Although Prince could appreciate what Pastorius was doing, he knew that there was no point in trying to copy him either, saying, “These days, if I have [bassist] Rhonda [Smith] play on something, she’ll bring in her Jaco influence, which is something I wouldn’t add if I played it myself. I did listen to Jaco – I love his Joni Mitchell stuff – but I never wanted to play like him.”
While anyone listening to Pastorius for more than a few seconds might consider hanging up the bass altogether, Prince knew that he could work in his own space. His heroes were people like Larry Graham from back in the day, and listening to where he took his music, the low-end was more concerned with playing something funky and not stepping too far into the jazz trap of playing far too many notes at once.
Because even though Prince had one of the most expansive discography of any of his peers, it was never at the expense of the song. We heard a lot of the notes he played throughout his lifetime, but each one was a note to be counted.
