{"id":438196,"date":"2025-09-20T09:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T09:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/438196\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T09:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T09:17:11","slug":"how-one-player-made-prince-never-want-to-touch-bass-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/438196\/","title":{"rendered":"How one player made Prince never want to touch bass again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Prince<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sat 20 September 2025 0:00, UK <\/p>\n

Sometimes you just have to admit that there\u2019s someone out there who is better than you at your craft, and even if you\u2019re considered to be up there with the best, like Prince<\/a>, it\u2019s good practice to acknowledge that there are people capable of knocking you down a few pegs.<\/p>\n

A multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, and phenomenal vocalist to boot, there wasn\u2019t much standing in the way of Prince Rogers Nelson when it came to flexing his musical abilities, and throughout his life, his accomplishments were reflective of his multitudinous talents. Across a career filled with glory, with plenty of critically acclaimed albums and awards, how could one possibly admit to not being good enough with a resum\u00e9 as stunning as his?<\/p>\n

One thing he was known for was recording virtually everything<\/a> on his records himself, although in his later years, this strict policy was relaxed a reasonable amount, and he began to invite plenty of other performers to collaborate with him on records. There are plenty of potential reasons as to why Prince wasn\u2019t exactly forthcoming with the idea of having session musicians, and while there\u2019s perhaps an element of him being protective over the end product, his personality suggests that he may not have been the easiest person to work alongside.<\/p>\n

That said, one player whom he did invite into his Paisley Park residence and studio was bassist Larry Graham, best known for having been a former member of Sly and the Family Stone<\/a>, and also having led his own ensemble, Graham Central Station. It wasn\u2019t until the late 1990s that Graham would come to work with Prince, contributing to both Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic in 1999 and The Rainbow Children in 2001 and touring with him from 1997 to 2000, but he made such a significant impact on Prince during this time that his departure from the group left a gaping hole.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, no longer having a bassist in his band would have been no skin off Prince\u2019s nose, as he was more than accomplished enough on the instrument himself to have survived without the services of Graham, but no longer having him on board to play in his live band led Prince to feel as though his abilities on the instrument were no longer sufficient enough.<\/p>\n

Before Graham\u2019s stint with his backing band, Prince would spend a few songs per live show on bass rather than guitar in an effort to show off his abilities on various other instruments, but he\u2019d refrained from doing this once he\u2019d worked with Graham. \u201cI can\u2019t even physically reach for it anymore,\u201d he claimed in a 1999 interview with Bass Player Magazine. \u201cI don\u2019t know. I hope it\u2019s out of respect for Larry, and not because I feel inadequate compared to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even after Graham\u2019s departure, he still stopped himself from picking up the instrument during live performances, and while Graham was a phenomenal player in his own right, who could have potentially put Prince to shame, it\u2019s more likely that Prince came to the realisation that he would never have it as good as he did with Graham.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sat 20 September 2025 0:00, UK Sometimes you just have to admit that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,7794,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-438196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-prince","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115235877799651331","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}