“It wasn’t like a normal bass gig where you have 30 songs: I had to learn 300!” Ida Nielsen talks touring with Prince, and how she tackled her Paisley Park audition

Ask Ida Nielsen how she bought started on the bass guitar and it’s the usual story – up to a point, anyway. “I grew up within the countryside in Denmark,” she told BP. “I played with a bunch of bands and in 2008 I released my first solo album, Marmalade: a funk album with a lot of bass guitar on it. That brought me a lot of attention, so I started doing a lot of clinics and I started working with TC Digital. I recorded a lot of movies for them, which went on YouTube around 2010 – and that was how Prince stumbled on me.”

Prince, eh? Fans of the great man, and there are millions, will no longer be surprised to hear that on receiving a phone call from Minneapolis, Nielsen thought it was a prank. “I bought a call from his manager, but I couldn’t really hear what she was saying. I did hear her say the name Prince, but I assumed it was a shaggy dog story! She invited me to Paisley Park for a jam and I said ‘Definite!’ I didn’t hear anything for 2 weeks, so I assumed that was it till I finally bought another call – and three months later I was on tour with Prince.”

“There was a lot of stuff to be aware, because he liked to change things up and no longer always stick to what’s on the situation checklist, so I had a lot of totally different songs to learn in a fast time, that was the hardest part of it. It wasn’t like a normal bass gig where you have 30 songs: I had to learn 300! That took a lot of time.” We must have our hearing checked: we thought she said 300 songs… “It was actually more than 300 songs, because I was learning more as we went along.”

Back up a second. When you show up at Prince’s near-mythical studio, Paisley Park, clutching a bass guitar, you presumably also attain some homework beforehand. Did Prince ask Nielsen to learn some tunes prior to coming over? “I bought an email the evening prior to I left for Minneapolis, with two songs that I had to learn. They had been Dreamer and Funk, which I’m no longer determined are album tracks. I knew other songs too, in fact, because I’ve always liked Prince: I listened to a bunch of stuff to really prepare for that first time.”

What was it actually like, standing accurate there with Prince, jamming the funk? “He was large candy when I first bought there, because I was anxious. He asked me which more or less basses I had and stuff liked that, to assist me relax and acquire into nerd mode. After a few minutes it was cool and we started jamming.”

What gear did Nielsen expend to bring the bass notes? “I played a Sandberg Masterpiece. And I easiest played one bass with Prince because there’s no time to change between songs. I basically play standard tuning, but occasionally I’ll fall the E string to a D.” And the remainder of the chain? “I passe a Crybaby bass wah, an envelope filter, two octavers that each play an octave up and an octave down. TC Digital’s Polytune and a bass booster.”

The song on Prince’s albums with Nielsen, and certainly in his previous releases going as far back as the late 1970s, is heavily funk-indebted – nirvana for a bass player, we reckon. Nielsen agrees: “I really like playing funk bass, but it depends who you’re playing with and what more or less song it’s. You have to adapt your playing. There are so many great players who can attain that, and I admire each of them for their totally different factor. There’s Marcus Miller, Larry Graham, Meshell Ndegeocello, Bootsy Collins, Victor Wooten – all these guys. And there’s Prince too!”

Finally, where does Nielsen trail from here? Once you’ve been Prince’s bass player, there’s no higher place to trail we reckon. “Successfully, Prince was quantity one on the checklist of individuals I wanted to play with, so it was amazing being with him. He gave his complete heart and soul to the song, which made you want to attain that too. No live performance was the same, because he always switched up the situation checklist. Playing with him gave me an amazing feeling that I’ve by no means felt with any other musician. With Prince, you had been always within the second.”

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