Greetings from the rabbit hole!
Today’s offering is Prince’s beautiful mash up of Crimson & Clover and Wild Thing.
When I covered Wild Thing last week, I Googled who else had covered the song and came across a live version of this. I genuinely hadn’t heard this song, or Crimson and Clover until last Wednesday, sitting in a hotel room near Chester, in the U.K.
Prince recorded the song in 2008 and it features his classic, dreamy, chorus heavy guitar sound. I played along on the Steinberger, in drop-D tuning, and thought my Zoom B1four’s GlamComp patch fitted with the song’s vibe pretty well. So that is what I used that when I recoded the bass line, via the Scarlett Solo into GarageBand, i.e. there was no further processing in GB.
As has become my custom, I recorded the baseline a number of times - 4 to be precise - planning them left and right, to give a natural chorus effect and fatten out the sound. When playing, I deliberately held onto the notes, no staccato here, and played the entire song on the (now) low D-string so that I could slide between notes. I thought that slurring suited the track.
Prince - Crimson & Clover / Wild Thing
I’d also say, laying down the foundation of the song, while listening to Prince play guitar over the top, was fantastic. Wow, that man could play. His untimely death was such a loss to popular culture.