Aussie bass virtuoso Tal Wilkenfeld shares her heartbreak after making Prince’s album Welcome 2 America

She was just 16, living in LA and a music gun for hire. Now this Aussie star reveals how she worked with Prince on his secret record being released now.

The final time Australian bass virtuoso Tal Wilkenfeld saw Prince, the music legend asked her to go on tour with him.

It was 2010 and dozens of chosen ones “dressed up Grammys style” had been ferried by limos to his mythical Paisley Park headquarters in Minneapolis for a listening party for a secret record called Welcome 2 America.

Wilkenfeld, then just 22 and already in-demand as a gun for hire by everyone from Mick Jagger to Jeff Beck after the guitar prodigy set out from Australia to LA at 16, was on a high after hearing the finished record she had played on months before.

Prince had his own way of getting to know the musicians he would work with. Picture: Mike Ruiz/ Supplied

Prince wanted Wilkenfeld and drummer Chris Coleman – who she had recommended to the Purple Rain pop god – to tour Welcome 2 America with him but she was booked to play gigs with Beck and Herbie Hancock. And her word was her bond in the close-knit session musician community; she couldn’t let them down.

Tal Wilkenfeld left Sydney for LA to follow her music dreams when she was 16. Picture: Gary Gershoff/Getty Images.

The prolific Prince shelved the record’s release and it has remained in his vault, an Aladdin’s Cave of unreleased songs and unheard versions, until now.

“I’ve had to kind of find a way to handle the sadness and almost the guilty feelings I had of not being able to tour the record and whether or not that had an impact on things,” a clearly emotional Wilkenfeld says.

“But then I also would ask myself the same question that you just did, which is like, well, maybe he thought that we weren’t ready for these words, and that it was going to come out at the perfect time.”

Ladies and gentlemen … welcome to this thing called America. Picture: Mike Ruiz

That perfect time, according to the Prince Estate, is now. Since his untimely death in 2016, archivist Michael Howe has been cataloguing the contents of the vault and last year, around the time the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd was killed, found three CDs of the recordings which had only ever been whispered about by Prince trainspotters. Not even Howe was convinced Welcome 2 America existed until he found the CDs.

The opening title track was released in April, with fans quick to hail it as an uncannily prescient commentary on the current state of the world, more than a decade after he penned it.

The song is a powerful spoken-word soliloquy set to music, with Prince hitting out at race relations, the impact of social media and reality television and inequalities in education and opportunity.

Morris Hayes, a longtime member of Prince’s band New Power Generation, played the keyboard parts on the secret record.

He says the album’s release in 2021 is “poignant” because of the issues addressed on the opening three tracks – Welcome 2 America, Running Game (Son On A Slave Master) and Born 2 Die.

But societal ills aren’t the album’s overarching theme. There’s a throwback to his 80s pop period with the party song Hot Summer, and sexy Prince makes a steamy return on the slow-burn jazzy When She Comes.

That track’s existence is significant as Prince had toned down the raunch factor ever-present in his 80s and 90s repertoire after becoming a devout Jehovah’s Witness in 2001.

Morris Hayes was a New Power Generation veteran. Picture: Peter Lodder

“When he played it to me, I joked that it sounded like old Prince and it was going to get him kicked out of the (Jehovah) witness protection program,” Hayes says, laughing.

Yet Prince was conservatively shy enough about the track that he never played it to his three female backing vocalists – Shelby J, Liv Warfield and Elisa Fiorillo – and instead recorded the harmonies himself.

Like all Prince sessions, everything was on a need-to-know basis, including the last minute, out-of-the-blue calls summonsing Wilkenfeld to his LA home, his limo and eventually Paisley Park.

“The first time he called me was in 2008 and his first question to me was not, ‘Hey, how are you?’ but ‘Do you like the drumrolls of Jack de Johnette?’ Who doesn’t? And we became fast friends, he was spending a lot of time in L.A. and I went over to his place a lot that year, the first time he was throwing a party, although I was the only attendee and everyone else was on the bandstand playing,” Wilkenfeld recalls.

She later found out Prince had discovered her work on YouTube and he would randomly call her, turn up in a limo and go for a drive, playing her a wide range of music and ask for her analysis on the bass parts and how she would play them.

They played together for the first time in 2009, spending three days just jamming in a rehearsal studio in LA, and a few months later, Prince told Wilkenfeld he wanted to form a trio with her and she should recommend drummers. Coleman was one of the two she suggested.

Wilkenfeld couldn’t tour with Prince as she was already booked by Herbie Hancock and Jeff Beck. Picture: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images.

In March 2010, the pair of musicians were brought to Paisley Park. Prince did not preview the songs to them, instead instructing them which chords to play and encouraging them to improvise.

“I just made everything up; he gave me no direction about what to play beyond a chord here or there. It was just do your thing. I never heard the lyrics, never knew what the songs were about, never heard the melody. It was like we had to be psychic when we were playing this music,” she said.

Hayes hated Prince’s driving. Picture: Peter Lodder

Prince clearly loved cars as a vehicle for listening to music. When Prince had finished recording the basic instrument and vocal tracks, he called Hayes to the studios but he made it as far as the carpark.

“When I got there, he sitting in his car, waiting for me – I used to call it the Batmobile because it was a Cadillac convertible hardtop two-seater – and just told me to get in and we just played it sitting in the parking lot. The other unorthodox thing about this record was he gave me a CD of the tracks and told me I could just go for it,” Hayes said.

Welcome 2 America is definitely a sign of the times. Picture: Mike Ruiz

The results of this very Prince way of making music are now being shared with the world on Welcome 2 America, which is released as recorded.

Hayes is happy the record is finally reaching fans and also relieved he doesn’t have to go driving with Prince to road test it on the Batmobile’s speakers.

“He was a terrible driver, he was the worst, he just drove too fast and wouldn’t wear his seatbelt. I always feared it would be a James Dean end for Prince. We all spent a lot of time in the car with him and I was always telling him “Prince, you drive too fast.’”

Welcome 2 America is out on July 30.

Originally published as Aussie bass virtuoso Tal Wilkenfeld shares her heartbreak after making Prince’s album Welcome 2 America