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Any man died of a big disease with the five chances government came across a needle and sushi and home 70 year old boys do is being again called the disciples high on crack until the machine gun.
He was different and he was unique and he was turning it upside down injected to life into the eighties I think he's on his own you know you by yourself you know I used to create a user interface genus reprints emerged in the late nineteen seventies few could have imagined the power he would soon hold in popular music a unique vocalists dynamic performer and multi-talented musician is rise to prominence in the eighties what vitality and imagination back to a tired seen this film is a review of his groundbreaking records that defined a decade the hits that helped him develop from a teenage prodigy to a global superstar i believe that the eighties were the most critical point and Princess career because of this confluence of of the times and the culture and what he was doing what we were doing together as a band and is he one of the greatest ever actually Prince Rogers Nelson was born in minneapolis in 1958 his father a jazz pianist expenses prints to music at an early age and by high school he had formed his own band grand central at this school friend Andre Simone even during these early years prince was drawing attention through his skills as a multi-instrumentalist playing guitar bass drums and piano he was also a confident vocalist I didn't know who was the the main star of the group you know because everybody was talented you know Andre was just as talented as Prince and but I all always notice print always going over to Linda keyboard player and showing her know this is what you play you know and she started playing so as he was went back to the guitar always go like you know looking at him and then I go like okay then we count it off and they start playing again you know this is not okay you know seeing where this guys coming from you know he's showing everybody all they had any told Andre nope latest on the base you know and you know he take the base from Andre and play a little bit on basically okay and then I could give the base back to Hungary on day we just go and play it i mean like that like nothing is gonna like wait a minute what's going on here who's you know who's the talent up in here you know he was sort of what we would call an urban legend in the Minneapolis area you know there were these hushed conversations about this you know sixteen-year-old kid who was the next Stevie Wonder and play all these multiple instruments wanting 76 prints that abandoned Grand Central and have begun working with minneapolis studio owner Chris moon despite the strength of some of these tracks which prints would later develop in his solo career.
We struggle to get noticed until the demo was sent to aspiring manager and has me I kind of have a little meter in my brain and there's a lot of music that sounds like it should be a hit that it could be a hit that it's promising but at the end of the day it really isn't a hit well the little meter in my mind when I have to hearing the second song the meter wet like all the way over to the other end of the scale and uh I just thought this group is phenomenal so I said to Chris who's the group this is this is pretty phenomenal because the guitar player was great the drummer was right on the drummer was working with the bass player to created an incredible rhythm section there's keyboards on top of the vocals were over-the-top great and I just said who's the group he said well I'd like it if you sat down I said you know I was mr. bigshot you know back of those days and i said i don't sit down I'm sorry you you tell me the group is and he said we'll just sit I said no just tell me the group is he says well it's one kid he's 17.
He's playing everything he wrote everything and he is singing everything and I just sat down immediately husband marketed princes apology a young Stevie Wonder and he managed to gain the interest of several major record labels by John 1977 prince had signed to warner brothers with a six-figure contract yes although Warner's had big plans for their young signing friends quickly made it known that he would remain in sole control of his output warner brothers came to us and said oh we've got a great thing I think we can get more research white from Earth Wind and Fire to produce your first album isn't that great prints and I walked out of the room and you said nobody's producing my first home and I'm like his manager already I'm ahead of Prince I'm thinking gee I have to tell one of the biggest record labels in the world that somebody 17 he's never made an album before is going to produce his own album and that's that's going to be at the music industry into which print surfaced in the late nineteen seventies was going through a radical revolution where is the fading stars of the sixties counterculture had dominated the first half of the decade the emergence of punk and disco at once again democratize the industry and represented new cultures and the new ideology.
Yes by the time that Prince's debut for you was released the scene was transforming once again and he failed to make an impact in this changing world it would not be long however before he found an audience.
We have two things that are going downhill.
We have disco which is doing a swan dive and we have punk which is evolving into new wave or has evolved into new wave and is about to evolve into the neuro magics which is a totally different thing in Britain there was the whole two tone sound which didn't export to the United States so we have a temporary cessation of normal service both on the rhythm and blues and the rock front and there is a window of opportunity for somebody new to come in and he takes it released in august 1979 the single i wanna be your lover provided clips with his first of many hits reaching number 11 on the US pop charts and hitting the top spot on the soul chart in Princes career which now extends nearly 30 years he has always had a great sound but at the two ends he hasn't always had great songs but i wanna be your lover was a great song and it combined to strength one was the vocal range and he was highlighting the falsetto and a way that we'd recently lost when smokey robinson stopped having regular hits so we needed another falsetto or mail soprano voice in the chart but also he had the funk he had the phone call like the seventies functors like george clinton and Funkadelic and the people from James Brown's group so he combined those elements i wanna be your lover was just one of the songs we cut but it would it had a great rhythm feeling the the tempo was right.
That's why I knew it was going to be a little bit of a rocker and of course I was into that and still them we just created it along with the rest of them and really didn't come together to put the drums on the track he just basically came in and started playing with this pocket and we call them pockets you know like it's that you know you said drum feel you know and like with the drum machine they're kind of hard to play too anyway because they're usually right on the meter but he basically made that change you know in your mind as you heard him play was he was very laid-back and very synchronous to a strict meter I thought it was really impressive that he could do that that agent and rocket like that you know he did you know being able to basically fit himself into that track knowing exactly what would come up what where any of the arrangements as well so to me I thought that was probably the most the deepest part of his musical ability was was to be able to do that into it.
Well everything he did had groove I mean you could tell a prince peace when you heard it.
The timing he had signature timing licks but it was those types of hooks and licks rhythmically that made a huge difference.
There's no question in my mind that would have been the single and it was even at this early stage Prince managed to impugn his music with neuroticism and sexuality that would become a more prominent feature of his later work right from the word go he was a very shall we say erratically charged performer even when he wasn't being blatantly sexual when he sings i wanna be your lover in that high voice the instruments go didn't didn't tune and it's it's a pattern which almost represents some sort of sexual excitement in other words the instruments sound like he's being your lover.
It's a total union of vocal and instrumental and it was to use the American expression horny for the time it's only discussing his musical influences princes tight funk grooves and stage performances immediately drew comparisons with James Brown yes although he was reluctant to acknowledge them prince was inspired by a far more diverse range of artists baby baby baby bear.
I could hear shades of the isley brothers Earth Wind and Fire Hendricks if you may slide in the family stone but there was one guy that everybody kind of looked up to a minneapolis in particular and Prince idolized this one person any later are played with Prince for a long time Sonny Thompson as far as instruments is concerned this guy is a monster if Prince idolizes him.
Ok then you know that this guy is great you know he is great I'm he played all the instruments also there was a sense in which you know he was he was kind of recreate the music had grown up with you know and and working in a style that I think both came naturally to him and with something though the record industry could could recognize and let him do but if printed continue doing that now I think he would have been a kind of second-tier you know kind of artist that you might include on you know the great army balance of the nineteen eighties you know rather than somebody who essentially defined the music of the nineteen eighties been previously formed a backing band to translate his music to the live arena Prince reenlisted them to help implement his second album.
Well then he chose to perform numerous roles in the studio in you that is alive actively dynamic and diverse players to assist him and thus the revolution is born a prince chose a diverse group of people because he really believed that that was imperative for what for his vision for what he was trying to achieve musically and visually and everything else and again because he also believed in in sort of mixing musical influences that it was important to mix ethnic backgrounds and cultural backgrounds as well he was obviously creating his own style you know.
And in something like that it was an amalgamation of all sorts of stuff you know the different people invent that was sliced down you know it's fine the families down men women black white councilman a lot of that came from there you can stop will begin the matchup this main purpose was so he wasn't stuck in 1 John room he wanted to be able to crossover and cross racial barriers and I think he did it well he was very very savvy even at an early age and he knew he had to differentiate himself and the band in specific ways and one of the earliest conversations I remember having with him right after i had been you know brought into the fold into the band was that he wanted everybody in the band to have a distinct image and that what he was going to do was in his words portray pure sexuality and I think that that's something that over time you know he understood that that was kind of what brought him to the party and he's been real consistent with that i can remember when prince was tired of the costumes and I was coming up with and he sent his girlfriend down to the to the hotel room I was in and she knocked on the door and she sweetly came in and dumped this bag of metallic multi colored underwear on my on my bed bra and panties basically and some Prince's wear this or you're fired and elected her and I said it could not be kidding she says no he's not.
Yes there was a point to all that and it was definitely the image of of we got it going on and it's really cool to be like us no matter what you think of it all great artists throughout time and in pop history.
Have at one time or another done something to call attention to themselves whether we know the Elvis Presley with his long sideburns and not remember watching that going on now he's gone too far you can use swinging his hips on the Sullivan Show the second Sullivan Show they wouldn't show anything uh you know below his stomach because way too suggestive to swinging your hips and I thought well he's gone way too far that and you need something if you're truly great you use an attention-getting device and then what happens is then people pay attention to and you were really good they're gonna buy your music one of the things Prince did ask us to do was if you're gonna wander around the hotel you're not gonna wander around like your granola queen or you're in your t-shirts and birkenstocks you've got it you've got to dress the part of a rockstar and I'd walk downstairs and I'd be in my spandex metallic colored pants and my body tough shirts and my boots my go-to coffee and have breakfast and I felt stupid as hell but you know after a while I got used people staring at me and realized you know it's all part of its all part of what this is and it's okay is a full-on rockstar he lives the life he is you know he is what you see is what you get you know he's a pop star rock star whatever you want to say but is its it is that life you know you he is the character that you see my character was becoming more develops on the next release on dirty minds the track and the album Prince presented and more overtly sexual persona and a more original sound and although it found little favor with the public the music press were quick to identify the emergence of an increasing a unique and challenging artist regarding the song dirty mind and really at in making that comment i have to say it in context with the whole album it was not a huge hit but it was the the sort of tipping point in terms of this huge critical response this tidal wave.
Of critical acclaim coming his way at a time when the record company you know understandably was very nervous about this sudden change we signed Stevie Wonder and and now we've got you know Ric Ocasek or something here what happened so that that song i think was again it represented a significant tipping point in terms of Rolling Stone coming out with this glow-in-the-dark review and so on and that was one of the things that enabled him to kind of continue on toward the commercial success.
Around the time that dream I came out I was living in Atlanta and I i want to see princess playing a club in town and there was something i was either out of town during the day or I was doing something else I could not get out and I couldn't get to the show and I just went down that night and it was like the club was like the club in a cartoon where the whole place is just shaking and I could just see like was balancing I couldn't put up standing outside on the street you know princess i think was playing dirty mind you know that that riff was just like propulsive you know and here that's what it that's what it felt like to and you heard it it was just completely galvanizing and we all want a shot to the answer the kind of music industry and there's a sense in which you know what's new mean things are really pretty slow in the early eighties music wise you apart from michael jackson and it's settling you know dirty mind just ignited things it was it was so compelling just brilliant the main keyboard riffs and dirty mind was actually something that that Matt had played that had kind of been developed in you know one of our numerous and lists jams in rehearsal and again that was kind of an example of how things that the the approach that Prince took to creating and expanding is-is-is universe and pushing the envelope just had to do with drawing influences from wherever I think you're great about prince was it was such a mixture of different kinds of music it was funk and jazz came in later but there's probably hints of it here and there at that time but it was also raw very influenced by the polk seen you know I really love the clash and notes so there was this whole kind of energy that was so opposite from anything else had been going on at that time in a certain sense in lyrics have got so far particularly and hip-hop that you know it might make you know somebody just looking at a lyric sheet of dirty mind just wonder what's the big deal a song called head yeah I mean you know yeah that's an element in every a pop song now but Prince's intensity about it there was something that was very liberating.
I think that a lot of hip hop it just retreads almost like a lot of conservative aspects about sex particularly between men and women who is in prison.
There's really this constant who's on top and who's doing what it was a statement it really was and I think you know a very powerful one and maybe one that you know once the AIDS epidemic became clear it might have been impossible to make that statement after that but it was like almost the last moment in which that sense of your hey it's all out there.
Yeah take it if you want it you know that was you know that was part of the fun of what dirty mind was about i think the Prince really felt when dirty mind was complete that it was his most honest record to date and the one that most represented what he was really out to accomplish when he started the record you really believed in that record he really believed that that was who he was and that was we wanted to go and that was his future and he was right as challenging this is sexually risque lyrics was pleased his image itself which had evolved into something far more provocative and ambiguous this is not conventional garb for any sexual stereotype he's not trying to look like a woman otherwise you wouldn't be wearing a trench coat on the other hand he's not trying to look like a man because he wouldn't be wearing bikini briefs it fits right in with this I'm not a woman i'm not a man am i straight or gay.
In other words he is building a personal mythology he is constructing an image of the pan sexual creature which is very brave.
On the one hand but it surely is commercial because no other major star had been that out there in october 1981 the follow-up to dirty minds controversy was released.
Although this more rock orientated album had critics hailing princes and natural successor to Hendricks sales were again disappointing it was with the release of the first single his fifth album however the prints finally broke into the mainstream 1999 exploded onto the charts in September 1982 and over time it would become regarded as one of the key singles of the decade 1999 was an immediate explosion in the United States not in Britain but you had three big hits in the states and the first was 1999 which is a tremendously exciting record I don't tell anybody it was the scene of a millennium how bigger can you get the net.
I think people you know 1999 you know people were beginning to become aware about the end of the century so around that time and prints made it seemed he was kind of apocalyptic but also a lot of fun.
That's something he began doing i think particularly well being able to leave in his sexual themes you know we've in his spiritual themes we've in his social themes but also kind of make a party record you know that's what 1999 finally is in a lot of ways get the record i would much of his success to the exposure that prince had received on the increasingly influential music channel NTV the circle was originally stored outside of the top 40 and it was the screening of its accompanying music video that eventually propelled Prince back into the charts and into the homes of Middle America.
I mean prince has an extraordinary visual sense i mean this guy who believes in videos and believes in vent in visuals so you know the marriage of prints and MTV was definitely made in heaven though they both took that to the bank.
You know it it gave Prince a big big audience and you know made MTV feel edgy define and.
Man.
Prior to that MTV never had urban artists on and at the point where michael jackson with beat it was on and then we were on with with the whole 1999 little red Corvette thing all that change so to speak to the issue of the songs all of those things came into play and because of this perfect storm the songs had a sort of a runway to land on in the public perception that no Prince record before that it had friends had started working on this new material back in april nineteen eighty-two unlike on his previous records the majority of the recordings had taken place at the prestigious sunset sound studios in los angeles here he embraced new technologies and managed to create a far more sophisticated end product while still maintaining control of nearly every aspect of the recording he would start a song in the beginning of the day whether it be in the morning or whenever we started and that very rarely did we come back to a song we finished it that day and in that time that was pretty much unheard of and I think still unheard of.
I mean sometimes he would overdub I think purple rain was the first one that he really kind of started bringing people and started overdubbing a lot more before it was just him and he did everything he worked around-the-clock he had so much energy and so much creative just it just flowed from him songs would just come out of him that was amazing there were two elements i think that in the early days became very synonymous with his sound one of them is the the Oberheim eight voice analog synthesizer which was used in the same way that horns were used on Earth Wind and Fire Records or Parliament Funkadelic records the other little bit later on was the the lynn drum the drum machine and honestly I think part of it was the sound of it but another part of it was for him as someone who had always been man band and even in working with people it was very important for the band to execute the sounds that he had his head to execute that original moment of creativity where he heard inspirationally heard that sound they said that the drum machine would do exactly what he told it to do and for a lot of us in that era that that was like a revelation wow I can actually program this machine and it will play exactly what i wanted to.
Whereas if I try to explain to a drummer what it is I'm trying to do he's probably going to play my idea his way and it's not gonna be the same thing the success of the single and the exposure that MTV had brought Prince benefited the album enormously the 1999 LP was the biggest selling record that prince had so far released and by the close of 1983 it had sold over a million copies in the us alone the 1999 album was the seismic shift where all of the things that were attempted all the things that were pointed toward through the records that preceded it came together in a sort of perfect storm and the the sudden magic formula for being edgy and and being and that the bleeding edge but at the same time being commercial and having huge radio hits all came together at the same time 1999 alone that was made for a tease radio you know i mean i think if you go back and listen to dirty mind for example you know those songs really sound strange there's so much space in them you know there's a kind of emptiness that's really intriguing it but they're not big radio songs the songs 1999 are perfect for radio there's something going on all the time you know prince had learned a lot as a producer and learned a lot as so you could shape his own music and I think understood what it would take to to bring him a bigger audience so you know if you listen to little red Corvette you know certainly if you listen to 1999 you know you just kind of here that you know.
Big bright sound of the nineteen eighties you know he was one of the guys who defined.
There were dimensions to his writing that were beginning to reveal themselves that I don't think he'd been there before the songs were a little more sophisticated not just lyrically but musically I mean you don't you think a little red Corvette it's just a classic pop song which is was and always will be to me the horniest song ever ever done and talk about slipping subject matter past the censors when he was talking about she had a pocket full of horses Trojans some of them used now the imagery is fantastic.
Everyone's familiar with the Trojan horse what a lot of people in Britain aren't aware of which was the number one condom in America at that time was called Trojans so to get past the radio sensors use the image of the Trojan horse rather than saying condom and then the disgusting line some of them used bolstered by his newfound fame print surprised many by following 1999 with a feature film project yet the semi-autobiographical purple rain which is both co-wrote and starred in proof that he finally hit his stride and ambitious spectacle it was the perfect vehicle for Prince the performer and Prince the musician and the soundtrack sold over a million copies within days of its release was almost as if he had an epiphany at that point with wild and it was just this whole thing that just came out of nowhere and was just genius total genius rock and roll and Hollywood coming together both the album and the movie purple rain just are probably you know certainly princess commercial peak and in many ways a very serious artistic peak as well the summer of nineteen eighty-four when all that was happening you know that was Princess summer you know he owned it adopts cry was the first single to be released from the Purple Rain album and marked Prince's first US number one hit in the summer of nineteen eighty-four it remained on the top spot for five consecutive weeks and sold over 2,000,000 copies in the UK it was a breakthrough single the finance the princes records to enter into the top 10 and it would pave the way for people need success in Europe throughout the decade.
I remember when he did it it was a normal song it was a beautiful song but it was a normal song and he looked over on the final passes of the mix and took the base out and he said nobody's gonna believe this.
And it was true nobody could believe it and it became a huge hit everybody loved that song my sister's my sister called him said i love the thoughts like hook up and people really did sit up and take notice he was different and he was unique and he was turning it upside down on what was you know.
Normal in this business I appreciated him in that way he he injected some life into the eighties i think i did have an ear for a hook in those days like the keyboard that thang think that it was like that's a hit that I didn't have to your base.
I didn't have to hear anything else I didn't care if he was singing about birds are singing to the birds none of it mattered the keyboard part was a here.
No.
That.
Thanks.
Double scribe was just it just raced up the charts i mean you hear that's a cliche but it's it's just astounding how that record I I think of certain records in my lifetime where the day they went to radio my phone lit up because all my friends called and said have you heard cold sweat by James man have you heard what's going on by marvin gaye well it was have you heard this dove song by brits it was on that level of impact just right out-of-the-box it was just like oh my god it was like every local band in the world had to go back to the wood shit and start rehearsing again because the vocabulary it changed it was like how you did music in the eighties had changed overnight once you heard that song everything you did was updated it's not often that you get lyrics on a number one hit like maybe I'm just like my father too bold maybe you're just like my mother she can't be satisfied your this idea of somebody talking about you know this kind of edible drama in their lives just you know an element in in all of the 3somes in Prince and-and-and in purple rain and here's something that I think you know is really there and in all of its erotic charge to you know animals strike curious poses they feel the heat the heat between me and you I mean that's that's a really interesting line it's like all of nature's kind of responding to this tension here between us and then you know you get the mother and father business thrown in yeah i mean that's raw stuff princes second single of purple rain let's go crazy also hit the number one spot in the u.s. credited for the first time to print some the revolution it would become a perennial concert favorite.
Let's go crazy with or without the the sermon at the beginning but i love the sermon forgetting its whacking at everything that Prince does sounds like it's coming from a unique perspective and that's what made him so distinctive it could only have been him I.
Let's go crazy i thought was the quintessential like opening song i think he'd managed for the first time in his career to write a signature song that every time somebody bought a ticket to a prince show the thing that was going to come to mind his man hope they play that song first it was also obviously a very memorable moment in the film that element of just like let's just jump on the bikes and go you know that's what let's go crazy about you know this is going to the club and have a good time the final song splits recorded for the album and the third single to be released the title track Apple rain this power ballads credit again to print the revolution which number eight in the UK charts and number two in the US believe me you don't usually want to spend eight and a half minutes of your life listening to anything american pie ok John McClane great a couple of things but not too many that's a big investment of your life Purple Rain deserves it Purple Rain we actually used a remote truck and recorded he was doing a live concert benefit for a dance company in minneapolis and we recorded live with a remote truck and was the first time you use Wendy and Lisa together he did all those songs are brand-new nobody had heard before Purple Rain let's go let's go crazy I would die for all those songs nobody hurt so nobody really applauded after the after each song and it's very strange because they there is no you know people don't take familiarity sometimes but purple ring was a live recording in First Avenue the kind of level of emotional honesty and nakedness in purple rain is something that I think is often overlooked you know this kind of sense of of injuring someone and just really wishing that you weren't doing it as you're doing it this wishing for a place you know the purple rain that that could just wash all that away somehow and get at allow you to have the connection without the pain it's deep you know I remember when I was going through a divorce one time is just listening to that song i was guys just started crying.
It is in a very indirect but very profound way I think he gets out those kinds of emotions of you know what what went wrong here.
There's no way to make it better I know I may even be at fault you know but can't something just save us from this and you know that that kind of soaring quality at the end of the song he sings a net full settled local and is playing this astonishing guitar parts just let's go to another world let's get to a place where we can get beyond all this somehow that's what purple rain is about because prince can look like I mean almost cartoonish sometimes you know people don't associate him with that that kind of emotional seriousness but he can go there man.
You certainly went there and that's something in you it's hard to find other songs that get it.
Feelings that complicated that powerfully well just not missing anything.
The song purple rain for me is his masterpiece in terms of marrying commerciality and emotion it's one of those songs that when you hear it you remember where you were the first time you heard it.
You know what I mean it causes your your endorphins and serotonin to be released in your brain.
And again it was a real step forward for him in terms of his evolution as a commercial artist but yet a distinct artist you know that it's him but at the same time it's a classic song that you know you'll hear it 20 years from now you'll still be classic the album and the film solidified prince's position as a global phenomenon.
Whereas at one time his appeal had been considered relatively limited he had not proven that he could attract a mass audience and his potential for influencing mainstream tastes and popular culture itself began to be realized he embodied a change in in our culture that in retrospect seems like it was inevitable but he was riding that way before a lot of us recognize that coming and I think that's really what it boiled down to was like listen we all have cable TV's now and we all listen to more than one radio station and anybody with any sense is opening their minds and open their eyes and years and recognizing that there's a bigger world in my neighborhood whatever neighborhood that might be rich poor white black who cares what the world is bigger than your neighborhood and he just simply embodied that and kind of let people along with him no matter what their background was just based on the promise that i'm not going to turn my back on you because it's all about all the music and everybody's welcome and in fact we're not gonna fight we're gonna get along here and i think that was part of the magic of the Purple Rain thing because I think purple rain became the extension of that politic he would go away and then I would work with other people need to know you work with prince is here he's that or he's you know he'll be gone tomorrow or whatever but I had really respected musicians coming up to me and saying he is a genius and I thought yeah they they get it they understand because I I loved his music I really did I loved his music and i know that a lot of people criticized it and tried to dismiss him and.
And then with purple rain they couldn't dismiss him anymore he was there and he was there to stay with this reputation now established his father strengthened his control over both his output and his finances i found in Paisley Park records although this venture allowed him to work with other artists such as Sheila E charges about and George Clinton its greatest chart successes references own records and the first of these was released in april nineteen eighty-five the album around the world in a day was a marked departure from popular rain and its first single rose beret continued princess string of hits raspberry beret one of the little known fact is that's that song was written while i was still in the band and I have very very clear memories of being in the back of the tour bus you know with guitars in these little portable guitar amps you know working the chord changes in the vocals and and and that the elements of that song out while we were touring so that song for me can has a special place because i was there in its early stages i was there in the prototype stage and to hear that the final version and to see it be again one of those hits that's very much connected with him as an icon that that's kind of cool playing with Prince when we were recording we got to experiment and a lot of times he would take the first take even though there were maybe mistakes that we thought he said no he wants the feeling he there was something about the first emotion that he wanted for your first impression of the song that he wanted and he mixed into it and go all because when you'd be doing it you know all I know I can do it better let me perfect it because in that area everybody was kind of doing the sterile music where you'd do 20 takes of one thing and he didn't work like that there's beautiful melodies like raspberry beret that you don't realize how intricate those chord changes are to you here and sit down playing on the piano its and nothing compares to you i mean those are really intricate orchestral songs compared to the basic funk music that he did in the beginning like controversy and you know dance music sex romance I mean those are quite a different style.
Ok he's like I said got a lot of personalities the personality that Prince decided to reveal on around the world in a day had one foot in the past whereas with 1999 and purple rain prince had been forging forward with technology to produce an original and very modern sound with this album you paid homage to the innovators of the nineteen sixties and in particular the vehicles I think he had a lot of respectful for music that you know the british invasion and things that came from the sixties that was if there's anything that made him humble that might have been the one thing that was communication between prince and rolling stone for a while and at one point he asked for a bunch of back issues and he wanted all the beatles covers and all joni mitchell's of major stories and and covers and it was interesting that there was this kind of sixties fascination on his part since he was seen as such a new artist prince said he was a great fan of joni mitchell and he would love Johnny's lyricism her vocal uniqueness and her silences the donor flying engines the song scrambles and see.
To you.
I think that's one of the most encouraging examples of an artist citing an influence that wasn't obvious that I've ever heard.
Despite these influences and very healthy sales the album was regarded as a disappointment after the revelation of purple rain.
I thought around the world today was really a transitional record it was important to Prince that he not do anything that's overtly redundant a purple rain and I think if there was a theme to around the world in the day was that it's the anti Purple Rain record you know it's easy to note the beatles influence particularly in things like raspberry / a but i don't want to say it was contrived but it was a record that had an agenda if only because it was determined to do something dramatically different so that he couldn't be accused of riding the crest of purple ring it was invoking and everywhere he hadn't been and he didn't do it as well enough as the people who had been there to begin with I think that's the safest thing to say.
So thank god for his beret which was good and was it prints return to the silver screen the following year with under the cherry moon which he also directed I like purple rain however the film was dismissed by critics and ignored by audiences and failed to break even at the box office yet with its soundtrack album parade Prince returned to his funk roots on several tracks and although the record again showed a decline in sales the single kiss would supply him with yet another us number one by the time parade and under the cherry moon came around he was quite successful he had made millions and millions and I think you just want to pursue a movie career and he wanted to do a soundtrack.
Most of that record is geared as a soundtrack for the film the song kiss came about totally accidentally I mean I was doing a group called maserati in one room at sunset sound and he was in the other room completing that sound track record and he gave us the song on acoustic guitar called kiss and we tried turning it into something and set up all night trying to figure out what to do with it.
We made the track and the next morning I came back about nine-thirty and he had already come in and I said where's my tape and he said that's too good for you guys and taking it back but he had already put his voice on it already put his guitar on it.
Bam and then there was a bass part on it didn't you know he removed a lot of the stuff that was on there this was the first song that i was going to be credited other than just an engineer and he also rename me david z because that wasn't my name on the first four records so you know I i was sort of speechless but then i talked to one of the people at Warner Brothers on the phone and they said oh no oh yeah we're not putting that out we don't like it went what that's like what and they said no it sounds like a demo there's no base there's no reverb it sounds like a demo sounds like we did in your basement and I was devastated and luckily enough he like i said was successful and he had enough power at the time to say you put that out first i'm not giving another single and a year later they were only trying to sign things that sound like that so that tells you where the music supposed to comfortable.
I remember the first time I heard the song kiss really feeling that he had managed to recapture some of that sort of raw R&B emotion from some of his earlier music and even going back to some of this stuff you know that that he written for the time but at the same time again because he had by now mastered the commercial elements and knew how to be himself but at the same time right hits.
I just thought that was a masterful song the sparseness of it the melodic elements of the soulfulness of the vocal I thought that was a masterful song on the guitar on kiss the rhythm guitar was gated through a gate to make it synchronized with the high hat on the drum machine and nobody can play that it's just a it's of electronic trick dead man was playing open chords and it's doing that rhythm but you know we try everything in anything and I know it's it was very fun and very creative and there's when there's no rules like that you don't have to do with somebody else did kiss is the kind of song which is perfect out of news as they say in other words if if the newsman and says more at seven or 35 degrees did it in kiss.
I mean it's perfect change of mood change of tempo and you're in the song within five seconds it's so well-constructed you see and and and he uses silence and pauses so wonderfully most people are afraid to leave pauses and silence because they think that people will lose interest in one second but prince knew that you could use pauses and silence for suspense for building for impact and kisses a perfect example of that go to record collection now listen to it from that point of view and you think oh yeah he's using these little pauses these little silences and it's all very dramatic and it's sucking me into the record that's great for the tracks on the album that work like a more conventional musical score Prince looked outside of his immediate circle for input on the arrangements the musician he discovered became the first person to contribute two princes music without interference the parade album introduced another dimension to Prince's em all of album making in that arranger Claire Fisher was a contributor and it was kind of unique because Claire somebody who was completely outside the Prince camp someone that Prince didn't have any over the influence on and in fact hadn't even met face-to-face and it was the proverbial case of sending tapes back and forth through the mail and just being interested enough in hearing what he would do left to his own devices i have recorded pop albums that required jazz albums were recorded happen the albums and I'm known in a whole lot of different categories and then to suddenly have poppers come along and want me to write a reference for them i said well i mean i wasn't averse to it but I delish a different dimension the first thing about priests was man he was free he didn't interfere with what you did and I thought that was wonderful unfortunately most people don't understand what arranging is so they think if they've got their recording with a voice and rhythm section everything that what they would like to have on it is what they would write only they don't know how to write so they call me in later years prince would sometimes given some kind of cryptic instructions i want this kind of thing on this track this on this track but never to specific because they there was an enormous respect for Claire's ability and his own creativity is an artist and Prince also i think had a curiosity to see what he would think there was it was a part of him that.
Going to be surprised but Claire we do and of course clear to this day is known for very creative string and sometimes or arrangements that go against the grain I mean this is a guy who marches to his own drummer in his world much the way Prince does and while he certainly has a personal stamp on everything he does it's not cookie cutter and it's not going to sound like anybody else's work except Claire Fisher and in that sense Claire fish and printer perfect match while kiss was at number one in the US charts prince was also enjoying success through a song given to the all-female group the bangles highlighting his gifts as a pop composer the track manic monday launched the band's career and reached number two on both sides of the Atlantic we have worked until about I don't like three or four in the morning we're both exhausted and he called the session for probably six in the evening when we worked that late he usually called it for six and i got a call at nine in the morning and said he's coming in and I was not too happy and he knew it when he came in i was not too happy and he said I said if I dreamed of course I was coming in and I said you dream your sons and he said yeah sometimes and we came in and we cut manic monday start to finish and that eventually went to vanity 6 but then david leonard and david kahn were working on the bangles and ask him for a song and he gave the bangles that song and they had a pretty decent hit with that so that was the song that he had dreamed that morning shoot.
It's interesting that Prince wrote so well for women his big head covers by women his range and his attitude suited female voice and manic monday is a great pop record this was neither the first nor the last time that other artists had success with Prince's songs chicon had major success with a cover version of I feel for you from his second album and scottish same machine Eastern three launched her career in the mid-nineteen eighties with an album co composed and produced by Prince kind of hinted toward his ability to seamlessly kind of move back and forth between R&B and pop and rock sensibilities.
Sometimes he did not do the best version of his songs in addition to all the ones that were hits for him some of them were good songs but he himself hadn't made them very commercial and it took somebody else's arrangement to make them commercial of course the most famous is nothing compares 2 u which is an all-time classic multi-million celebration O'Connor and the original by the family is poor.
Ready.
Having now seven most of his ties with the revolution during 1986 prince was in a staggering Lee prolific creative spouse is follow-up to parade a triple album called the crystal ball was to be a 22 track-focused incorporating several distinct strands yet warner brothers were uneasy after the lukewarm reception to the previous two releases and eventually reduce the album to a two-disc set renamed sign of the times it was really a song day coming out of the studio in his house and later at our rehearsal warehouse where you had your installed and it was just any given day you show up for work and he'd be playing another new brilliant song to me it was just seen never-ending concepts for albums were coming to him almost as quickly as the songs were it kind of documented where he was at as a composer as an instrumentalist as a bandleader because the band played on a few tracks on the album not all of it but some of it and and just about every creative aspect of Princeton musician was represented and updated with sign of the times the album's title track was released as a single in February 1987 and reached number three in the u.s. chance.
Sign of the times uh the the song seems to me just exactly what it says it is you know it's it's this it's Prince kind of scanning the social environment and sort of reporting on what he's seeing that any man dad of a big disease or the check is good i came across a needle and sushi and home 17 years boys d being again called the disciples on crack.
Machine-gun Prince doesn't often seem to be looking outward appearances to be working in his own kind of inner terrain but to just kind of see him look out in that way in itself was powerful and then this the song itself kind of double that there's a an element of seriousness in it that that makes a big impact I think a lot of times you listen to the song oh that's weird.
And then about the third time you go oh I love that it's it's not something you can explain.
It's a gift that he has and you only wish that composer could be like that and you wish all means it could be like that but it's not some music grabs you right away some music takes a while to warm up to but that's the kind of stuff you can't let go i guess it's a deep look but that's what's complex about it is the hooks are buried so deep that takes you awhile to figure it out sign of the times i thought was his most creative for a in a long time the song sign of the times and it managed it wants to be totally creative totally unique and hooky at the same time which doesn't happen very often you know you might have to go back to let gary numan and cars before you can kind of come up with something like that but I really admired that record because it really had me listening to the sounds and the tracks and going.
Wait how do you get that stair sounds so different how did you get that you know which for me I hadn't been struck that way with any of this stuff for a while yet alongside this seriousness there were also classic Prince part numbers the track you got the look at you at with sheena easton become princes biggest US hits its kiss written number two on the billboard charts despite its commercial appeal it was still removed from pop conventions however and princes experiments with sped up and distorted vocals knocked it out something of an anomaly time everybody.
I was a part of a lot of that experimentation we used to joke that we put guitars underwater if we had to and we did everything from play the bass part of the song on pedals or the organ instead of a bass guitar just obviously slowing down the tape and putting his voice on speed it up it sounds like a much again singing and we do that and we do all kinds of things you got the look is a fabulous record they have this local interchange in the middle of record which is unique when he goes ladies and gentlemen the world series of love and she goes oh please what it wouldn't have occurred to anyone to put anything like that a record but it's put in a record and it was hilarious in the middle of being funky you got the look was just a great kind of rock and track i mean in the duet with with sheena easton you know just had this kind of erotic charge to it you know uh it was fun you know it was just kind of like Prince just cutting loose and it's kind of its erotic quality and it's you know just sense it was just one of those tracks that you know it was a great Prince dance track is pushed this don't feel further on his next album love sexy and in particular its standout single alphabet street released in 1988 the record was a spiritual reports to the dark undertones of the black album which printed withdrawn at the end of the previous year.
In Europe don't music infusions of house and hip-hop had emerged over the previous two years and love sexy fitted well into this new musical culture in the u.s. however sample-based music was still underground and princes more minimal sound failed to ignite the chops became a pretty-pretty semi regular fixture on the on the club scene both London in Paris and that's influenced this music that came pouring out of it I tended to look at love sexy as a album that didn't know what I wanted to be thank God for alphabet street this is just like with around the world in a day and raspberry beret you have one great track that saves it and gives him oxygen for another year love sexy isn't one that people go back and listen to but alphabet street is a very poppy funky song and of course has again another great beginning.
One of the interesting aspects one of the interesting trajectories in in princess careers his evolution of ideas about sex you know because initially he was embraced as you know this kind of sexual Liberator you know is he white or black shemale or female you know it's sort of beyond category you know you have that moved from the black album which was kind of an extension of all of that kind of you know polymorphous perversity sexuality into love sexy you know into love is a kind of spiritual love you that's what sexual you that's where the erotic charge comes from that was I think that moment the first moment where he turned away from the kind of wild controversy style sexuality that that in many ways you brought his big audience and I think personally began to feel uncomfortable with it and then spiritually and you know and it certainly in for a time effective with his music was like those prints led the way as an unlimited mainstream artists for the duration of the decade by the end of the nineteen eighties things were changing hip-hop finally began to emerge from the underground in the US and brought with it the culture in which prints would find no place although he would remain a major player his appeal would become more marginal in the coming decade after sign of the times he does not have consistent top 40 success occasionally a giant record yes but he is not in the mainstream is in the Prince stream and once these terrible themes of.
Nineteen nineties hip-hop emerged he's relegated to the sidelines because he's not going to talk about misogyny homophobia he's not gonna go there he's not gonna talk about gun crime or bling.
These are not his subjects and so one would say thank heaven for Batman one of the blockbusters which eventually defined the decade tim burton's batman films was both a huge production and a shrewd marketing exercise asked to record a track to promote the film print instead delivered an entire album dismissed by someone is releases a lackluster mishmash containing songs that Prince of discarded earlier in the decade and revived for this venture in everyone's became one of his most commercially successful albums selling 11 million copies worldwide it also provided him with a US number one single that dance obviously by the very nature of it being a batman film and the first in a long time he's not going to be doing a series of these things but yeah let's hang on to this and that dance is wonderful I mean I don't even want to know how long it must have taken him to do that there are so many samples from the soundtrack there are so many lyrical references to things going on in the movie it is a very clever assembly but boy it's a very skillful one and this especially if you talk about the full-length six-minute track but i was i was a very important moment in his career and kept him on top even when the scene was going in a weird direction.
Don't go with a slot.
Keep busting we have three years of working for prints that has just been sending us different songs and we've been adding orchestral backgrounds to them not knowing really what they were going to be used for and knowing also that he had a penchant for wanting to sometimes take some of these backgrounds maybe individual tracks or maybe the entire orchestral background to separate from the track that we had done the arrangement for and put it on something else use it as background music for his movie scenes or to put it in a completely different tune and this was the case with Batman and so we didn't even realize we were involved in that until we got a call from the record company saying that they would be sending us a check for the new use of the music Amy back dance as a theme song you know too that film there was such a hype about that movie and it was you know the big movie and everybody was excited about it and it just kind of see more exciting that prince was doing the theme song.
I mean to me it wasn't really that great a song you know I think it was just it was propelled by you everybody's good feeling we're gonna go to the movies we can have a good time we're gonna we're gonna like it if we want to like it yeah it was fun to see Prince doing something that seemed like fun and you didn't seem all that serious you know that bad dance you know it there was a kind of element of you know let's just get behind this far as you know comparing bat dance to purple reign as a song I mean there's no comparison I mean purple rain is is I would say profound you know that this is a great theme song to a big summer movie i think that Prince reach the point that all career artists reach we're just the sheer chronology of it all you will come to some sort of flat spots where sort of the confluence of what's happening in the culture what's happening.
In in the in the industry what's happening on radio whatever the case might be and where you are and where you've been don't necessarily line up as perfectly as they did during the 1999 era but I think ultimately he was the master at being first and artists and being first a persona and a live performer so that the people were coming out the shows were selling out all through that era and it all comes back around again by that time the end of the eighties everyone who was remotely interested knew that he was a killer life performer that he was not a person who just made music to be famous or acted to be famous.
This was a guy who lived within music who spent time voluntarily in the recording studio made more music than he could release you are not built to be able to go work at Burger King McDonald's you couldn't handle it you would know what to do or how to function in that type of a life and I picked up on that from Prince that this was the only thing he was either going to make it huge or he was not going to be around there's a whole series of black artists everyone from you know Terence Trent d'Arby to you know to living color to lenny kravitz and a lot of ways Prince really kind of broke the path for them.
He's kind of white artists uh I mean these black artists who are interested in rock and roll and saw that as part of their bag of tricks you know prince broke that ground so many prints was huge he was a huge it was not just usually successful but it was usually influential.
He's the number-one artist on this planet bar nine because he's been on the cover of guitar magazine he's been on the cover of drum magazine he's been on the cover of keyboard magazine and he's been under a couple of base magazine no other artist in the history of this music industry can do that has done it.
In a lot of ways the music of the eighties was littered with styles that Prince rejected as soon as he moved on from something everybody else grabbed it and had the remaining amount of hits have left to that sound that Chris Prince lost interest in it was on to something else.
The combination of the element of who and what prince is as a unique and once-in-a-lifetime artist with the particular time period and and the bands that he surrounded himself through that period I don't know if anybody will ever reproduce.
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