PRINCE, The Story Behind Every Album, His Royal Badness, The Ultimate Tribute

100 Pages·2017·22.94 MB·English

by  Music Icons

Summer 1982 at
Allen Beaulieu studio
in Minneapolis, MN.
MUSIC ICONS
COLLECTOR’S EDITION
EVERY ALBUM
THE STORY BEHIND

Contents
Introduction
4
..............................................................
Albums
For You ..............................................................................................6
Prince ................................................................................................8
Dirty Mind ........................................................................................14
Controversy ......................................................................................18
1999 ...................................................................................................20
Purple Rain .......................................................................................26
Around the World in a Day ................................................................34
Parade ...............................................................................................38
Sign o’ the Times ..............................................................................44
Lovesexy ...........................................................................................48
Batman ..............................................................................................52
Graffiti Bridge ..................................................................................53
Diamonds and Pearls .........................................................................54
Love Symbol .....................................................................................56
Come ..................................................................................................60
The Black Album ...............................................................................61
The Gold Experience .........................................................................64
Chaos and Disorder ...........................................................................65
Emancipation ....................................................................................68
The Crystal Ball ................................................................................69
The Truth ..........................................................................................69
The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale ............................................................70
Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic ...............................................................71
The Rainbow Children ......................................................................72
One Nite Alone... ...............................................................................73
Xpectation .........................................................................................76
C-Note ...............................................................................................76
N.E.W.S. ............................................................................................77
Musicology ........................................................................................78
The Chocolate Invasion .....................................................................82
The Slaughterhouse ..........................................................................82
3121 ....................................................................................................83
Planet Earth ......................................................................................85
Lotusflow3r ......................................................................................86
MPLSound .........................................................................................86
20Ten ................................................................................................87
Plectrumelectrum ............................................................................88
Art Official Age .................................................................................88
HITnRUN Phase One ........................................................................90
HITnRUN Phase Two .......................................................................90
Stories
Becoming Prince ...............................................................................10
Making The Time ..............................................................................24
Prince vs. the PMRC .........................................................................32
Prince’s Movies .................................................................................42
Prince vs. Warners ............................................................................58
Prince’s Protégés ...............................................................................66
Purple Wedding Bells ........................................................................74
Inside Paisley Park ............................................................................80
How Prince Became One of Jehovah’s Witnesses .............................84
The Death of Prince ..........................................................................92
The Aftermath ..................................................................................94
PRINCE 3

Introduction
They called it the Endorphin Machine. A company that
builds Rose Bowl Parade floats had been paid a million
dollars to erect it on the stage at Prince’s Glam Slam
club in Minneapolis. But the Endorphin Machine wasn’t
really a machine at all. It might more accurately be de-
scribed as a cavernous edifice, with a red velvet curtain
hanging between huge, suggestively curved walls at the
entrance. The curves were designed to evoke the same
thing as the “Sugar Walls” referenced in the hit song
Prince wrote for Sheena Easton.
During performances, Prince would ocassionally disap-
pear behind the structure’s curtain, leaving audiences to
wonder what the heck he was doing back there.
In 1994, following a gloriously hot-and-sweaty Prince
concert, his guitarist, Sonny Thompson, invited me inside
the Endorphin Machine to have a look around. The space
was tight and cave-like, maybe five feet long, with a round-
ed gold ceiling sloping downward toward a floor covered
in a snow-white shag pile carpet. It felt claustrophobic and
smelled kinda funky. At the big end of the cave, right near
the red velvet curtain, was a giant sound-mixing console.
Down at the small end sat a mirrored dressing table and
a throne-like chair upholstered in leopard skin.
For a journalist dispatched to write a cover story on
Prince, it was a revelation. The mirror and mixing board
seemed apt symbols for Prince’s glamorous image, on the
one hand, and his obsessive, control-freak attention to
musical detail on the other.
Conventional wisdom says that it’s impossible to mix live
sound from up on stage. But the word “impossible” was not
in Prince’s vocabulary. He routinely crashed through bar-
riers—boldly fusing funk, rock, r&b, hip hop and other
genres to create a brilliant new musical hybrid that dra-
matically impacted the course of pop music and pop cul-
ture in the ‘80s and beyond. When he left this life last year,
on April 21st, people were shocked and overcome with
grief. It seemed far too soon for his Purple Reign to end.
But, in a very real sense, it hasn’t. Prince left behind an
immense body of recorded music—39 “official” album re-
leases in all—that listeners are still trying to digest. In ex-
amining Prince’s astoundingly prolific recorded legacy, one
can trace his lifelong spiritual quest, his wild erotic imagi-
nation, his struggles with a music industry he saw as re-
pressive and his quixotic, triumphant bid to assert himself
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PRINCE 5
1997788
For You
A Promising Debut
In shopping for a record deal, Prince’s manager had billed him as “the next
Stevie Wonder” to prospective labels. The comparison is an apt one in many
regards. Like Wonder, Prince would have a profound impact on the sound and
style of popular music. Both artists were accomplished multi-instrumentalists,
endowed with an ability to play the entire recording studio like a single musical
instrument. And both were early achievers. Wonder had his first hit, “Fingertips,”
at age 13. Prince was just 18 when Warner Brothers Records took a chance on him,
cutting him an unprecedented three-album deal. Its investment in Prince would
turn out to be a wise one.
Work on For You commenced in October of 1977. The teenage wunderkind was
flown from his home in Minneapolis out to the Record Plant recording studio in
Sausalito, California, in the San Francisco Bay area. In the spirit of musical auteurs
such as Stevie Wonder, Prince had opted to record his first album entirely on his
own, with no backing musicians. He performed every single guitar, bass, keyboard,
drum and vocal part by himself, layering one track on top of another.
Although young, Prince had already amassed enough recording studio experience
to pull this off. He had made demo recordings of most of the songs on For You back
6 PRINCE
in Minneapolis. But the Sausalito Prince performing
Record Plant was definitely a big step circa 1980
Minneapolis, MN.
up from this—one of the world’s top
studios at the time. Prince and re-
cording engineers David Rivkin,
Steve Fontano and Dave Roeder
did a first rate job of putting together
a solid r&b album that doesn’t really
reflect the innovative sound and
brash persona that Prince would
later develop, but nonetheless con-
tains some hints of musical triumphs
to come.
The album starts off with an
impressive piece of studio legerde-
main. “For You” is an a capella vocal
track, with Prince multitracking his
voice numerous times to create an
inspirational arrangement that bears
traces of gospel and doo wop, not to
mention the occasional snazzy, jazzy
harmonization. The lead single from
For You—Prince’s debut single re-
lease—was the electro-funk workout
“Soft and Wet.” It is the only song on
the album for which Prince shares
songwriting credit, having co-written
the tune with one of his early Minne-
apolis mentors, Chris Moon (see p.12).
The basic lyrical idea for the song
came to Moon after an evening of
amorous adventure, and “Soft and
Wet” is significant as the first exam-
pple of the sexually suggestive style of
llyrrric that would later become Prince’s
ssttocck-in-trade.
LListening to the track’s punchy Prince put in many, long 12- to
ssynth arrangement, it’s important
14-hour days at the Record Plant,
to bear in mind that synthesizer
technology was still in its infancy evincing—even at this early stage—
in the late ‘70s. But Prince wrings
the most from the Moog, ARP and the studio perfectionism that would
Oberheim keyboard synths that were
available back in the day. The key- characterize his working method.
boards used on the album are among
the 27 instruments listed in the liner allocated $180,000 for Prince’s first the track wears its influences on its
notes, along with the credit line, three albums. But he blew nearly the sleeve. Echoes of Earth, Wind and
“produced, arranged, composed and entire amount on For You, racking up Fire, the Jackson Five and other
performed by Prince.” a studio bill of some $170,000. In the leading late ‘70s r&b artists are
Prince put in many, long 12- to end, though, Warners would more readily apparent. Which is true of
14-hour days at the Record Plant, than recoup its investment. much of For You. Not quite out of his
evincing—even at this early stage— The second single release from For teens, Prince had yet to transcend his
the studio perfectionism that would You, “Just as Long as We’re Togeth- influences. While he’d acquired a
characterize his working method. By er,” was a song that Prince had re- precocious command of the tools of
the time sessions wound up in De- corded five times previously before music making—both instruments
cember of ’77, the project had gone laying down the master at the Record and studio technology—he had yet
way over budget. Warner’s had Plant. Very much in a ‘70s disco vein, to find his own unique style.
PRINCE 7
1997799
Prince
Cracking the Charts
TTThhe modest success of For You enabled Prince to purchase his first house, in
tthe Minneapolis suburb of Wayzata. Down in the basement, he put together a
rrecordinnnnngg studio where he set to work writing songs specifically designed to
becomeee thhhheeeee hit singles that For You had failed to deliver. As Warner Brothers hadn’t
prroovidedd mmuch at all in the way of tour support to promote For You, Prince had
pplleennty offf ttime to stay at home and work on tunes for his next album—the one that
wooouuuld sssiimpplllyy bear his name as its title, and which indeed would propel its creator
to tthe upper rreeaches of the charts. As well as gearing up musically, he’d switched
mannaagementt iin the aftermath of For You, ending his managerial relationship with
the Minneapolis-based Owen Husney and signing on with the powerhouse team of
Bob Cavallo and Joe Ruffalo.
Prince was definitely going for the gold when he entered Alpha studios in Bur-
bank, California, in April of 1979 to start work on Prince. He’d written 20 new songs,
but would end up focussing on the nine he felt were the strongest. Although he
formed a band early in ’79, he once again opted to go it alone in the studio, playing all
the instruments and vocal parts by himself. Two of his band members, however,
would end up contributing to the album in largely unspecified ways. Drummer
8 PRINCE