Prince

by Matt Thorne

  The complaints expressed in the world-music-influenced ‘Digital Garden’ are also familiar. The song introduces the Rainbow Children’s enemies, the Banished Ones, who appear to work in the media (the ‘Digital Garden’ consists of ‘whose-papers, hellavisions and scagazines’) and are linked to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. ‘The Work Pt 1’ features the Rainbow Children deciding to destroy the Digital Garden, before discovering Paradise on Earth in ‘Everywhere’. The ‘Wise One’ and his muse are united in ‘The Sensual Everafter’, before Prince sneaks in a nightclub song and a bit of name-checking (Macy Gray and Common) in ‘Mellow’, a song that also features the ‘Wise One’ seeming to bring ‘the Muse’ to orgasm through song alone, before hypnotising her by stroking her hair. The cryptic but funky ‘1+1+1=3’ seems to refer to the importance of including God (and James Brown) in a marriage. ‘Deconstruction’ is not Prince’s take on Derrida, but a continued attack on the Banished Ones’ media empire. (In the light of 2011’s hacking scandal, the album feels more contemporary than ever.)

  The Rainbow Children feels more obviously related to what was going on in Prince’s life at that moment than usual: a few months after releasing a record focused so strongly on the relationship between a ‘Wise One’ and his ‘Muse’, Prince married his second wife, Manuela Testolini, having recently purchased a new home to live with her in Toronto. Yes, The Rainbow Children is primarily funky theology, but it’s also a sort of sequel to , only with a new subject of devotion.

  The last time Prince got married he produced a ballet; this time he composed a bizarre piece of comic opera entitled ‘Wedding Feast’. The feast is vegan (as Prince now was) – something also true of the woman in ‘She Loves Me 4 Me’, the more substantial song which follows on the album. While it is not especially distinguished among Prince’s many ballads, it does appear richly autobiographical, with Prince (or the ‘Wise One’) celebrating the fact that his new lover appreciates him for who he is rather than the fantasy Prince many of us like to imagine.

  Those listeners concerned by the Holocaust line in ‘Muse’ were even more troubled by what they perceived as anti-Semitism in the song ‘Family Name’, which addresses the subject of African slaves who were forceably renamed. Because the family names of the people in the song (‘Rosenbloom’, ‘Pearlman’ and ‘Goldstruck’) were considered to be either Jewish surnames or corruptions thereof, the assumption was that Prince was attacking Jewish people. But the origins of the song can be traced back to an intro to the version of ‘When Will We B Paid?’ that Prince played at an early show on the 2000 Hit N Run tour, in which he makes a comparison between the unimaginative names given to African slaves, such as ‘Lynch’ and ‘Payne’ and ‘Blackburn’, and what he sees as poetic, nice names, such as ‘Rosenbloom’. In this intro, Prince is keen to point out that terrible things have happened to Indians, white people and black people, and notes how pleased he is to see a mixture of races at his concert. He talks of Martin Luther King and Aretha Franklin, and there is nothing in his depiction of race relations that could cause offence. ‘Family Name’ also gave birth to a character, Violet Brown, who would later provide journalistic reports on his website – insider stories about what went down at private parties. The album’s closing chapters, ‘The Everlasting Now’ and ‘Last December’, are more straightforward gospel, addressing the eternity of Christ’s love granted to worshippers and the day of Revelation.

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  Prince seemed very keen that his new direction was understood by his fans, and when he previewed the record at the second of his annual Celebrations in 2001, he followed up the listening sessions with group discussions. In order to get this message to a wide audience, he invited director Kevin Smith (whose movie, Dogma, had impressed Prince) to make a film of these sessions. It was an unfortunate choice. Many directors might have experienced some misgivings about some of the messages put forward in this music, but only Smith would make their clash one of the main routines in two separate stand-up shows (admittedly prompted by questions from the audience). I approached the director to give a more considered description of his experience with Prince, but he was too busy podcasting and making terrible films for dwindling audiences and declined (politely), so I am left with the way he presents Prince in front of fans for laughs. In the first recording, released on DVD as An Evening with Kevin Smith (2002), Smith spends over thirty minutes explaining how Prince invited him to document people’s reaction to the album at his second Celebration for a film intended to be taken to the Cannes film festival, something he struggled with (after accepting the invitation) because he didn’t believe himself a documentary-maker and had concerns about some of Prince’s more hard-line beliefs. In the second film, An Evening with Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder (2006), he criticises Musicology, Crystal Ball and Under the Cherry Moon and suggests that Prince wanted to turn the footage into a recruitment film for Jehovah’s Witnesses. It is easy to see why Smith’s ego was bruised by the experience, but the loss to Prince fans is greater: if only Prince had approached someone who could have respected his intentions but still made the project their own.

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  Prince’s One Nite Alone … tour is among the high points of his entire career, the most musically accomplished and sophisticated series of shows he’s ever performed. And for once, there is a satisfactory audio document of the tour. While the Lovesexy tour was only officially documented on videotape, this time Prince finally released an official box set which, for all its flaws, is a good souvenir of the US leg of the tour (he would follow this with stints in Europe and Japan, during which the show would change). The One Nite Alone … Live! box set features two CDs covering the main show and a third intended to represent the after-shows. The first two are compiled from eight different performances from the US leg of the tour, edited together to represent a typical night. It’s easy to see why such an approach would appeal to Prince and yet alienate purists who might have preferred a recording of a whole show rather than this stitched-together patchwork. I realise this is a regular complaint, and that musicians like to point to the fact that some of the most acclaimed live albums of all time are the product of multiple nights of recording and serious overdubbing, but no matter how much work was done to the recording after the performance, the first CD of the set at least is among Prince’s finest releases. Although the show, like the tour, focuses largely on The Rainbow Children, it is more than just a live representation of this material. As with Prince’s best live performances, the set sees him revisiting his back catalogue in an almost wholly original way. Beginning with sci-fi noises and drums, the opening – the first two tracks of The Rainbow Children – is even more disorientating than the Rainbow Children album itself, as the audience cheers while Prince intones in his new Darth Vader manner. His spoken addresses to the audience indicate just how hard he was working to make this new sound work. During ‘The Rainbow Children’ there is a much clearer division between Prince-through-tone-box and Prince singing normally – yet another representation of Prince’s belief that there is more than one person inside him. ‘Muse 2 the Pharoah’ is much heavier and harder live, with a lyric change that makes clearer the importance to Prince of ‘monotheism’.

  But it’s the third track that really makes this recording essential. This is the only official release of ‘Xenophobia’, Prince’s best jazz-influenced track. Originally intended as the title track of an album, but removed from that recording after its appearance here, it’s worth buying the set for this alone. Accompanied live by footage of people being searched at an airport, part of the song (and the title) is clearly Prince’s response to increased security following the events of 9/11. This is only part of the twelve-minute track, which unlike the unreleased instrumental studio version, begins with Prince encouraging his audience to surrender to him, avoid ‘dead blood’ and rise up. Encouraging the audience to chant as Greg, Candy, Maceo, Renato and drummer John Blackwell take turns to solo, it’s a wonderful example of how to bring jazz to a
pop audience, a far greater achievement than any of his later jazz records. After five minutes he threatens to search his audience; after nearly eight the song becomes much softer as Prince conducts a combination sermon and trust exercise, encouraging audience members at the front of the stage to give up their seats to those at the back and pulling a fan up onstage before directing his performance to this lucky individual. This kind of stagecraft was not completely new, but it had a fresh purpose.

  The intensity of this opening is broken with a surprising choice: ‘Extraordinary’, from The Vault … Old Friends 4 Sale, here used as a springboard for continued jazz improvisation, a three-way between Renato Neto, Candy Dulfer and Prince. It’s one of the best examples of Prince taking a throwaway song and turning it inside out. It also flows perfectly into ‘Mellow’, making it clear that The Rainbow Children was less of a departure than it first seemed. Prince worked harder in these shows (and on this recording) than he ever did before (or has done since), and the version of ‘1+1+1=3’ on this record features a continuation of this era’s extraordinary showmanship. It’s one thing to inspire an audience to get funky; quite another to get them up on their feet and dancing to celebrate ‘the theocratic order’.

  The first two ‘hits’ appear towards the end of the first side, although both – ‘Strange Relationship’ and ‘When U Were Mine’ – are fan-favourite deep(ish) cuts, Prince pretending this music is playing on his WNPG radio station. Of all the old songs on this album, ‘Strange Relationship’ is one of the few that has the impact of the original. The heat has definitely gone, but Prince makes up for it with a passionate delivery and scat-singing that hides this, rhapsodising over Rhonda’s bass line. ‘When U Were Mine’ is less successful, Prince treating the track as if it is a cover of someone else’s new-wave song (he even instructs Renato to play an ‘old-time solo’). As if punishing the audience for their enjoyment of the oldies, he follows this with the furious ‘Avalanche’, delivered soft and smooth, another wonderful example of Prince voicing harsh sentiment in a gentle register.

  The only truly brilliant performance on the second disc is the opener, ‘Family Name’, another song brought to life through interaction with the audience, Prince giving new names to the Portland people sitting up front. Given how much Prince has enjoyed renaming his protégés over the years, it seems ironic that he now finds this practice so outrageous.

  Aside from ‘Everlasting Now’ and a very brief version of new song ‘One Nite Alone …’, the rest of the second disc is given over to oldies, including a seven-track piano medley and two attempts to reclaim songs from the artists who’d covered them (‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ and ‘How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore’). The closing rendition of ‘Anna Stesia’ starts brilliantly: Prince inhabits the song so completely he could have written it yesterday, before he ruins everything by sermonising and berating the audience for not joining his music club.

  While this box set is a good representation of the tour, there was one show that was dramatically different. When Prince arrived in Louisville, he did so without the NPG horns, which meant a certain amount of improvisation and rejigging of the set was necessary in order for the show to work, with Prince concentrating largely on piano instead. It’s the sort of magic night that if Prince was a different sort of artist would be a perfect archive release, but instead it passed largely unnoticed, another inspired moment forgotten by everyone aside from those who were there.

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  After the US, Prince took the show overseas, first to Europe and then to Japan. I only saw two shows (and one rehearsal and aftershow) of the European leg of this tour, both in London, and wish I’d attended more. On the second of three nights at the Hammersmith Apollo, I went as a regular punter: the seats were bad and we were openly mocked by Prince for not being members of his club. The next night I went back with a friend who was a member of the NPG Music Club and enjoyed the best Prince experience I’d had to date (there would be better to follow). The rehearsals he was letting fans into were less rehearsals than mini-performances in themselves, with Prince joking and bantering with the crowd (a couple entering late were shocked to nearly bump into him in the aisle). From the back on the first night, surrounded by audience members intolerant of Prince’s latest sound, it felt as if the new material was falling flat; up front the next day, it felt as if he only really cared about the dedicated fans in the first few rows, who’d been prepared for what to expect by the rehearsals. The after-show that night wasn’t epic; the best after-show in Europe was an extraordinary night in Copenhagen when Prince and his band ranged freely through styles, going from an extraordinarily heavy version of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ to a cover of ‘Take 5’.

  The fact that the after-shows on this tour were largely less interesting than the main shows is also borne out by the third CD of his live set, One Nite Alone … The Aftershow: It Ain’t Over. Consisting mainly of the highlights of two US after-shows (one from New York, the other from Los Angeles), plus one track from a Portland show, it does give an indication of the after-show experience, but suffers from the edits and unrecognisable versions of much-loved hits. The best Prince after-shows – such as the famous Trojan Horse performance – have a sense of purpose; the worst are given over to guests and formless jamming. This live album falls somewhere in the middle. The CD opens with a long version of ‘Joy in Repetition’ that Prince used to open the New York after-show, which took place in front of an audience who’d already watched a George Clinton show that night. It’s a worthwhile performance, opening up the song into a jam without losing the lyric’s mystique, but I’ve seen him do much better versions of the track live.

  George Clinton is one of a number of high-profile guests on the CD, performing an unreleased original of his entitled ‘We Do This’. Prince kept this cover but clipped the two that preceded it – James Brown favourites ‘Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing’ and ‘Pass the Peas’ – robbing the show of the building funk jams that would have been a true representation of an after-show experience (he’d later do something similar with the Indigo Nights live album). The only other track from this particular two-hour performance to make it onto the CD is a medley from much later that morning, Musiq Soulchild performing his ‘Just Friends (Sunny)’ combined with Sly Stone’s ‘If You Want Me to Stay’. Aside from a vamp from ‘The Everlasting Now’, the remaining tracks on the album are all old songs, all in versions that don’t compete with their originals. Frankly, ‘2 Nigs United 4 West Compton’ could be anything, the only evidence that Prince is playing this song coming when he shouts out the title. ‘Alphabet St.’ is delivered in the country-and-western style he’s unfortunately adopted whenever he’s played the song in recent years. ‘Peach’, too, is barely recognisable, at least when compared to the recorded version. Sometimes when Prince extends or deconstructs a song it’s the most exhilarating part of his performance; other times (as here), the jamming becomes excruciatingly dull. Chanting ‘It Ain’t Over’ live is great fun; hearing it at home merely makes me want to scroll to the end of the track and shout, ‘There. Now it’s over.’

  The hits are dull on this CD too. All the psychodrama of ‘Dorothy Parker’ has been removed in favour of Latin stylings – with a Sheila E percussion solo – and ‘Girls & Boys’ quickly turns into yet another jam that bears scant resemblance to the original song. It’s almost as if Prince was using the CD to blow the mystique of his after-shows.

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  The DVD release covering the tour is an even greater disappointment. Billed as the ‘1st official NPG Music Club Concert DVD’ – and, to date, the last – it’s not that it’s light on Rainbow Children tracks, as it does include ‘The Work’, ‘1+1+1=3’, ‘Family Name’ and ‘The Everlasting Now’ (as well as The JBs cover ‘Pass the Peas’ that was an important part of many of these shows), but rather that a three-hour show in Las Vegas has been edited down to less than half its length, losing much of its structure and character along the way. The problem is not just that Prince h
as dumped half the show, but that he’s edited out the most interesting bits:7 by removing ‘The Rainbow Children’ and ‘Xenophobia’, the show immediately becomes a much lighter, more generic experience.

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  As on the Lovesexy tour, most nights during the One Nite Alone … shows Prince had sat down at the piano for an extended medley. His next major release was a fan club-only CD with the same title as the tour. The One Nite Alone … album works best when considered as a companion piece to The Truth, only this time focusing on piano and vocals instead of vocals and acoustic guitar. His decision to record an entire song in this manner, accompanied only by the occasional synth and John Blackwell on drums, seemed a fan’s dream come true. ‘One Nite Alone …’ is almost as arresting as ‘The Truth’: it’s unclear whether the ‘undulating acrobat’ is Prince, his lover or a servant, but it’s certainly a surreal one-night stand. But much of the rest of the record consists of scrappy and lyrically peculiar fragments. ‘U’re Gonna C Me’ is a dated account of Prince and a lover paging each other in the same way he once did his engineers. ‘Here on Earth’ is a bizarre dream of a woman in a building site covered in vomit, the lyric utterly at odds with the syrupy arrangement. An elegant cover of (part of) Joni Mitchell’s ‘A Case of You’, which he’d performed live for decades and had revived for the One Nite Alone … tour, is more arresting, but might have been stronger if he’d recorded the entire song.