by Hahn, Alex
A modest budget was approved, and Prince’s team got the go-ahead to begin filming in Nice in fall 1985. Warner Bros.’ film division had doubts about the project from the very beginning, but the die was cast – Prince was going to get an opportunity to build upon the tremendous success of Purple Rain.
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Among Prince and his entourage, optimism reigned about Under The Cherry Moon. As he and several close advisors flew to Nice to start the project, Prince’s recent setbacks – the “We Are the World” controversy and the rapid fall-off in sales of Around The World In A Day – seemed far away. And there was apparently another reason for cheer: Among those accompanying Prince on the flight was Susannah Melvoin, wearing something that looked very much like an engagement ring. Shortly before the team had left Minneapolis, an article appeared in USA Today reporting that Prince, one of the entertainment industry’s most eligible bachelors, had proposed to Susannah.
In truth, he hadn’t, exactly; Prince had given Susannah the ring, and she had chosen to interpret this as a marriage proposal, which perhaps it was. The USA Today article’s origins were unclear – it was based upon anonymous sources – but Prince was incensed over this intrusion into his personal life. In truth, he remained deeply ambivalent about committing to Susannah, and now the whole matter was spilled out before the public.
The group cleared immigration and customs and arrived at the Beach Regency Hotel to a beautiful day – eighty degrees and sunny with a relaxing sea breeze. The penthouse suite, where Prince, Susannah, and bodyguard Gilbert Davison would be staying, occupied the majority of the top floor and had a wraparound balcony that afforded startling views of the ocean to the front, and the towering hills of Saint Paul de Vence to the rear.
Moments after being escorted to the penthouse, Prince silently steered Alan Leeds into the bedroom and out of earshot of the rest of the group. He ordered Leeds to immediately take Susannah home. More specifically, he wanted her brought to his residence in Minnesota. “I don’t want her going to L.A. and crying on Wendy and Lisa’s shoulders,” Prince insisted.
Reluctantly, realizing that his job would be in jeopardy if he refused, Leeds agreed. But his wife, Gwen, upset with Prince’s treatment of both Susannah and Alan, had to be restrained from going upstairs to confront Prince when she learned the news. Gwen was left alone for two days as Leeds flew Susannah home to Minneapolis and then immediately turned around and jumped on his third transatlantic flight in a week back to Nice.
With Susannah removed from the scene, Nice became a sexual playground for Prince. He met women at local nightclubs, and during the two-month shoot, he would enjoy visits from girlfriends Sheila E. and Jill Jones. He also had an affair with Scott Thomas, according to a knowledgeable source. “Prince and Kristin were definitely an item during the making of the film,” the source said. “It was hardly an enduring relationship, but they spent an awful lot of private time together in Nice while filming.”
The production itself, though, was far less of a lark. Director Lambert quickly alienated much of Prince’s team with what they perceived as a haughty attitude, and the decision was made to dump her. Then, the inevitable happened: Prince himself took the helm, just four days into shooting. This action ratcheted up the pressure on Prince and immediately led to predictions in the media that Under The Cherry Moon was a doomed vanity project.
The initial fallout from Prince’s takeover was mixed. It certainly created resentment within the larger Hollywood film community. Veteran actor Terrence Stamp quit the movie, unhappy with what he perceived as Prince’s imperious manner. But Stamp’s replacement, Steven Berkoff, developed a grudging respect for his novice director, and everyone seemed to agree that Prince, in contrast to Lambert, brought a highly disciplined and focused atmosphere to the set.
Yet there were more fundamental problems with Under The Cherry Moon, most notably its script, a confused, tone-deaf mixture of slapstick comedy and preening. The movie would obviously rise or fall on the acting ability of Prince and Jerome Benton – a dubious proposition at best, since it had been Morris Day, not Prince, who carried much of Purple Rain. And with his very limited experience in directing (he had previously helmed only the “Raspberry Beret” video), the project ultimately proved too much even for Prince. By the time the filming was halfway completed, everyone involved, including Prince, seemed to realize that the wheels were coming off. “What it came down to, I think, was a case of the idea being more ambitious than the skills,” observed Leeds. “There were some casting problems, scripting problems, and directing problems. You ain’t gonna fix them with a night of conversation around the fireplace.”
Other signs were mounting that Prince, for all his energy and ideas, had finally spread himself too thin. Shortly before he departed Minneapolis for Nice, his Paisley Park Records released the eponymous debut by the Family. Initially, enthusiasm was high that the Family would be a worthy successor to the Time, Prince’s most successful side project to date. But while the Time was oriented principally toward black R&B listeners, the Family was tailored to white New Wave and pop fans. “We’ve got to go after some of that Duran Duran money,” Prince exclaimed to engineer David Z. Rivkin during the sessions, referring to one of the slickest and most successful synth-pop groups of the 1980s.
While Prince recorded all of the basic tracks in a matter of days, including guide vocals for singer Paul Peterson, the next step proved much more difficult. Listening to the guides, Peterson struggled to imitate every nuance of Prince’s vocals as ordered; Rivkin recalled one session where twelve hours were required to complete three lines. By the time Peterson finally finished the album, his enthusiasm for the project had all but disappeared.
Much of the material on the album was strong, showing the focus and experimental flare Prince brought to his music in the mid-eighties. Most of the instruments were played by Prince himself, with Eric Leeds’ saxophone and Clare Fischer’s strings prominent on several tracks. “I consider it as much a Prince album as anything else he’s done,” noted Eric.
The lead single, “The Screams Of Passion,” generated some interest from radio, but the project as a whole faced a fundamental problem: no one was available to promote it. Band members Jerome Benton and Susannah Melvoin were in Nice (Susannah having been summoned back from Minneapolis by this point), meaning that the band could not play concerts. At Prince’s Paisley Park Records, which released The Family, no one was really in charge, and in truth there was little to be in charge of, as the vanity label was lightly staffed and poorly organized. “Paisley certainly was an unfocused label in its very gestation at that time, and didn’t even have a single employee, really,” recalled Leeds. And although the label was a subsidiary of Warner Bros., its relationship with the parent company was too poorly defined to make a difference in terms of promotional muscle.
Further, like so many of Prince’s satellite projects, the Family represented another awkward attempt to have someone else imitate his singing style. Paul Peterson’s uncomfortable vocals undermined otherwise strong songs like “The Screams Of Passion” and “High Fashion.”
Ultimately, the Family existed only as a front; the album would have been more successful if released (and sung) by Prince himself, rather than through a fictional band. “You cannot put somebody in a certain costume and automatically have them assume that role,” said engineer Susan Rogers regarding Paul Peterson’s failure to emerge as a credible front man. “It was an impossible task.”
As The Family quickly faltered, failing to crack the Top 50 of the Pop Chart, a frustrated Paul Peterson called Prince in Nice and announced he was quitting the group. “If you’re gonna be in charge of this band, you can’t do four million other things at the same time,” Peterson shouted. “Yes, I can!” Prince shot back. “I did it with the Time, didn’t I? I did it with Sheila E.! I did it with Vanity 6!”
Although Prince and other members of the Family still believed that the project held promise, Peterson could not be convinc
ed to stay. The group came to a quick end with the exit of its designated star. Soon after, a frustrated Prince complained to David Z. Rivkin, “I shouldn’t have let him go so far away from me and out of my control.”
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Back in France, the shooting of Under The Cherry Moon limped to a close during November 1985. Even as it became apparent from dailies that the film was not working, Prince composed music for the soundtrack. He involved Wendy and Lisa in this process, renting them an apartment across the English Channel in London, where they recorded frequently at Advision Studios. The duo developed, among other things, an instrumental piece that would become the song “Mountains” on Parade. On weekends, Prince frequently joined them for recording sessions, socializing, and clothes-shopping sprees.
On the set in Nice, Prince seemed conflicted about Christopher Tracy, the character he had created for himself to play in the film. This charismatic, sexy, and somewhat snide piano player was hardly a sympathetic figure, and Prince’s plan all along had been for Tracy to die at the end of the film, representing his own symbolic transcendence of these character flaws. But Warners, preferring a happy ending, pushed him to conclude with Tracy reforming and heading off into the sunset with love interest Mary.
The alternative ending was shot, and publicist Howard Bloom, viewing a cut of the film where Tracy survives, found himself believing in the character’s redemptive journey. “Warner Bros. insisted on him getting the girl at the end, and it really worked,” Bloom remembered. “This little asshole character that was so hard to identify with, you bonded with by the end.”
But Prince favored the original ending. In the final cut, Tracy died (the victim of an assassination) with the result, in Bloom’s view, that any meaning in the film was also destroyed. From the publicist’s perspective, this was another powerful indication that Prince could no longer tolerate his own dark side, the part of his persona most responsible for making him a musical and cultural rebel. “His instincts were with God now,” Bloom recalled. “He had created this character who was such a scamp, and he had to kill him.”
As work on Under The Cherry Moon concluded, Prince also made a fateful decision about the future of his band. At a November wrap party, Susannah Melvoin and Eric Leeds again joined him in Nice, accompanied by guitarist Miko Weaver and bodyguards/dancers Greg Brooks and Wally Safford. All of these associates had been slated for the live lineup of the Family and after the band’s demise had nothing to do. Eric had lunch with Prince and Susannah at the film studio commissary to discuss plans. “Well, what do we do now?” Eric asked Prince.
“Why don’t you just come on with us?” he responded, which Eric took to be a formal invitation to join the Revolution. “Sounds good to me!” he said quickly.
Prince’s overture, it turned out, extended to all of the ex-Family members, representing a dramatic expansion of the band. Weaver became the third guitarist, joining Prince and Wendy; Susannah was added as a backing vocalist; and Brooks, Safford, and Jerome Benton signed on as dancers. Finally, Leeds’ friend Matt Blistan was drafted on trumpet, completing the Revolution’s transition from a lean rock outfit into a full scale, eleven-member R&B ensemble.
Wendy, Lisa, and the other members of the Revolution learned of these changes when they arrived in Nice to shoot a video for “Girls & Boys,” a song for Parade and the movie. Wendy and Lisa in particular were stunned by this further dilution of their own roles. The Revolution, which they viewed as their band almost as much as Prince’s, had been commandeered by outside forces and transformed into something radically different than the group that had captured the public’s imagination in Purple Rain.
During a break in choreography rehearsals for the video, Wendy’s emotions bubbled forth in a tirade in the commissary. Sitting at a table with Bobby Z. Rivkin, Matt Fink, Eric Leeds, and Matt Blistan and with Brooks, Safford, and Benton within easy earshot, she began attacking her boss and, by extension, her new comrades. “Prince is out of his mind, he’s ruined everything,” she said. Looking at Leeds and Blistan, she said, “At least you guys are musicians, but now we’re just an everyday funk band. We look like a circus. Doesn’t he know what an ass his fans will think he is?”
Wendy’s verbal slaps were clearly directed at the three dancers, who avoided a direct confrontation by ignoring her, but went on ogling female extras in the commissary, behavior that Wendy doubtlessly saw as symbolic of what had changed in the Revolution. Wendy and Lisa’s arrival in Nice also led to another troubling discovery: Sheila E., Susannah’s principal rival for Prince’s affections, was there for a romantic visit. Wendy and Lisa resented her presence, especially in light of the way Susannah had earlier been sent home from Nice, and they worried that Sheila E. also coveted Rivkin’s position as drummer in the band.
Numerous factors influenced Prince’s restructuring of his band. According to Susan Rogers, he had a nebulous concept that the expanded Revolution would embody various groups of “twin” or “triplet” figures – Wendy and Susannah; himself and Miko Weaver; Eric Leeds and Matt Blistan; and the dancers. More concretely, Prince wanted to make productive use of the personnel he had recruited for the Family. Finally, he felt some obligation to reconnect with his R&B roots; after two rock-oriented albums, there were whispers in the media and among fans that Prince had become too “white” in his approach. The presence of dancers and a full horn section made Prince’s group reminiscent of classic funk outfits like James Brown’s Fabulous Flames.
But whatever the rationale behind his decisions, the swelling of the Revolution changed things irrevocably and placed additional emotional stresses on his core band members. The new arrivals, by contrast, felt they represented the wave of the future. “I started calling the band the counter-Revolution,” remembered Eric Leeds. “The name ‘Revolution’ did not have the same meaning to Prince after he expanded the band.” The unit that had been so tightly knit during Purple Rain was now separated into feuding camps, and even more disturbingly, these factions were to a significant extent broken down along racial lines.
As Parade and Under The Cherry Moon were completed, matters were proceeding on two tracks – one toward collaboration, the other toward confrontation. Wendy and Lisa, just as they seemed to be making progress towards being accepted as true songwriting partners, found their roles in the live band diminished by the expansion of the Revolution. There were also indications that Prince, even as he stretched his songwriting in intriguing new directions, had become unfocused. Parade was in danger of being overshadowed by the boondoggle of Under The Cherry Moon, and the implosion of the Family destabilized the Revolution. Plus, he had more girlfriends than he could keep track of and was pitting them against each other. Surrounded by an increasingly large group of band members, lovers, and confidants, Prince was, in many respects, choosing to mentally and emotionally isolate himself by ignoring mounting signs of trouble and insistently keeping his own counsel – whatever the cost.
23. The End
Prince loved being in the Minneapolis area during the springtime, and in 1986 there was something special to celebrate: he was moving into his new home on a property in the southwest suburb of Chanhassen. (He gave his previous residence, the famous purple house on Kiowa Trail, to his father, John L. Nelson.) Only a mile and a half away, construction began on Prince’s Paisley Park studio complex, envisioned as the seat of an expanding musical empire.
His new three-level home (including a basement) sat on a verdant lot that afforded plenty of privacy. A long, circuitous driveway led from a security booth to the home, and the property was surrounded with a black fence. The residence itself sat about 200 yards back from rural Galpin Boulevard; trees masking the home added another layer of protection from the outside world. The exterior was painted yellow with purple balconies and window trim. Inside, the living room extended two stories up to a loft-like roof with exposed wooden beams. His master bedroom included a sitting area overlooking the living room. The rear of the house opened onto a small lake s
urrounded by woods, and the backyard sported a tennis court, basketball court, and swimming pool.
With its exposed wood, lack of high-tech amenities, and a square footage that was modest in comparison to what people might have expected from a global superstar, Prince’s new abode felt perhaps more like an upscale ski lodge than a haven for the rich and famous. Indeed, far more money was poured into Paisley Park than his residence. “When I first visited the house, he saw my reaction and said ‘I know, it’s kind of small, isn’t it’?” remembered Mark Brown. “I said I had expected some marble pillars or something, but he said he didn’t go in for that gaudy stuff.”
Susannah Melvoin was planning to move in, representing Prince’s first real attempt at cohabitation. She and her close friend Karen Krattinger, now general manager of Prince’s organization, took charge of decorating and organizing. Susannah added artsy touches throughout the residence, such as hanging large nude canvasses she had painted. The two women were also given free rein to shop for furnishings. And in what had been designed as a wine cellar, Krattinger meticulously organized thousands of videotapes Prince had made of shows and rehearsals. “It became this amazing history of his entire career,” she noted.
Prince enjoyed hosting barbecues, sports, and video nights at his home. Among the frequent guests were Wendy and Lisa; Alan Leeds, along with his wife, Gwen, and son Tristan; Eric Leeds; and bodyguard/friend Gilbert Davison. During the spring and summer, Prince also gathered friends for softball games and bowling nights throughout Minneapolis. “It was nice for him to be able to incorporate his social life into his home,” said Susan Rogers. “He had what he’d always wanted: people around him. They would go upstairs and watch TV or sit in the kitchen for hours telling jokes.”