by Hahn, Alex
Although $10 million was being poured into the construction of Paisley Park, scheduled for completion in 1987, Prince also had a costly, state-of-the-art studio built in his home and insisted that it be large enough to accommodate group performances, something that had been impossible in his previous homes. In the studio control room, Susannah installed stained-glass windows that were illuminated by the morning sun, giving the studio a church-like serenity. Completion of the studio’s technical elements fell to Rogers. Working with Westlake Audio of Los Angeles, the contractor designing the facility, she divided the basement of the Chanhassen home into a warren of “isolation” rooms where band members would set up during sessions. Prince’s purple piano, too large for the basement, sat upstairs in the living room and was wired downstairs.
By mid-March, with Rogers still working out the studio’s kinks, Prince without warning informed her that his bandmates were on the way over for a recording session. They planned to record “Power Fantastic,” a song based on a composition by Lisa Coleman called “Carousel.” She had been reluctant to share the idea; according to Rogers, she and Wendy may have been considering it for a solo project but after weeks of Prince’s cajoling, she had finally let him work with it. Using her chordal melody, he arranged a jazz-like piece full of somber majesty that evoked Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue.
As the session began, Rogers discovered that the studio was one pair of headphones short and concluded that the only person who could spare them was herself. Since Prince was singing in the control room, the main speakers had to be shut off so that the playback would not be picked up by his microphone. Prince almost always vocalized alone, but he allowed Rogers to remain so she could monitor the song’s progress. He sang in a corner of the room, his back turned away from her. As the band played, Rogers could hear nothing but Prince’s falsetto vocal. It was one of the most intimate experiences of her career, and Rogers felt at the very center of artistic creation.
The band nailed “Power Fantastic” in one take. Eric Leeds, who played a lilting flute solo, walked out of the studio feeling goosebumps. “That’s one of the greatest things we ever did,” he remarked; no one disagreed.
“Power Fantastic” was to be one of the cornerstones of Prince’s next project, The Dream Factory. As work began, he let everyone stretch out a bit. He composed the lullaby-like ballad “A Place In Heaven” for Lisa to sing and took a day off while she completed the vocals on her own. When Lisa composed a solo piano piece, entitled “Visions,” Prince surprised everyone by slotting it as the opening cut of The Dream Factory. “Teacher, Teacher” and “It’s A Wonderful Day” included prominent vocal and songwriting contributions by Wendy and Lisa. “In A Large Room With No Light,” a dense and busy jazz-fusion piece, featured live playing by most of the Revolution and drumming by Sheila E., whom Prince favored over Rivkin for such complex numbers. Susannah was put in charge of the album’s cover art, which had a homemade look and included contributions from everyone in the band, with each member scrawling pictures and words that would appear on the front or back cover.
The collaborative ethos carried over to rehearsals, which included long improvisational sessions. One jam lasted so long that Mark Brown prepared and ate a sandwich even as he kept thwacking away at his bass to keep the groove going. No one could seem to get enough of playing. “I think that my greatest memories of my musical career are of rehearsals that were spectacular, not shows,” Rivkin recalled. “It was an exciting, exciting time.”
For Wendy and Lisa, this was just what they had hoped for. Prince’s expansion of the band hadn’t diminished their roles in the recording studio; in fact, they were given more latitude than ever before. While Eric Leeds had become an important and respected contributor, Prince made Wendy the second-in-command, letting her run rehearsals on days he did not attend. “Her musical discipline, articulate assertiveness, and work ethic clearly made her the logical and most effective candidate, and deep down the whole band knew that,” noted Alan Leeds.
Prince’s openness to the influence of others also extended to his continued study of jazz. Eric, who often lent Prince albums, found him fascinated with John Coltrane’s Love Supreme and classics from Duke Ellington’s Live At Newport, such as “Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue.” Miles Davis remained a growing inspiration; when Eric mentioned that he had complimented Prince in a recent interview, Prince was deeply touched. “You know, Eric, that’s what makes it worthwhile, when someone like that says something,” he said.
Given the apparent mutual admiration, associates of both Prince and Miles were hopeful that a collaboration might materialize. When Miles moved from Columbia to Warner Bros. Records in 1985, the idea seemed even more possible. Prince recorded a song called “Can I Play With U?,” which he sent to Miles along with a note urging him to add whatever he liked. Miles cut a horn part but didn’t seem particularly inspired by the pedestrian song; after receiving it back, Prince decided not to release it. Still, their respect for each other remained strong. “Prince does so many things, it’s almost like he can do it all,” Miles would write in his 1989 autobiography, Miles. “For me, he can be the new Duke Ellington of our time if he just keeps at it.”
They would appear together onstage once, in a performance at Paisley Park in 1987, and Prince would continue to send Miles tracks from time to time. According to Alan Leeds, who helped arrange the initial meeting between the two musicians, Miles would have preferred a face-to-face collaboration to Prince’s favored practice of sending tapes through the mail. “Up until his illness and death, Miles continued romancing the idea of an eventual album collaboration with Prince – an idea Prince never rejected but never brought himself to take seriously enough to commence writing or recording together,” Leeds said. “Instead, Prince made periodic offers of various tracks. Miles held out, wishing for the opportunity to actually work together. Alas, it never happened.”
A few days after recording “Can I Play With U?,” Prince undertook a series of jazzlike jams at Sunset Sound with Eric Leeds, Sheila E. on drums, and Levi Seacer, Jr. (a member of Sheila’s own band), on bass. These sessions represented one of the most genuinely democratic collaborations in Prince’s career, as he, and everyone else present, threw out ideas that straddled the border of jazz and funk. “He was dealing with musicians of a very high caliber,” recalled Eric. “Water seeks its own level, and I think he was finding the better quality of water.” Various instrumental numbers were recorded, and Prince seriously considered releasing some of them under the anonymous banner of a group called the Flesh.
This interesting project was tabled, and Prince’s jazz excursions became more solitary. Playing all the basic instruments by himself, he recorded an album of instrumentals and had Eric Leeds overdub saxophone parts. Eric, while pleased to be involved in the new project, had found the Flesh sessions much more galvanizing. “What had been a dialogue between musicians now became a script,” he remarked later.
The album, released under the name of the fictional group Madhouse and called simply 8 (it contained eight songs, with each identified by a number rather than a name), was released in January 1987 without any credits. While Prince’s involvement was at first denied by his management, eventually word leaked out that he and Leeds were the sole players. Considering the absence of vocals, the album did quite well, reaching No. 25 on the Black Chart. The single “6” even became a hit on the Black Singles Chart, climbing to No. 5. And among Prince’s core fan base, 8 was seen as yet another unusual expression of his protean genius. In the absence of vocals, it showcased his outstanding drum, keyboard and bass skills prominently. While Eric Leeds, as jazz purist, would later criticize the album and downplay his own contributions, many listeners felt that he and Prince had achieved a meaningful creative synergy on the album.
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As work continued on The Dream Factory during spring 1986, the jovial, collaborative atmosphere that had at first surrounded the project gradually dissipated. Of the various ways
that Prince reminded Wendy and Lisa that he was still in charge, perhaps the most hurtful was his failure to fully credit their songwriting contributions. The most recent example of song pilfering had occurred on the album Parade; when Wendy and Lisa reviewed the album’s cover art, they discovered that Prince had withheld individual songwriting credit for them on “Mountains” and “Sometimes It Snows In April,” pieces for which they had composed much of the music. As a result of such incidents, they became increasingly reluctant to share their ideas with Prince, and began stockpiling material for a possible solo career.
Another of their concerns was Susannah’s emotional health. Although she agreed to move into the new home, Prince’s resistance to monogamy remained a consistent problem; Susannah had been made aware of his dalliances in Nice, and her patience was diminishing. Back in Minnesota, Prince continued to sleep with, among others, Sheila E., Jill Jones, and actress Troy Beyer, whom he had met in Los Angeles.
Although Prince had bought Susannah an engagement ring, the notion of lifelong commitment frightened him, leading to his wildly inconsistent behavior towards her. Many friends believed that he loved Susannah deeply, but was conflicted about having a conventional relationship. He privately told production designer Roy Bennett that he felt overwhelmed by his feelings for her and worried that the relationship could cause him to quit playing music.
Susannah, despite the oscillations in the relationship, struggled to make it work. “She loved him unconditionally,” observed her friend Karen Krattinger. But cohabitation did not agree with Prince, and after just a few months of living together, he told Susannah he wanted her out. Riddled with ambivalence, he convinced her to rent an apartment a short drive away. “He wanted her in his life, but he couldn’t go to sleep and wake up with the same person every day,” Rogers recalled.
The twists in the relationship left Susannah angry and exhausted, and she wrestled with leaving Prince and Minneapolis altogether. The lovers’ conflicts also placed stress on Prince’s relationship with Wendy and Lisa. When he arrived at the studio in a foul mood, they could tell he had been fighting with Susannah the night before. They also knew that even as Prince demanded loyalty from Susannah, he was dating other women, and they saw him as a hypocrite. Susannah’s pain became difficult for Wendy and Lisa to ignore, even as they struggled to separate the personal and professional elements of the conflict.
There were other clouds on the horizon as well, most notably the release of Under The Cherry Moon. Advance word about the film among Hollywood insiders was uniformly negative. Prince knew that his career as an actor and filmmaker stood to suffer serious damage if the movie flopped, as now seemed likely. One evening at his new home, Prince had a rare explosion of emotion, laying down on the floor and screaming at Susannah that he hated the movie.
As rehearsals began for upcoming tours in support of Parade, Wendy and Lisa again became frustrated about Prince’s augmentation of the Revolution. “We’ve gone from being the Beatles to being an overblown R&B band,” Wendy blurted out during one session. The vision that she and Lisa had of a small, intimate ensemble where they shared the spotlight with Prince was slipping away. Then, over roughly a month between June and July 1986, Prince began overhauling The Dream Factory, replacing collaborative efforts (including “Power Fantastic,” “It’s A Wonderful Day,” and “Teacher, Teacher”) with solo compositions. He also booked a series of live engagements dubbed The Hit and Run Tour that took the band away from the studio. He periodically flew alone to Los Angeles, recording songs for side projects at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood and seeing girlfriends, including actress Sherilyn Fenn. He was not always missed; when he disappeared to the West Coast after instructing Wendy, Lisa, and Susannah to complete the song “Witness For The Prosecution,” the atmosphere in the studio suddenly felt light and breezy.
When he returned, the fighting continued, particularly with Wendy; according to Susan Rogers, spats between the bandleader and guitarist were a “weekly if not daily occurrence.” One rehearsal at a Washington Avenue warehouse in Minneapolis degenerated into a shouting match between Prince and Wendy and Lisa. “You fucking lesbians, you’re gonna rot in hell for your lifestyle!” Prince screamed. “You’re a fucking womanizer,” retorted Wendy. “You’re such a prick and a control freak. You’re just a womanizing pig.”
Finally fed up, they visited Prince’s home and demanded that things change and that they be treated as creative equals. Despite the clear threat that they might otherwise leave the band, Prince refused them point-blank. And with that, the fate of one of the most intriguing albums of Prince’s career was thrown into jeopardy.
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Prince and his management were hungry for a hit, and the success of the single “Kiss,” which reached No. 1 on the Pop Singles Chart after being released in February 1986 gave them hope that Parade: Music From Under The Cherry Moon would also take off. At the same time, Warner Bros. worried that the album’s experimental elements might hinder its commercial potential.
The album was released in late March to critical claim. “Who but Prince fills us today with the kind of anticipation we once reserved for new work by Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones?” began Davitt Sigerson’s review in Rolling Stone, again making clear how much hope the critical establishment had invested in Prince’s success. The Detroit Free Press called the album “a confirmation of Prince’s place as a superior melodist, arranger and player as well as a celebration of his creativity.”
Sales in the United States were not overwhelming, topping out at about two million, but the album sold another two million abroad. The album’s overall performance showed that while Prince had dropped from the stratospheric height of Purple Rain, he was building a base of die-hard fans across the globe.
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Prince, his managers, and Warners Pictures hoped that Under The Cherry Moon, released in July 1986, would be a summer blockbuster like Purple Rain. But this would be a black and white film with an idiosyncratic rather than celebratory soundtrack. And the premiere would not take place in downtown Los Angeles but rather Sheridan, Wyoming, with a population of about 10,000 people. This strange choice resulted from a promotional lottery sponsored by Warners Pictures and MTV that allowed the winner to have the film’s premiere held in his or her hometown and be escorted to the event by Prince himself. The victor was Lisa Barber, a twenty-year-old hotel worker in Sheridan.
None of the band members really wanted to be in Sheridan, and certainly not at the drab Holiday Inn where the post-screening party was to be held. On the day of the premiere, a minor incident caused a meltdown. Wendy cracked open a beer in her room at the hotel and, upon exiting, bumped into Prince in the hallway. Claiming that this constituted public drinking and could embarrass him, he informed Wendy that she would be fined $500. Wendy said nothing, but something snapped for her, and this infantilizing incident became a metaphor for Prince’s insistence on controlling not only their music and image, but even their personal behavior. The incident brought her one step closer to quitting the band.
The film’s premiere went forward that afternoon at Centennial Theatre in Sheridan’s modest downtown. Prince showed up in the same outfit he had worn on the cover of Parade – tight black pants with large white buttons, and a matching black half-shirt that left his small, flat belly exposed. True to his promise, he served as Lisa Barber’s date. Before picking her up in a limousine, he sent over a clothier and makeup artist to prepare her for the event.
Those in attendance at the theater, a peculiar mixture of several hundred of Barber’s Wyoming friends and celebrities flown in by Prince on two Lear jets, found common ground in their distaste for the film. “I couldn’t figure out what was going on,” said one Sheridan resident afterward, speaking for many. During the screening, Prince briefly put his arm around Lisa Barber, but otherwise interacted little with either her or the crowd.
By the time the band was on a plane headed back to Minneapolis, early reviews had arrived,
plunging Prince into gloom and casting a pall over the flight. The notices were negative, often laceratingly so: The New York Times, for example, called his character in the film “a self-caressing twerp of dubious provenance.” Wrote Glen Lovell in the San Jose Mercury News: “The last time I can remember such an outrageous, unmitigated display of narcissism was when Barbra Streisand discovered she could do it all, and cranked out celluloid monuments to herself, like A Star Is Born.”
A distressed Prince continued obsessing about Cherry Moon, so much so that he failed to heed signals that his band was spiraling out of control. Wendy and Lisa finally concluded that the downsides of remaining with Prince outweighed the benefits. They understood the consequences – The Dream Factory had just been completed and mastered, and the album still remained a showcase for many of their contributions. If they left, the project was likely to be scrapped or drastically changed. Just the same, they were ready to walk away and begin planning a solo career.
Later in July, Wendy and Lisa showed up at Prince’s home and said they wanted out. While aware of their growing dissatisfaction, Prince never believed that they might actually quit, and now faced a logistical problem, as a tour of Europe and Japan was about to begin in support of Parade. With Cherry Moon failing at the box office, postponing the tour would likely doom the album’s commercial prospects.
In fact, the entire band was coming unglued. Mark Brown felt woefully underpaid and was troubled by his ever-shrinking role; the band’s live configuration now consigned him to the very back of the stage, hidden by the rest of the group and the dancers. “I was behind the piano, next to Bobby Z., and behind three guys that used to be the bodyguards,” Brown noted. “I started feeling a little unappreciated.”
Brown had also just been offered $3,500 a week to tour with Stevie Nicks (Prince was paying about a third of that), and told Prince he might forego the Parade tour in favor of this opportunity.