by Hahn, Alex
Undaunted, Leeds began planning the tour. Struggling to meet deadlines, he and his deputies rented vans, buses, and lighting equipment, hired road crews, and booked the show and entourage into arenas and hotels across America. These meticulous efforts left the managers hopeful that, despite the huge overhead, the tour might somehow break even. “This was one of the most logically, economically routed tours I have ever seen,” Leeds recalled. “Everything made sense.”
Just over a month before the tour, Prince summoned Leeds and Fargnoli to Paisley Park for a meeting. His manner, as it had been since his spiritual epiphany at the end of 1987, was serene but resolute. Quietly, Prince insisted that his managers postpone the U.S. swing and instead set up a tour of Europe. Displeased by the response of American consumers and radio stations to Lovesexy, he would visit U.S. venues only after enthusiasm for the record increased.
A shaken Leeds explained the potential consequences. With Lovesexy already fading on the charts, the album might be beyond rescue before the European tour was over. An immediate U.S. campaign, Leeds argued, was the only way to boost the album. The manager also explained that the change in plans would wreak logistical havoc. And all of the enormous efforts that Leeds’ team had put into booking the U.S. swing would go to waste.
Despite the chorus of dissent from his advisers, Prince stood firm. Leeds, exhausted by his failed efforts at persuasion, could do nothing more. “Every decision he made about Lovesexy was arguably wrong,” Leeds recalled. “And the worst one was flipping the tour at the last minute.”
***
The European Lovesexy swing began in Paris in July and drew strong crowds despite the hurdles Prince’s managers had faced in arranging it. Tightly themed and structured, each performance played out as a stage show split into two equal-length “acts,” the first focusing on Prince’s “darker side,” and containing songs from The Black Album, and the second showing his rebirth through the music of Lovesexy.
Prince’s live band included many carryovers from the strong European Sign O’ The Times tour, including Sheila E. on drums and the horn section of Eric Leeds and Matt Blistan, offering ample opportunities for instrumental flourishes. For many fans, the show represented a brilliantly staged, well-paced presentation of songs that touched on many parts of his canon. For Prince’s band members, it was less satisfying, as the rigid choreography required by the complex stage design left little room for improvisation. Their patience was tested at times, such as during “Anna Stesia,” when Prince sermonized for as long as ten minutes while band members noodled on their instruments. “It was overkill,” said keyboardist Matt Fink. “I thought it was a big waste of time, and the audience didn’t get it.”
Offstage, things remained tense between Prince and his management as Lovesexy slid down the U.S. charts. After an August 21 concert in Copenhagen, Alan Leeds received an early-morning call in his hotel room from Prince, who had just seen the latest Billboard numbers documenting the album’s free fall. He beseeched his tour manager to return to the U.S. and fix whatever had gone wrong. “He was almost in tears,” Leeds said. “It was almost as if he were saying, ‘How can you sit here and fiddle while Rome is burning?’” But Leeds parried the request, arguing that if he were suddenly to abandon his post, the complex Lovesexy jaunt could descend into chaos. “It was a total case of miscasting – I was one of the least expendable people at that time and place, and I was one of the least likely people to be able to help things in the States,” Leeds noted. “But that was his level of desperation.”
By the time the tour finally reached America, the concert swing had lost its momentum. While tickets sold out quickly in Prince strongholds like Chicago, Detroit, and New York, he no longer had huge numbers of fans throughout in Middle America. “In some places, he was playing to half-empty houses,” recalled Warner Bros.’ Marylou Badeaux, who attended dozens of the Lovesexy concerts.
In Boston, a tragedy further dimmed the mood. An automobile accident caused a car to plunge into a line of fans waiting in front of a Tower Records store to purchase tickets for the show in Worcester, Massachusetts; a Berklee College of Music freshman named Frederick Weber was killed, and several other fans were seriously injured. “Prince was devastated,” Leeds recalled. “He didn’t like what it represented, and he was genuinely upset about the tragic element. The last thing he wanted to do was draw people into an unsafe situation.”
When the tour arrived in Massachusetts in October, Prince scheduled a late-night benefit concert at a Boston nightclub in honor of the deceased student. This performance, like other “aftershows” during the tour, was charged with excitement, as Prince and the band, shorn of props, tore into a series of funky jams and cover versions, including James Brown’s “Cold Sweat,” which backing vocalist Boni Boyer sang as Prince drummed. In this setting, the energy that had been stifled by the Lovesexy show’s elaborate staging was released.
The Boston show followed on a large number of aftershows Prince had played during the European swing, with the late-night shows representing an opportunity to see Prince perform in intimate settings and to hear rarities. One such show, at the Hague’s Paard van Troje, would become immortalized on a bootleg album called “Small Club,” which included a largely improvised instant classic called “People Without.” It was at these late-night events that Prince delivered some of his most passionate performances of the tour and when, not coincidentally, he seemed happiest.
28. Albert Understands Me
Prince didn’t allow himself to dwell on the commercial disappointments of Lovesexy; rather, he threw himself into plans to revive the Graffiti Bridge film that had become stalled in late 1987 when Madonna declined to participate. Energized and anxious to return to the project, Prince directed Steve Fargnoli to cancel an early 1989 Lovesexy swing through Japan – where ticket demand was strong – so that he could work on preparations for Graffiti Bridge.
The decision, like the postponement of the U.S. swing, created an uproar amongst Prince’s managers. In a series of contentious conversations, Fargnoli told Prince that he would be sued and stood to lose tens of millions of dollars if he breached his contracts for the shows. Finally Prince relented, but he again felt that Fargnoli, so long a critical ally, was now hindering his career plans.
The Lovesexy show was greeted as enthusiastically in Japan as it had been in Europe. Upon returning, he immediately launched into work on the Graffiti Bridge screenplay. The other key task was finding an appropriate female lead, with Madonna out of the picture and Prince not interested in bringing back Patricia Kotero.
Seeking support from his managers for the project, Prince scheduled a meeting with Bob Cavallo in Los Angeles. Cavallo arrived knowing that his firm’s once-strong relationship with Prince was in jeopardy. During the Lovesexy swing, Prince had actually tried to fire Steve Fargnoli, forcing Cavallo himself to join the tour to patch things up. It was clear to the managers that Prince had little interest in their advice and that he was edging towards self-management. Still, Cavallo, a key supporter of Purple Rain, would not reject the notion of a sequel out of hand, and held out some hope that Prince’s once-promising career as a film star could be revived.
Prince arrived at the meeting with a twenty-page draft of the screenplay, which he passed to Cavallo. The concept, which reprised various elements from Purple Rain, seemed saleable enough, even if the execution was hardly perfect. After examining it, Cavallo looked up brightly. “This is a good idea,” he said. “Let’s get you with some hip young screenwriters and make this happen.”
Prince looked at him quizzically. “We don’t need any screenplay,’’ he said. “This is all we need.”
Cavallo responded that this was at best a treatment for a script and that the idea needed to be fleshed out. Again, Prince stood his ground. The conversation went nowhere, and Cavallo got up and shook Prince’s hand.
“I don’t think I can do it,” said Cavallo, aware that this was likely to be the death knell of his firm’s long
association with Prince.
Undaunted by Cavallo’s reaction, Prince sought others who could help him sell Graffiti Bridge. During the Lovesexy swing, Albert Magnoli, the director of Purple Rain, had socialized frequently with Prince offstage, gradually replacing Steve Fargnoli as his closest confidant. With his Hollywood ties, Magnoli seemed a perfect choice to secure backing for Graffiti Bridge. In truth, his career was stalled; he had directed only one film, a commercial flop called American Anthem, since Purple Rain. The notion that Magnoli had the power or the creativity to turn Prince’s screenplay treatment into a successful feature film was ultimately little more than wishful thinking. And perhaps, there was also nostalgia at work, along with a pressing financial need to recreate the commercial success of the Purple Rain era, a time in which Magnoli loomed large in Prince’s life and career.
Not long after Prince’s initial meetings with Magnoli, Karen Krattinger received a call asking her to have some packages picked up at the Minneapolis airport. Inside, she found letters dismissing Cavallo, Ruffalo & Fargnoli and appointing Magnoli as manager. Shocked, she phoned Prince. “Do you have something to tell me?” she asked.
She found him in an exuberant mood. “Don’t worry, it’ll be great,” he assured her. “Albert understands me!”
It was only the beginning of a major purge of Prince’s business apparatus. In the coming weeks, he fired business lawyer Lee Phillips, financial consultant Fred Moultrie, and others. Finally, Krattinger herself was sacked, in large part because of clashes with Magnoli, whom she considered a chauvinist pig.
Alan Leeds, another member of the old guard, heard nothing about his own fate for weeks and worried the axe was about to fall on him as well. Eventually, Leeds inferred that he was being kept on, but felt frustrated by the way the message was delivered; after years of service and friendship, Prince never even called to assure him that his job was safe.
The reaction to the hiring of Magnoli was a surprise across the entertainment industry, as well as among seasoned Prince associates like the Leeds brothers. Fargnoli and Cavallo had been viewed by many as the ideal managers for Prince, and through a combination of creativity and savvy, they had, over a period of ten years, guided him to the very heights of fame. Magnoli, by contrast, brought little to the table in terms of business acumen. His greatest qualification, it seemed, was that he had directed a film that had rocketed Prince to superstardom – and that he unconditionally supported Graffiti Bridge.
Magnoli, meanwhile, was entering a situation far more chaotic than he could have imagined. Prince was several million dollars in debt, owing to many factors – the fiscal debacle that was the Lovesexy tour, his bloated payroll, and also the legal fees that began to mount in the aftermath of firing most of his business team. (Both Cavallo and Fargnoli brought suits against Prince and eventually settled out of court.) After being one of pop music’s biggest money-makers for the better part of a decade, Prince had spent himself into a deep hole.
Despite all of this, it initially seemed that Prince had made a shrewd decision by tapping a Hollywood insider as his manager. Shortly after assuming his new job, Magnoli was contacted by the acclaimed director Tim Burton, who was shooting the movie Batman with Jack Nicholson in the role of the Joker. While assembling a rough cut, Nicholson and Burton placed two Prince songs, “1999” and “Baby, I’m A Star,” into scenes as background music. Pleased with the effect, they hatched the idea of asking Prince for new material to add to the film’s soundtrack. Here was Prince’s way back into Hollywood: an association with a high-profile film that could easily become a blockbuster.
***
During 1988, Prince’s social life began to focus on Anna Garcia, now 17 years old. Their relationship remained platonic but was otherwise essentially romantic. Garcia found their interactions to often have a strange quality. At times he played mind games where he would describe a hypothetical situation and ask Garcia how she would handle it. When she responded in a way that he perceived as “wrong,” he assumed a disapproving air; when he liked the answer, he was encouraging and affectionate.
One evening when they were relaxing in an Amsterdam hotel room, Prince posed an odd query, asking what Garcia’s name was. Realizing that Prince was about to choose her stage name for the side project he was planning to build around her, she responded that he must know. He then sat down at a piano and began playing.
“Of course I know your name,” he said. “It’s Joy Fantastic.”
The song he wrote, “Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic,’’ was recorded in June 1988 at Paisley Park, although it would not be released for more than a decade. He and Garcia settled on calling her “Anna Fantastic.” Clothes were tailored for her with this name on them, and Prince wrote a brilliant ballad called “Pink Cashmere” that described a coat he had made for her. He would give her the coat on December 31, 1988, the very day she turned eighteen. Their romantic relationship formally began at that point, and quickly Garcia fell very much in love with him. She often found herself longing, though, for a life in which he was not famous. Invariably, she found that his friends in Minneapolis viewed her just as another “Prince girlfriend,” rather than an individual.
Much of their time consisted of watching movies together, and she was expected to spend hours listening to him record. One afternoon in the studio, to relieve Garcia’s boredom, he brought her into the drum booth and showed her how to bang the sticks against the skins. When he left for a few minutes, she continued to play and added rhythmic embellishments to her rudimentary beat. Abruptly, a stern-faced Prince walked in. “All right, that’s enough,” he said. Oddly, it seemed he was worried Garcia was already becoming too good a drummer, and this was inconsistent with what he wanted in a demure girlfriend.
This fundamentally competitive side of Prince also emerged around family members. When John Nelson, then seventy-two, visited the Chanhassen home for a game of pool with his son, Prince was a picture of intensity behind the cue stick. Mostly out of politeness, Garcia offered encouraging comments about Nelson’s playing. After the game, Prince confronted her angrily, saying he couldn’t believe that she had rooted for someone other than him; his sense of betrayal appeared genuine. The same dynamic characterized games of basketball with the taller Duane Nelson, Prince’s half-brother, who also visited from time to time. Prince, still showing the resentment he’d accumulated during high school when Duane was more successful at sports and with girls, clawed and scraped for every advantage in the one-on-one contests.
When Prince and Garcia were alone, the topic of winning – whether in recreational sports or in the entertainment world – came up over and over. “He always talked about how important it was to be the best at something,” she remembered. “He seemed obsessed with that – being the best.”
***
As 1988 came to a close, the roster of people surrounding Prince had changed significantly. Alan Leeds had moved from tour manager to president of Paisley Park Records, a shift that in practice diminished his day-to-day contact with Prince. The firing of Bob Cavallo – a reliable, steadying figure that had guided him through the maze of the entertainment industry – left a gaping hole in Prince’s business affairs. Prince’s Lovesexy backing group was largely disbanded, although some of its members remained in the fold.
Some of Prince’s friends viewed such changes with concern, fearing that he was depriving himself both of good advice and imaginative musicians. Perhaps more concerning, figures like Susan Rogers, Marylou Badeaux, and the Leeds brothers felt that Prince’s ceaseless recording had led to a degree of creative burnout. Lovesexy, for all its strengths, arguably represented the first record of his career that hadn’t in some way reinvented his sound.
Still, Prince’s friends could not have been entirely surprised by the changes he had undertaken. His pruning of bandmates and confidants, while bittersweet for fans and perhaps in some ways for Prince himself, also represented a re-assertion of independence. Going it alone had always been central to Prince�
�s character, and was an essential part not only of his psyche, but of his artistic process.
The first 30 years of Prince’s life had marked an incredible trajectory in which he had overcome adversity in his childhood and emerged from a community of hundreds of gifted musicians to distinguish himself as a singular pop star and household name. In doing so, he had achieved one of the greatest runs of creativity in pop history, creating an unparalleled universe of alter egos in the Time, Vanity 6 and the Family along the way. He had created at least four albums – Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain, and Sign O’ the Times – that were among the most influential releases of the 1980s. Remarkably, he’d accomplished all this by the age of 30.
Despite the impossible standard he had erected for himself, in the years that followed, he would accomplish a great deal more. And as he prepared for the next chapter of his career, Prince felt nothing but excitement for the creative vistas that lay ahead.
Epilogue
Summer 1970, Wisconsin
A black-and-white home movie shows a group of sixth grade boys, on the brink of becoming teenagers, playing games outside in the warmth of the summer sun. The kids are from the Northside neighborhood of Minneapolis, and they’re at a summer camp, as part of a church group’s effort to give underprivileged kids a chance to enjoy time in the great outdoors. The rural environment is far removed from what they experience in their daily urban lives. The sounds are raucous, and reminiscent of what you might hear on an elementary school playground at recess: the shouts of kids at play, embracing their freedom, and enjoying being kids.
The camera pans to a young Keith Johnson, who would go on to attend seminary and would eventually officiate at Prince’s wedding to Mayte Garcia; it rests on Keith’s future wife Andrea; and then focuses on Keith’s younger brother, Kirk Johnson. There are black kids and white kids, a clamorous group representing all races, playing camp games, chanting slogans, shouting and screeching and laughing.