by Ronin Ro
Music fans however ignored the numbers.
By month’s end, he played his managers a number of his new bass-and-drum-machine anthems, including some thrown together in his home studio. The songs lasted six minutes each, but the grooves were compelling enough to carry them. He wanted every note of it released—on two discs. The first album would have tight, well-written works that invariably led to passionate Sly-like exhortations, synth riffs, and hand claps. The second album held slower, mood pieces.
They listened intently to “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” “Delirious,” “D.M.S.R.,” and “Little Red Corvette.” His managers liked them but urged him to include something like Controversy, a title track with a main theme. “He yelled at us and then he went back to Minneapolis and kept recording,” Bob Cavallo told author Alex Hahn.
Back home, he returned to his new trademark, purple skies, and fear of nuclear war. He programmed another dance beat and recorded a Sly-like multiplayer vocal about a dream, a nuclear “judgment day” in which the sky was “all purple” with “people runnin’ everywhere.” Then, on the keyboard, he played a synth line that some felt unconsciously mimicked one on The Mamas & the Papas sixties classic “Monday, Monday” “I think he was trying to become as mainstream as possible,” his keyboardist Matt Fink explained. “To some extent, he was trying to make the music sound nice, something that would be pleasing to the ear of the average person who listens to the radio, yet send a message. I mean, ‘1999’ was pretty different for a message,” Fink continued. “Not your average bubblegum hit.” Its lyrics discussed dancing in the face of Armageddon.
Prince’s eleven songs lasted nearly seventy minutes. Three songs ran over eight minutes each. Warner wasn’t thrilled with a double album from someone that wasn’t a superstar yet, but they considered the newest Time album What Time Is It? Warner had tested the water with lead single “777-9311” and saw it reach No. 2 on the Black Chart and No. 88 on the Pop Chart. And since August 25, the entire album was selling faster than their debut. Warner agreed to a double album.
They started planning a cover. Prince wanted purple on it. His name would be in huge letters, but over part of the letter “i” in his name, he added, in small, backward lettering, “and the Revolution.” “I wanted community more than anything else,” he said. “He was setting the public up for something that was yet to come,” Bobby Z added. It was the name he would assign this band.
Prince told them it was time to create a video. MTV had rejected the cheap-looking clips for “Dirty Mind,” “Uptown,” and “Controversy” Lisa Coleman said, “We weren’t even allowed on MTV at first. It was all like, you know, white hair bands.” And she didn’t think MTV would want this one, either, but still the band—and sexy blond Jill Jones—performed “1999” for cameras, on a set with red-lit Venetian blinds.
This time, things were different. “It looked as though he had more money to spend and his interest in film and marketing started to increase,” Jill Jones recalled. “He started to single out professionals instead of amateurs. Peers.” He was, she added, “Professional. Focused. Well rehearsed.”
September 24, Warner released “1999” as a single. It made No. 4 on the Black Chart, but got no higher than No. 44 on the Pop chart. Still, it improved upon his last commercial single, “Let’s Work.”
With Warner about to release his double-album and three works—The Time’s second album, his “1999” single, and vanity 6—doing well in the three months spanning August to October, Prince planned his most ambitious tour yet. Vanity 6 was on the bill, so he invited Jill Jones, fresh from her appearance in the”1999” video—and his girlfriend at the time—to sing backup. “I was hired as an employee,” she said. “Work for Hire.”
He next decided The Time needed some work. He sat with them, and showed videos of Muhammad Ali taunting old champion Sonny Liston.
Next, while they rehearsed, he saw they had trouble with their Prince-written “777-9311.” One session, he faced keyboardist Jimmy Jam. “Jimmy, you’re just doing the bass with your left hand. You’re not using your right hand.”
Jam said there was no part there.
“Well, you make a part there! You add something. You got to make it better than the record. No hands can be lazy. You got to play!”
The band sometimes felt Prince was too hard on them. But he respected their talent, to the point where he later publicly admitted, “To this day, they’re the only band I’ve ever been afraid of.” After they devoted a few more rehearsals to the routine, Prince returned to find the group proud of their progress. Some members even said, “Teach! Prince, check this out! We’re jammin’!”
But Prince frowned. “Okay, who’s not singing? Everybody’s gotta sing a harmony part.”
Someone noted it had few harmony parts.
“Doesn’t matter. Gonna be better now than it is on the record.”
The band sighed. But they sang during three more rehearsals.
Prince showed up again. “Okay, where’s the choreography? You guys got to be steppin’!”
Terry Lewis, Morris Day, and Jesse Johnson were stepping and “having a great time,” Jam recalled. But it wasn’t enough.
“Jimmy Jam, what about you?”
“What about me? I’m the keyboard player.”
“No, you got to step with them, too.”
“What! I gotta play with both hands, sing a note, and be steppin’ at the same time? Forget it. I can’t do that shit.”
Prince left. He had other details, and bands, to deal with. Jam considered his request. The next few rehearsals—“about four solid hours of playing at each one”—were difficult, but Jam could soon “do the shit in my sleep.” Jam could play his keyboard part, pull a handkerchief to wipe his face, stow it away, and perform a dance step.
“That’s what Prince did, time and again,” Jam said. “He taught us we could do things we’d never believed we could.”
Jesse Johnson however believed “his real knack is trying to discourage people, and keep them from being confident.” He claimed Prince once said no one would recognize them on the street; they laughed because fans usually mobbed them during shopping trips. “He likes to tell you stuff like that, because of course if you got people believing that, they’re always gonna be there, accepting that small paycheck and feeling happy.”
7
PARTIES WEREN’T MEANT TO LAST
WARNER RELEASED 1999 ON OCTOBER 27. THE REVIEWS WERE generally supportive. But Rolling Stone called “All the Critics” and “D.M.S.R.” obvious filler, where Prince saw them as two of his best new songs. He granted an interview to the Los Angeles Times to promote 1999, but then, he announced he’d never speak to reporters again and walked out. “He’s afraid he might say something wrong or say too much,” said a former aide-de-camp. Numerous tabloids and magazines offered cover stories, but his managers referred them to a public relations firm, which repeated Prince wouldn’t talk. With his retreat, rumors continued.
Prince meanwhile continued to plan his most ambitious tour yet. While conferring with Roy Bennett, his production designer since 1981’s Dirty Mind Tour, he heard Bennett pitch an odd concept: Prince could perform a few lewd stage moves near a woman reclining in a first-class airplane seat. He rejected this. “Prince felt we had to be careful not to be so suggestive that it would upset people,” Bennett recalled. “He’d be the one to say we had to be careful about going too far.” Instead, he asked Bennett to create a brass bed he could use during the finale of his ballad “International Lover.”
The Time got just as much mileage out of bawdy lyrics, synths playing horn lines, and their look as Prince did. Until now, they and Vanity 6 accepted that Prince would hand them completed albums and expect their singers to match his guide vocals. It wasn’t the best arrangement but Prince at least let them claim they wrote and created their works. He had credited their album to “Jamie Starr,” the pen name he also used on Dirty Mind. Reporters, however, kept bringing Prince up, aski
ng why The Time used the same sexual themes he did. Questions about Starr led to icy tension between him and the band, a writer felt.
Reporters began wondering if Jaime Starr existed. In response, Morris said Jamie was an engineer and co-producer. “Of course he’s real.” Manager Steve Fargnoli claimed Starr didn’t grant telephone interviews since he was “in and out of Minneapolis,” “a reclusive maniac” and might not be around for months. But Prince’s old pal Sue Ann Carwell (once known as Suzy Stone) said it plainly: “Prince is Jamie Starr.”
People tied to the band wondered if Prince encouraged the disclosure to attract more attention. Alan Leeds meanwhile said, “To my knowledge, he discouraged anyone ‘leaking’ that he was Jamie Starr. He preferred the mystique of it all.”
Either way, The Time coped with the revelation. “When people came to realize how big a role he played in some of these projects, they started to lose a little respect,” said Alan Leeds.
Once people learned Vanity 6 was really his concept (from lingerie to lyrics and the music) “it wasn’t the same.” But live shows didn’t suffer. One reporter spoke for many when he noted, during the tour, The (actual) Time now outplayed “whoever it was on the first Time record.”
By December 16, when Prince arrived at The Time’s sound check in Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium, morale was low. Various band members sensed he feared they’d upstage him. Tensions mounted.
Prince kept playing his dates, videotaping every show. On his tour bus, he scanned the footage for missteps. And some nights, he had the band nearby, offering commentary and suggestions while the videos played.
During a tour break in New York City, Prince strolled down a hotel corridor, bound for his room. He heard guitar playing from behind Lisa’s door. He approached and knocked. “Who’s playing,” he asked, “’cause I know it ain’t you.”
Lisa answered. He saw her good friend Wendy there. Both their families were in town for Christmas and Wendy was spending a few days in the room. She was also holding a guitar. “I played some hotshot progression,” she recalled. His eyes twinkled. “I didn’t know you played.”
He asked to hear more. “He was impressed,” Wendy said. “I was shocked. I was this kid, just out of high school. I had no real performing experience.”
In late January 1983, Prince ended his month-long break and continued the 1999 Tour. As February began, program directors at rock radio stations heard his plaintive new single, “Little Red Corvette,” and enjoyed its conservative, moralistic lyric—a wounded man urging a fast woman to “slow down”—and its fiery guitar work. They added it to play lists and a new audience helped it quickly reach No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. And where his songs usually did better with R&B listeners, this one kept climbing higher on the Pop Chart. Then MTV started playing the clip, Prince in a shiny purple jacket and frilly white shirt. Fans ate it up.
As the second leg of the tour continued, he found himself booked into stadiums and ice-hockey rinks for crowds of twenty thousand. And during shows, he faced audiences that were now 50 to 75 percent white. With “Corvette,” and then “1999” crossing over, demand for tickets had him leaving small theaters behind. Rock fans considered him “a dynamo [that] could write brilliant songs, outperform just about every rival, and sell out arenas,” said associate Alan Leeds.
Now when the band left the dressing room and marched toward another stage, they could already hear crowds screaming for them. Screaming fans were nothing new, Dickerson noted, but the cries carried a new intensity. “We could see we were at a turning point,” he explained.
By month’s end, the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics’ poll had 1999 at No. 6 in their albums of the year, over Michael Jackson’s new Thriller (No. 15), The Clash, Paul McCartney, Aretha Franklin, Fleetwood Mac, even his idol Joni Mitchell.
MTV started airing Michael Jackson’s video for “Billie Jean” on March 2, a week after the song reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. While Thriller had already sold 2 million copies since its late 1982 release, “Beat It” now inspired sales of 800,000 every seven days.
But Prince was on the rise, too. March 21, rock fans paid top dollar to see him play Radio City Music Hall. That night, a riot flare burst from the drum kit on the dark stage. “Controversy” pulsed. Prince rode a backstage platform—an elevator—until his silhouette appeared on the Controversy blinds. His set list included his usual electronic funk—“Sexuality,” “Let’s Work,” “Dirty Mind”—but sped up and rearranged. It also included “Little Red Corvette” and live instruments. Everything came together. Roy Bennett’s light show included purple and pink police lights. The integrated band re-created moves from videos. Midway through “Let’s Work,” he and Dez did “a classic Rolling Stones move,” a critic reported, standing back to back like Ron Wood and Keith Richards.
Between shows, Prince relaxed by playing basketball or video games. “We thought Space Invaders was incredible,” Dez said. But once Prince started traveling on his own rented tour bus with Fargnoli and Chick, his band felt demoted to backing musicians. Others joined in blaming Fargnoli for Prince’s increasing isolation. “He only cared about Prince and his money,” Mark Brown said.
“Steve seemed very possessive and protective,” Dez explained. With the album gaining momentum, Dez added that people in the entourage were exhibiting many “unhealthy attitudes.”
For his part, Prince was plotting his next move—something big.
There was tension among Prince’s team of musicians. Morris continued to tell Prince he was The Time’s main draw and deserved a raise. Dez was more crestfallen than other band members. “Originally, Prince wanted to be a black version of the Rolling Stones,” Dez said. “His Mick to my Keith,” he added. But Prince’s calculations and endless rehearsals had Dez feeling constrained.
“It began to feel more programmed than I would have liked,” Dez said.
At the same time, Dez still had trouble with some of the more outrageous songs. He and a few other band members watched Christian television on days off and Dez sometimes uttered “the salvation prayer” under his breath while performing onstage.
By spring, Dez recalled, “I arranged with Prince to opt out of sound-checks entirely.” Usually, Prince started these long rehearsals at two—“as soon as the gear was up and running,” Dez recalled—and kept the band on stage until six. “It was always intense,” Dez explained, particularly when Prince controlled every move. Then, after about four hours, he’d always end with about sixteen bars from “Controversy.”
With Dez absent, he turned to Lisa Coleman’s brunette pal Wendy, who sometimes rode on the tour bus. Would she mind stepping in? Wendy strapped her guitar on and played “Controversy.” Prince liked how she handled the song’s scratchy rhythm guitar, and had her sit in a few more times. The others sensed he wanted her in for good. They were right. He invited her to join. “I was just in the right place in the right time,” she said. Dez felt she was being “opportunistic.” This wasn’t Dez’s style—undermining a band member—but Dez reluctantly conceded that positioning herself as a possible replacement was a good move.
Relationships with others were being challenged, too. Vanity was barely speaking to Prince, riding on a separate bus, unhappy because he was seeing both her and Vanity 6 member Susan Moonsie, Per Nilsen reported. “All of us girls were on one bus!” Jill Jones recalled. “He had his own.”
In March, England’s New Music Express flew in writer Barney Hoskyns from Los Angeles to accompany the tour. “He came to the door of his dressing room and shook my hand,” Hoskyns recalled. For two days, Prince avoided conversation. “He occasionally glanced at me but otherwise seemed indifferent … . Remember he had just made a huge deal about never talking to the press again,” Hoskyns explained. But this seemed to extend to more than reporters. Hoskyns observed “a more or less total separation between Prince and everybody else.” Lisa took the writer to a party after their Minneapolis show. Then Vanity “sort of took me und
er her wing,” Hoskyns recalled.
After their exhausting March 13, 1983, show at Kalamazoo, Michigan’s Wings Stadium, the line of tour buses left I-94 in northern Indiana. Between shows, Prince would ride in his own bus, filling pages in a purple notebook. He carried it wherever he went. The secrecy was confounding.
That cold night, the flamboyant entourage stood outside a huge truck-stop diner. The Time, Vanity 6, and The Revolution mingled with roadies, technicians, and tour personnel. They were dressed strangely, compared to local residents, but Hoskyns noted “Prince was already enough of a star for this not to be an issue.” Only when everyone settled in at booths did Prince enter with giant, bearded Chick. “No one said anything overt but there was an implicit feeling of ‘His Majesty has just entered the building …”’ Hoskyns recalled.
They silently passed tables, and crossed the room. At a far-off table, Prince and Chick sat in relative silence. The band didn’t comment on this. “It just seemed to be accepted that he was so brilliant and important that he couldn’t consort with mere mortals,” Hoskyns quipped.
March 24, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis missed a Time concert at San Antonio’s HemisFair Arena. Prince had valet Jerome Benton strap on a bass guitar and pretend to pluck the instrument. Backstage, Prince held his own bass and played every note. Lisa Coleman played Jam’s parts. The duo returned for the next show, with an explanation. After recording with the S.O.S. Band in Atlanta, a snowstorm trapped them in an airport. Prince wasn’t satisfied, though. He fined each $3,000, Uptown magazine reported. “He thought we were off seeing some girls,” Jam told Uptown’s Sam Sandberg. But then Prince saw them near the S.O.S. Band in a photo in “Billboard magazine or something,” Jam added. “Seems like it was okay to be off meeting girls, but not okay to be furthering our own independent careers.”