by Ronin Ro
After three weeks, Magnoli started reworking Blinn’s draft. Magnoli rewrote 90 percent but “the story changed hardly at all.” He based characters on Morris, Prince, and others, then exaggerated or downplayed attributes and had them act out a fictional story. “There’s music,” Magnoli explained. “That means there’s night, there’s bars, there are alleys.” From here, the plot unfolded. “A girl comes into town to a club. She sweeps out of a cab in black. There’s Prince—he’s a dark figure. There’s Morris—he’s a light figure. There’s the girl—she’s a mystery.” The Kid was popular in the local music scene but at home, his parents’ fights left him “humiliated, frightened, and damaged,” Magnoli added. He was too introverted to cooperate with his band or love the new girl. When she fled to Morris, he socked her, realized he was just like his father, then let everyone know he had changed by singing a power ballad. By the finale, Magnoli added, “he has learned to let others into his world … he has learned to love.”
Magnoli’s biggest change to the script was with the parents. He cut what Blinn planned as an offscreen murder-suicide, and included the Kid’s parents as characters. While Prince’s own mother never considered themselves other than black, the script showed Prince’s character the Kid as the product of a mixed marriage. They also “jacked up” the father character, Neal Karlen explained. In a few scenes, he berated or beat his wife; he fought with his son; he pulled a gun. They included elements of his biography “to make the story pop more,” Prince said, “but it was a story.” The real John never touched guns or cursed at his mother, Prince claimed. “He never swore, still doesn’t, and never drinks.”
It was at this same time that Prince asked Magnoli, “What should I have as a vehicle? I was thinking of a motorcycle.”
9
YOU SAY YOU WANT A LEADER
WHILE WORKING ON PURPLE RAIN, PRINCE INCLUDED THE REVOLUTION more than ever. “We were recording and writing and doing it,” drummer Bobby Z remembered. “We all worked hard and did this music together.” Bobby credited Wendy with changing things for the better. Wendy meanwhile felt Prince “definitely” enjoyed group sessions more than he had.
Instead of recording everything then teaching them how to play it live, he doled out parts of a song or cassettes and solicited input. They jammed until they found a groove they liked, Wendy explained, then individual players took over when a section played to a particular strength. Ultimately, he included The Revolution on six of nine songs. He also shared credit for composing, arranging, and producing.
At some point, Prince brought out his idea for “Let’s Go Crazy.” He started this with a mood-setting church organ and his filtered voice saying there was something else—“the afterworld.” In this world of never-ending happiness, you could always see the sun, day or night, he added. Instead of relying on a shrink in Beverly Hills, people should simply accept that this life was harder than the afterworld. “In this life, you’re on your own!” His chunky guitar chords and pop keyboards followed to a quick beat. His vocal was drenched in reverb. His guitar roared through the entire song. He threw in a few high-pitched squeals.
People around him loved the track, but they frowned on its overt religious message. They knew he had dedicated five albums to God—even Dirty Mind—but they also knew the religious theme weighed down what was otherwise a great party track. Prince ignored them. His song was about God and “the de-elevation of sin.”
One August day, he started working on something called “Computer Blue.” He had considered this rock suite since the second part of the 1999 Tour in early 1983. That day, Matt Fink improvised a slinky synth groove during a rehearsal. Prince loved it and said, “Let’s turn that into a song!” Now, Prince wanted to inflate it to include a riff his father John used to play. He had Wendy and Lisa greet each other by name over a pounding bass drum and whiny noises. He screeched, and a thrashing rock beat started. He played more roaring guitar, and sang about loneliness. The results were strange and catchy—but it still needed something. He’d finish it at some point. Maybe in California.
August 3, he again brought out “Baby I’m a Star,” a song he had recorded once during the Controversy Tour. Fink remembered improvising riffs “over the track for several takes until I got one Prince and I liked.” Prince also worked on a smooth instrumental called “Electric Intercourse,” then filled his dance number “I Would Die 4 U” with more religious subtext. He also started “Purple Rain,” a guitar-heavy power ballad in the “Free” tradition, and one as expansive as any on Jimi’s Electric Ladyland. With echoing voice booming over drums he told a girl he never meant to hurt her; he wanted to see her again; he didn’t want to be the other guy. Then he sang louder, seemingly telling a crowd times were changing; it was time for something new. “You say you want a leader …” Well, they better make up their mind and let him guide them to the purple rain.
At the warehouse near Highway 7, Prince had the band play the song. “Everybody was coming up with their own parts,” Wendy claimed. And by day’s end, they pretty much finished it. It found Prince playing charged guitar and emitting a Jackson-like “Whoo!” Near the end, the others joined its chorus.
The band was playing the song again when a woman walked in with her bike. “She was like a bag lady” She took the seat in front of them while they played. “Really quiet, very demure, really sweet.”
The performance moved her to tears. “She was bawling,” Wendy recalled.
Bobby Z thought its song structure and tempo almost felt like country, rock, and gospel. It had blood, sweat, tears, and soul. “You can smell the crowd in it,” he said. “It’s a movie, it’s a hit, it’s an album. It just sums it up.” His bodyguard Chick was just as affected. Entering an office, he told Prince’s other employees, “Wait until you hear the song he did last night. It’s gonna be bigger than Willie Nelson.” He kept predicting it would make Prince a superstar, and that Nelson would actually cover it. “That, to him, was a big achievement,” said Alan Leeds, “that the song would have that broad of an appeal.”
When Prince finally played it for them, they were just as thrilled. Dez, however, wondered if he might have spawned it. He conceded Prince was a great guitarist, but would Prince have written this kind of song without him around? “I know we influenced each other,” Dez explained. They frequently discussed the rock genre. And the new ballad was “definitely reminiscent of my style.” In the end, Dez decided, “I’m glad I had the chance to influence his sound somewhat.”
One thing is for certain, “Purple Rain” is Prince at his most self-assured. While he spent years downplaying Jimi Hendrix as an influence, this majestic ballad finds Prince openly reveling in the free-form, long and winding sort of balladry Jimi embraced during his brief career in rock music. Huge drums proceed at a leisurely pace; Prince unveils an arsenal of riffs and high-pitched solos; his falsetto reaches stratospheric heights; his lyric—which veers from accepting a breakup to telling listeners he wants them to be saved and go to heaven after Judgment Day—is open and moving. And the strings that end the number are just as affecting. After years of fumbling with a rock sound—the discolike material on his debut, the falsetto-marred “Bambi” on Prince, and the plodding, canned feel of “Free” on 1999—“Purple Rain” found Prince a style that worked—big drums, majestic guitar, and an echoing and loose conversational delivery. It also offered an unexpected alternative to the overproduced, hook-heavy ballads churned out by hair-, spandex-, and image-obsessed glam metal acts routinely appearing on MTV.
Fans descended on the downtown Minneapolis club First Avenue, which was to appear in the film. With The Revolution well rehearsed, Prince arranged to test them before a live audience, at a twenty-five dollars-per-person concert to benefit the Minnesota Dance Theatre. (They did it “because that’s where we were getting our dance instruction,” Fink explained.)
Since he was between tours, Prince had no “first-rate, tour-worthy technicians on payroll,” Alan Leeds explained. By the time he sta
ged his final rehearsal for the show, Alan Leeds had flown a few sound and lighting wizards into town. At the last minute, Prince asked Leeds to have a mobile audio truck near the club to record every note. Leeds obliged, accepting he “pretty much had to assume control of it all.”
Alan got it there by the time the band arrived backstage; and in it, David Rivkin—his drummer’s brother and the guy who helped record his debut’s vocals—prepared to engineer and record. Rivkin couldn’t get over how great this black truck from New York was. With no experienced road crew around, Leeds became “production manager by default,” he said. Inside the club, he recalled, “it was just elbow to elbow, a goddamn sweat-box, and no one knew what to expect, ’cause Prince was gonna play a bunch of new stuff that no one had heard.”
The MDT corps started things off with a Flashdance-inspired routine to “D.M.S.R.” Backstage, Prince had his band gather around to link hands while he led them in prayer. When the curtain rose, Prince marched toward the stage “like a boxer to a ring, jabbing, feinting,” Leeds recalled. By now, actor Don Amendolia had given Prince and his bands acting lessons and workouts. Local choreographer John Command (who also taught everyone their dance moves) had reshaped Prince’s body so it looked toned and fit. Prince took the stage playing a purple guitar, with Wendy Melvoin replacing Dez. New to performing live, Wendy said, “I was scared to death but I loved it.”
His ten-song set found Prince debuting idiosyncratic new works “Computer Blue,” “I Would Die 4 U,” and “Electric Intercourse.” He also offered a rare cover, Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You.” He floored the sweaty audience with “Let’s Go Crazy” (a song so new Rolling Stone misidentified it as “Let’s Get Crazy”). With relief, Prince watched the crowd accept its mix of fiery guitars and pop keyboard.
Then, Rolling Stone reported, “he encored with an anthemic—and long—new one called ‘Purple Rain.”’ The magazine claimed the power ballad brought the house down. David Rivkin however said the crowd had never heard any of these Purple Rain songs, and so when they finished playing, no one really clapped. They weren’t familiar with any of it.
Either way, after his set, Loyce Houlton, a woman in her sixties who worked with the Minnesota Dance Theatre, hit center stage. “We don’t have a Prince in Minneapolis,” she told the crowd. “We have a king.” She pulled a purple rose from her bouquet and handed it to Prince. Alan Leeds was just as pleased. “It was a great night,” said Leeds. “Thank God we got it all on tape.”
Prince entered his car and was about to leave when a wild fan stepped off the curb, blocking his car.
She started opening her coat, suggested that she wore nothing underneath.
But before she could, Prince winced. “No, don’t do that.”
He rolled his window up and drove away.
Prince didn’t intend to use any of the night’s recordings on the album. But while hearing the tapes later, he saw there were no technical mishaps. He could touch things up in the studio and get these versions of “I Would Die 4 U,” “Baby I’m a Star,” and “Purple Rain” out there. “What we did on the album was to loop a football crowd underneath,” David Rivkin revealed, “so it sounded like everybody was cheering, because there was no applause.”
Prince soon faced another film-related setback. He wanted Vanity to play the love interest and she was taking acting and singing classes.
One night in August, he took her to the downtown rock club First Avenue. They passed pictures of Grandmaster Flash, the Human League, The Clash, and others, then heard the disc jockey in the booth ask, what’s new? Prince held up the test pressing of “Delirious,” asked him to spin it, then led Vanity to the dance floor.
It was a good night, but it did little to change things between them. While Prince had half of a Vanity 6 album done, and a script with her character in it, Vanity was now telling Alan Leeds she was unhappy with how Prince treated her.
Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese was offering her a role in The Last Temptation of Christ. Other producers wanted meetings. All of a sudden, she was in demand—and she wanted more money for Purple Rain, “The movie was Prince’s dream,” she said. “He was bringing in everybody for very little money. You’ve got to pay people. You’ve got to be fair.”
As she told it, the film’s producers failed to meet her salary requests so she left. “I didn’t want to be stuck in the snow at six in the morning in some camper with no place to change clothes. Who needs that?” Vanity was out.
Within days of the First Avenue show, he recorded “Darling Nikki,” to be the album’s shocker. Whether Prince had Vanity in mind when he yelled, “Come back, Nikki, come back!” is unknown. But Prince felt it was the coldest song he ever wrote, and perfect for the film. And though they eventually changed the film character’s name from Nicolette, he kept the song title anyway.
By August 15, he was back in Los Angeles. Wendy and Lisa came by Sunset Sound to help rerecord “Computer Blue.” Prince wanted something epic, to use overdubs to create something grander. Engineer Peggy McCreary reminded him their recorders only had twenty-four tracks. “We don’t have enough room.”
“Make some more room.”
McCreary brought in two other recorders.
They added strings and he was so pleased with the results, Lisa predicted that, from now on, he’d intersperse his “solo” albums with group collaborations.
Away from the studio, his 1999 success continued. When Warner released “Delirious” on August 18, he saw this nonthreatening, upbeat dance tune enter the Top 10 (at No. 8), and become his third Top 20 pop hit that year. Then he learned Thriller star Michael Jackson was, to his amazement, actually aware of him.
Between sessions, Prince heard James Brown was playing the Beverly Theater August 20. Recently, Prince had attended one of Brown’s shows in Minneapolis. That night, Alan Leeds—who once worked for Brown—had asked if he wanted to head backstage and be introduced to Brown.
“Why?” Alan remembered Prince responding.
Like everyone else in his orbit, Alan knew Prince loved Brown’s music. He had also seen Prince’s sound checks and rehearsals frequently segue into “marathon jams on Brown tunes.” As Brown’s Minneapolis concert continued, Alan shrugged: Prince didn’t want to meet an idol. Not only that: “Near the end of the show, I turned around and Prince had disappeared; out the side door and off into the night. It’s anybody’s guess why.”
Still, with Brown playing Los Angeles, Prince wanted to attend. He also, Jill Jones claimed, made a few plans in advance. Prince arrived in a flashy outfit with shoulder pads and a flap open to reveal his chest. From his seat in the rear, he watched James invite Michael Jackson on stage. “Brown had known Michael since before The Jackson 5 signed with Motown,” Alan Leeds explained. Michael—in trademark shades and royal blue military jacket—sang a few words (“I love you”) then leaned into James’s ear. “James barely knew who Prince was at that time,” said Brown’s former employee Alan Leeds.
But Michael did.
“Prince would like to have competed,” Alan Leeds noted, “but Jackson was enjoying the biggest-selling album in the history of the music business! Jackson’s success was impossible to ignore.” Within seconds, James—in a sleeveless green vest that highlighted muscular arms—told the crowd he wanted to introduce someone else. He started calling, “Prince? Prince?” He faced the bustling crowd. “Prince?”
As the crowd cheered, Prince reluctantly climbed onto Chick’s shoulders. Though Prince looked mildly surprised, Jill Jones explained, “It was planned with Chick and everything.” He stripped a glove off and tossed it at the audience. As he climbed on stage, James said, “You gotta do something.”
A musician handed Prince a guitar. Prince strapped it on, then huddled with James for a second.
James backed away a little, watching expectantly. His band played a heart-pounding soul vamp. Prince “played some innocuous rhythm parts,” Leeds recalled. James nodded along, pleased to have him there. But then Princ
e stopped playing. At the front of the stage, he knelt, pointing the guitar at the crowd like a phallus. Prince rose, while panting, then knelt again while hitting an odd chord. Prince rose again, removing the guitar then his shirt.
The crowd cried out.
Prince handed the shirt to a backup player then performed a few stilted dance steps. He marched over to where Big Chick waited in the crowd, raising a peace sign, clapping his hands over his head. With embarrassment, he leaped off stage and into Chick’s arms. But his foot caught on a huge stage prop, knocking the fake lamppost over into the audience. Behind him, Rolling Stone claimed, Brown said, “Look out, Michael!” Instead of returning to his seat, where Bobby Z and Jill Jones sat “hiding their faces, Prince rushed up the aisle and out to his limo,” Leeds recalled. It was a quiet ride back to the hotel.
10
DON’T MAKE ME LOSE MY MIND
AT SUNSET SOUND, PRINCE WORKED TO MAKE HIS SONGS EVEN hotter. He also began to show further interest in Wendy’s twin sister Susannah. Since she had visited Wendy in Minneapolis a few months ago, he thought of her frequently. Finally he addressed the situation the way he addressed all of the meaningful moments in his life: in song, this time with his ambitious, haunting work “The Beautiful Ones.” September 20, he filled the somber ballad with cold electronic drums, dramatic synthesizers, angry guitar, and a poignant vocal that led to awful screams and rants. It was his favorite new song, engineer Susan Rogers told Rolling Stone. It also outlined his feelings for Susannah. He kept writing about her, Rogers said, “but that was the first one.”