by Ronin Ro
What made it even more taxing was the fact that new melodies kept arriving when least expected. Even brushing his teeth could lead to seeing the brush shake, dropping it, and a race across a hotel room to “get to a bass guitar, quick!” as Mojo reported. So between shows, he began to book time in various studios. But taping led to another problem. Since he wrote and recorded so much, he sometimes caught himself trying to rehash an old hit. “You think you hit on something, right! You try to do it again.” Thankfully, Wendy or Lisa would react to these retreads by saying, “Hey, man, I’ve heard that. Put it away” He’d arrange to shove these tapes into a vault that now held 320 other works.
Halfway through the tour, when he reached South Carolina for three nights, he invited Eric Leeds to visit. Eric arrived the second night, and Prince immediately asked if he had his horn. The older seasoned player did. Prince had Eric get on stage and play some saxophone during his long closer, “Baby I’m a Star.” At one point, Prince even ordered the band to stop playing so fifteen thousand people could hear Eric solo. He liked the sound—and respite from material and an image that now bored him—and invited Eric to stay. Wendy didn’t mind—she had her guitar solo before he started singing “Purple Rain” and played for a few minutes during its break. But in Santa Barbara, right before an encore, he told the band Eric would handle this and she turned pale. “Just crushed,” said Alan Leeds.
Fans kept buying tickets and wearing purple. Screaming lyrics. Cheering for the set, splits, and between-song banter. Twenty-four concerts in seven cities grossed an estimated $7 million. He earned even more from sales of tour merchandise, T-shirts, a tour book (which told fans, “U should come more often”), and a replica of the hand puppet he spoke to in the film.
The album itself passed the 10 million mark. The film grossed over $70 million in the U.S. “In some ways, it was more detrimental than good,” he said in Entertainment Weekly. People’s perception changed “and it pigeonholed me.” At concerts, kids screamed simply “because that’s where the audience screamed in the movie.”
The unrelenting pace began to exact its toll. Backstage one night, Prince prepared for “the seventy-fifth Purple Rain show, doing the same thing over and over” for a young pop audience. “And I just lost it. I said: ‘I can’t do it!’” They were putting the guitar on him.
It hit him in the eye and cut him.
Blood flowed down his shirt. “I have to go onstage,” he shrieked.
Prince had to escape this. “I couldn’t play the game,” he told Icon. His next album—it would change all this. He kept recording in a mobile truck. When halls emptied after some shows, he jammed with the weary band to see if anything came of it. The next album would get him away from Purple Rain, And he’d get it out there while this large audience-bigger than the ones that bought his earlier works—were eager to hear his next release.
December 1984, Prince was booked for a five-night stand at Minnesota’s Saint Paul Civic Center. He was on the cusp, finally of escaping the same batch of soundtrack songs, including fewer guitar solos, making things slower, losing the choruses encouraging listeners to party.
Since he kept flying to studios in Minneapolis or Los Angeles between shows, or using mobile trucks, there was only one song left to record, a rock ballad called “The Ladder.” Another long and windy opus in the “Free” tradition, Prince claimed it included a chord structure his father John liked to use. Some felt the song was included as a way to improve the relationship between father and son. Since the jam session before the 1999 Tour, when Prince let John sit in with the band, they had seen him invite his father on trips; include him in songwriting credits; and keep seeking ways to involve John in his career. Now, they figured Prince wanted to claim John wrote some of these new songs to put some more money in the old man’s pocket. Still, more people felt John was trying to ride Prince’s coattails. Local writer Neal Karlen shook his head. “I’m not sure where those coattails would lead him,” Karlen opined. He might get some money or feel proud but “he wasn’t trying to rejuvenate his career or anything.”
Either way, Prince taught “The Ladder” to the band during a sound check and recorded it the next day December 30, at a warehouse. By the time he finished, Prince had taped booming echo, a fairy tale narration, striking piano, slow drums, and his girlfriend Susannah and singer Taja Sevelle’s dragging backup vocals. The next day, Prince had to play the last of five shows at the Civic Center. It was Christmas Eve, so promoters made it a matinee. But Prince also had Susan Rogers load all the tapes into a mobile truck and drive over to his purple house on Kiowa Drive.
After the concert, Prince arrived to find Rogers waiting in the driveway. He recorded a final vocal, the dialog that ended “Temptation,” then gathered the songs he’d recorded since January 1984. Even with Rogers helping, he didn’t finish sequencing Around until 4:00 A.M.
“He had nobody over there at Christmas, which is typical of him,” she said. “He was mainly interested in getting his record cut together.”
PART TWO
The REIGN
13
THE LADDER
PURPLE RAIN’S TWENTY-FOUR-WEEK STAY AT NO. 1 WAS THE fourth longest reign in pop album history. Further, it yielded five hit singles, including his first two chart-toppers (“When Doves Cry” and “Let’s Go Crazy”). His ballad “Purple Rain” meanwhile reached No. 2. The New York Times called him “vulgar.” The San Francisco Chronicle said “rude and raunchy” The Minneapolis Star Tribune called him “an elf of a man … with a shock of hair that looks like it was treated with Crisco and an eggbeater.” Newsweek saw a “self-taught prodigy” Another white writer opined that the film made him “a lot more real to people” since it showed he was more than “a strange, maybe gay, quasi-rock-and-roller, exactly the kind of entertainer whites don’t trust.” Yet, no one denied his amazing success. In fact, Rolling Stone named him Rock Artist of the Year.
He remained guarded, rejecting more interviews than most stars dream of getting. So, reporters got creative. One Saturday morning, his mother Mattie answered her door with cigarette in hand. She had earned her master’s then started working (like Andre’s mom, Bernadette) as a social worker in the Minneapolis school system. Faced with a reporter that morning, she said, “No interviews. We just don’t give them.” Hearing each book or article describe her differently—Musician said she was Italian, while Steven Ivory’s book Prince said she hailed from Baton Rouge—she replied, “I’m from here. I’ve lived here all my life. I’m from Minneapolis.” With that, she closed her door. His father John meanwhile told local paper the Star Tribune that Purple Rain’s depiction of him as a gun-packing wife beater was inaccurate; he never used a gun.
With the next album finished, Prince was free to attend the twelfth annual American Music Awards. But by night’s end, his image had suffered even more. At the January 28, 1985, ceremony his bodyguard told everyone “they gotta turn around because Prince’s girlfriend was walking by” Cyndi Lauper recalled. It turned out to be her pal Sheila E., “and nobody was supposed to look at her. And he told that to Stevie Wonder!” (Wonder of course was blind.) Like many in the auditorium, Lauper liked and respected Prince—her debut included a cover of his “When You Were Mine”—but she thought, C’mon, now. Now you’ve crossed the line, His bodyguards also supposedly asked the group Night Ranger (the group behind such hits as “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me” and “Sister Christian,” and seated behind him at the awards ceremony) not to address or acknowledge him. And when Prince won three awards that night, the guards joined him on the dais while he accepted them.
Another misstep, with longer-reaching repercussions, involved his skipping a recording session immediately after the ceremony. The session was for a star-studded single whose proceeds would benefit starving people in Africa. Superstar Michael Jackson had everyone ready to record. Lionel Richie, producer Quincy Jones, and arranger Tom Bahler had already chosen vocal pairings: Tina Turner and Billy Joel, Dionne Warwick and count
ry singer Willie Nelson, and so on. Someone pitched Michael and Prince but Michael reportedly refused. Either way, producers paired Michael with Diana Ross. When the awards show ended, a crowd of over forty stars followed producer Quincy Jones to the “We Are the World” recording session.
Prince didn’t attend.
Instead, he went to Carlos ‘n’ Charlie, a Mexican restaurant on Sunset. And when he left at 2:00 A.M., he led Jill Jones into his car. They got inside, he said. But a photographer did, too. His bodyguard Lawrence Gibson—who stood six nine and weighed three hundred pounds—leaped forward. So did his second bodyguard, Wally Safford. They pulled the man out, but he supposedly hit his head in the car. He dropped the camera, which fell and broke. Someone called the cops.
Prince didn’t show for the recording session. But at six the next morning, Fargnoli called A&M studio to ask if Prince could come lay down a guitar part. Quincy said it wasn’t necessary.
February 1, in New Orleans, his concert attracted seventy thousand fans despite the media hounding him for not attending the recording session. The next day he had a day off. In the enormous Superdome, he set up instruments and a recorder and taped “4 the Tears in Your Eyes,” a moving work about Jesus and the crucifixion. In a black-and-white video, he simply sat in a chair in neat dress shirt and topcoat and strummed an acoustic guitar. His straightened hair, mascara-ringed eyes, and meek facial expressions evoked Michael Jackson. When he finished, he faced the lens and said, in deep voice, “Thank you.” He sent it to the creators of the USA for Africa album—even rerecorded it for a video he sent to the people behind the global Live Aid marathon—in hopes of making up for his absence from the recording sessions. But reporters wouldn’t let up on hounding him.
Warner would release Around the World in a Day, the first release on Prince’s own Paisley Park Records label, in April. Until late January, only a few top Warner executives knew about it. He submitted its strange cover. Instead of a band photo, artist Doug Henders painted an image. He and band members wore funky sixties clothes and stood on a colorful landscape heavy on cloud-filled skies with bright hues. Henders depicted him with gray, shoulder-length hair and a white scarf covering a haggard face. In one hand, he held a tiny ladder. He chose this new approach, he said in Rolling Stone, “because I thought people were tired of looking at me. Who wants another picture of him?”
Thursday, February 21, someone telephoned Warner’s offices late that afternoon to say its biggest star would arrive at the Burbank tower in forty-five minutes. Office phones buzzed. A huge crowd of employees rushed to the front lobby. Some of Prince’s staff quickly descended on a fourth-floor conference room with special decorating supplies.
At about 5:00 P.M., a shiny purple limousine arrived. Prince exited it along with his father, guards, managers, and guitarist Wendy. He wore a long, purple antique kimono and striped, pajama-type pants. Prince held a single pink rose while entering the corporate tower. In the lobby, he smiled when a crowd applauded.
His entourage passed more fans in stairways and corridors. They entered the conference room, now decorated with hundreds of purple helium balloons and white streamers. Various Warner employees—Rolling Stone claimed there were 150 while other published reports claimed as few as 20—were waiting, including president Lenny Waronker and board chairman Mo Ostin. After a few words with Ostin, Prince silently sat on the floor near Wendy and his father and stared at the ground, holding the rose as tapes of the album played at full volume.
“Condition of the Heart” was a solo performance, a haunting ballad with moody piano, falsetto vocal, and dramatic silences. “Raspberry Beret” didn’t have many overbearing guitars but its strings evoked late-sixties acid rock. He sang side one’s final cut “Tambourine,” over bare drums.
Side two had “America,” which quoted lyrics to “America the Beautiful” with “an American Indian feel,” a reporter claimed. “The Ladder” was the plodding ballad he claimed he wrote with his father. Then “Temptation” lasted eight minutes and twenty-one seconds. It started, Rolling Stone said, with “Hendrix-style guitar” and ended with “a weird rap that sounds like a dialogue between Prince and God.”
Around found Prince abandoning the Purple Rain character and returning to real concerns. He sang about utopia, masturbation, loneliness, politics, and religion. Musically, Prince tapped into the sixties, but only superficially without substance. Still, the album teems with inventive sounds that have stood the test of time: the exotic riffs on his title track; that funky beat on “Tambourine”; the giant drums and roaring guitar on “Paisley Park”; and his timeless, haunting classic, “Condition of the Heart.” Some songs are too slow; many lack choruses. But despite minor flaws, Around stands as one of Prince’s most inventive albums ever, only a step below Purple Rain,
It was very different from Purple Rain but Warner employees clapped for every song. Still, Prince felt the label didn’t really like or understand it. “Everyone sort of stood up, and applauded after the record was over, and then he wasn’t there anymore,” said one employee. Prince soon told Eric Leeds he could tell by their faces it wasn’t working. He laughed. “Well, sometimes you know right away that you’re not going to reach some people but that’s okay. It still was where I was at the time.’”
The world was awaiting the next Prince album. Only days remained before Warner shipped albums to stores. Warner thought “Paisley Park” (and nonalbum song “She’s Always in My Hair”) could work as lead single on February 27, the day after the Grammy Awards. But Prince changed his mind. He didn’t want any single out there. Especially not one that could lead reporters to claim he wanted to distract pop fans from USA for Africa’s “We Are the World.”
February 26 at the Shrine Auditorium, Wendy’s father, Mike, stood onstage in a black tuxedo. Tonight, they’d celebrate the success of a very special performer, he announced. The crowd at this Grammy Awards service interrupted with whoops of delight. Mike spoke through them. This next performer had taken the music world by storm, he continued. “He’s always been the cutting edge of music. It gives me extra added pleasure to introduce him because my daughter Wendy is a member of The Revolution.”
The crowd roared.
Prince took the stage in a light baggy shirt with fringed sleeves, and slacks with buttons running down the sides of his legs. His big hair made him resemble Sly Stone or James Brown. In front of a huge light on the dim stage, Prince did some high-pitched birdcalls and clapped his hands over his head to the disco beat. When he sang into a mic on a stand, he stumbled and hit himself in the mouth. He pretended it didn’t happen, kept performing his few dance moves. These and the squeals, Jheri curls, and shrieks made him seem like a funky Jackson type.
Before long, Prince turned away from the crowd and wiggled his butt; he stood near Jerome, leaping in the air while doing the “Jungle Love” dance; then paused for Sheila’s long solo. Oddly, a midget ran onto the stage. Audience members did, too. Prince’s shirt was halfway off now. Other musicians, including Grace Jones, danced and had fun on stage. Prince ran into the crowd, shirtless, with Big Chick trailing; he marched out with raised arms, triumphant.
Big Chick’s days working with Prince were nearing their end. Since the LA incident surrounding the paparazzo, Prince told Rolling Stone, Chick had been antsy, nervous he’d lose his job. Then Chick started using more coke. One day, Prince spoke to him. The guard blurted, “What are you jumping on me for? What’s wrong? Why all of a sudden are you changing?”
Chick’s paranoia increased. He now believed people, including Prince, were out to get him. “I started thinking he was doing me wrong, which he wasn’t.” Finally, Chick told Prince, “I’m tired. I’ve had enough.” He liked Prince but had to leave.
14
INTERNATIONAL LOVER
MARCH 25, PRINCE ARRIVED AT THE DOROTHY CHANDLER PAVILION, in LA, for the fifty-seventh Academy Awards ceremony. His purple hood, tight slacks, and high heels drew stares. And his entrance—raised chin, blank
stare—struck some reporters and photographers as arrogant. But what could he do? Stop and tell them he was a little nervous and agoraphobic? Inside, he joined Wendy and Lisa near the legendary Jimmy Stewart. Fans looked over but Prince ignored them.
Finally, they announced the category of music: Best Original Song Score. Amazingly, Prince won. Wendy and Lisa joined him at the podium (Wendy later joked that they looked like The Addams Family). Prince faced the crowd and said he could never imagine this in his wildest dreams.
His plan, for a continuous stream of product, worked. With “When Doves Cry” the album, and the movie he had released a new product in each of three consecutive months. When the movie peaked, he launched his tour. Along the way, he collected an Oscar for his score, three American Music Awards, and three Grammy Awards. He was as proud—for having achieved a goal—as he was terrified. “It’s my albatross and it’ll be hanging around my neck as long as I’m making music,” he said of Purple Rain.
Still, he made it through the second leg of the tour from December 26, 1984, to early April. He traveled to 32 cities, playing for 1.7 million fans at 98 sell-out shows, finished Around the World in a Day, and mapped out his next album.