by Ronin Ro
Before his final show at Miami’s Orange Bowl, he had manager Steve Fargnoli issue an announcement. This would “be his last live appearance for an indeterminate number of years,” Fargnoli said. “I asked Prince what he planned to do. He told me, ‘I’m going to look for the ladder.’ So I asked him what that meant. All he said was, ‘Sometimes it snows in April.”’
Reporters were bewildered. Even Johnny Carson began one Tonight Show monologue with “Prince is retiring from show business.” And Prince couldn’t be happier. “After that things started to open up a little,” said Leeds. Prince ended the tour in Miami, even as Warner filled millions of orders for Around the World in a Day.
With his newest album arriving in stores, Prince was already at work on his next product. It would be a film called Under the Cherry Moon.
After enjoying a sample script by newcomer Becky Johnson, Prince had hired her to create a romantic comedy set in an exotic locale like Miami’s Palm Beach or Capri. He wanted Under the Cherry Moon to evoke the screwball comedies of the nineteen-twenties and thirties, which already influenced the look he designed for his side project The Family. He also wanted a love story as moving as the one he had spun on his Around ballad “Condition of the Heart.” Lounge singer Christopher Tracy would meet and fall for rich white woman Mary Sharon, who wore miniskirts and pigtails. Then her father, a disapproving shipping magnate, would have him gunned down. Shot in the back, Christopher would fall, smile, and, with blood on his lip, say “Hey we had some fun, didn’t we?” It was a simple, timeless story, and a sour look at race relations that he wanted in theaters within an unthinkable three or four months.
But co-manager Steve Fargnoli shook his head. Prince wanted jarring modern slang and black-and-white footage. Fargnoli didn’t think it’d work.
Meanwhile, he joined other managers in relaying his strict instructions to Warner regarding Around. “Prince’s management hasn’t even let us run a plain old ad in Billboard just announcing that the record had been shipped to the stores,” said creative-marketing chief Jeff Ayeroff of Warner. “Any merchandising in the stores is stuff they’ve done on their own.” His campaign was refreshing but “merchandising anarchy” Warner’s promotion team was just as stifled. Radio was “very enthusiastic, but we’re really not pushing any particular song,” said Russ Thyret. Instead, they mailed copies and let stations “pick what they like.” The Los Angeles Times reported on the dearth of singles, videos, ads, or merchandising displays in record stores. “Either he’s crazy or he’s Prince—or both.”
By April 22, 1985, despite the free-for-all, Warner had shipped a surprising 2.7 million copies. Fans queued outside stores each morning to buy copies. “We haven’t had this much excitement in a long time,” said an executive at the thirty-four-branch Licorice Pizza chain. “It’s almost like in the old days, when the Beatles came out with an album and everybody got it at the same time.” But the campaign confused many radio station programmers. LA station KIQQ-FM’s program director said no song on the album was so outstanding they had to play it. “For now, we’re going to sit back and see what tracks do well in our research studies.” Influential KROQ-FM’s programmer said, “We think it’s going to be as big as Purple Rain. The only record I’d compare it to is Sgt. Pepper’s. We’re playing a cut from it every two hours.” At Music Vision, a major radio promotion and research firm, executive Lenny Beer reported that Top 40 stations were “practically in shock. For once, they’ve actually been forced to listen to a record. It’s very confusing for them.”
Usually, programmers slid advance cassettes into players, heard about forty seconds of a song, and decided whether to add it. “But the Warner promo men are just handing them the record and telling them to play what they like. So they’re a little bewildered—they’re even calling us and asking us what to play.”
The most popular tracks were “Raspberry Beret” and “Pop Life,” but with neither on a single, many programmers were “very cautious about making any commitment.” But MusicVision’s Jon Scott remembered how Purple Rain had trouble with rock radio. Upon its release, about 80 percent of rock stations ignored it. “They had to be convinced,” said Scott, “and it took a long time for them to see that Prince was a viable artist.” His management had no comment. Prince didn’t either.
Despite the unusual lack of promotion, and only ten months passing since Purple Rain, the new album managed to top the U.S. Album Chart. Some Purple Rain fans played their new copies in confusion, but producer Jimmy Jam felt a few tracks retraced some of Prince’s earlier steps: “The Ladder” evoked “Purple Rain.” “America’s” groove was as speedy as “Baby I’m a Star.”
Most American reviewers liked it, but felt “America” contained demagogic red-baiting. In Britain, most critics frowned on the cover and implied “Paisley Park,” the title track, and crowd noises during “Pop Life” mimicked The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour. Prince couldn’t stand what he was reading. These reviewers claimed he wasn’t “talking about anything on this record,” he said. Others claimed he was “trying to be this great visionary wizard.” He couldn’t win.
Still more invoked the Beatles—and “Strawberry Fields Forever”—though they weren’t the influence. “[The Beatles] were great for what they did, but I don’t know how that would hang today.” What most upset him were reviews that claimed black people believed he sold out with Purple Rain. “Oh, come on, come on!” he replied. He had emphasized his upbringing in a mostly white town, where he heard and played every kind of music, he explained. But now, critics were focusing on his race, rather than his music. George Clinton—leader of Parliament-Funkadelic—recently told him he loved the album. And Clinton knew more about black music than some white nerd in glasses and an Izod shirt pecking away at a typewriter.
At tour’s end, Prince tried again to involve his father John in his activities. John was in his late sixties, and retired from his thirty-year job at Honeywell, but still a bit bitter about not having made it. Prince flew him out to Los Angeles, let him attend recording sessions, and even briefly considered releasing John’s jazz album. Prince also bought him a new customized BMW, and handed him an early copy of Around, which supposedly featured John’s music on a few songs and sat unopened, in the backseat of the new car. John meanwhile let him have the white Thunderbird he bought in 1966, which had only twenty-two thousand miles on the odometer.
Prince moved on from the album. He was happy about not touring for a while. “There are so many other things to do.”
And one of them was music for Under the Cherry Moon.
April 17, 1985, only ten days after the last show, he entered Sunset Sound, with plans to create four songs that very day: “Wendy’s Parade,” “New Position,” “I Wonder U,” and “Under the Cherry Moon.” Even before the success of “Little Red Corvette” and “1999,” Prince had other producers reaching for their synthesizers and drum machines. But Purple Rain’s success inspired so many imitators he had to work hard to stay a step ahead. By the time imitators tried to mimic “When Doves Cry,” he added unexpected strings to 1985’s “Raspberry Beret.” With imitators suddenly including strings on their works, he reached for ouds and Darbukas. Now, jazz, and The Cocteau Twin’s Treasure, inspired him, and he would accent horns by Eric Leeds and his pal Atlanta Bliss. He mostly wrote melodies on guitar but remembered how sitting at another instrument, the drums, led to Around’s “Tambourine.” Thus, at a piano he created the riff that carried his new “Under the Cherry Moon.”
In the studio, Susan Rogers had everything ready. “I’m gonna start playing drums and when I stop, don’t stop the tape,” Prince told her. “Just keep going, just let it roll.” He sat at the drum kit, taping lyrics to a nearby music stand. Rogers hit Record and he created one drum pattern after another. After four beats, he rose and approached Rogers in the booth. “All right, here we go. Where is my bass?” He played melodies on the four tracks and moved on to adding sounds fro
m the Fairlight (a sampling keyboard with flute and wind sounds, voices, and hand claps that Wendy and Lisa claimed to have shown him).
He had Wendy and Lisa add backup vocals to some works, and actually let Wendy sing “I Wonder U.” He credited his father for helping with “Under the Cherry Moon.” After two days, he started “Life Can Be So Nice” with Sheila on drums. The next day, he taped “Others Here With Us” and “Old Friends 4 Sale.”
After spending all night on “Old Friends,” he wanted to keep working. He had someone call Wendy and Lisa to the studio. When they arrived, he showed them a melody for “Sometimes It Snows in April,” and let them interpret it in their style. After a week, he had completed nine songs. The mood around his camp lightened. He had successfully followed Purple Rain with Around. He was already creating the next album.
He also had time to help Sheila. Fans now knew Sheila as much for her drumming as for the stilettos, paisley print jackets, huge shoulder pads, and hairspray she wore in videos. But she was bone-tired after touring for about a year and living out of a suitcase. Prince brought out “A Love Bizarre,” a sax-heavy dance track he wanted on her second album Romance 1600. Since he left his guide vocals on it, everyone heard him sing during the chorus, squeal, then dominate the lengthy track’s second half.
Work on his own next album continued. During rehearsals, tape rolled. He told the band what he wanted, since he’d already written and arranged the songs, but let them add ideas. If he liked something, he included it. “In nearly every case, Wendy and Lisa were around to provide backing vocals and input,” engineer Susan Rogers noted. He also kept including Wendy’s sister Susannah—already co-lead in The Family—on new songs and playing this new synth guitar that Bobby Z felt whined “like a duck.” Before anyone knew it, he played them a new work, “Girls and Boys,” which included its odd sound.
At the board, engineer Susan Rogers considered the songs, which would form the album called Parade, “some of his best melodic work.”
At the same time, he started working with Mazarati, for his label Paisley Park.
April 28, he was recording in LA while Mazarati was next door with Mark Brown and David Rivkin. Rivkin arrived in California, from Minneapolis, for a weekend of work. But in Sunset Sound’s Studio C, Prince said, “You’ll probably be here about a month.” Rivkin had enough clothes for three days, but shopped for more. Now, Prince kept wandering into their session to check their progress, but never spoke directly to them. He heard one of Mark’s songs, “Fear the Shadow,” left, then returned ten minutes later with handwritten new lyrics that turned it into the gentler “Strawberry Lover.” Mark’s “We Did Things Our Way” inspired another ten-minute writing session and lyric sheet that changed it to “I Guess It’s All Over.” Prince didn’t want credit for these alterations, but Rivkin noted tension. “I don’t know if there was something with Mark and Prince, that he didn’t want to use Prince’s songs.”
Then Prince wanted to write something for them. “We were very happy to have one Prince song on the album,” said band member Christian. Instead, he delivered two: “100 M.p.h.,” recorded in summer 1984 and “Jerk Out,” a leftover from The Time. When singer Terry Casey rejected “Jerk Out,” about a white woman and a black man, the band asked if Prince had anything else.
Prince entered another room with a portable cassette recorder and soon handed Rivkin a tape. “Do what you want with this song!”
He called it “Kiss,” and presented a verse and chorus played on acoustic guitar. He told David he’d get him the rest soon. David felt it sounded like folk music by Stephen Stills. “I didn’t quite know what to do with it and neither did the group.”
Terry couldn’t sing it. Its two minutes had no “real indication of a groove.” Mark was furious, Rivkin added. “He didn’t like that at all, so he walked out of the studio.” Rivkin reached for the Linn 9000 drum machine and tapped out a beat. He created intricate hi-hats and copied them in a delay unit. He put the original hi-hat on another track. While playing the beat he kept cutting away to the hi-hat with delay. He added guitar chords, with echo, and had them play the same rhythm as the hi-hat. “That gave us the basic rhythm groove for the song.” Mark Brown had returned, and he recorded a bass part. A Mazarati member added a piano part inspired by Bo Diddley’s “Hey, Man.” Casey sang the lyric, then the others added background vocals based on ideas Z remembered from Brenda Lee’s “Sweet Nothings.” “This is what we had at the end of the first couple of days,” Z sighed. “We were trying to build a song out of nothing, piece by piece.” They didn’t know where it was heading but knew it was weird. Frustrated, exhausted, they decided to break for the night.
The next morning, Prince was blasting the song on a portable radio while on a basketball court. In Studio 3, he told engineers Susan Rogers and Peggy McCreary, “I’m taking that back!”
He asked their opinions. Rogers said, “Take it back. It’s just great!”
Rivkin arrived, and asked what was happening. “This is too good for you guys,” Prince said. “I’m taking it back.” With Z near him, Prince listened to the track. He wanted something like Purple Rain’s “When Doves Cry.” “We don’t need this,” Prince said, turning a knob and removing the bass track. Instead, he ran the kick drum through a reverb unit. He slid headphones on and recorded his own vocal, an octave higher. With only nine tracks on the song, he got on the API console. The track sounded pretty dry and empty. Z worried that it sounded too stark. Rivkin reached over and sneaked a little piano in. They also applied tape delay to the guitar track. Prince kept moving faders, and he had it mixed in five minutes.
An hour later, Mazarati was playing ping-pong when the song blared over speakers. “Hey, that’s the song we did last night!” They were reportedly angry when Prince said he was reclaiming the idea, so Prince added, “Of course you guys will get paid for it.” They said, “Sure!” But Prince changed his mind about the song. “Kiss” was too strange. He shelved it.
In May, he wanted to hear how all of these strange new songs would sound on one record. While creating a test pressing of Parade, he had to decide. Should he really include “Kiss”? He did “as an afterthought,” Alan Leeds later wrote, and probably was still not convinced it worked.
May found him using Paisley Park projects to tap into other stars’ audiences. With The Family, he had targeted the Duran Duran and Wham! audience. At Sunset Sound, Prince now used Jill Jones’s album in progress as a way to compete with another crowd favorite, Tina Turner. With a straight face, he sat with an acoustic guitar, and had Susan Rogers tape him singing a new work called “My Man.”
Then he had to head to Manhattan, where Sheila was filming Krush Groove, a movie starring Run-D.M.C. He made time to call Chick. He told his former bodyguard he still had a job if he wanted it, and that he “was alone.” Chick was happy to hear it and promised to meet him in the city. Prince breathed easier. With this Krush Groove movie involving some rough characters, it would pay to have good security.
Director Michael Schultz (of Cooley High fame) started principal photography on May 5, and hoped to wrap by May 31. But Sheila wasn’t having an easy time of it. For one, some cast members resented her presence. They thought Krush Groove would dramatize the rise of Run-D.M.C. but saw producers soften it with a love story and a nonrapping outsider. “A lot of people on the set and a lot of the rappers weren’t very cool,” Sheila said.
Neither were street-hardened extras at the Disco Fever club in the Bronx. Sheila performed “A Love Bizarre” for cameras but heard the director yell “Cut!” Facing the crowd, Schultz said, “Look, this is a movie and you have to clap for Sheila E. We’re not sitting here critiquing her.”
In Manhattan, Prince waited for Chick. “He didn’t show up.” Even without him, Prince reached the Manhattan Center, a theater on Thirty-Fourth Street, where director Schultz quickly filmed performances by Kurtis Blow, Blow’s protégés The Fat Boys, Run-D.M.C, young unknown Latin singer Chad, and Sheila. In a dim,
mostly empty balcony, Prince took a seat. With raised chin, and blank, regal expression, he watched Sheila take the stage in her gray outfit. Her band feigned playing instruments, while she did “Holly Rock,” a track Prince had written aimed at the rap audience, for a crowd of mostly black and Puerto Rican extras dressed like break-dancers or rappers. They didn’t seem to like Prince’s bongo-heavy take on the genre. But Sheila ignored the nonreaction between takes, and kept playing drums, sliding across the floor, as practiced, lying on her side and pumping her hips while panting into a microphone. Once Schultz yelled cut, extras offered weak applause. Prince quietly left the building. Young LL Cool J, whose upcoming single “Rock the Bells” insulted him and Michael Jackson, told a reporter, “Prince and his boys thought we were making Sheila E. Goes to Hollywood when the film was really about my homeboys Run-D.M.C. and Kurtis Blow.”
He could have really used Chick by his side during this trip. But Chick didn’t show. Then someone handed Prince the May 7, 1985, edition of The National Enquirer. His eyes widened. A headline read, “The Real Prince—He’s Trapped in a Bizarre Secret World of Terror.” The Enquirer quoted Chick rehashing the usual description of a lonely eccentric. But the story called his Marilyn Monroe posters a shrine; his modest home an armed fortress with a food taster, fountains out front, and a swimming pool. In short, it called Prince a fearful hermit in a self-created prison. In California, co-manager Steve Fargnoli was stunned. “The whole thing was absurd.”
15
AT LEAST YOU GOT FRIENDS
PRINCE STRUGGLED TO UNDERSTAND WHAT HAD HAPPENED. Chick was still on the payroll, even after their rift. People he did business with might see this. Eventually, he learned that after promising to meet him in Manhattan, during their phone call, Chick actually hung up, returned to using drugs, and became so hungry for cash he sold this story to The Enquirer for a reported three thousand dollars.