Prince

  Small, remote Sheridan (population: 10,369) is in north Wyoming, ninety minutes from a major city (Billings, Montana, population: 67,000). Sheridan was home mostly to “cowboys, coal miners, and retirees. Just a handful of blacks live here,” according to the Los Angeles Times. As the ten thousandth caller in a contest sponsored by MTV and Warner Bros., twenty-year-old hotel worker Lisa Barber won the premiere and party for her economically depressed town. Barber, who entered various contests, had never won anything but “a couple of Big Macs and a curling iron,” People reported. Now, they had to make a premiere happen in her town. Everything was more complicated and costly to arrange. They had to go to Billings for cars and limousines upscale enough to rent for the event. They also held the event at the Centennial Twin Theater, “about the last place in America you would expect to see the world premiere,” the LA Times felt.

  At MTV, Freston accepted higher costs. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “We had one budget and then we had our worst-case-scenario budget in which we projected costs if the call came from Nome, Alaska. This place exceeded that budget.” MTV and Warner shared the bill, which ran about $250,000, “although several put that figure higher.” Barber invited two hundred close friends. Prince would bring his entourage. Another three hundred would attend. Barber gushed, “This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened here. I love Prince. I saw Purple Rain thirteen times.”

  Not everyone was happy. A rancher at a coffee counter in Ritz Sporting Goods told a reporter people best knew this town for fishing lures. “We don’t care about no boy who wears tight pants and struts around like a woman.” The owner of an antique shop on Main Street however said, “We needed something like this to give the place a lift.”

  July 1, eleven days after Barber’s call, a Tuesday, Sheridan was ready. A crowd at the airport held signs. WELCOME TO SHERIDAN. WE’RE PROUD OF OUR TOWN. GOT ANY EXTRA TICKETS? At the tiny airport, the crowd cheered the sight of his private Learjet. It landed and sat on the strip a few minutes. The passenger door opened. His tiny, high-heeled boot appeared first. Then he emerged in a dark silk suit. Smiling, he stepped onto a soiled twenty-five-foot red carpet, flung his black silk sport jacket over a fence to the crowd of seven hundred on the airport’s one runway, then exchanged pleasantries with Sheridan’s mayor, and others. Slipping into a gray-and-black limo, he claimed, “I’m going to buy a house here.”

  In a small cottage behind her mother’s trailer, Barber didn’t know what to wear. “I usually shop at Kmart.” But she felt relief when his staff sent a black-and-white outfit, a hair stylist, and a makeup artist. Then she sat and waited until 6:00 P.M.

  Fifteen minutes late, Prince drove a white Buick convertible with license plates that said, “Love.” He wore makeup and his midriff-baring shirt. Vaulting a chain-link fence, he then knocked on the door. “Hello,” he said, kissing her hand. “My name is Prince. Ready to have a good time?”

  She said yeah and sat in the car.

  He asked for the best radio station. Turned to it. Heard the deejay mention him. “If I had a phone in here, I’d call him.”

  Ahead of the car, Sheridan’s female riding troupe, the Equestri-Annettes rode horses with MTV bumper stickers near their tails. Costumed cowboys also led Prince “and a glitzy contingent of stars, studio executives, and publicists to the premiere.” Near the Centennial Theater, eight hundred enthusiastic people hoped to see celebrities. Jerome Benton, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Rosanna Arquette all showed up. Singer Joni Mitchell entered, unnoticed. But singer Ray Parker, Jr. drew cheers. They thought he was Lionel Richie. “We cheered for anyone who was dressed weird or who was black,” said a crowd member.

  Inside, Prince and Barber sat in a back row. At one point, he played with her hair and put his arm around her, she claimed. She asked how he liked it here. It was very pretty, he said. She was lucky to live here.

  When he first appeared on-screen, one woman yelled, “Nice butt!” The audience kept cheering him in various scenes, but the LA Times recalled no “overwhelming enthusiasm for the film itself.”

  After the film, a local told a TV camera, “I liked it, but I didn’t get it.” Most viewers agreed. Another said, “It was great! Like one long rock video! But I didn’t really figure out what was going on.” The crowd filtered out, and Prince went to the party at the Holiday Inn. At 10:00 P.M., he climbed an enormous, specially built stage that consumed half the ballroom floor, to play forty-five minutes of funk. Martha Quinn, the cherub-faced MTV vee-jay, was hosting the post-screening party at the hotel, so about 2 million MTV subscribers nationwide saw the live broadcast. Ultimately, the packed audience seemed to find his set (“Delirious,” “Purple Rain,” the usual numbers) more enjoyable than the film, People reported. From here, he and band members mingled with locals.

  Eventually, it was time to go. He made sure Barber got a ride home in a limousine.

  Prince and his onetime collaborator Jimmy Jam, now a successful producer, no longer spoke but Jam thought he knew what was up. “When you’re real successful and you start falling off the pedestal, you get real paranoid.” People around you expressed doubt, but even worse, you “begin to doubt yourself. You think, damn, am I really what I think I am? That kind of thing.” He felt something had Prince freaked out, and going through changes. Prince had done a complete about-face, promoting Cherry Moon with interviews. But this MTV thing took the cake. “To me, that was beneath him. Here he was sitting with this chick reporter; I can’t even remember her name … .” He described perky on-air host Martha Quinn. “God. She made me sick. Here he’s gone from not talking to Rolling Stone, not talking to the LA Times, not talking to anybody. And now he’s talking to Martha Quinn? Gimme a break.” It was a low point, Jam said, but he predicted Prince would regain his footing.

  Reviews of his film exacerbated his stress. People quipped, “His movie’s a smash—in Wyoming.” The New York Times called his character a “self-caressing twerp of dubious provenance.” The Washington Post said, “Prince begins to remind you of something your biology teacher asked you to dissect.” USA Today noted acting wasn’t his strength: “Fewer people saw [Purple] Rain for the acting than saw Old Yeller for the sex.” It was an odd film. “Funny when it was supposed to be tragic, just plain strange when it was supposed to be funny,” one critic explained. Its first weekend, it grossed $3.1 million (about the same as Walt Disney’s cartoon movie The Great Mouse Detective).

  Prince had poured his heart and soul into the film but critics kept attacking everything about it: the lack of color, the “dumb script,” “atrocious acting,” even the fact that he chased a white woman (when so few blacks appeared on the silver screen).

  In all, it was a low point—and an unfortunate taste of things to come.

  18

  DON’T DIE WITHOUT KNOWING

  NO MORE MUSICAL. NOT NOW. AT SUNSET SOUND, HE WORKED to finish Dream Factory. One Sunday, he arrived with a lyric called “The Cross.” He started with intimate vocals and some echo. The present was a black day and a stormy night, he sang; with no love or hope in sight. But people shouldn’t cry “for He is coming.” They shouldn’t die without knowing the cross. There were ghettos to the left and flowers to the right, he continued, but everyone would have bread if they stuck it out. He described a pregnant woman singing a sweet gospel song. “She lives in starvation,” he noted. But the cross would solve all problems.

  He kept playing loud, raucous chords then removed everything but his hoarse voice crooning the title. Around him, everyone was amazed. “The Cross” was a sobering antidote to the era’s yuppie rock and hair metal.

  July 15, another Sunday, Prince taped another social statement. After sampling drums with the Fairlight, he sang about AIDS, drugs, street gangs, gun homicide, and the government focusing on space travel. He called these situations signs that the Bible predicted would preface Christ’s return. He called the song “Sign O’ the Times” (a title it shared with a Grandmaster Flash rap single). “He had begun t
o see the effect of crack and drugs on young people,” said Alan Leeds. “He’s not really a preacher, but it’s certainly an antidrug song.”

  He wrote, recorded, and mixed it during a ten-hour session, then moved on to his 1982 idea, “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” Again, a lyric seemed to echo events in his personal life. He sang about meeting a woman in a club one Friday night. Her man left her last June, she told him, and she kept crying because he’s “gone 2 stay.” He asked her to dance, she wanted more, but he told her not to waste her time. He was good for a one-night stand. She kept crying, asking if they could be friends. “And I said, oh, honey baby that’s a dead end.” Its music included three-chord blues-rock; jazz cymbals and a keyboard sound that evoked “When You Were Mine” as much as it did sixties garage rock. He also lengthened it with a slow groove in the middle. He tinkered with something called “Joy in Repetition,” and set it aside for now.

  July 18, he sequenced a final eighteen-song version of Dream Factory and sent it out for mastering. He was also having a cover made. A mock-up featured every band member. Each would scribble a few words to the loose free-form graphic.

  Then everything changed.

  Wendy and Lisa stopped by his mansion. Wendy was unhappy: She didn’t like sharing stages with her twin sister Susannah, him adding a second guitarist, or the dancing bodyguards. Lisa joined her in wanting greater creative input. They reportedly demanded he treat them as creative equals. He refused. They said they were leaving.

  Prince needed them for the Hit and Run Tour.

  He contacted Bobby Z. The day of their flight back to LA, Bobby caught up with the women at the airport and asked them to stay. Alan Leeds also interceded, asking them to do the tour. “They were a bit disillusioned at the time,” Leeds explained. “I think I convinced them that the timing was not prudent for them or Prince. That if they were committed to moving on they could strategize and time it better.”

  They stayed, but Prince also had to deal with Mark Brown. This was becoming a nightmare. Mark also considered sitting out the tour. Ironically, Mark felt Prince was favoring Wendy. Mark was in the band first but saw Prince work to increase Wendy’s fame. Then Stevie Nicks offered him $3,500 per week. Prince convinced Mark to stay, Mark recalled. “He gave me all these hopes,” the bassist said. “‘You’re gonna get rich next year.’” Mark had no idea Prince planned to hand each band member $1 million as thanks for Purple Rain.

  Away from the band, he considered Dream Factory and the nine songs with prominent contributions by Wendy and Lisa. He removed them then decided to start over. In late July, and early August, he worked in his home studio and felt back in control. He created “Hot Thing,” a lyric about meeting a young girl (“barely twenty-one”) in a club. “Are your smiles for me?” he sang. As the song continued, he urged the girl to call her parents and say she’d be home late. “He was hearing a different kind of music,” said Alan Leeds.

  But Prince also used “Forever in My Life” to tell Susannah Melvoin he wanted to be with her and her alone. This one found him mimicking Sly & The Family Stone’s cadence on “Everyday People” (from 1969’s Stand!). However, it contained another mistake. After programming its beat, he sang his backup vocal first. Then he had engineer Susan Rogers lower it so he could sing the main lyric. He was still singing about monogamy when the softer voice burst in and interrupted. During a playback, he shrugged. He would keep it.

  Prince got back to preparing for this latest European tour. They got through the one-month tour, with the expanded Revolution finally reaching Japan for their September 9 show. “We were all so tired and ready to go home,” said a bodyguard. Prince couldn’t get over how Wendy and Lisa threatened to quit, how he had to convince them to stay and do this Hit and Run Tour, and how they had been so unhappy and vocal. Still, the public knew nothing about this. They took the stage one more time at Yokohama Stadium. During the show, Prince deliberately smashed his guitar.

  Wendy and Lisa faced each other. “It’s over,” one said.

  Yes, it was.

  After the show, he left the stage. He didn’t offer his usual talk about the performance. He immediately entered a car. Tired, with towel around his neck, he sat in silence during the ride back to the hotel. Everyone sensed Wendy and Lisa were out. The next day, they flew back home.

  In the basement of his new home, Prince kept recording new ideas. September 13, he started The Dawn, for another film musical with two rival bands. Three days later, he took a break to create something for Jesse Johnson’s new album. Johnson rejected it so Prince had “Shockadelica” pressed onto a platter and sent to radio station KMOJ, which played it within days.

  He returned to his own next album by creating a dark dance cut called “Superfunkycalifragisexy.” Over a swirling organ, horns, and a sinister groove on Fairlight, Prince urged people to dance, drink blood, and party all night. Then he taped “When the Dawn of the Morning Comes” for his movie idea The Dawn. September 18, he took another break.

  Producer Quincy Jones let him know Michael Jackson wanted him on his new duet “I’m Bad.” Instead, Prince submitted a song. In his Encino home, the Thriller star heard Prince’s contribution, a reworked demo from 1976, and passed. Jackson really wanted him on his title track. He even called directly to outline his promotional plan: His manager Frank DiLeo would plant stories in tabloids and both camps would hurl put-downs. DiLeo would tell Rolling Stone Jackson was confused since he considered Prince a great friend. Epic would release the single and video for “Bad”—helmed by Martin Scorsese—a month later, and let fans see Prince’s James Brown steps, Michael moonwalking, and both trying to settle who was really “bad.”

  Prince considered the idea until he heard the tape Jackson sent. As with “Beat It,” the song described a kid on mean streets. Only this time, a kid was back in his neighborhood during a break from private school. Hooligans gave him trouble but he sang, “I’m bad, you’re bad, who’s bad?”

  Its slick drum machine, horn stabs, keyboards, and dark, swirling bass line didn’t bother Prince as much as Jackson’s opening line: Your butt is mine. “Now who’s gonna sing that to who?” Prince joked on VH1. “‘Cause you sure ain’t singing it to me. And I sure ain’t singin’ it to you … Right there, we got a problem.” He backed out, Jones recalled, saying “you don’t need me to be on this. It’ll be a hit without me. It’d succeed without him.”

  By September 28, Prince started recording instrumental jazz. Sunday afternoon, October 1, he invited Eric Leeds to his house, played three or four tracks, and said they were for 8, an album by a fictitious group named Madhouse. And just three days later, he finished the album. He worried that critics would pan it. “And if it comes out, I don’t want it to just end up with all of the Prince fanatics,” he added.

  Prince arrived at Sunset Sound, October 5, and planned to record every day until his next album was finished. Within two days, he realized he had to resolve things with The Revolution. “Lisa was very vocal with him,” Wendy admitted. “And I never kept my mouth shut.”

  October 7, he called Wendy and Lisa on the phone and told them to come over. They reached the house he was renting in Beverly Hills. After dinner, at 12:30 A.M., he played pool with them for two hours. Then he entered an adjoining room, reached for the telephone, and dialed Bobby Z’s number. Bobby was great with soul and pop, but Prince was now exploring jazz. “Moreover, as the father of an infant son, he [Bobby Z] was the only parent in The Revolution, whose members are on call twenty-four hours a day,” Jon Bream reported.

  Once Bobby answered, Prince said, “We’ve been together for a long time. You’re the man and you’ve done a great job. We’re gonna be friends forever. I’m gonna honor your contract. Sheila wants to play drums with me. I think it’s a good idea.”

  Bobby answered, “I think it’s a good idea, too.”

  He said he was canning Wendy and Lisa, Bobby told Per Nilsen, but would try to keep Mark Brown and Matt Fink. This done, he reentered
the other room and told Wendy and Lisa, “I can’t expect you guys to go where I’m going to go next. I think we’ve gone as far as we can go. I’ve got to let you go.”

  Both had convinced themselves to stay. They were shocked. He added that he needed to start making music on his own again.

  Prince approached Fink that same day. “I’m not going to fire you. You have a choice to leave or stay, and I’d understand if you didn’t want to stay.”

  Fink thought, Okay, if I quit, what do I do? “I decided to keep my job.”

  October 16, hometown paper the Star Tribune reported, “The Revolution is over.” His New York-based publicist Robyn Riggs told reporters Bobby would keep writing songs and producing. Lisa and Wendy had six labels and a major film studio courting them. Alan Leeds, heading PRN, the small division that handled Prince’s touring, wasn’t surprised by the move. “I knew it was coming,” he said. “Didn’t think it mattered much.” When a reporter called for a quote, Leeds said band members were “growing in different directions.” The disbanding would let departing members have “the freedom and the time to pursue other interests that they expressed interest in pursuing.”

  Warner had no comment.

  Prince calmly told a reporter, “I felt we all needed to grow.” They all “needed to play a wide range of music with different types of people. Then we could come back eight times as strong.”

  A day later, Susan Rogers was on her first vacation in three years (four days of rest in Santa Barbara). Engineer Bill “Coke” Johnson manned the board and recorded Prince’s new song. Producers in Chicago at that time were popularizing “house music,” stripped-down disco; Prince covered his new track beat with soul music and horn riffs in the James Brown-style and called it “Housequake.”