Prince

by Ronin Ro

  For vocals, he revived the varispeed technique from “Erotic City,” singing lyrics onto a slowed tape. When played at normal speed, his voice sounded higher, even feminine. Backup vocals were all over the place, but the song sounded like a fun house party. Prince meanwhile yelled, boasted, rapped, and sang.

  When Rogers returned, he lingered on the up-tempo horn-driven dance cut to the point where she decided it was either “especially important” to him or just fun to work on. Before long, he told her he saw potential in this vary-speed voice. It could represent a character on his songs, named Camille. “He was thinking of battling with himself,” Rogers explained. “He had this whole idea that Camille would be his competition.”

  October 27, he started Camille, another Madhouse-styled “side project”—and a curveball for his audience. By November 2, he was using the odd voice on “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” Since March, Michael Jackson’s sister Janet had reaped a fortune with her album Control and hit singles, “What Have You Done for Me Lately?” and “Nasty.” Her producers—Jam and Lewis, formerly of The Time—had created a signature sound for her that included artificial big beats, orchestral hits, and multitracked vocals. Now, with “If I Was Your Girlfriend” Prince played a similar beat, but on live drums; with a claustrophobic bass; an organ that played convoluted minor chords; a haunting synth riff that replaced a chirpy chorus; and more than a few repeated programmed riffs.

  Despite canning her twin sister Wendy, not to mention their reported bickering, Susan Rogers explained, “It was a way of asking [Susannah], ‘Why can’t I have the closeness you have with your sister? Why can’t we be friends, too?”’ He ended it with his genre-bending voice desperately begging for attention. “I want to be all of the things you are to me.” Though another studio malfunction created an accidentally distorted vocal, he moved on.

  In ten days, he had knocked out four pretty complex numbers: this one for his girl, “Rebirth of the Flesh,” “Rockhard in a Funky Place,” and “Good Love.” He included a new version of “Feel U Up,” from 1981, and that dance cut Jesse Johnson rejected, “Shockadelica.” He also reworked “Strange Relationship,” removing Wendy and Lisa’s parts. The final version was also a bit Janet-like, with a memorable riff over booming drum machine. He expanded the template to include a wooden flute, sitar, some tambourine, even congas, and kept barreling forward.

  Camille had no theme or concept, just the sped-up voice. To hear Prince tell it, the album explored inner conflicts and a battle between Good and Evil. He also envisioned a movie based on the character. He’d ostensibly play a guy somehow interacting with Camille, until the end when audiences saw he was actually a split personality.

  By November 5, Camille was done and sequenced. Side one had “Rebirth of the Flesh,” “Housequake,” “Strange Relationship,” and “Feel U Up.” He put “Shockadelica,” “Good Love,” “If I Was Your Girlfriend” and “Rockhard in a Funky Place” on side two. Warner accepted it, issuing a catalog number and a January 1987 release date. The label also created a test pressing of the single, “Shockadelica” backed with “Housequake.” But Prince wavered again, adding more songs recorded earlier that year.

  Even Prince Nelson needed a break; especially after writing so many ballads with the same theme. He unwound with some Miles Davis. But two 1986 albums, Patti LaBelle and Luther Vandross’s The Winner in You and Give Me the Reason really got his competitive fires burning again. Wanting to get back to his own ballads, in his own voice, he sat and wrote a falsetto-sung number called “Adore.” The song featured the usual elements, but sounded warmer thanks to an electric piano (instead of a synth), and lush melodies that popped in from time to time (each of which could have carried a full song). While recording it, Prince included intertwining vocal rhythms, not to mention the “F” word.

  Prince spent eight days listening to tracks he had created that year. Warner was already preparing Camille for release but early December found Prince combining Dream Factory tracks with some from Camille (“If I Was Your Girlfriend,” “Strange Relationship,” and “Housequake,” all with the sped-up voice). After adding a few new works—including a twelve-minute opening suite—he was sitting on an unwieldy three-record set called Crystal Ball.

  Warner usually balked at double albums, no less triple. Alan Leeds felt its length could inspire a backlash. Casual fans might have to pay more for the collection. Critics might attack Prince for daring to think everything on the three records was worthy of release. “Fact is, the album had a few weak spots.” Besides die-hard fans receiving a deluge of new material, Leeds felt “there were few upsides.”

  While he moved on to the next project, his managers had to pitch Warner on Crystal Ball.

  In December, as usual, Fargnoli met with label brass. In recent years, Fargnoli had convinced them to release demos as Dirty Mind, make 1999 a double album, finance Purple Rain, and release “When Doves Cry.” Since Warner went along, and these ideas were successful, Prince felt the company would agree to Crystal Ball. However, by late 1986, things had changed. He was certainly talented and Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker still felt he was an unstoppable creative force. Nevertheless, they wondered about a few of his business decisions (perhaps including a hasty decision to pull Camille at the last minute). Prince had also faced lower sales of each album since Purple Rain. Then there were media reports of unpredictable behavior, the “We Are the World” debacle, and firing Wendy and Lisa. Ostin and Waronker now reportedly wondered if Prince was another “self-thwarting” musical genius. Fargnoli, who didn’t completely support the triple-album idea, either, knew there’d be trouble.

  With Parade one of his poorest sellers, Warner balked at Crystal Ball’s length, predicting sales would be just as low. Before long, Fargnoli told Prince, “Man, they’re not going to buy this.”

  “You work for me,” Prince answered. “You make ’em buy it.”

  19

  WE ALL HAVE OUR PROBLEMS

  CRYSTAL BALL WAS BECOMING A TURNING POINT. PRINCE WAS now ruining a very important relationship. At Warner, some people noticed. “Steve [Fargnoli] was reaching a point where he didn’t need this,” Warner executive Marylou Badeaux recalled. “It’s not unusual for an artist to make demands of his management, but some of Prince’s demands were getting more and more out in left field.”

  Along with Crystal Ball causing untold frustration, his relationship with Susannah ended. In December, she packed her things and flew to Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley to join Wendy and Lisa.

  Mark Brown also left. Prince was changing his sound. “He wanted to go back to funky things, back to where he started,” Mark later explained. Prince invited him to stay, but Mark considered how, despite the good times and money, the past six years hadn’t offered much creative freedom. When Mark left, Prince had Paisley Park cancel Mazarati’s contract.

  At Sunset Sound shortly before Christmas, Prince poured his energies into a new song called “U Got the Look.” He wanted to tap into the market that made a hit of Englishman Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” (from his 1985 album Riptide). Like Palmer, Prince set a familiar blues riff over a cold, artificial drum machine. He threw in lots of fake-sounding synth and shrill guitar chords. He expanded the sound with dramatic riffs and him playing a commentator during the “world series of love.” But it wasn’t working. Prince changed it a million times, and kept “really struggling with it,” an associate recalled, but believed it was an important single. At the last minute, he told the engineer to speed the tape. His voice sounded younger. It had more energy. Sensing it would draw his white pop audience, he went with this version. But it still needed something. Shortly before Christmas, he knew what it was.

  Sheena Easton stopped by unannounced to ask if he’d produce her next album. Rogers said, “He didn’t feel like socializing, though.” He asked Easton to play an instrument on the song. Once she did, he asked, “How’d you like to do this? Feel like singing?”

  Sure.

  He
played it once or twice.

  Easton was initially taken aback by its sexual nature, “but he convinced her to get into it, and it worked perfectly,” Rogers recalled. She wished she could hear it more than twice but stood behind the microphone and in her Scottish accent reached the line: “Your body’s heck-a-slammin’.”

  She stopped. “What the hell is heck-a-slammin’?”

  Prince laughed.

  “He loved to make fun of me,” Easton claimed.

  By December 21, Prince was adding a coda to the song, which was, Leeds felt, “as mainstream a record as any in his career.”

  Prince soon learned Mo Ostin, himself, was coming to Sunset Sound to hear the triple album. Fargnoli kept pressing for it but Ostin considered the economics of a triple album. How many people would pay a whopping thirty dollars? It’d be expensive to create and distribute. Even if critics did hail it as a masterpiece, there was no guarantee it would turn a profit.

  Ostin arrived at the studio. Fargnoli was nearby while Prince played him all of his exciting new tracks. When he was done, Ostin said, “I respect your vision, but it just won’t fly.” Ostin wanted Crystal Ball cut to a double album. Even this in a way was stretching it (it would be Prince’s second double album).

  Prince wouldn’t do it. For weeks, they bickered. “There were a lot of meetings, a lot of loud hollering, a lot of frustration,” recalled Leeds. “It was very, very ugly.” A few times, Prince lost his cool, screaming at Warner employees then storming out of conference rooms, Marylou Badeaux remembered.

  “‘You’ll overwhelm the market,”’ Prince remembered them saying. “I was told, ‘You can’t do that.’” He felt Warner executives were overstepping their bounds. “I don’t think it’s their place to talk me into or out of things,” he said.

  In the end, Prince bitterly made the cuts. He yanked that windy title track, which ate up nearly half an album side. He named the album after his song “Sign O’ the Times.” He also cut “Good Love,” a pop song with the “Camille” voice, and “Joy in Repetition,” a soothing ballad that author Alex Hahn felt found him treading Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel territory.

  But he also told Alan Leeds he “lost interest,” Leeds recalled. Prince was used to hearing it only as a triple set. Now, this “incomplete work” didn’t reflect his true vision for the project.

  The night of December 28, in Minneapolis, Prince entered his basement studio to try something else. At a piano, he tapped out a glum riff. He spoke lyrics, pretending to ask bodyguard-turned-dancer Wally Safford for fifty dollars and sunglasses. Next, he pretended to return them, since he had no girl to impress. Engineer Susan Rogers enjoyed his vulnerable guitar, bass, and chorus. Nevertheless, he started piling on instruments. A percussion part tangled the verse, obscuring lyrics. She asked, “Don’t you think it was better before, Prince? Maybe we should stop.”

  Instead, he added a synthesizer.

  She felt he was deliberately ruining it. After recording more melodies, he said, “Now put all twenty-four channels on record and erase it.”

  “No, you can’t do this!”

  “If you don’t, I will.”

  He’d have to. “I thought it was the greatest thing he had done,” she said later. “I had waited years to hear a Prince song like this. I ached to hear him be this honest.”

  Regardless, he erased the tape.

  In January 1987, Prince was back in his Washington Avenue warehouse, updating his baleful “Superfunkycalifragisexy” Warner got the first Madhouse single out there and “Six” went Top 10. Then the album 8 arrived on January 21, with a cover that featured buxom model Maneca Lightner in a polka-dot outfit. Prince also deemed Jill Jones’s debut ready after four years, and let Cavallo, Ruffalo and Fargnoli sign Dale Bozzio (formerly of new wave act Missing Persons), Minneapolis group Three O’Clock, and Good Question. But with Prince multitasking, things at the label changed. “Warner was handling the business as far as public relations,” Jill Jones recalled. But Warner wasn’t providing much, she added. Then less-talented newcomers and managers came around and caused what she called “a complete feeding frenzy of the most unsavory types.” Then Prince “was distracted and detached,” she added. Before returning to his own album, however, he told them to sign an artist named Mavis Staples.

  He was rehearsing with a new band in a warehouse on Washington Avenue. Sheila agreed to play drums for him. Then, Prince contacted her black guitarist Levi Seacer, Jr. and asked him to replace Brown Mark on bass. Next, he added new dancer Cathy Glover and dubbed her “Cat.” He also had Cat pose on covers for Sign O’ the Times singles and the album’s inner sleeve. In these shots, she held his guitar, and a giant mirrored heart (his new emblem).

  In February, Warner started promoting his lead single, “Sign O’ the Times.” For a week, the label placed ads, and a few lyrics, in left-leaning newspapers and magazines. Though eerie and not exactly upbeat, fans and reporters loved the song’s social comment and sent it flying up the charts. The double album arrived soon after, on March 31, and entered the Billboard Pop Chart at No. 40. Critics offered unanimous praise, noting Prince effectively balanced his core and Purple Rain audiences. In the Village Voice’s year-end poll, 220 reviewers voted Sign Best Album, making it the biggest winner in poll history, and chose its title track as Top Single. Overseas, European writers rushed to call him a true artist.

  With Sign rising to No. 12, from No. 40, on the Billboard Pop Chart its second week, Prince was busier than ever. Most afternoons he watched morning rehearsals for opening act Madhouse and his own band. Then he flew to England to rehearse for his first far-reaching European tour (which would last two months). Next, he turned his attention to a new stage set, handing Roy Bennett a picture of the album cover and saying, “Make it look like this.” Bennett rose to the challenge, creating a two-level set that cost about $2 million and re-created the cover right down to neon signs flashing phrases like UPTOWN, FUNK CORNER, BAR & GRILL, GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS.

  Prince started his tour April 28 in Stockholm. He’d be in Europe until July. He was on the road when Warner wanted a second single. “Sign” was a perfect introduction to the album. Now, he asked a few people for opinions about a follow-up, Alan Leeds told Prince.org, “but at the end of the day, he called the shots.” Many said “Hot Thing,” or “Adore,” could work on rock, and R&B stations. “Adore” was still an album cut, not yet a single, but black radio played it anyway. They also kept playing “Slow Love” and “Forever in My Life,” though neither was on a single. There was also demand for “Housequake.” Many around him believed the quick party jam was an obvious choice. “So did Prince,” Leeds remembered. “Too obvious.” Leeds felt he missed the point. Singles were marketing tools for albums and “obvious is what the party calls for! Some wheels don’t need reinventing.”

  Prince insisted his forlorn “If I Was Your Girlfriend” should be the second single. Warner went along with his choice. “Girlfriend” went on sale May 6, and alienated radio with eccentric music that didn’t easily fit a format. The B-side, “Shockadelica,” didn’t help, with the feminine Camille voice, a flat discolike beat, and loud guitar. Then there was the imagery on various album and single covers. Photos actually showed a woman in a miniskirt holding a huge heart over her face. Since Cat Glover was unmentioned in credits, many believed the photos showed Prince in drag. Even his father John was confused. Once Cat cleared things up, he said, “Don’t tell my son but I really thought he’d flipped out this time!” At cash registers nationwide, however, it was no laughing matter. Leeds noted that Prince’s choice for second single did not sell as well as expected. “That we were touring Europe instead of helping the album in America didn’t help,” Leeds told Prince.org.

  By mid-June, two weeks remained on the European tour. Prince quickly canceled plans for American dates. Every band member shook his or her head. Eric Leeds finally asked, “Are you out of your mind?”

  “We’re going to make a movie out of it instead,” Prince r
eplied.

  Eric thought it might be a mistake. When sales of Sign slowed, Eric knew it was.

  Still, Prince felt a movie could work. Once again, he’d direct. He arranged for a camera crew to film his final three shows in Rotterdam, Holland (June 27 and 28) and Antwerp, Belgium (June 29).

  Cameras rolled when he went on stage with his ten-member band. They played his new mix of funk, rock, jazz, gospel, pop, and slow jams. Some moments, saxophonist Eric Leeds and trumpeter Atlanta Bliss stole the show. At others, he did, with solos that finally silenced diminishing comparisons to Jimi. Then cameras turned to catch Cat performing erotic bumps and grinds.

  During “Hot Thing,” he raced across a stage, slid between her legs, and snatched her skirt off with his teeth. Sheila E. played intricate beats and rolls. On cue, Sheena Easton came out to do “U Got the Look.”

  Back from Europe, Prince walked the corridors in his enormous, new studio complex, Paisley Park. By July 6, he resumed recording. He already had one film to finish but started planning another called Graffiti Bridge. And this one would be different. He’d show a musician playing the sort of clubs his father once did in the nineteen fifties. He’d also try writing the perfect song, one that would cause this “rainbow” bridge to appear and take him away. He recorded songs like “No Changes,” “Graffiti Bridge,” and “Melody Cool,” about an old sage. Then leaped into the second Madhouse album, 16, with the band that just toured with him. And this time, thanks to their input, it “was a much more organic album,” said Eric Leeds.

  Meanwhile at Warner, executives dealt with the aftereffects of his second single. They believed his lighthearted pop single “U Got the Look” would get things “back on track.” They were right. The duet with Sheena—backed with “Housequake”—arrived July 14, and reached No. 2 on the Pop Chart. It was his largest hit since “Kiss,” and the album’s highest charting single (staying on the Pop Chart for twenty-five weeks). But when some detractors saw it reach only No. 11 on the Black Chart—stopping just outside of the Top 10—they whispered that the song “Girlfriend” and no U.S. tour had brought sales to a standstill. They claimed Sign was a failure when the album had in fact just passed the million-sales mark that month.