Prince

by Ronin Ro

  At Paisley Park, Prince worked on his concert film. While watching the footage, he saw there were problems with the multitrack tape. There wasn’t enough separation between channels. He called the band into Sunset Sound and Paisley Park to rerecord their playing. “We played the entire show in the studio,” said Eric Leeds. Sheila replayed every drumbeat.

  The footage also troubled him. “It was just awful, grainy, and didn’t look good at all,” Rogers noted. “He realized, ‘well if I’m going to do this, I better do it right’ so he decided to perform the whole concert onstage at Paisley Park.”

  In mid-July, he invited a few hundred extras onto Paisley Park’s soundstage. The band lip-synched while the prerecorded concert recording played. He filmed these performance scenes and numerous close-ups. “By the time the film was completely edited for release,” said Eric Leeds, “the bulk of the shots, around eighty percent, were the ones we shot at Paisley Park rather than footage from the actual concerts themselves.”

  It was a concert movie, but Prince felt little vignettes with acting could add a dramatic story and his usual themes of love, lust, and the search for spiritual salvation. On a tiny set, he had cameras film Wally Safford and a Minneapolis model on a street. Prince was in the frame, too, eavesdropping on this unhappy couple’s argument about trust. Before long, Prince stepped to the woman and created a classic love triangle.

  While editing, Prince removed “Let’s Go Crazy,” “When Doves Cry,” “Purple Rain,” “1999,” and “Girls and Boys.” He left “Little Red Corvette,” but at the last minute, deleted “Kiss.” Then, someone decided to include his video for “U Got the Look.” With the song in the Top 10, the video could potentially get general interest viewers’ bodies into theater seats. Disregarding that it was on videotape, not film, and would make for a jarring change from the rest of the footage, Prince included it as a dream sequence in his story.

  He finished post-production in August. The film cost about $2.5 million to produce, and included little actual live footage. “Of course he wanted it out immediately,” said Marylou Badeaux. At Warner Pictures, an executive was wary, “especially after the situation with Under the Cherry Moon.” This person told Prince, “Thank you but no thank you. Concert film, that’s a summer thing. Hold it until the summer.”

  Prince replied, “No, I want it out now.”

  “Fine. Do it somewhere else.”

  And so he did. His managers inked a deal with Cineplex Odeon Films, the distribution side of a fifteen-hundred-screen Toronto-based theater chain.

  20

  DEAD ON IT

  SEPTEMBER 11, 1987, PAISLEY PARK OFFICIALLY OPENED. THE first people inside saw that Prince was already recording. He planned to throw Sheila E. a big birthday party in LA. But after intense sessions for Sign, Susan Rogers recalled, “he just wanted to lay down some mindless jams.” During this period, Prince was happy. Nothing “really dark” was happening, Alan Leeds noted. He was simply recording “very innocuous dance music.” His “dream building, his facility, and his company” were all “growing by leaps and bounds.”

  He also spoke with Wendy and Lisa during this period. After he canned them, the duo signed to Columbia, and worked with drummer Bobby Z on a self-titled debut. When they occasionally spoke, Prince noticed they sounded hurt. He didn’t know why. Their careers were fine. But they could be better. Hearing they planned a video for their moody lead single, the breakup song “Waterfall,” he urged them to make a splash by “doing something like jumping off a speaker with smoke pouring out everywhere. Something.” Instead, Wendy strummed guitar in a chair. When he saw it, he shook his head. “You can’t do that when you’re just getting established,” he said. “Kids watching MTV see that and they go click.” They’d change channels. “They’d rather watch a commercial.”

  Prince, however, was focused on his next film, Graffiti Bridge, which he decided was to be about a magical bridge. He had already recorded songs for it. Now he spent a few days in New York and in his Paris apartment quickly creating a first draft of the screenplay.

  But his enthusiasm kept him from seeing how convoluted it was. First, a love triangle: a male character, Camille, caught between Cat and another female character that was to be played by Madonna. Then Camille’s struggle to write the seventeen chords that formed “The Grand Progression.” Then weird hobo characters and “Almost” (a guy whose body and face were half-white and half-black) dealing with angry cops and social problems. He couldn’t wait to film scenes in which he and Madonna’s character crossed that bridge, passing late jazz legends like Billie Holiday.

  But in October, reality intruded again. Paisley Park released Madhouse’s album 16, and Eric Leeds recalled, “Unfortunately, it wasn’t that successful.”

  Prince didn’t seem to mind. He was still knocking out songs for Sheila, but considering the film, which he had decided was his next official project. Thus, he created “The Grand Progression” and “Ruthie Washington’s Jet Blues” for the film. Then he prepared for a visit from Madonna.

  Recently, her third album, 1986’s True Blue, generated five Top 5 singles on Billboard charts. But her 1986 film Shanghai Surprise (co-starring her husband Sean Penn) flopped, costing about $17 million and earning back about $2.3 million. Then her next film, the Warner Bros. comedy Who’s That Girl, also flopped in early August.

  In mid-October, she arrived in town to use Prince’s studio. He offered special quarters but she moved into an upscale hotel in town. He passed her his script and after reading it, she reportedly told him it was “a piece of shit.” He was shocked. Still, he continued to focus on it.

  His good-natured party music “gradually took on a darker edge,” Leeds added. There was something different about his approach. “Moody and hasty, for the first time he appeared truly obsessed, as if he had something to prove.”

  On “Cindy C.,” Prince sang about feeling rejected by a high-class model in Paris. “Cindy C, play with me,” he sang. “I will pay the usual fee.” To clear up who he sang about, he mentioned seeing Cindy in Vogue and asked, “Where’d you get that beauty mark?” Sheila offered another stiff rap and Prince implied that the Cindy character was a prostitute, demanding, at full volume, to know why she didn’t think he was good enough to date.

  He revived “Rockhard in a Funky Place” from Camille, about a guy looking for sex in a whorehouse. Once he got some, Prince added, the guy could start thinking about playing guitar again. Prince soon mentioned the guy was so bummed out, he now wondered if God even existed. He left the whorehouse, to “head back to a life so tough.”

  Then he added September 1986’s home-studio dance number “Superfunkycalifragisexy,” which urged people to drink blood and dance.

  Implying Cindy C. was a whore, since she didn’t want him … describing bondage and discipline on one song … urging people to drink blood and dance … having his bandmates call each other “bitch” or “ho” … this was bad enough. But he had really alienated engineer Susan Rogers with his March 1987 creation “Dead On It,” according to Alex Hahn. Over a rigid swing beat and whoosh noises, Prince rapped about driving in his Thunderbird and searching for a good song on its radio. He heard “a silly rapper talking silly shit.” His next verse said “Negroes from Brooklyn” couldn’t play bass like him. Rappers were so tone deaf, their singing would clear a packed house and have fans burning cars in the parking lot and complaining, “Rappin’ done let us down.” At the board, white engineer Susan Rogers felt this was pathetic. Where he once supported new sounds, he now attacked a new black-created form (after his involvement with Krush Groove, no less). “‘Dead On It’ was an embarrassment and proof positive that he didn’t get it,” she told author Alex Hahn.

  Susan Rogers was sick of this music, this darkness, this recent attitude of his. “It just wasn’t a good feeling in the air,” she said. He finished the batch of party songs for Sheila, and then Rogers, a longtime member of his production team, ended their working relationship, finally lea
ving the fold.

  Prince premiered his concert film in his key market Detroit on October 29. Then in early November, Warner released Sign‘s final single, “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” backed with “Hot Thing.” With it entering the Top 10, hopes were high for his new film. And this time, reviews were great. Rolling Stone called its article “Sign O’ the Times: Prince Bounces Back with Bold Concert Movie,” and said it restored his “luster as a formidable big-screen presence” and “blows away the haze of his last two LPs.” The Star Tribune‘s Jon Bream called the film splendid, noting the film confirmed he was “pop music’s most exciting and provocative concert performer.” The film opened in 250 theaters on November 20, and his fans rushed to buy tickets. But Eric Leeds believed not following up with an American tour “was the biggest mistake he ever made. It came at a very crucial time for him, ’cause he had some momentum going with the record.” Prince had told the band his concert movie would compensate “but nobody went to see it.” And not even Sign’s final single reaching No. 10 on the Pop Chart drew many more people to the album or film.

  At home, Prince accepted that Sign hadn’t done as well as he’d like. Then, Susannah was gone.

  At Paisley Park, employees felt he was more demanding, always cranky. Some co-workers felt burned out. Susan Rogers had already left. Now, he told tour manager Karen Krattinger to work Thanksgiving week. She refused, she told author Alex Hahn. She was visiting family. “You are not my family,” she stressed.

  While at Sunset Sound, Prince figured he’d record three songs for the party he’d throw for Sheila’s birthday in four days. It was December 7, and he programmed a forceful drum machine beat. With pitch-deepened voice, Prince played a man seeing his girl come home with a new coat.

  The woman on his song said she bought the coat. The narrator scoffed. He called his manager Bob Cavallo a few names, threatened to slap this woman, then also accused Bob of buying her the ring she wore. He then asked which stars Bob managed. At the mention of Prince, he raved even more. “Don’t you know I will kill you now?” he added. The song continued with him telling her to put that suitcase down, get in the bedroom, and don a wig he bought her. Cops arrived, he fired a gun at them, and a cop—Prince’s comical impersonation of a white man—said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He named the song “Bob George” after his manager Bob Cavallo and writer Nelson George. In his office, co-manager Steve Fargnoli heard it: “I thought it was funny.”

  Prince kept working on the party songs, recycling his instrumental “2 Nigs United 4 West Compton.”

  He moved on to another “Housequake” sequel called “Le Grind,” starting it by saying, “So you found me. Good, I’m glad.” He was here to rock, he said, and no one would stop him.

  After Madonna’s rejection, Prince set Graffiti Bridge aside. He sent tapes of Sheila’s party tracks—and other recent new works—to Bernie Grundman’s for mastering, and submitted this as his next album.

  Warner expected catchy songs from the hitmaker and creator of Purple Rain. Instead, he delivered what he called The Funk Bible in press releases (and in a hidden message on the record itself). To their ears, it was an album-length version of “Housequake,” with frenzied backing vocals, filtered voices, shouts, samples, and party sounds. They heard Prince rant, laugh, and chant, slow or speed his voice, and sing in falsetto. After including expletives, references to a “bitch” or “ho,” and mostly jams, Prince ended the collection with a feedback fade. But his voice returned to ask, “What kind of fucking ending was that?” Then he faded out again.

  The collection confirmed Warner’s suspicion that his marketing decisions were now alienating the public, and that he had abandoned tight songwriting. Still, some of these hooks could work on black radio: “Superfunkycalifragisexy‘s” swirling chorus; “Le Grind’s” vibrant horn; “Dead On It” and “Bob George’s” rap beats; his kindhearted ballad, “When 2 R in Love” (which seemed to belong on another album).

  Prince then insisted the album include no printed title, artist name, liner notes, production credits, or photography, much like Rob Reiner’s classic comedy This Is Spinal Tap. Despite trepidation, the label planned a mid-December release, and pressed hundreds of thousands of vinyl albums, cassettes, and compact discs for distribution. Promotional copies had a track listing and catalog number on the disc itself. The commercial version would have a peach-colored catalog number on the spine and a sticker.

  Warner started sending advance copies of The Funk Bible, aimed at dance clubs and black-music radio stations, to disc jockeys in England. His advisers, Bream explained, were saying it could “interfere with the momentum of ‘Sign O’ the Times’” but Prince wanted—as usual—to audition his newest work in a club for unwary patrons.

  December 1, about a week before its release, Prince traveled to Rupert’s in Minneapolis. Entering unseen, he reached the deejay booth and asked them to play songs. While deejays did, he mingled with patrons and locked eyes with a brunette in her early twenties. “We had an instant attraction, but it was not necessarily a physical one,” said Ingrid Chavez. The serious brunette had moved to Minneapolis to make music with a friend. When that soured, Chavez kept writing poetry. Like Prince, Chavez grew up in a religious home (Baptist in her case). As an adult, she continued to show an interest in spirituality. That night, she told Prince, “If you smiled you’d be a really nice person.”

  Later, facing his black album cover, Prince saw his miserable reflection. He considered how, if he died after releasing this, it would be what people remembered. “I could feel this wind and I knew I was doing the wrong thing … .” After a long conversation with Ingrid, they drove back to his studio complex where they kept talking religion, love, and life fulfillment. Then Prince said he had a stomachache and left the room.

  He grabbed a phone. At about 1:30 A.M., he called Karen Krattinger, the tour manager he had asked to work on Thanksgiving week. During their emotional talk (according to Alan Leeds) Prince apologized for his stormy mood, and recent uncharacteristic behavior in the office. He didn’t mean to be hard on her. He had trouble expressing feelings, he added, but he loved her.

  Next, he called Susan Rogers, asking her to come to Paisley Park. After four years as his engineer, Rogers had a hard time leaving Prince behind. When she complied and arrived at the rehearsal room a few hours later, it was dark, save for red candles casting ominous shadows on walls. From the gloom, she saw Ingrid Chavez, who asked, “Are you looking for Prince?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, he’s here somewhere.”

  He materialized from the dark. Rogers was spooked. “I’m certain he was high,” she said. “His pupils were really dilated. He looked like he was tripping.”

  He struggled to connect. “I just want to know one thing. Do you still love me?” Startled, she said yes, and she knew he loved her, too.

  “Will you stay?”

  “No, I won’t,” she said, and left. (“It was really scary,” she recalled.)

  That night “a lot of things happened, all in a few hours,” Prince later said. He told people he saw God. “And when I talk about God, I don’t mean some dude in a cape and a beard coming down to Earth. To me, he’s in everything if you look at it that way.” He also supposedly told Chavez this Funk Bible was an evil force. Alan Leeds heard, “Some voice told him, ‘Don’t release that record.’”

  Whatever the case, in that moment, Prince changed his approach to songwriting, and life itself. “I was an expert at cutting off people in my life and disappearing without a glance back, never to return,” he said. “Half the things people were writing about me were true.” He’d stop acting like such an angry soul.

  Prince suddenly decided The Funk Bible represented rage and debauchery. “He couldn’t sleep at night thinking about ten-year-old kids believing ‘this is what Prince was about—guns and violence,’” Sheila recalled. “He said, ‘I can’t leave this on little kids’ minds. I don’t care if they pressed 500,000
copies.’”

  He called Warner chairman Mo Ostin. Warner had over 400,000 copies of The Funk Bible in boxes, on loading docks, but Prince told Mo Ostin he’d pay whatever it cost Warner to cancel its release. “Prince was very adamant and pleaded with Mo,” said Warner exec Marylou Badeaux. Once again, Warner understood. Ostin agreed. Warner would destroy the albums.

  The incident inspired gossip in his studio complex corridors. Instead of “God,” Fink said, Prince told Gilbert Davison he thought he saw Satan. Davison then, Fink claimed, told various band members. And the hallucination scared Prince. Even after ditching the album, Prince asked them to return cassettes he had hoped would teach them the songs. Prince meanwhile simply said, “I didn’t want that angry, bitter thing to be the last thing. I learned from that album, but I don’t want to go back.” He told employees at Paisley Park that “Blue Tuesday,” as he had dubbed it, had changed him; suddenly he exuded cheer and optimism. Alan Leeds felt an awakening inspired a sincere and major decision to change his focus, “be it temporarily or permanently.” But Karen Krattinger believed, “It was a facade. It was evident to me that he still wasn’t happy with his life.” Warner meanwhile coped with fans somehow obtaining a few vinyl records and compact discs, and passing each other cassettes of varying quality. A few reporters claimed that Warner—despite helping Prince by agreeing to pull the album—had canceled it to censor Prince. Publicity director Bob Merlis finally told Rolling Stone, “I’ve seen things in print about how we were chicken, but we were committed to putting this record out.”