by Ronin Ro
He told the guard to go get them.
PART THREE
The RETREAT
25
LOLITA
THE GIRL’S NAME WAS MAYTE GARCIA. SHE WAS SIXTEEN, AND born in America to middle-class parents. Her father was a pilot in the military, stationed in various countries. Her mother, an academic and linguist who loved dance. For eight years, Mayte had danced, first ballet, then belly dancing in Cairo. At some point, a dance-related injury led to forced recuperation and voice lessons. Now, she was studying ballet again, near the family’s current home in Frankfurt, Germany. Recently, her family had attended Prince’s show in Spain, and her mother enjoyed the Arabic feel of “Thieves in the Temple.” Since then she kept telling Mayte, “You have to make a tape of your dancing and send it to him.”
Five minutes after seeing the tape, Prince watched the guard lead her and her family in. Face to face, she thought, Wow, he’s really—small!
He complimented her moves. She mentioned she could flip coins on her stomach. He called in band members to watch. Soon, he had to leave. But he asked her father if he could keep in touch. The man said sure. While leaving, a band member reportedly joked, “There’s your future wife.”
August 10, near Switzerland, Prince nursed a cold. But the show had to go on. He rested and swallowed Sudafed then marched into the dressing room on time. After the band’s last-minute huddle, costume designer Helen Hiatt slipped a huge crucifix necklace around his neck. Then Gilbert Davison said, “It’s raining.”
Prince squinted. “It’s raining,” he mumbled. He still did the show for damp and screaming teens.
Between shows, Prince and the band crammed into Olympic Studio in London to tape “Walk Don’t Walk” and “Daddy Pop.” Then, they reached Japan, on August 30. For the next two days, he booked time at Warner Pioneer Studios in Tokyo and recorded his mellow “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night” and the similarly breezy “Strollin’.” To his relief, the band worked quickly, finishing basic tracks in one or two takes.
By the final concert on September 10, over a million people had bought tickets to see his tour. “Considering Prince didn’t have any new product on the market or any recent hit, the figure is incredible,” critic Per Nilsen opined. Once the show ended, he led the band to the borrowed multitrack recorder in his backstage dressing room. He taped his drummer’s beat, hummed, and added melodies, and called it “Willing and Able.” Then he led them through recording an album side’s worth of basic tracks.
Back home, Gilbert Davison was working on another movie tie-in. Davison had been his bodyguard since 1984, when Gilbert left a local community-college computer program. Now, he was turning the former hat factory at 110 North Fifth Street into a two-story nightspot named “Glam Slam.” Prince’s Lovesexy single had been one of his biggest flops, failing to enter Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1988, but Prince was using the title in his upcoming movie, and now, this new club.
As for who financed its creation, one published report claimed twenty-seven-year-old Davison collaborated with club owner Ruth Whitney in December 1989, and owned 90 percent after investing over $1 million. “He has no financial interest in the club,” Davison said of Prince. Another report claimed Paisley Park provided most of the $2 million. What’s clear is that Davison worked on its look while Prince toured Europe and Japan. Now, Prince’s likeness was on some of the plaster cast masks on columns surrounding the dance floor. They had workers dye the thirteen-hundred-square-foot maple dance floor black. Everything was black, gray, and industrial, right down to the artificial rivets that resembled scrap metal.
Employees created displays featuring guitars, old stage costumes, and neon signs from the sets of Sign O’ the Times and Graffiti Bridge. They even rolled Prince’s bike from Purple Rain to a spot behind a fence. The in-house shop on the first floor stocked Prince-style outfits, cheap T-shirts, and fifteen-hundred-dollar leather jackets with fractured local license plates on back. In a rear stairwell, artist Sotera Tschetter covered walls with graffiti, Prince-like slogans, song titles, and lyrics to “Elephants and Flowers.” With local authorities prohibiting the hanging of a sign on the historic building, they slipped their huge neon “Glam Slam” display in a front window.
Davison hoped to sell three-year memberships to the second-floor balcony. Here, people could, for three to five thousand dollars, lean over and see the stage or dance floor. But he reserved a booth in the rear—with one of the best views of the stage—for Prince, who bragged, “Glam Slam’s gonna kick ass. It’ll be one of those joints that’s remembered!”
Rumors about the film soon appeared in print, as did predictions it would fail. “I don’t mind,” Prince replied. “Some might not get it.” They said the same about Purple Rain, dubbing it unfit for release, he recalled. “And now I drive to work each morning to my own big studio.”
But it was a concern. In addition to shows and recording new songs, Prince worked on the film. Warner delayed its release from summer to November. In dressing rooms, he used VCRs and telephones to oversee dubbing and editing. He now suggested, “One of these days, I’m going to work on just one project, and take my time.” A few nights later, he assembled his near-finished film. “People are going, ‘Oh, this is Prince’s big gamble,’” he said. Fast-forwarding a video of his rough cut, he added, “What gamble? I made a $7 million movie with somebody else’s money, and I’m sitting here finishing it.”
July 17, 1990, he had Warner release “Thieves in the Temple” as the lead single. On it he sang over a break-beat familiar to almost any hip-hop fan—Lowell Fulsom’s “Tramp.” Bream called it “the least striking first single from a Prince album since ‘Uptown’ from Dirty Mind in 1980.” Warner quickly planned to follow up with “Round and Round,” now-thirteen-year-old Tevin Campbell’s cheery song over the same drum pattern heard on the break-beat “Ashley’s Roachclip,” once heard on Soul II Soul’s hit “Keep on Movin’.”
By August 20, Prince was in London, for twelve nights at Wembley Arena. His crinkled dime-store notebook held ideas for twenty-one new songs. But during a sound check, he heard dancer Tony Mosley rap, and asked Tony to write something. Tony delivered a dance rap called “The Flow.” During the next show, Prince let Tony perform it during his Batman number, “The Future.” Tony wondered how Prince’s audience would react. But they seemed to like it. Prince asked Tony to write more.
August 20, he was still editing Graffiti Bridge during the tour. But Paisley Park and Warner released the album of the same name, two months before the movie’s premiere. While promoting the album, he assured one reporter it was “just a whole bunch of songs. Nobody does any experiments or anything like that.”
In frustration, he saw reviews describe his trendy music and ignore his heartfelt messages. For their part, his hardcore fans knocked Graffiti Bridge for aping the trendy new-jack swing sound. Rap fans meanwhile ignored the break-beats he sneaked onto songs, and even the Jimi Hendrix sample on “Tick, Tick, Bang.”
An employee in Minneapolis faxed the latest notices to his suite at England’s Wellington hotel. His eyes landed on one in The New York Times. He couldn’t believe it. In disbelief, he reached for his phone at 4:48 in the morning and called the Rolling Stone reporter down the hall. “Hi, it’s Prince. Did I wake you up?” He wouldn’t call this late if he didn’t have interesting news. The Times notice stunned him. “They’re starting to get it. I don’t believe it, but they’re getting it!” Maybe he was wrong about the mostly white rock intelligentsia. “They’re starting to get it,” he repeated. The Times hadn’t exactly praised his lyrics. If anything, Jon Pareles wrote, “Verbally, he’s no deep thinker; when he’s not singing about sex, his messages tend to be benevolent and banal.” But Prince felt “they’re paying attention.” Sounding amazed, he ended the call.
In the end, Graffiti Bridge reached No. 6 on the Pop Chart but failed to sell a million copies. In trying to recapture the Purple Rain magic he had offered listeners dozens of catchy melodies. He also
improved his rap sound; made his lyrics more accessible than those on Lovesexy; and employed his usual quality production. The results were a mixed bag, though the album includes winners like his prog-rock ballad “Graffiti Bridge,” his classic “Thieves in the Temple,” and his popular, slower work “The Question of U.” Despite the presence of too many aging vets, second-tier acts, and trendy sounds, Graffiti Bridge was better (if less successful) than Batman, and rougher than Lovesexy.
He wouldn’t tour the States. Warner was investing big money in Paisley Park Records, he claimed, so he wanted to “put in some serious time behind the desk.” He leaped instead into trying to save the film. By now, reporters were claiming he desperately wanted to return to the old Purple Rain heights by creating this quasi-sequel. Entertainment Weekly reported it had “already been totally overhauled twice” and would arrive in November, “if it is ever released at all.” He had promised to tour the States that fall to promote the seventy-two-minute album but wouldn’t even finish this current European jaunt.
After rescheduling a few final shows, Prince flew to Hollywood to spend four days editing. By now, two cuts by Warner Bros.’ editors did leave everyone—him included—unhappy.
Prince had filmed performances for every song. He cut four and trimmed two others. Warner still sent it back for reediting. Now, Prince spent a week reshooting scenes in Hollywood. He shot transitional scenes since, as Ingrid Chavez had noted, it was confusing before. The new scenes created an “adorable story,” she added. “Before, you couldn’t get into the characters.” He kept editing into fall, eventually removing thirty minutes and production numbers set to songs already heard on the soundtrack album released in August. He kept tinkering with it until October 1990, when he deemed it finished. He had done what he could. Warner, still not pleased, considered a direct-to-video release (embarrassing since viewers feel straight-to-video meant a studio had deemed something unfit for theaters).
November 1, Graffiti Bridge opened nationally. Originally, Warner wanted Graffiti Bridge in fourteen hundred U.S. theaters on August 7. Now, it opened at only seven hundred. The ads read, “The story only Prince could tell. Music only Prince could play.” With him listed as screenwriter, director, composer, and star, reporters wondered if the oft-delayed film was any good. Rumors claimed the film, about two nightclub-owner musicians disagreeing over music, needed repairs. “It has gone through the normal process,” said Bridge producer Arnold Stiefel, Prince’s manager. “It has changed in postproduction as much as any film.”
The negative buzz continued. As with Under the Cherry Moon, Warner Bros. decided not to screen it in advance for critics. Said Los Angeles Times movie critic Patrick Goldstein, “I’ve gotten no indication that Warner Bros. has any high hopes for this beyond the normal Prince following. That’s large in record-industry terms. It’s relatively small in movie-industry terms.”
The New York Times described Prince dancing in spike-heeled boots and shiny hip-high leggings, and joked “Prince is nearly ready for Broadway.” But the plot was feeble. Characters solved problems by singing and dancing. He filmed himself “in Christ-like poses.” His acting and directing were “roughly equivalent to his aptitude for presidential politics.”
Entertainment Weekly gave it a “D-minus,” and added that comparing it to rock videos “would be an insult to videos: The movie can barely muster the energy to get from one shot to the next.” This critic zeroed in on his self-pitying stare, and female characters receiving “the usual shabby treatment,” shoves, insults, and apathy. “Graffiti Bridge is a sad fiasco,” it added, and the only good song was The Time’s “Shake!” This was the first time Prince seemed to “be preaching to a world that has left him behind.”
The Washington Post’s Richard Harrington felt the film should immediately be bronzed and sent to “Hollywood’s Hall of Shamelessness, where it might draw bigger crowds than it’s likely to at movie theaters, once word gets out about how thoroughly execrable it is.” Harrington claimed it made Under the Cherry Moon (“a Golden Turkey honoree just a few years back”) look like Citizen Kane. “We are talking major disaster here.” He noted that Prince directed, starred in, wrote the script, and scored the film. “This may be four hats too many.” His thin plot suggested “that the music came first, the script last.” There were too many “poor-pitiful-me close-ups”; his wardrobe resembled “Kim Basinger castoffs”; the dance numbers looked seriously dated, “as if Graffiti Bridge had been shot in 1984, right after Purple Rain.” And of the white feather that floated during various scenes: “One suspects it has escaped from Prince’s brain, much like the film itself.” Graffiti Bridge bombed at the box office. The film left theaters after grossing only $4.2 million and effectively ended Prince’s film career. But at Paisley Park, Prince refused to admit it flopped. Ingrid Chavez remembered him blaming the world for not getting his vision.
26
RELEASE IT
FORBES SAID PRINCE EARNED $20 MILLION IN PRETAX PROFIT IN 1989. The New York Times reported Paisley Park was quite solvent. “We’re doing okay,” Prince said.
This would change. After managers Stiefel and Phillips left in 1990, Prince decided he had the perfect replacement. During his Nude Tour in Europe, Arnold or Randy had frequently called Jill Willis to relay messages to Prince. “I think Gilbert was in the same position,” Willis said of Prince’s main bodyguard. Soon, she and Gilbert were fielding calls from his attorney Gary Stiffelman, his accountant Nancy Chapman, and various Warner executives. “Prince might speak to Mo Ostin, Lenny Waronker, Russ Thyret, or Benny Medina but that was it,” Willis recalled.
Prince invited Willis and Davison to his home and asked Willis to become his manager and run the company.
She said she’d consider it if Gilbert were involved. Former head of security Davison meanwhile had been working with him on the Glam Slam club not to mention a screenplay. They had a history, Willis added. “He seemed to be the one person Prince trusted.” The topic next arose when the duo traveled to Manhattan for the film premiere of Graffiti Bridge. There, business manager Nancy Chapman and attorney Gary Stiffelman asked both to accept positions as President and Executive Vice President. They did. “But there was more to the ‘job’ than just managing Prince,” Willis added. “He had nearly one hundred employees and there was no one running the ship.”
At Paisley Park, co-manager Davison ran the company, handled damage control, and sometimes advised vendors to disregard Prince’s expensive requests. “They say, usually after the fact: ‘You can’t listen to what he says,’” said set designer Blaine Marcou. But once Prince heard someone had dismissed a request, Paisley Park’s CFO Jenifer Carr explained, he simply wrote a check from a private account and bought what he wanted.
People around him claimed not matching Purple Rain’s success and seeing acts like MC Hammer, and white pop rapper Vanilla Ice, outsell him had Prince frustrated. He even asked Alan Leeds, “Do you know what it’s like to sit here and see these people on the charts who do nothing but talk?” Prince resented hip-hop’s ease in selling records, Leeds remembered. “In his mind, if emcees couldn’t sing or play an instrument, they didn’t deserve hit records. I’m sure he would deny this today, though,” Leeds added.
But when MC Hammer rented one of Paisley Park’s studios, to record music for a footwear ad, Prince said, “I like his stuff a lot.” He even let Hammer deliver his religious lyric “Pray” over the beat to “When Doves Cry.”
Then he started his own next album. But he had an unexpected new influence. Robert Clivillés and David Cole called themselves 2 Puerto Ricans, a Blackman, and a Dominican on their 1987 dance-hit “Do It Properly.” In 1989, as the 28th Street Crew they created an album for Vendetta/ A&M Records. Now, as C+C Music Factory, they covered a speedy drum machine track with sampled guitar chords playing a dance riff, a rap by then-unknown Freedom Williams, with thickset Martha Wash singing, “Everybody Dance Now.” In late 1990, C+C Music Factory’s lead single “Gonna Make You Sweat (
Everybody Dance Now)” topped Billboard’s Hot 100 and R&B Singles Chart. Their album Gonna Make You Sweat was on its way to selling a Madonna-like five million copies.
From the start, Prince loved their sound. Prince identified with rap’s hard edge and “other pop music like ‘Everybody Dance Now,’ which came out during that time,” engineer Michael Koppelman told Housequake.com. Engineer Tom Garneau agreed. “I think he was chasing that trend.”
The song was soft for hip-hop, dismissed by most genre fans as a diluted form, but Koppelman explained, “He worked hard to make parts of Diamonds and Pearls ‘hard’ like that.”
Prince was doing “tons of sampling” those days with “the Publison, a very odd, early sampler,” Koppelman added. They mostly used it, however, to sample and rearrange his own recorded tracks, Garneau recalled. “We’d pick up a vocal or a lick and he would fly it around all over the song.”
He was working hard to emulate contemporary black music. He also told people he liked rap, and that he, himself, had profoundly influenced this genre with his spoken-word break in “Controversy.” People shook their heads. “I remember Prince saying something to the effect that he had invented rap,” Koppelman told Alex Hahn.
His other engineer Tom Garneau meanwhile thought Prince “came to rap way too late. I considered it boring by the time he was doing it.”
Prince had dancer Tony Mosley writing raps. “When I came into this I realized that Prince has a lot of hard-core fans who don’t give a damn about rap,” Tony explained in Musician. At the same time, people in hip-hop didn’t “give a damn about Prince.” Tony wanted to sound “straight from the ’hood” but Prince swiftly requested a more “worldly aspect.” Just as Tony was getting used to these simple dance-raps and Hammer-like chants, Prince suddenly asked for a “Gil Scott-Heron thing on black-on-black crime, cops, and the community,” Tony recalled in Details magazine. “I think black awareness is really taking an upturn today and he really wants to be a part of that,” he added. Tony delivered, but returned to his neighborhood and saw pals dismiss Prince as a pop sellout. “It’s been rough,” Tony eventually said, “but I knew it would be like that.”