by Ronin Ro
28
WATCH THEM FALL
PRINCE NEEDED DIAMONDS TO HIT. BUT AFTER GRAFFITI BRIDGE, he wouldn’t rely only on Warner’s publicists. Jill Willis and Gilbert Davison suggested he turn to Jackson’s former manager Frank DiLeo to help Warner promote this new one. As Willis saw it, DiLeo could “guide us through some of the areas where we both lacked experience such as radio promotion.” Warner employees included DiLeo in promotional efforts. Warner was also still excited about Ingrid Chavez’s album and predicted success when it arrived on September 21, 1991. Executives chose “Hippy Blood,” “Heaven Must Be Near,” and “Elephant Box” for singles and club remixes. “There was a lot of excitement about it but by the time it came out it kind of fizzled and the record did not do well,” said co-producer Koppelman. Turned out, Prince was right about this one.
“Gett Off,” though, was another story. The single debuted at No. 66 on the Billboard chart but dropped twelve places its second week, even as another song he helmed, Martika’s “Love … Thy Will Be Done,” rose from No. 57 to No. 45 during its third week. Billboard’s Club Play Chart had “Gett Off” at only No. 21. Critics were frowning on him singing about “twenty-three positions in a one-night stand” then mentioning some. Entertainment Weekly chose this moment to remind readers that only two of his seven albums since Purple Rain sold 2 million copies. “Two of his last three, Lovesexy and Graffiti Bridge, have yet to reach the 1 million mark.” The biggest Prince song in years, they added, was Sinead’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
Once again, Warner got things back on track by quickly releasing “Cream” as a single on September 9, 1991. More radio stations added the guitar-heavy pop song to playlists than any other single that week. Even better, it became his fifth U.S. No. 1 single.
Warner released Diamonds and Pearls October 1, but at Controversy, the British-based fanzine Prince had mentioned in liner notes, editor Eileen Murton said, “Many of the fans think he’s selling out.” Eric Leeds agreed. For years, peers expected him to call the tune “but then there came a time when he began to listen to rap and other stuff, and said, ‘I can do that, and I can do it better.”’ Eric felt the new CD’s best moments returned “to who he really is. It’s not cutting edge, but at least it’s true.”
Riding high with his latest chart-topper “Cream,” Prince started October by recording “Sweet Baby,” a gentle number heavy on cooing, and far from the crowded dance-rap he had lately been creating. That same month, at Larrabee Studio in LA, he recorded another ballad called, “Insatiable.”
It was while working on his next album that he saw the media suddenly crown Michael Jackson the King of Pop. Like Prince, Michael Jackson saw rap and metal rising, and worked to deliver new work that looked and sounded modern without alienating his core audience. Jackson had filled half of Dangerous with songs that mimicked early hits. The other songs featured rap producer Teddy Riley’s trademark new jack swing, James Brown rhythms over drum machine swing beats.
But what got Prince’s goat was how Jackson tried to promote his video for lead single “Black or White.” In late October, Jackson let Fox, BET, and MTV know, if they wanted his “Black and White” video first, they had to call him “the King of Pop.” The song was a rock-tinged dance cut that urged racial unity and included Guns ‘N’ Roses’ guitarist Slash. But Jackson’s video was a bit raw. Jackson had director John Landis, back from Thriller, direct scenes of Jackson dancing in an alley, without music; shaking his feet, adjusting his hat, and splashing in a puddle; leaping onto a car with a crowbar, to smash windows, and scream. Then, still on the car, Jackson tap danced while holding his crotch. He pulled his zipper up. He screamed, “Ho!” Near a puddle, he dropped to his knees and tore off his T-shirt. He threw a trash can through a store window and screamed so loud, the sign on a hotel fell off. Then Jackson morphed into a dark panther and left the scene.
November 11, a week before Jackson’s video premiered, MTV executives sent on-air staff a memo on letterhead telling them to call Jackson “the King of Pop” at least twice a week for the next fourteen days. “Fox and BET are already doing this,” it added. Prince laughed and reached for a pen, planning, as he sometimes did, to respond to a real world development with a new lyric.
Warner saw Prince’s latest album Diamonds and Pearls become his biggest hit since Purple Rain and its four Top 30 hits attract the mainstream media and casual music fans. With a nationwide American tour, he could get back up there with Madonna and Michael Jackson. But Prince was unmoved. He flew to Paris, for a quick trip, to create more ideas.
By December 1, Prince returned to the studio with new songs for a concept album. For the next few weeks, he had the band help record complex numbers like “The Sacrifice of Victor,” “And God Created Woman,” and “Arrogance.” Along with these, he added May 1991’s “Blue Light,” September’s dance-rap “My Name Is Prince,” and his recent “Sweet Baby” to the lineup. At one point, he slapped an old title from 1988, “The Max” onto a new work.
At home at night, Prince banged on a piano, sang, and taped ideas on a portable radio. The next morning, he carried the device to the studio. He already knew how he wanted things to sound but let the band suggest ideas. After playing a new tape, they recorded together and things happened quickly. After creating one intricate melody, he turned and asked everyone present, “What do you think U2 will do when they hear that?” The awards show defeat was still on his mind. But after comments like this, he got back to work on some of his most complex arrangements to date. “We cut entire records in a day, sometimes,” said one player.
For “3 Chains O’ Gold” he wanted classical to lead to rock, funk, and more classical. After cutting the basic tracks, he let Tommy Barbarella add riffs. Then Levi added bass. Engineers also took a turn. Finally, he would enter the studio, sift through their concepts, and choose the best, then add his final touches to certain works. He wanted similar changes on “Love 2 the 9’s” so its airy groove gave way to heavy hip-hop. For “7” he mixed an odd but catchy groove, a break-beat (Lowell Fulsom’s familiar “Tramp”), some Egyptian musical references, and backup vocals from a singer named Jevetta Steel. When Steel asked what it all meant, he only smiled. Then he heard Levi Seacer, Jr. singing something while walking around Paisley. In an elderly tone, Seacer joked, “You sexy motherfucker!” One day in Studio A, Prince created a melody on piano. Seacer added notes. Prince threw in soulful horn blasts. “Within half an hour we had an arrangement,” said drummer Michael Bland. Prince had Seacer perform the hook “into a shitty old SM 57,” engineer Michael Koppelman recalled, and got the new song, “Sexy M.F.,” done in one take.
It was an even further departure from his usual style than “Gett Off.” But it reflected what Prince saw during his frequent hangout sessions at Glam Slam. “There was a dance troupe there, and the sexier the dancers, the bigger the revenues and the noisier the crowd,” Prince told Interview magazine. He also saw they loved a record called “Bitch Betta Have My Money.” “When you hear something constantly, you can get swayed by the current. I was swayed by hip-hop at the time.” At the same time, his band’s evocation of old James Brown convinced him to abandon sampling.
Outside of the control room, Prince put a “For Sale” sign on a tall pile of electronic equipment.
29
MY NAME IS PRINCE
MAYTE KEPT INSPIRING LOVE SONGS. EVERY TWO DAYS, SHE told the Mail on Sunday online, he would call her at home to chat. It was intense, having him stay in contact, but she didn’t bother telling friends, assuming they wouldn’t believe her anyway.
For his part, their talks led to fantasies and dreams he channeled into lyrics. “I Wanna Melt with U” seemed to describe a point in time in which they would finally—once she was of age and they were together—have safe sex. “The Continental” also alluded to her. In it, Prince called for a woman to flip quarters on her belly (something she mentioned she could do when they met at his show overseas). As the lyric continues, she tell
s him, “If I flip ’em on my stomach, will you marry my ass?” And his response would be, “Yeah man.” By song’s end, he added that he’d show her how couples should have fun.
Even “Sexy M.F.” seemed to be for her. To be his wife, he sang, a woman had to be peaceful. He didn’t want fights; he wanted real love. And though his desire to wait confused her, he said he wanted “the whole 9,” her body and mind. He ended this one by saying he was usually into physical relationships. “But I had to change my state of mind for this behind.”
Prince was as ever private, and those around Prince assumed these were simply components for his concept album’s fictional story. But they can be seen to present his life as an open book. And since Mayte’s arrival, he continued to involve her even more in his professional life and Art.
Away from the band, everything was “all work,” Mayte noted.
They rehearsed and recorded, and while others called him a demanding boss, she felt they brought his anger on themselves.
Prince meanwhile liked Mayte’s optimistic attitude, unflagging support, truthful nature, and willingness to take professional advice. He liked how she danced—and her body, his eyes frequently drifting down to a posterior he would soon describe in songs. There was her voice, too. He felt she could handle a solo album.
Before anyone knew it, Prince had Mayte sitting near him some nights in his booth at Gilbert’s club, or joining him on the dance floor. Now that things were heading south with Warner, he began to slowly entertain a different vision of his future: one that included her—after she turned eighteen, of course—by his side as a companion, a recording artist, and a supportive soul mate.
However, before any of that could happen, he wanted Mayte in his new epic video for “7” and onstage during an operatic show, in which he rescued her from a royal family while dodging annoying reporters.
He remained happy with his band, though its members knew things could change in an instant. “With Prince you can only take one day at a time,” drummer Michael Bland told Q Magazine. “You never know what’s gonna happen. He’s been known for hiring and firing folks so quick, just out of nowhere, just uninitiated.” Sure enough, before Christmas, he got into it with engineer Michael Koppelman. During his three years with Prince, Koppelman had played some of the music on “Blue Light” and worked on half of Ingrid Chavez’s debut. Prince had scheduled a Carmen Electra session for Christmas Eve, engineer Tom Garneau remembered hearing. Koppelman couldn’t do it. He was, Koppelman explained, “deathly ill, and Prince wanted me to cancel a trip home for Christmas!” He boarded his flight, Koppelman wrote on lolife.com, so Prince fired him.
Koppelman left, feeling Prince really made a mess of things. His company once had tons of energetic talents. Now, he fired many for air-headed reasons. Prince meanwhile was a “dysfunctional ‘leader,’” who failed to build a successful label and studio. “He also put out album after album of shit and a couple of ridiculously bad movies,” Koppelman later opined.
Engineer Tom Garneau couldn’t disagree. “Being his own manager and career advisor, he made many bad decisions. Too many clubs opening. Too many ‘girlfriend video shoots’ on double-time Sundays. No one was saying no to him. This led to his well-publicized cash flow issues.”
Unmoved by the shift in personnel, Prince turned his attention to his label Paisley Park. It could really use a hit, and he felt he had one in new discovery Carmen’s album. He helped create seven of her eleven songs. She was gorgeous and photogenic. Her dance-raps were as good, if not better, than any by chart-toppers MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. He kept sending Warner assorted versions of her debut Carmen on Top, but label staff rejected the tracks and vocals as weak. He ignored them, writing more songs and planning a big-ticket clip for her song, “Go-Go Dancer.”
In March 1992, he filmed a video for her title track and hoped a strong promotional push would make a hit of her album. At Paisley, he told staff members his latest marketing idea. “Prince wanted to drop eight-by-ten publicity photos of her from a helicopter over major cities,” said Jill Willis. It would have made a splash but Willis told him “it would be too big of a liability if someone were to get hit in the eye by a falling eight-by-ten.”
They paid for commercials on MTV but the network barely played her video. Then in April, their ad in Rolling Stone backfired. As in the film The Idolmaker, Paisley Park showed her face, and nothing else. She was hot, it was undeniable; but most people didn’t understand what was happening—the ad didn’t mention her name or album. Many insiders felt it was another wrong move.
But Prince knew what he was doing. Everyone would know who she was when he had her open his European concerts in July, and released her album.
That summer, reporters from Spin, USA Today, Playboy, Musician, Request, and the Sunday Times of London visited Paisley Park Studios. He gave most a hard time. “There’s not much I want them to know about me, other than the music,” he claimed.
The latest tour, for Diamonds, started April 3, 1992, and would run until November 25. As usual, he staged another costly spectacle: a lit Milky Way backdrop, plasma lamps, and two giant statues with huge bosoms. He rode a glass pod into view, played “Thunder,” and rushed around walkways, podiums, three male dancers, eight musicians, his dancers Diamond and Pearl, and a four-piece horn section. One critic noted his young new protege Mayte’s ballet dancing was “rather spoiling the futuristic theme,” but it continued.
During the tour, he groomed Mayte for stardom, designing her look by tearing pictures out of magazines, especially those with fashions by Vivienne Westwood, and Versace. The tour continued, with thirteen huge trucks lugging 200 tons of equipment, twenty wardrobe cases with 1,000 costumes, and an entourage that numbered 137 and included his chef.
A month into the tour, back home, Alan Leeds did some thinking. It was, he explained, “time for a change.” Prince’s ideas for alternative marketing and records that bypassed Warner and the industry were fresh and challenging. But many ignored his legal obligation to Warner and the funding they provided Paisley Park Records, “not to mention a contract!” as Leeds noted.
Late one night Leeds told his wife, “You know where this is going to end up?” Playing Sundays in a purple church in Chanhassen. “People will be dressed in ruffled shirts, looking like it’s the eighties, watching him preach and play ‘Purple Rain.’”
At his desk at Paisley Park, he gave it his best shot. But Prince’s differences with Warner infected everything the label was trying to do. Prince kept racing through projects and thinking, “That’s done. On to the next thing.” Warner felt he wasn’t creating competitive records to turn the label around. With both sides harboring “very real frustrations and agendas,” Leeds said, “I could see it was never going to work.” After seven years as his tour manager, and three running the label, Alan Leeds decided it was time to leave the fold.
At the same time, Jill Willis recalled, “Gilbert became more and more involved in running Prince’s nightclub, the Glam Slam, and so he was in the office less and less.” Prince had various underlings tackle projects, whether they were qualified or not. If one couldn’t handle a chore, he quickly assigned it to another. Before long, Jill Willis recalled, many of these individuals approached her or Davison to “discuss whatever request had been made.”
Prince was on the road but wanted to get “Sexy M.F.” out there as soon as possible. In a studio, his engineer Tom Garneau used an Akai S1100 Sampler to create a clean version, “replacing every instance of the word fucker with a Prince scream,” Garneau explained. As with “Gett Off,” Prince leaked the song to clubs and radio stations early. Leeds called the latest giveaway of a gold vinyl pressing the “1992 Birthday Surprise.” Then Prince kept touring. In June, after midnight during another show, he mysteriously played “Happy Birthday” on guitar. Apparently, no one remembered it was his thirty-fourth birthday.
At Warner, publicists started mailing promotional advance copy cassettes of Carmen’s album Carmen on Top
to the media. Her twelve-inch single “Go Go Dancer” was in stores, but only small network Video Jukebox Network played her clip. Still, he had her opening European concerts in fringed bikinis. She had a band, a birdcage, and a dressing table on stage. “She bumps and grinds like there’s no tomorrow,” a woman reporter explained, “but I don’t think anyone’s going to take her seriously, despite the subMadonna ‘strong woman’ stance.”
Halfway through the tour, Warner executive Benny Medina flew in to catch a few shows. During a sound check, Medina approached to say four tracks had to go: “Power From Above,” “Carmen on Top,” “Go Carmen Go,” and “Powerline.”
In fact, her album needed new songs and remixes. Prince’s reaction was uncharacteristically responsive—and swift. He fired everyone in her band and tapped Sonny Thompson, Levi Seacer, Jr., and Michael Bland to play behind her during two London shows, her last of the tour. He also recorded two tracks at Olympic Studios in London in June 1992, with most of his band as guests. Reportedly, British-born female rapper Monie Love appeared and he put her on the payroll as a songwriter. He also spent some of his time at Olympic knocking out “Goldnigga,” “Black M.F. in the House,” and “2gether” for a controversial album by the NPG.