Prince

by Ronin Ro

  December 17, 2002, the live album arrived with jewel cases; a fifty-six-page full-color booklet with quotes from fans, newspaper critics, and band members; various photos; and a small poster of Prince on guitar. He also gave club members the original One Nite Alone … and a disc of after-show gigs. While they started the usual debate over a new work’s merits, Prince leaped back into Xenophobia, changing its title to the less disputatious Xpectation and not even planning a retail release. Instead, he uploaded the jazz album to his music club on New Year’s Eve 2002, making him one of the first major recording artists to opt for this sort of distribution.

  Within three days, he sent his fan club C-Note, another online-only MP3 album credited to Prince and the New Power Generation. He had taped these five instrumentals during sound checks for his recent One Nite Alone Tour, and named the album after the initials for their individual titles (“Copenhagen,” “Nagoya,” “Osaka,” “Tokyo,” and “Empty Room”).

  By February 6, he had knocked out basic tracks for another jazz album called N.E.W.S. Saxophonist Eric Leeds and his band helped create four instrumentals (“North,” “East,” “West,” and “South”) that each lasted fourteen minutes, and presented two or three ambitious melodies. When everyone else left, Prince stayed in the studio, adding guitar, keyboards, and drums. By the time Prince finished, the album evoked the best of his bygone Madhouse. After crediting everything solely to Prince, he tried to line up a traditional release in stores.

  Away from work, in mid-March, Prince moved forward with plans to destroy the old purple house on Kiowa Trail. John had spent his final years there, with health-care workers watching over him. Now, Prince wanted it gone. He also thought about Tyka, his only sibling of the same two parents. Along with financial woes, City Pages reported forty-three-year-old Tyka now had a serious drug habit. For years, Tyka had occasionally used drugs or drank. But now, her habits reached epidemic proportions. She didn’t even want to live anymore, City Pages added. After handling some bills, Prince urged his little sister to seek treatment. He helped get her into a rehab clinic called Hazelden. When Tyka left, she was clean, sober, trying to take it a day at a time. She relapsed once, but got back on the horse the next day and remained sober. Before anyone knew it, Tyka celebrated ninety days clean. “It’s the longest I’ve been sober and drug-free in years,” she told contractmusic.com in September.

  By June 19, Prince had released N.E.W.S. on his site. Most critics ignored it. Mainstream listeners barely knew it existed. Some club members felt a few sections were tiresome, his James Brown tributes had devolved into formula, and that Prince should probably end this current jazz phase. But many industry executives were amazed, calling its mix of jazz-rock, Eastern melodies, and classical, some of his best music in years. “Regrettably, distribution of N.E.W.S. was limited and it didn’t reach beyond Prince’s core audience,” Per Nilsen remembered. “In fact, the music media hardly noticed the release.”

  That July, his thought-provoking, cathartic jazz phase continued. During David Sanborn’s show at the Hollywood Bowl, Prince stood on the sidelines, watching keyboardist Ricky Peterson—once considered for The Revolution—play with Sanborn’s band. After a song ended, Prince gave him a big hug. Peterson thought, What? This is unheard of.

  Prince told him, “Man, it sounds really good.”

  Peterson felt the old Prince would never have been so effusive. “Geez, man, maybe you are turning a corner.”

  In late July, Prince was preparing his music club’s first DVD for release within a month. But then he confused members with a group e-mail. “Help the cause!” it said, before asking readers to search their collections for “anything with a WB logo that was unofficially released during Prince’s tenure at that label.”

  This was followed by a list of items he hoped to receive, including singles from 1999 and Purple Rain released by such companies as Back 2 Back, 2-on-1, and BackTrax; compact discs; boxed sets; even home videos.

  These were all sold as imports, in Europe and Japan, the letter mentioned; meaning someone cut Prince out of rightful royalties and payments; and readers should send them to “The Ways of the Pharaoh,” a post office box in Vermilion, Ohio. Since the e-mail didn’t mention a reward or reimbursement, some of his hard-core fans went online to complain. At the unauthorized Prince.org site, one wrote that he bought these in a shop and legally owned them “and Prince wants me to send them back free of charge. Fool.”

  Others expressed similar sentiments, so Prince elaborated on his site. “Not long ago, an unauthorized version of the concert film Sign O’ the Times surfaced online,” a message explained. “Supposedly originating in Brazil and distributed by WEA International, this DVD is not something that was approved by Prince or any of his affiliates.” Prince tolerated most bootlegging, the message continued, but it crossed the line “when Prince’s [former] record company … gets in the mix.” They needed these items “to show a federal court the actual truth of this age-old rift between artist and label.” MTV soon created a story about the e-mail, titled “Prince Wants His Music Back … Now.”

  42

  A CERTIFIABLE LEGEND

  THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTS MUSICIANS twenty-five years after their debut. Since 1986, the hall had inducted 201 artists and industry figures. Seventy-five record executives, lawyers, managers, journalists, and musicians had started the induction process by meeting to discuss potential nominees in spring. After whittling down choices, they created a ballot with about twenty names.

  In early September, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame mailed ballots for the year’s nominations to fifteen hundred industry workers and inductees. Now they waited to see which five to eight names received the most votes. On Monday, September 15, a spokesperson for the Hall announced Prince was among the names up for consideration on the ballot.

  In spite of this undeniable endorsement, various media outlets continued to debate whether Prince was a has-been. Industry experts felt he’d sell more albums with a major label. People also suspected his beef with Warner, the “Slave” stunt, and other antics had alienated label executives and the mainstream media, not to mention fans. His work wasn’t on radio, MTV, or other outlets.

  But Prince had a plan.

  In September 2003, Prince hired veteran music publicist Ronnie Lippin. Raised in Brooklyn, she had worked as head publicist for MCA Records. After her stint at Elton John’s Rocket Records, Lippin arranged publicity campaigns for RSO, the label that released the hit soundtracks Grease and Saturday Night Fever. In 1989, Lippin arrived at her husband’s The Lippin Group to work with Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, and Brian Wilson. Lippin knew that a major comeback “doesn’t just happen.” But Prince told her he’d be more flexible with the industry, regain his audience, and aggressively work to get back on the mainstream radar. “It is far from a casual process, and Prince is the primary force driving everything,” she explained.

  Part of a comeback meant the right album. Now that he got all of his bolder ideas out of his system with the jazz albums, Prince started creating new songs while in Mississauga, Ontario, a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Ottawa. And the distance from the American music scene, or industry, he felt, made the album that he created, called Musicology, unlike anything on the market. If anything, he used his lyrics to denounce what popular music had become in his absence. “Making music about alcoholism,” he frowned. “Is that the one topic? Is that it?” If he grew up on that music, he wouldn’t be here.

  In the studio, Prince considered changes back home, and alluded to the ongoing war in Iraq, and government surveillance during his ballad “Call My Name.” “Cinnamon Girl” described an ethnic woman’s life in the U. S. during wartime. He also mentioned social ills on his broody, Sly-like “Dear Mr. Man.” But most of the album was undemanding: “A Million Days” offered heartfelt balladry. The title track and “Life ‘O’ the Party” called fans to the dance floor and mentioned producer Dr. Dre and Missy Elliott. “What Do U Want Me 2 Do
?” dabbled in beat-heavy R&B and sounded a bit like Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall number “I Can’t Help It.” Prince played instruments, reveled in influences, and emerged with twelve songs that ran only forty-seven minutes. What resulted from the recording was a collection of songs that was far from groundbreaking, but appealing enough to get him back onto pop radio.

  Prince also continued to visit his complex in Minneapolis, where cynics now claimed his marriage and faith were marketing tools. But even Cheryl Johnson—the local reporter who called herself C. J. and reported on his personal activities for the Minneapolis Star Tribune—believed religion had changed him for the better. “A lot of credit is being given to Manuela,” she told another writer. “Both his parents died recently, too.” Their deaths were “the last barrier to realizing that you, too, will die.” Prince was warmer; spiritual; monogamous. In the past, with other women, he “got bored quickly,” Johnson noted. “The traumatic death of his baby changed all that. It affected him in a big way.” Still, people in Minneapolis kept saying, in jest, “It looks like they finally got the medication right.”

  One day in early October, according to Entertainment Weekly, Prince knocked on the door of a suburban home in Eden Prairie.

  When a white man answered, he introduced himself as Prince Nelson, and entered with his band member Larry Graham. The homeowner’s wife thought: Cool, cool, cool. He wants to use my house for a set. I’m glad! Demolish the whole thing! Start over! Instead, they started “in on this Jehovah’s Witnesses stuff,” she remembered.

  She interrupted him. “You know what? You’ve walked into a Jewish household, and this is not something I’m interested in.”

  “Can I just finish?” Prince answered.

  Graham pulled out a tiny Bible and read scriptures “about being Jewish and the land of Israel,” the woman recalled.

  They left a pamphlet and got out of there after twenty-five minutes. “He was very kind,” she said of Prince.

  Outside, Prince and Graham reentered a black truck where a woman—thought to be Manuela—waited. Prince left without knocking on other doors. He realized that he had just tried to “convert a Jewish family hours before the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar,” Entertainment Weekly explained.

  Prince returned to planning what he called his “World Tour 2003/2004.” He needed a break from the image, meetings with distributors, scalding reviews, and interminable fan expectations. And his father was still on his mind. Before leaving for the tour, Prince reflected on this in a video for “Musicology.” He had the clip include a light-skinned kid playing him at age ten; and a stand-in for his late father (originally to be played by popular comedian Steve Harvey).

  After announcing he’d release a seven-disc boxed set called The Chocolate Invasion, that compiled downloads from his site’s first three years, Prince flew to China, where local officials hoped his performance during the three-week Hong Kong Harbour Fest could lure tourists back after a SARS epidemic.

  October 16, at the Tamar site in Admiralty—a huge outdoor lot surrounded by skyscrapers and overlooking Victoria Harbour—Prince led the band through rehearsal. Promoters barely advertised the show but the next night, October 17, he played all of the old hits. As he had many times since 1995, Prince claimed these shows marked the final time he’d perform them. Thus, instead of segments in medleys, he offered full versions. And despite claims of resenting Purple Rain typecasting, he featured seven of its songs. (Only “Computer Blue” and “Darling Nikki” were absent.)

  While onstage, Prince also got to hear how this latest band handled numbers from Prince, Controversy, 1999, Parade, Sign O’ the Times, Graffiti Bridge, Diamonds and Pearls, The Gold Experience, and The Rainbow Children. But his inclusion of “I Feel For You” (popularized by Chaka Khan), and “Nothing Compares 2 U” (made famous by Sinead) inspired some to suggest he was trying to make money on the nostalgia circuit.

  The accusation that he was coasting on past hits arrived just as he was preventing VHi from celebrating one of them. The network was creating a special called True Spin: Prince 1999, with everyone from Jill Jones to Lisa Coleman singing his praise and discussing his past work. “But at the eleventh hour Prince wouldn’t allow use of the song so it was shelved,” said photographer David Honl.

  Even The Wall Street Journal said he looked “like a has-been” at this stage. His name change sealed his reputation as erratic, they suggested. Battling Warner had also affected his stature and sales. “He was furious that the company, following standard industry practice, refused to cede ownership of the master recordings for his albums going back to 1978,” the Journal continued. They also noted his claim that Warner didn’t effectively market older work.

  It was two months ago that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced his name was on the ballot. He considered how they must view him: complaining about major label Warner for a decade; refusing interviews; hurling accusations at record companies, radio stations, industry trade journals, and even MTV; accusing executives of being racist or greedy. He didn’t get too excited about being included.

  By November 20, the votes were in.

  John Mellencamp, on the ballot for the first time, didn’t receive enough votes. They passed over five other first-timers. But they named Prince to the Hall of Fame, the only honoree inducted during his first year of eligibility. Bob Merlis, on the nominating committee, said his induction was “automatic.” Prince was everything people could want in a rock star. “Iconoclastic, great guitarist, great dancer, enigmatic, a rebel, everything—and he makes great records.”

  Someone told him the Hall was inducting him. “I didn’t feel anything at first,” he said. At Paisley Park, reporters’ calls went unanswered. Los Angeles publicist Lippin said he hadn’t sent a statement. But she was ecstatic. Most inductees were happy anyone remembered them so many years after their last hits. But his induction would smooth his transition into a bankable “heritage act” stage of his career, where a loyal, older following, not into downloading, would keep buying products. Bobby Z meanwhile said, “It’s not a surprise; he deserves it. From the first day I met him in seventy-five or seventy-six, I could see it immediately: He had a magical gift. One in a billion!”

  43

  EVERYTHING AND NOTHING

  THE BAND WAS READY FOR AN AMERICAN TOUR. PEOPLE KEPT talking about the Rock Hall induction. Soon, even old white women approached in public to congratulate him. He didn’t think they even knew he existed. He realized how important this was; the industry was essentially calling him a legend. Though his excitement grew, he said little about the honor in public.

  Meanwhile, his second wife Mani had become a close aide. She chose artwork for his studio’s walls; developed products for an ambitious new NPG Home brand; supported his decision to upgrade his two studios, and add two more; and agreed that interns should work here in exchange for lessons about every aspect of the music business.

  They were just as united away from work. When her sister was marrying a businessman in Calabogie, a village outside of Ottawa, Prince joined Mani at the ceremony. Local residents stared in disbelief as they observed the couple emerging from a gleaming limo, but her family extended the usual warm welcome. Then they joined eighty other guests at the Dickson Manor ski lodge. He would also have her join him on the road, and hire laborers to finish adding a big gatehouse, a fence, a tennis court, and a pool to their home on Bridle Path.

  By this point, Prince was self-managing. If someone called his publicist for an interview, Lippin might have them call Prince’s guitar technician, Takumi Suetsugu. If Prince weren’t busy Takumi would then let him know who wanted what. This was how Prince learned that television producer Ken Ehrlich wanted him to perform a duet with pop-star Beyonce Knowles during the 2004 Grammy Awards. The invitation was nothing new, Prince explained. Every year, they invited him onstage. Usually, he declined. But he’d soon be meeting with major labels, to pitch them on Musicology. He also had a tour to promote.
The exposure could only help. Instead of declining, Ehrlich noted, “he was ready for a major return to the scene.” But on one condition: “That he open the show.”

  February 8, 2004, onstage at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, the breast pocket on Prince’s suit jacket held a yellow handkerchief. He wore his signature elegant, white -shaped guitar. Violet lighting covered everything onstage as he began with “Purple Rain,” filling the opening of the song with screaming solos. By the second verse, Beyonce had emerged in a short pink skirt. To the next chorus, she added her passionate vocals. Live horn players joined them then for “Baby I’m a Star,” then the festive riff that started Beyonce’s hit “Crazy in Love.” They capped the set with “Let’s Go Crazy,” and an onstage fireworks display.

  At least one observer, Jon Bream, felt he upstaged the twenty-two-year-old (who would end up dominating the awards of the evening).

  As the ceremony continued, N.E.W.S. was a nominee for Best Pop Instrumental Album, Prince’s first nomination since 1996 (when The Gold Experience and “Eye Hate U” competed for R&B Awards)—this in spite of the fact that satirical magazine and Web site The Onion named it the “least-essential album of 2003” and sales showed a meager twenty thousand copies after nine months. It faced Jim Brickman’s Peace, Kenny G‘s Wishes, George Winston’s Night Divides the Day: The Music of the Doors, and Ry Cooder and Manuel Galban’s Mambo Sinuendo. Prince lost out to Cooder and Galban. Still, critics raved that his duet opener stole the show.