The Rise of Prince 1958-1988

by Hahn, Alex

  Eric Leeds, with his sophisticated knowledge of jazz and vast record collection, also contributed significantly to Prince’s ongoing musical education. “I talked up Miles a lot to Prince,” Leeds noted. And Prince recruited Leeds’ friend Matt “Atlanta Bliss” Blistan on trumpet, creating a full horn section.

  Prince also began work on a new album (ultimately titled Parade) that melded the various sounds and styles he had been exploring – psychedelia, string arrangements, and the jazzier textures made possible by Leeds’ presence.

  Just ten days after the conclusion of the exhausting Purple Rain tour, Prince decamped to Sunset Sound studios in Los Angeles and commenced a series of prolific and adventurous sessions. For the next several months, each of Sunset Sound’s three studios was typically in use by either Prince or his associates. The atmosphere was festive, as musicians popped from one studio to another to check on each other’s progress, also playing Ping-Pong in the recreation room and shooting baskets on a court that sat between Studios 2 and 3. Prince was among the most competitive and skilled at both games. When he needed privacy, Studio 3, a self-contained building with a bathroom and kitchen, provided him a hermetic work environment, which he decorated with scarves, Christmas lights, candles, and a queensized bed with purple sheets, where he would lie and write lyrics.

  Along with the planned use of horns (which were overdubbed by Leeds after Prince recorded basic tracks), the Parade sessions found other changes afoot. Rather than programming patterns on his Linn LM-1 drum machine, which had been a signature of his sound on 1999, Purple Rain, and Around The World In A Day, Prince returned to the use of live drums that marked his earlier albums. As the session got underway, he settled in behind the drum kit, taped lyrics to a music stand in front of him, and signaled engineer Susan Rogers to start the tape. He instructed her not to stop it if he stopped playing, and then ripped off four songs in a row, with brief pauses between them. Each composition was fully mapped out in his head, and he used the taped-up lyric sheets as a guide to the structures.

  After finishing, Prince returned to the control booth, bristling with energy and enthusiasm. “Alright, here we go! Where’s my bass?” he said to Rogers. Following the same process, he laid down bass guitar parts on each of the songs. Whereas many musicians can spend days on a single piece, Prince was sketching the better part of an album’s side in an afternoon. When Parade was released, these four songs – “Christopher Tracy’s Parade,” “New Position,” “I Wonder U,” and “Under The Cherry Moon” – would appear in the same sequence Prince recorded them.

  The manic pace continued as Prince stayed in Studio 3 virtually around the clock, catching brief respites of sleep at a rented home in nearby Beverly Hills. In short order, nine new songs were recorded. The chaotic “Life Can Be So Nice,” with Sheila E. adding cowbells, was recorded at the tail end of a twenty-four-hour marathon session. Just as the exhausted engineers began to clean up, Prince barked out, “Fresh tapes!”

  Although Prince often worked alone, Wendy and Lisa were frequent visitors to Sunset Sound, adding their own instrumental ideas to songs he had already recorded. Rapidly, the personal and creative chemistry of the troika of Prince, Wendy, and Lisa developed to the point where they virtually became a band within a band. “He was more comfortable with giving them a tape and saying, ‘Put whatever you want on it and give it back to me,’” noted Rogers.

  But inevitably, the ascendancy of Wendy and Lisa as Prince’s closest friends and musical partners left the other members of the Revolution feeling excluded, and the band’s tight chemistry began to erode. Matt Fink, who had been Prince’s keyboardist since 1978 and had made modest contributions to Dirty Mind and Purple Rain, now felt a growing chill in the air. “I got married, and you kind of get cut out of the picture by Prince when that happens,” he recalled. Bobby Z. also felt underutilized; Prince was now playing live drums in the studio and also jamming more and more often with Sheila E. And Mark Brown, dissatisfied with his role as a sideman, on several occasions almost quit before being dissuaded by Chick Huntsberry, with whom he developed a tight friendship.

  In truth, the sense of common mission that the Revolution members had felt during the recording of Purple Rain and the shooting of the movie had all but dissipated by the time the tour ended. The addition of Eric Leeds as a virtual member on the tour served as fair warning to other members: Prince’s plans and visions might not always include them in prominent roles – or include them at all.

  Following the tour, Prince began spending more time both socially and in the studio with Wendy and Lisa. Not only lovers but lifelong friends, the two women had been composing together for years and in combination created a sound that struck listeners as unusually emotionally expressive. Lisa, with her classical training, was the superior musician, but their artistic symbiosis went far beyond instrumental chops. Their ideas proved a perfect complement to Prince’s work; in places where his music threatened to become sterile or harshly minimalistic, the women would lend lushness and feeling. New songs like “Our Destiny” and “Roadhouse Garden,” both composed with Wendy and Lisa, demonstrated the melodic sophistication and pop-rock flavor that they brought to his sound.

  Given Prince’s resistance to surrendering creative space, his relationship with Wendy and Lisa would have had potential for instability even if strictly professional in nature. But there were other flashpoints as well – notably, his tumultuous and passionate relationship with Susannah Melvoin. When Susannah emerged as Prince’s primary (though hardly only) girlfriend, Wendy suddenly found herself again sharing a large part of her life with the same person with whom she had shared a womb. Moreover, Susannah was a skilled vocalist, and Prince added her as a kind of adjunct member of the Revolution, making her part of the musical equation as well. Prince frequently socialized with Susannah, Wendy, and Lisa as a group. He enjoyed their company, and reveled in the ritual of entering restaurants and nightclubs with three beautiful women in tow. At times, though, the lack of privacy in his romantic life became frustrating. “He soon realized that dating Susannah was like dating all three, because Susannah shared things with her sister and Lisa that Prince was unaccustomed to his band being privy to – his private life,” said a confidant who watched the relationship unfold.

  The purely musical part of the Prince-Wendy-Lisa relationship was also marked by rapidly shifting dynamics. For the moment, Wendy and Lisa found themselves contributing more to Prince’s music than ever before. They added musical embellishments to most of the new tracks he recorded at Sunset, and Wendy even took the lead vocal on the psychedelic oddity “I Wonder U.” At the same time, from For You through 1999, absolute self-sufficiency had defined Prince’s career, and he was not about to surrender this lightly. As such, Wendy and Lisa could never be sure when Prince would reclaim his territory. What Wendy and Lisa wanted most – some definitive measure of equality and stability – was unlikely to come without a fight.

  ***

  Of all of Prince’s band members, the one who seemed ripe for defection was Mark Brown, a prospect that troubled Prince. He appreciated what Brown’s unique, percussive style of playing brought to the Revolution’s live sound and even asserted, in an interview with Rolling Stone, that if Brown were not in the band, he would not even use bass in his music. But Brown’s true ambition, like that of Andre Cymone before him, was to become a figure not unlike Prince himself, a respected songwriter and producer of other bands. In 1984, unbeknownst to Prince, Brown took under his wing a seven piece rock-funk outfit called Mazarati that he had discovered in the Minneapolis clubs. Soon he became essentially a member of the group, regularly jamming with them onstage. Because he worried that Prince would frown upon such extracurricular activities, Brown performed wearing a mask and identified himself onstage as “The Shadow.” “I thought he was going to be pissed at me because I had kept it a secret from him,” Brown recalled. But as this double life became more stressful, Mazarati guitarist Tony Christian urged Brown to let Pr
ince know about the project. “Just tell him,” Christian advised one evening as the two musicians were driving around Los Angeles. “The worst he can do is want a piece of it or tell you to stop.”

  Brown did approach Prince, who was more curious than angry. After taking in a Mazarati concert, Prince realized he might even have a new side project on his hands. He urged Brown not to take the group to another label, but to release its first album on Paisley Park Records. Brown agreed, despite his concerns about retaining creative control over the project. And as rehearsals for the album proceeded, Prince sometimes arrived unannounced, with his presence proving distracting and inhibiting. At gigs, he often jumped onstage to jam with Mazarati, and soon he even began telling group members how to dress. Gradually, the group lost its sense of identity.

  When Mazarati began recording at Sunset Sound, Prince gave the group two songs for possible inclusion on its album. The group used “100 MPH” but passed on a number called “Jerk Out” because some members were offended by its explicit lyrics. Brown functioned as the producer of the sessions, but Prince, too busy with Parade to oversee the sessions himself, wanted a more veteran presence in the studio, and placed a call to engineer David Z. Rivkin in Minneapolis.

  “Can you come out to L.A. for the weekend?” Prince asked. “I’ve got some stuff for you to do.” Rivkin agreed, packed two pairs of pants, and booked a flight. When he arrived the next day, Prince greeted him boisterously. “Oh, by the way, you’ve got to be here for a couple of months!” he exclaimed. “We have a Mazarati album to do.”

  A few days after Rivkin’s arrival, Prince took a break from his own work and poked his head into Studio 2, where Mazarati was working. When one of the band members asked off-handedly if he had any more songs for them, Prince paged Susan Rogers over a studio loudspeaker; when she arrived a few moments later, they disappeared into a room with an acoustic guitar and a four-track cassette recorder.

  As he waited for Rogers to prepare the equipment, Prince tapped impatiently on the body of the acoustic guitar. “Rolling?” he asked. She quickly responded affirmatively, and Prince began briskly strumming a basic twelve-bar blues pattern and singing mournfully in his lower register. The song, “Kiss,” was completed in just minutes, and Prince emerged with the tape. “Here, finish this off,” he said to Rivkin and Brown. “Do what you want with this song!”

  After Prince left, the group caucused. Tony Christian, Mazarati’s rhythm guitarist, was not impressed. “Nobody liked the song,” he recalled. Rivkin wasn’t enthralled by “Kiss” either, but the song’s blues orientation triggered ideas in his mind. He and Brown began reconstructing it, first creating a foundation of drums that made the piece peppier and more danceable. Rivkin added an infectious piano riff borrowed from an obscure Bo Diddley song called “Hey Man.” He and Coke Johnson, another engineer present, used a studio trick that linked the acoustic guitar part to the hi-hat cymbal, making it follow the same jagged rhythm. Singer Terry Casey then added his own rendition of Prince’s words, and Rivkin came up with an idea for a backing vocal part based on the song “Sweet Nothings” by pop singer Brenda Lee.

  Working through the night, they completed the song by about nine a.m., when the band members went home as Rivkin and Johnson prepared a mix. When Prince stopped by around noon, Rivkin gave him a cassette. Intrigued, he took a portable boom box out to the basketball court in the center of the complex and blasted it. “He went ballistic,” remembered Johnson. Prince could not believe that his languid blues number had been changed into something so funky and energetic. “This is too good for you guys!” Prince shouted. “I’m taking it back.”

  But after this initial reaction, Prince felt guilty about poaching the band’s work. Huddling with engineers Rogers and Peggy McCreary, he asked their opinions. Although McCreary felt Mazarati should keep the song, Rogers cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of Prince because she felt “Kiss” would get more exposure on his album. With this resolved, Prince took the master tape and cut his own vocal (this time using his falsetto), replacing Terry Casey’s. He also added a James Brown-style guitar lick at the beginning of the song and during pauses that recurred at the end of each chorus. Finally, he tweaked the mix, dropping out the bass guitar. He was finished in a little over an hour; “Kiss” had completed its transformation from a Prince song, to a Mazarati song, and back to a Prince song. It would eventually reach No. 1 on Billboard’s Pop Singles Chart as the first single from Parade.

  Not surprisingly, given its genesis, credit for the song was contested. Although Prince gave David Z. Rivkin an “arrangement” credit for the song, the rest of the credit states that “Kiss” was “produced, composed and written by Prince and the Revolution.” In an apologetic call to Rivkin, Prince said that Warner Bros. would not allow him to give anyone other than himself a producer’s billing. While Rivkin certainly didn’t accept this flimsy explanation, he remained philosophical about the episode and concluded, in the end, that Prince’s modest additions to the piece made it much better.

  Mark Brown also claimed that he was in essence the producer of “Kiss,” and remained chagrined that Rivkin, rather than he, received the arrangement credit. Brown said he gave Prince and his managers numerous opportunities to compensate him for his contributions to the song, but no action was ever taken.

  ***

  Even as he worked on Parade, Prince was planning Under The Cherry Moon, his follow-up film project to Purple Rain. Success in the world of film remained a priority for him, and of all the laurels he had received for Purple Rain, the most meaningful had been his Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. At the ceremony, when he reached his backstage dressing room he handed his award to bodyguard Chick Huntsberry and bear-hugged with Steve Fargnoli. This was surprising and uncharacteristic. “I never found Prince to be a touchy-feely person who easily expressed any kind of physical affection, particularly towards men,” noted Alan Leeds, who witnessed the embrace. “Even his handshake was wishy-washy, soft, and seemingly reluctant; this was the one-and-only exception I saw.” The moment reflected Prince’s spontaneous, heartfelt joy over receiving Hollywood’s highest honor.

  The stunning success of Purple Rain virtually guaranteed Prince the right to make whatever sort of film he wanted, within certain budgetary constraints. Just as he sought to enhance his status as a songwriter through the more challenging music of Around The World In A Day, Prince now wanted to create a movie that would be taken more seriously by critics than the melodramatic Purple Rain. He had a tentative idea for a wry comedy that would be shot in black and white. Prince also proved receptive to Fargnoli’s idea of filming in France.

  As a means of selecting locations for the film and exposing Prince to European culture, Fargnoli took him (along with Alan Leeds) to Paris in June 1985; they stayed at the Nova Park Hotel near the Champs-Elysees. Hoping that Prince would share his passion for Paris, Fargnoli proposed a variety of outings. But on the second day of the visit, Prince ducked into a music store and became enamored with several new pieces of equipment, including several cutting-edge synthesizers. He asked Leeds to arrange for a line of credit through Warner Bros.’ local office, and, by that evening, Prince had a makeshift studio running in his hotel. “At that point we lost our mate to the gear,” Leeds recalled. “Getting Prince away from his new toys was like pulling teeth.” While Prince later agreed to visit the Louvre, he backed out at the last minute. And an evening drive past the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower found Prince with no inclination to get out of the car to view these historic monuments.

  Prince did show some willingness to visit restaurants and nightclubs, but in a curious reversal of rock star stereotypes, it was Fargnoli and Leeds who more often prowled the town. One night at a club, the men ended up so inebriated that they failed to recognize two women who joined their table as prostitutes, resulting in a bill of over $1,000 even though no physical contact occurred. A drunken Fargnoli shouted obscenities on the street as he and Leeds reached their hotel a
t about six a.m. As Fargnoli tried to steady himself using a street sign, Leeds heard a familiar sarcastic voice calling from a balcony above the street. “Look, Paris! That down there is my management!” shouted Prince, who was still fiddling with his new equipment. “Hey, down there on the street, can you bums quiet down and let a rock star get some work done?” Leeds, who was almost as drunk as Fargnoli, could do nothing but sit down on the sidewalk and start laughing.

  Yet despite his resistance to sightseeing or partying, Prince was sold on the idea of filming overseas; he decided to shoot Under The Cherry Moon in Nice on the French Riviera, which he had visited on a side trip from Paris. A writer named Becky Johnson was commissioned to write the screenplay from Prince’s basic idea about a poor piano player who meets a rich socialite.

  Although Warners’ film division in essence green-lighted Prince’s next picture without even seeing a script, objections were raised when it was learned that he wanted to film in black and white. Prince held firm, and a compromise of sorts was reached; it would be shot in color, but transferred to black and white (which presumably kept alive the possibility of reversing Prince’s decision). Michael Balhaus, who had worked with Martin Scorsese on several movies, was recruited as the cinematographer.

  For Purple Rain, Prince had relied on friends and associates as the principal cast members, and he planned to do the same in Under The Cherry Moon. But the Revolution, after being a focal point of the previous movie, would not play a major role this time; instead, he cast friend Jerome Benton (also a member of the Family) as his comic foil and sidekick. Prince initially wanted Susannah Melvoin to play the female lead, but the studio prevailed on him to accept the casting of Kristin Scott Thomas. Selected as director was Mary Lambert, who had helmed various MTV videos.