Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / When Prince Said 'No': The 'We Are The World' Fallout [Highlight From Episode 315]

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When Prince Said 'No': The 'We Are The World' Fallout [Highlight From Episode 315] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a highlight from a recent episode of book Don
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Rock Revolution Prints. The band The Era is the book.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Author James Campion is our guest. He was asked to
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: be part of We Are the World. He said no.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Why did he decline?
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that anybody asking Prince now, I remember
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: this was not well known information then. But in my research,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: you're gonna ask a guy who's never been produced. When
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: he was eighteen years old, he was his own producer.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: He's gonna work for Quincy Jones. And now I know
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: he loves Quincy Jones and Quincy Jones as a master,
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: but that's not gonna fly. He never sang in front
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: of anyone. How he always sang was microphone hanging above
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: the board. He would kick the engineer out, He'd kick
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: everybody out and record all his vocals by him side.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Never recorded a vocal after the age of seventeen with
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: anybody in the room.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: That is amazing.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: He's gonna sit with forty six people and sing a
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: song written by another person. That's never gonna happen. And
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: he's gonna sing a song by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: He's never sung a song in front of anyone, and
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: since he's seventeen years old and he's never sung another
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: song by another artist except for a case of You Live,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: and only once by Joni Mitchell. So you're gonna put
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Prince who's never done the three things you have to
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: do to be on weird with the world, sing in
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: public with other people, sing another person's song, and just
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: show up with all those people. It's completely against his
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: his psychology.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Now that backfired on him because people probably thought he
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: was looking down at it like this is not worth
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: my time, and that's not what it was. In fact,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: he offered something to Quincy. He said, let me record
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: something here and I'll send it to you.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like a guitar. He said, let me go to
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: the different studio. But that was what they were trying
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: to do, camaraderie. Leave your ego at the door. Prince
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: had an ego that was embedded in his psychology. He
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: would he I am fully convinced he did not belong
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: in that room, despite the fact that two is of
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: his most the two paragons of his life when he
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: was younger, except for James Brown, was Ray Charles. His
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: first teacher music teacher worked for Ray Charles, and told
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: him about Ray Charles and how he crossed over and
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: did country music and anything he wanted. He controlled his
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: own publishing, all the things Prince wanted to do. And
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Stevie Wonder who everybody said he was the new one
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: who he played all the instruments on his record. They
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: were there, so you would think just to be in
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: their presence, but it just wasn't in him. Now. The
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: thing that made that worse was he sends Sheil there
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: in his stead and they don't want Hill, so she
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: feels badly. Then he lies and says he he has
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: the management lies and say he's sick. And then after
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: winning the awards on the American Music Awards, he goes
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: out partying in public, and then when the paparazzi tries
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: to take pictures of him and his entourage, he sends
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: his bodyguards out to wrest the film from them, excuse me,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: and they beat him up. Now, he didn't ask them
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: to beat him up, but that's what happened. It was
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: in all the papers. So not only does he show
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: up to the world he's out partying. It looks so
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: bad and he doesn't even see it, doesn't even tell
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: a band or his management. Nobody knows. They find out
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: at three in the morning when they get phone calls
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: from newspapers. So it was such a huge deal, and
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: he was all the myths, all the stories that because
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Prince got talking to the press in nineteen eighty, all
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: the stories started to come out. He's a freak, he's
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: a jerk, he's up his own ass. All that stuff
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: came out, and it was hard to deny with anyone
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: around him. It was a terrible, terrible look, but he did.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: There's a great PostScript to this. He did write a
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: song and give it to the album We of the World,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: and performed a version of it on the day that
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: they had live Aid in July of eighty five, for
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: the Tears in your Eyes, which is a religious kind
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: of song, a connotation to to Jesus's feeding the loaves
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: and the fishes, feeding the multitudes. Of course, with the
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: feeding Africa, we should say for young people, we are
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: the World, was a song for African famine relief. So
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: here is Prince on at his own time in a
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: hot studio trailer outside of one of the venues he
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: played at two in the morning with Susan Rogers, engineer
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: putting this song together, as she said, with stale chips
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: and salami sandwiches and warm soda, when all those people
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: who sang and we are the World got fully fifteen
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars cater and they all had limos, and they
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: were in a great A and M Studios being produced
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: by Quincy Jones. So that's a kind of a nice
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: little thing where Prince was like, you know, I'm gonna
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: give this. I'll take the shit, but i'm gonna give
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: this song and let's move on. But it took years
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: for him to get over for a lot of people,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: including his fans, to get over that snub.