Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / When Doves Cry - Celebrating 40 Years of Prince's 'Purple Rain' Legacy [Episode 198]

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When Doves Cry - Celebrating 40 Years of Prince's 'Purple Rain' Legacy [Episode 198] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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We're totally booked rock and roll. I mean gott to leave you. You're
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reading Little Hands says it's time to rock and roll. Wreck Roll are totally
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booked. Welcome back to book don Rock, the podcast for those about to
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read and rock. Find the podcast at booked on rock dot com, where
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you can find every episode of Booked on Rock. There, along with links
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YouTube channel. You can find it at booked on Rock and if you like
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what you see, make sure you click the like and subscribe buttons. That
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goes a long way to support the podcast. This June marks the fortieth anniversary
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of Prince's Purple Rain album and film. To commemorate the anniversary, Motorbooks has
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released the book Prince and Purple Rain forty Years, authoritatively written and including rare
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photography and memorabilia. This beautiful slipcase hardcover is the only illustrated gift book to
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examine Prince's most iconic album and film, Purple Rain. The album has gone
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on to sell twenty five million copies and counting. And Prince in Purple Rain,
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Andrea Swenson, a Minneapolis based journalist and host slash co producer of Prince
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Official podcast, takes a deep dive into the legendary musician's most famous album on
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its fortieth anniversary, and she's here to share some of what's inside the book.
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You can hear all of Purple Rain by heading over to the show notes
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page. You'll find a link there. Now here is Andrea Swenson. Andrea,
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Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm excited Prince Purple
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Rain forty years I remember when the album came out, so I'm showing my
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age. But yeah, it's such a phenomenal album, and it gets better
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as the years go on. There is really a better person to choose to
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tell Prince's story for this book than yourself. Tell us about your background covering
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prints and print and on the radio and podcasting, and how you eventually met
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the man himself, who I understand was a fan of your work. Oh
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yeah, it feels very surreal to really recount any of that. But yeah,
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I've been a music journalist in the Twin Cities for twenty years now,
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and of course, if you're going to cover you know, local music in
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Minnesota, you have to know about Prince and be following him closely. So
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I started writing about him pretty early on in my career, but it really
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ramped up around I would say twenty thirteen. He kind of re rooted himself
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in Minneapolis. At that time, he'd been spending a lot of time out
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in La renting houses out there, and he came back home and he started,
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you know, throwing more parties, concerts, last minute, little shindigs
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all over town, showing up at clubs here, and just being really present
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in the scene. So I started writing about everything that he was doing,
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starting with a show that he played at the Dakota Jazz Club. It was
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a rehearsal show for the NPG, so there were like fifteen or sixteen of
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his musicians crammed on this tiny little stage to this club that held maybe two
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hundred and fifty people, and they didn't allow any cameras or phones or anything.
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So that was, you know, something I was covering, and I
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had to really think about how I was going to do that, and kind
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of as a joke, I drew this little drawing of him in my notebook
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as I was taking notes of the show, and I posted that with my
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review and that just started this whole exchange with him. He had his manager
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reach out to me and asked if they could have that drawing, and he
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ended up using it as a cover art on YouTube for like a bootleg recording
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of the show that he released through his YouTube account. And that was a
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trip. And then within a year, what a trip. Within a year,
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I was face to face with him, meeting with him and talking to
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him at Paisley Park and that was really why. That was the thirtieth anniversary
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of Purple Rain to the day actually of the album coming out, So that
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was June of twenty fourteen, and we had a great conversation that night.
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It was a really unforgettable experience, just, you know, getting to chat
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so intimately with him. And then after that, it was every single thing
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he did, I was getting personal invitations. He had the expectation that I
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was going to be writing about everything he was doing, and then he would.
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Even in the final days, he was tweeting out links to everything that
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I was writing about him, which was really surreal. I keep coming back
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to that word surreal. So it just kind of escalated over the last few
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years of his life, and then, you know, after his shocking death,
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I transitioned into this role of helping the estate do things around his legacy
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and tell these stories and interview people about his life. And I've started doing
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a podcast for the estate, the Official Prince Podcast, and now I've interviewed
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like one hundred and fifty of his associates, people that worked with him throughout
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his whole life and career, and people that knew him, and it's just
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really taken over my career in a way that I did not see coming.
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But that has been such a gift because it's introduced me to so many amazing
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people, and it's really brought me so much closer to him and his work
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and what he meant to all of us. It's amazing. How long were
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you a fan of princes? When did you first become a fan? Well,
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I don't remember a time in my life that he wasn't part of,
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you know, the fabric of life, and his music was in the air
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and his videos were on TV. I was born the day, it turns
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out that he recorded Let's Go Crazy, So I was this year. Wow,
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boy I was meant to be. Yeah, my mom showed me recently
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in my baby book, she wrote that Prince was you know, they're supposed
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to write like current events that are happening in the world when your baby is
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born. And it was pretty that he was becoming really popular and that everyone
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in Minnesota was really proud of him. So I just always knew about him
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and his music and knew that he was from Minnesota, and I was really
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proud of that, and I know he was really proud of the state too.
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And then, you know, like I said, as I got into
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actually working in the music industry as a career, then I really kind of
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put myself through Prince School and really tried to learn, you know, about
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his back catalog and all of the different things that he did throughout his life.
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And it's an ongoing process. I mean, I'm years and years into
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this thing now and learning new things every day. When you met him,
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did he did he tell you what it was that he liked about your writing?
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Did he indicate too, what it was that he connected with because I
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don't think, I don't even I never knew he even read stuff about himself.
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A lot of artists don't. They don't want to know, right,
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Yeah, I knew that he followed the local media scene just from other stories
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of other journalists that I'd talked to over the years. There were a couple
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instances of people that I knew that had actually been called out there for various
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reasons by him and yelled at or not yelled at, but maybe scolded is
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the right word for various things that they had written. So when I got
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called out, I was certain that's what was happening. I figured we hit
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some kind of nerve. And he definitely teased me a little bit because I
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had just done a big special on Purple Rain, and I think he was
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making a point to me that, you know, he was so present and
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so forward facing that he found it pretty ridiculous to spend time looking that far
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back at that point, thirty years back. And you know, he walked
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me down to his studio and he swung the door open and he said,
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this is what I'm doing now, and he played me material from two albums
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that he was getting ready to release, because he was that prolific. So
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he was definitely making a point. But it was a gentler, kinder meeting
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than the other journalist meetings I'd heard about, and he was not the kind
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of person that would ever say, you know, why he chose anyone,
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you know, all the people I've interviewed that came into his orbit. That
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was just not something that he did. He would not really speak directly about
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his you know, feelings for people, his appreciation for people. That was
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just not really part of how he interacted. But after he passed, that's
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when I was told that he liked it, you know, that it was
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something that he followed and that he appreciated and just that, you know,
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learning that was kind of life changing for me to hear that that he felt
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that way about me. But it really gave me this purpose that I still
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feel like I have now to keep doing this work and to try to honor
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him. There was something interesting that you wrote in the book. It's in
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the introduction. I believe you talked about when you met him and it was
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an unforgettable meeting. That quote I would only understand in full detail years later.
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That made me curious, what did that mean? Yeah, you know,
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at the time, I was covering him so much. I would write
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about everything he was doing, and it was so ongoing and so all the
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time that I never stopped to really reflect necessarily on what it meant or why
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he was doing anything that he was doing. So at the time, you
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know, like I mentioned, I wasn't sure if I was in trouble,
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or if he was appreciative, or if he was just scoping me out,
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you know, because I was starting to write about him more. I really
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didn't know what that was all about, why I was invited there. But
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now that so much time has passed and I've talked to Bobby Z a lot
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about it. Who was with me that night, Bobby Z, drummer for
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the Revolution and long long time close friend of Prince's. I mean they knew
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each other when they were fifteen, and Bobby knew you know, Prince pre
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fame and was really at his side through so much. So, you know,
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in talking to him and reflecting on it more, I really do think
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it was him proving a point about where, you know, where he saw
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himself in the music industry and how he appreciated being talked about, which was
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as a constantly creating, forward facing songwriter and creator and visionary and that it
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was about the next thing for him and not looking back. And now that
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I've had time to think about it. That really resonated with me, especially
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working on this book, which is about looking back about you know, how
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he needed to position himself in order to keep creating the volume of work that
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he did. Yeah, there were so many influences as we go back to
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the beginning, so many influences for him musically. It all makes sense after
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reading the book. He starts off on James Brown and Ray Charles and Smokey
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Robinson or Wretha Franklin. But then his dad takes him to the theater to
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see the Woodstock film and his mind is blown by hendricks Lie in the Family
11:01
Stone and Santana, and then it's like, oh yeah, it's all there.
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It's as all like that mix, you know. Focusing on Purple Rain,
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you write about how this album challenged the stubborn, segregated mindset of the
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music industry. Can you expand on that and the importance of this album in
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terms of breaking down that mindset because Thriller is like that as well, I
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think in terms of you know, at one point MTV was just playing all
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white artists absolutely. Yeah, you know, I was just talking today about
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what the Minneapolis sound is and how you define it. And of course it's
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so closely related to prints and everything that he made, especially in that early
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to mid eighties period. And I think that there's something at the core of
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what we call now the Minneapolis Sound, which is, you know, electronic
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drums and synthesized horn parts mixed with all these funk and R and B influences
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to create something really very cutting edge in the early eighties. But it's fundamentally
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about mixing these different genres together that had been separated by a music industry that
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had these really serious racial divides. There were literally black charts and white charts,
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and white radio stations and black radio stations. And I mean this goes
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back decades before Prince, but it was something that I think he saw as
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a challenge when he was signing to Warner Brothers and starting to position himself as,
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you know, almost an adversary to this industry and to a lot of
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their long held beliefs about how music should be marketed. There's a quote from
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him. I talked to Lenny Warrenker, who was one of the Warner Brothers
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executives that sign Prince, and Prince looked at him when they were in this
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like first meeting in the studio and he said, don't make me black.
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And it wasn't about you know, denying his own blackness and the fact that
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he came from this rich African American community, but he knew that if they
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made him overly and overtly a black artist, that it was going to limit
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the reach of his music. And he was really intentional about breaking through that
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he had a mixed race band at a time when that wasn't very common.
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He was obviously influenced by you know, Slying the family Stone and other artists
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of that flavor that we're you know, starting to try to integrate bands and
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bring in more women and have more representation in that way. So that helped
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him to you know, break out of some of the barriers in the Twin
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Cities where we were dealing with a lot of clubs segregation. And then the
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sound that he made was it seems tailor made to call into question, you
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know, why they're spinning certain kinds of music on certain radio stations and why
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can't this music be for everybody. I have to think of, you know,
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a modern contemporary comparison like Beyonce releasing her country album and daring country stations
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not to play her because she explicitly is making the kind of music that the
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play and trying to break through that barrier. And he was just so strategic
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about it from such an early age, and I really think that's impressive and
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kind of a part of his career that isn't as discussed as the music itself.
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He was never played on the rock stations here where I am in Connecticut,
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and I never understood that. And then years later, it really was
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that appearance at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that a lot of my
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friends who are into rock and roll like it. Just they woke up and
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realized, oh my god, like this guy can rock those while my guitar
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gently weeps. I think we're petty up there, and now all of a
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sudden, everybody's like, oh wow, Okay, I get it. But
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yeah, never played on any of the rock stations Top forty, Yes,
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Rock No, which was always strange because I mean, listen to him on
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guitar and it's rock and roll absolutely. Now, those previous albums leading up
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to Purple Rain were primarily solo recordings, but on Purple Rain is credited as
15:01
being produced a range composed and performed by Prince and the Revolution. So this
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is interesting. Tell me about what led to him forming this lineup, because
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Bobby Z told you took some time for Prince to figure out what role he
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wanted his backing band to play, So that took a little while for everything
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to kind of come together, right. Yeah. You know, from an
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early stage in his career, he knew that he wanted to be a mentor
15:26
and a maker of proteges. That was something that was just so obvious early
15:33
on, you know, with making the Time and even before the time,
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he had a band called the Rebels that was made up of members of some
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of the members of the Revolution around like nineteen seventy nine, So he knew
15:43
that he wanted to mold these groups of people and make different artistic statements with
15:48
them. But I think what happened by the time he got to the Revolution
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is that he found a group of people who he had a vision for and
15:56
that he arranged in a certain way, but who also were in turn inspiring
16:00
him. They were coming to the table with different musical influences than he had,
16:04
like Wendy and Lisa with their you know, huge admiration of Joni Mitchell,
16:10
who Prince also really admired, but I feel like they kind of brought
16:12
that side out of him a little bit more. And you know doctor Fank
16:17
being such a keyboard wizard and really coloring some of the sound with the technology
16:22
that he was really interested at the time. So Prince was really starting to
16:26
feed off of these musicians and respect them as collaborators and as peers and not
16:30
just you know, a band that he can kind of shape and bend to
16:33
his will. So I think it's so powerful that he, you know,
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decided to co credit them alongside him with you know, the Purple Rain album,
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and then in the movie there's even you know, the plot in the
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movie about you know, taking Wendy and Lisa seriously as co composers and hearing
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their ideas. And although that's a fictionalized version of what happened, you know,
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during the writing of that album, it really represents I think this opening
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for him of letting other people into his creative space, which up until that
17:03
point had been extremely closed off and very sacred to him. You know,
17:07
he rarely let other people into the studio other than a few people up until
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them and the Revolution has written backward on the cover art for nineteen ninety nine.
17:15
Right, yes, yeah, a little, I mean, yeah,
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I love that trivia. There's a few more. My brother, by the
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way, is a huge Minnesota Vikings fan, so't I have yet to tell
17:26
him about the ending to the song Purple Rain and the crowd sound, which
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I'm we're going to get to. But yeah, I haven't told them that
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yet. Yeah. But there's one print show that became one of the most
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legendary and heavily bootleg shows of his career, and that was a show that
17:38
took place at First Avenue in Minneapolis August third, nineteen eighty three. So
17:44
talk about this show its importance to the record as well. Yes. So
17:48
the film had already had a screenplay drafted, It was in the process of
17:53
being kind of rewritten and edited at that point, and there was this null
18:00
and you know, everyone that was working with Prince that there was this movie
18:03
coming and it was going to be the next huge thing that they're going to
18:06
be working on, and that there's all this new material pouring out of Prince
18:08
that he was making for this movie. And they had already been rehearsing like
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crazy in their rehearsal warehouse and the really so many interesting things about that show,
18:18
but one of them is that at that point, Des Dickerson had just
18:22
left Prince's band and Wendy Melvoyne had just come in as the new guitarist.
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She was nineteen years old. Prince found her because she was at the time
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dating Lisa Coleman and they had toured together on the nineteen ninety nine tour,
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and Prince was walking through a hotel one night and heard Wendy playing her guitar
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and was absolutely mesmerized by this young, you know, phenomenal talent. So
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that show at First Avenue in August of eighty three is Wendy's first show with
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Prince, and it's at that show when they recorded the versions that we know
18:55
of Purple Rain, of Baby I'm a Star, of Let's Go Crazy.
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These are the versions that you're hearing in the film that made it. Unto
19:02
the soundtrack, Purple Rain was much longer at this performance. It ended up
19:06
getting edited down a little bit. It's still a long song even on the
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album. But it's just so incredible to me to think about, you know,
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a nineteen year old young woman coming into this world, and playing those
19:18
iconic opening chords of Purple Rain, and it's I think it says so much
19:22
about Prince's creativity that he really valued putting people on the spot, seeing what
19:27
they were going to do with a big opportunity and capturing your first instinct at
19:33
an idea and seeing what that was going to sound like. So that show
19:37
is so legendary. I hope that eventually, you know, the whole thing
19:41
is released in a really high quality. I know there's video of it because
19:45
the club First Avenue recorded everything at that point they had cameras set up,
19:51
So I hope someday that that can come out because it's just such a huge
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piece of Prince history and music history and just such a great example of how
20:00
he worked. Yeah, you have the picture of the venue in the book,
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and I think pictures from the show in there too. Yes. Yeah,
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I was so excited to work with some Minneapolis photographers on this book because
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there's so many that have followed him closely in head shots that a lot of
20:15
them hadn't really been widely distributed before, So that was exciting. Speaking of
20:21
seeing him live, when did you see him live for the first time?
20:23
How many times did you see him. My first time was in two thousand
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and one. Yeah, Like I said, forty, so I was coming
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of age. I think I had just turned eighteen when I saw him for
20:37
the first time. He played a big arena here and it was part of
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one of his early celebrations. He had a lot of events happening out at
20:45
Paisley Park and then he ended the week with this big show at at a
20:49
big arena here called Excel Energy Center, and it was honestly, I was
20:55
pretty far up in like the Nosebleeds. There were definitely moments where I was
21:00
like, Wow, this is incredible, but there were other moments where I'm
21:03
like, what is even happening? And now that I've talked to a lot
21:04
of people about that era, it turns out that was just like a really
21:08
rare, bad print show. He was just not on his a game that
21:14
night. He was really upset with how the venue sounded, so he was
21:18
very frustrated and just kind of distracted by that. And it explains a lot.
21:23
But I think it's kind of funny that that was my first time I
21:26
tried to go out to Paisley Park. After that, they told everyone to
21:30
go to Paisley after at the show, and me, being a dumb teenager,
21:34
I didn't know that it was going to cost money, so I waited
21:37
in line for like two hours and then got to the front and didn't have
21:40
any money to go in. So kind of a funny start to my Prince
21:45
fandom. But after that, you know, once I started actually professionally writing
21:51
about him and covering him for my career, I saw him so many times
21:55
here in town, especially in those last few years. I mean he was
21:59
playing some points every week. Every other week, he'd kind of he would
22:03
go through these little spurts where he just have a lot of activity, and
22:07
I would just be out there all the time. I actually haven't counted up
22:10
how many times, but it has to be at least dozens, because there
22:12
were big shows and small shows and pop up shows and rehearsals and yeah,
22:18
just kind of a dizzying time to be following him that closely. What an
22:22
amazing performer, Yes, I mean, just that presence on stage, larger
22:27
than life, and you realize he's that was the thing over the years,
22:30
you will he's just a little guy. He's like he's like larger than life,
22:33
you know, But that he really had that presence on stage electrifying,
22:37
right. Yes. Yeah, it's hard to explain to people. You know,
22:41
I've talked a lot about him obviously over the years and to people that
22:45
never got to see him, and it's it goes beyond just being a good
22:51
performer, being like proficient at his instruments. It's there was something about him.
22:55
He had a magnetism, He had a charisma, and he made it
23:00
looks so easy at like the music was just flowing through him and out of
23:04
him, like he was just this vessel for it. And it's really rare
23:08
to see a musician that comfortable on stage. I think, you know,
23:12
of all the different you know, areas in his life where he existed,
23:17
I think being on stage was his most natural state. You could just see
23:22
that it helped him relax, It made him look joyful, and it connected
23:26
him to like his true self. Like I really I really think that,
23:30
you know, after watching him play, like it's really rare to see someone
23:34
in that state where they're just flowing and giving you their raw talent as it
23:38
pours out of them. The book gets into both the album and the film.
23:45
I'm going to focus probably more on the album but just let people know
23:48
there's a whole lot of information in this book that you cover. The film
23:52
also his younger days and his music career in Minneapolis, and each of the
23:59
five studio albums that led up to Purple Rain and his backing band. And
24:03
actually we should mention, let's see all the names of the guys in the
24:07
band that we have. Bobby Z drummer, Bobby Z, bassist Mark Brown's
24:15
right, Yeah, Brown, Mark, That's why I was like, am
24:17
I reading this right? Guitarist Wendy Melvoy, keyboardist Lisa Coleman, keyboardist Matt
24:22
Fink, Right, Yep. That's the core five, and then from then
24:25
the Revolution expanded in later years. But that's the that's the band that he
24:30
was working with for Purple Rain. So we have focusing on the album.
24:33
That opening track, Let's Go Crazy, wasn't immediately perceived as a religious song
24:38
about heaven and God's salvation, but that is exactly how Prince intended it.
24:42
He had to change the words up in the song. What were the changes
24:47
and can you talk about why he changed them? Yeah, this was something
24:51
he commented on much later. It was in the late nineties. He was
24:55
speaking to Chris Rock for an interview on MTV, and he talked about how
24:59
he didn't feel like he could say explicitly that that song was about his belief
25:03
in God, in you know, his Christian God that he was devoted to
25:07
throughout his whole life. He felt like that would not make it onto radio,
25:14
not make it onto MTV, and that it would, you know,
25:17
have people perceiving him in a certain way. So he was really creative in
25:21
how he talked about God and the devil in that song, calling Satan the
25:25
d elevator, which I don't know if people pick up on that, you
25:29
know, even now that we've heard that song so many times that that's what
25:32
he's saying, sounds like the elevator. Don't let the elevator get you down,
25:36
you know, and did not know that read the book. But he's
25:38
talking about, you know, the evil and and the devil getting you down
25:45
and that you have to focus on you know, Heaven and the higher Power
25:49
and staying positive and going crazy. And that's Yeah, that was a really
25:56
great example of how he could be about integrating his spirituality into his music,
26:03
and you know, and later in his career, especially as he went through
26:07
as Jehovah period. You know, in the late nineties early two thousands.
26:11
He was getting pretty explicit about his spirituality at that point, but early on
26:17
in his career it's woven into almost every song, but it's all kind of
26:21
hidden in these double entendres and kind of metaphors like that. The book Down
26:26
Rock Podcasts will be back after this. The second track take Me with You,
26:32
a song meant to showcase Prince's co star in the film, Patricia Kotera,
26:36
known famously as Apollonia, and there was an emotional conversation she had with
26:40
Prince in twenty fourteen that you talk about in the book. Can you share
26:42
what she told you about as a phone call? Yeah? Yeah, she
26:48
So she came back to town that year, and it was the thirtieth anniversary
26:53
of Purple Rain. That was the same time that I got called out to
26:56
Baisley to meet with Prince. Just a few days later, he called up
27:00
Apollonia, knowing that she was in town to play this benefit concert that Bobby
27:04
Z had put together, and he had her come out to Paisley Park.
27:10
He walked her around and showed her, you know where he wanted it to
27:14
eventually be a museum devoted to what they had done together in Purple Rain and
27:18
gave her a private concert, and she said that they were able to tell
27:22
each other how much they loved each other, and that that experience was so
27:26
profound for both of them, and it was very emotional for her to recount
27:30
that. She told me about that when I interviewed her that summer when Prince
27:36
was still with us, and then in the years since it's become even more
27:38
profound. Do you think Prince was misunderstood as a person because he was so
27:45
he was shy, and he didn't talk to the press a lot. Was
27:48
he misunderstood? Yeah? Absolutely, I you know, when I started writing
27:53
about him, one of the most frustrating aspects of trying to research him is
27:57
that he did all these interviews where he refused to be recorded, so you
28:03
would have an interviewer like me at that point, you know, getting called
28:07
out last minute to go to Paisley Park. You're flying by the seat of
28:10
your pants. You have maybe a notebook that you're allowed to have out,
28:12
but maybe not even that, and he's telling you all of these incredibly insightful
28:18
things about his life and his work, and you're supposed to just remember it
28:22
and then go, you know later and write it down, and of course
28:26
he's going to be wildly misquoted and left up to interpretation based on whoever he
28:30
was talking to. And you know, as someone that is I really value
28:37
oral histories and people being interviewed on record and being able to look at those
28:41
transcripts. It's really frustrating to me that Prince didn't allow that to happen,
28:45
because I think we would understand him so much more. Why didn't he Why
28:49
didn't he want you to record it? He what I've seen him say.
28:53
I did not have this conversation directly with him about it. I just knew
28:56
based on reading other people's things about him over the years, is that he
29:02
was afraid that someone was going to record his voice, his speaking voice,
29:06
and sell it. And that was the same reason that he didn't allow certain
29:10
band members to record rehearsals, even if they needed something to work out a
29:15
part or He was really private and really cautious and aware that people were avidly
29:21
bootlegging every single thing that they could find that he was doing. So I
29:23
think for him it was a control issue and also a issue of if you're
29:29
going to monetize me. I should be the one that is profiting off of
29:33
that, not you. So I think he was really just kind of cagey
29:37
in that way. And he had early interviews in his career before nineteen ninety
29:44
nine even came out where he was speaking on the record to people that were
29:49
allowed to record him, and those are some of the most fascinating interviews that
29:53
you can find because it's actually verbatim, word for word what he said,
29:57
and you can see how he thought and how he expressed himself verbally. And
30:03
yeah, I just it's something that I think about a lot, is like,
30:07
what what what would our experience of relating to him been like if he
30:11
had allowed that kind of access at any point in his career and opened himself
30:15
up to the public in that more authentic way. Of course, we'll never
30:21
know, but you know, when you look at how he was treated in
30:22
the nineties when he changed his name to a symbol, he was basically like
30:26
the laughing stock of mainstream media, and the reasons behind it were so much
30:32
deeper than what was ever explored in you know, media around him. And
30:36
if he had just given one good interview in nineteen ninety six, I think
30:40
it could have been so incredibly powerful, but you know that's just my opinion.
30:45
And no, I've forgotten entirely what you're hearing. Oh no, no,
30:47
I remember that. But I remember that time so well, and I
30:51
was asking if he was misunderstood, But yeah, I remember that time so
30:53
well because it was it was like like a punchline, that this the symbol
30:59
like oh, rolling their eyes, like get over yourself, you know.
31:00
But we realize years later that he was fighting against he was fighting four other
31:07
artists and against the labels too. I mean a lot of these artists were
31:11
just just getting robbed and he was standing up to that. And then he
31:15
had slave written on his u his face I think at the MTV video wards
31:21
or something. But yeah, it's uh yeah, he just it's just there
31:25
was he He always seems very standoff as he had that that that look that
31:30
what's the word that that koy look on his face, like he there was
31:33
something he was thinking. It's like what is he thinking? Yes, you
31:37
never know what he's thinking. Well, and there was just something mysterious about
31:41
him. I mean even people that may have wanted it that way though,
31:45
that that that is missed among today's and every everybody knows everything now with social
31:51
media and everybody the phones, recording video, everything, But he there was
31:55
a mystery about him, which you need that. Yeah, he really he
32:00
kept control of his mystique in a really, really great way. But I
32:05
do think even people that were close to him, as close as anyone was
32:08
able to get to him and be his friend, even they only saw a
32:13
part of him. He was really a compartmentalized person. He had a lot
32:16
of different people that he knew for different reasons, and I just don't even
32:21
know if he allowed himself to fully be you know, understood by people in
32:24
his life. I forget. Did he ever talk about writing a book.
32:30
He did, so he started working on one. Let's say, I think
32:35
you mentioned it in this book. Yes, yeah, that was starting on
32:38
that. He unfortunately started working on it three months before he died, so
32:44
he only got something like thirty pages down handwritten. He was working with a
32:50
co author, they were going to work on it together, and he had
32:52
just selected the co author and ink the deal in like February of twenty sixteen,
32:58
I think, so they'd only gotten a little ways in. But it's
33:01
a really valuable text because the co author Dan Pipe and Bring. He wrote
33:07
this really long, beautiful forward explaining the process of getting to know Prints through
33:12
this whole experience, and you know what he was talking about and what it
33:16
was on his mind and what he wanted to say in the book, and
33:20
it's really revealing and interesting, and you know he wanted it to be a
33:23
tell all. He was going to set straight like all these rumors and records
33:27
about him and really tell his story and his words much in the same way
33:32
that he was doing with the piano and a microphone shows that he was playing
33:36
in the last months of his life. I was lucky to be able to
33:37
see the one he did at Paisley Park in January of twenty sixteen, and
33:43
you know, he was pausing between these beautiful soulo renditions of his music at
33:47
the piano and telling stories, talking about his dad and talking about the radio
33:52
station he listened to as a kid, and Wendy and Lisa and what they
33:55
meant, you know, to certain songs, and he was just in this
34:00
very open, reflective place. And it's so tragic that he wasn't able to
34:05
complete those stories and to get that part down, you know, for the
34:08
record, because that would have been incredible for all of us to help understand
34:14
him and understand you know, all these beautiful songs that he made total shock
34:17
fifty seven, right, fifty seven years old, and then he came off
34:22
that super Bowl performance where like all of a sudden, it was like he
34:25
was poised for this next phase. Yeah, just blew people away with that
34:30
performance. Yeah. Absolutely So. Getting back to the record, Beautiful Ones,
34:35
track three recorded at the legendary Sunset Sound Studios, which I'm wearing my
34:39
Van Helen shirt, which is many of the Van Halen albums were recorded on
34:44
Hollywood Boulevard and it was all doing one marathon session. A lot of speculation
34:47
of the years as to who this is about. What did Prince have to
34:51
say about it? Well, yeah, the quotes from him about this song
34:54
are really fascinating because of course there's all this speculation over the years of different
35:00
women that thought it might be about them, and he said, look,
35:04
it was written for a movie. It's written for these characters in this movie.
35:08
And like all good art, I'm sure it was inspired by experiences that
35:13
he had in his real life, but he was so talented at creating these
35:16
characters and to put himself into the position that his character in the film was
35:22
in at that point, which was in absolute agony over Apollonia and writhing around
35:27
on the floor on stage. And he delivered a torch ballad for the ages
35:30
alone in a studio, which is so incredible. I had just the delight
35:37
of interviewing a few of his engineers from this era. Both of them are
35:39
women, and I love speaking to both of them. Peggy McCreery is the
35:44
one that spent a lot of time alone at Sunset Sound with Prince. She
35:49
was a staff engineer there, and then Susan Rodgers became his basically in house
35:52
engineer and came to his warehouses in Minnesota and set up all these kind of
35:57
rough shod recording situation and so so she could capture it as it's pouring out
36:01
of him. But yeah, they both said that there were definitely sessions that
36:07
lasted longer than twenty four hours, and I think Peggy's longest session was thirty
36:12
six or forty hours, where they're just trying to stay awake and trying to
36:15
keep up with this man as he's laying down track after track after track,
36:21
And you know, the really cool thing to me to think about is that
36:25
he would lay down each instrument and know exactly where to speed up or slow
36:30
down, or where the brakes and the songs were going to be. It
36:34
was all in his head. So he could lay down the drums and then
36:36
he would put the bass part over it, and then the guitar or the
36:38
piano over that, and then his vocals at the end, and it would
36:42
become a perfectly composed piece with all of these different elements. And I just
36:47
can't fathom, you know another artist on that level that was able to do
36:52
that all alone. Yeah, and that might be my favorite of the non
36:55
hits from the album. I think Susan Rogers was, uh, maybe you
37:02
saw these interviews. Sunset Sound has their own YouTube channel. Did you see
37:07
what she was Yeah? And then I believe Apollonia too, and she was
37:09
telling a story about she was dating David Lee Roth and Prince Prince said,
37:15
no, no, I don't want you to be like they couldn't be seen
37:19
together in public or it was something that Prince he was very specific about.
37:22
I remember that. I can't remember the specifics, but yeah, he had
37:25
a lot of specific guidance for anyone that was going to be working with him.
37:30
On how they should be acting out in public. Yeah, I love
37:35
those stories, you know. Wendy Melvoy shared with you just how challenging her
37:38
dual guitar solo the Prince was for her. Her hands are his hands,
37:45
she said, were shaped to do that lick. Hers weren't, so she
37:51
said it was hard to master. But uh, this is I think this
37:55
is on the beautiful Ones, right, isn't that one that's in Computer Blue?
38:00
Oh? I'm sorry, computer Blue. Yes, let's talk about Computer
38:01
Blue. Okay, Computer Blue was the one. Yeah, Wendy Melvoy,
38:07
she talked about that one, and that was the challenge her guitar solo with
38:09
Prince and the hands and all that stuff. So talk about that. Yeah.
38:15
And I think Prince gave his father songwriting credit on this one too,
38:19
right, Yes, yeah, Computer Blue is Wendy and Lisa and his father
38:25
all co credited as songwriters of different elements of the song. I had a
38:31
really fun experience watching a live performance from the Purple Raine tour with Wendy and
38:37
Lisa. They wanted to watch it again because they hadn't watched it in so
38:42
many years. It's live in Syracuse, New York. It was released as
38:45
Prince and the Revolution, I've and it's been remastered a few times in recent
38:49
years, so we all watched it together and that was where she was commenting
38:52
about, you know, when you're working with Prince, and doctor Friink had
38:57
commented this too. You know, he's got all these ideas of what you
39:00
can do in a song, and it works because he's in the studio and
39:02
you're able to isolate a track or punch it in or fix it if you
39:07
don't like it. But then all of a sudden they have to roll out
39:09
this huge purple rain tour and play all of these things live, and Wendy
39:14
was saying that that really angular riff in Computer Blue is so easy for Prince,
39:20
but for her, she had slightly smaller hands, and suddenly she had
39:22
to just jump in and learn all of these things and be able to replicate
39:24
it night after night after night on tour, and it was very challenging,
39:30
but she did it. You know you can hear it in the live recording.
39:31
She did it. And why did he give his father song where he
39:35
credit on this song? Yes there was a story behind that, wasn't there?
39:38
Yes, Yeah, there is, So there's kind of a bridge in
39:42
the song where it becomes more spacey sounding, and there's this riff that ended
39:49
up also appearing in the song Father Song, which is not on the album,
39:54
but in the soundtrack to the film in there's a scene where it's played
39:59
on the piano and it's really beautiful. And that all came from Prince's father.
40:04
He was a jazz piano player who played for many many years here in
40:09
Minneapolis. He performed under the name Prince Rogers, so he had a Prince
40:15
Rogers Combo, Prince Rogers trio. Sometimes he was just alone, and he
40:20
was really an entertainer and someone that was gigging a lot around town and a
40:23
huge influence on Prince. At some point they became somewhat estranged, but then
40:30
around the time that Prince was working on Purple Rain, they patched up their
40:32
relationship and he began appearing in Prince's life again. So I think giving him
40:38
that co credit it was not only a nod to what he had given Prince
40:43
musically and that idea that really inspired Prince in the writing of Computer Blue,
40:50
but also as just a way to say, like, look, I want
40:52
you to be part of my success, you know, and I want I
40:54
want this token of appreciation to you know, lead to some dividends for you
41:00
as a way to say, you know, thank you and I forgive you,
41:05
and that you know you're in my life again. I think he said
41:08
too that he shared both characteristics of his mom and dad. Yes, that
41:15
came out in the music too. Did he have a good relationship with his
41:19
mom? I would say they were both challenged relationships. He ran away from
41:24
home at a pretty young age. He was twelve. If all the lore
41:29
is to be believed in the interviews that I've done in research I've done,
41:32
it seems like it was around the time he was twelve years old that he
41:35
ran away. His parents had divorced a couple of years prior, and his
41:39
mom remarried a man that became Prince's stepfather, and they did not get along.
41:46
And there's certainly insinuation in things that Prince said and wrote that that was
41:52
an abusive relationship for him, his stepfather. So that was really complicated,
42:00
you know, not being able to be with his mother because of this volatile
42:04
situation. And then he went to live with his father, and his father
42:07
was a very conservative religious person and didn't like Prince running around with girls,
42:15
so they started butting heads when Prince moved in with his dad, so then
42:19
he ended up moving out again. He spent some time living with an aunt
42:22
and then eventually finished out his high school career living with his best friend at
42:25
the time, Andre Anderson, who we know is Andre Simone who was in
42:30
Prince's early band and became his own solo recording artist and everything. So it
42:36
was a rocky start to life and a really challenging time for Prince, and
42:40
I think that led to periods of estrangement and then periods of closeness, and
42:45
that continued on and off again throughout the rest of his parents' lives, and
42:51
they influenced When Doves Cry Yes Yes, And he wrote that explicitly in the
42:55
pages that he was able to get down for his memoir that is a based
43:00
on true events and the dynamic of his parents, that they had a some
43:07
sometimes explosive relationship, and that that was something that he witnessed as a very
43:12
young kid. Yeah. His first number one single too, Yeah, that's
43:16
that kicks off side too, going back, just to finish up side one
43:21
was Darling Nicky, which got Tipper Gore's attention. Not in a good way.
43:27
Yes, yeah, he had a good laugh talking about it years later.
43:29
What was her issue with the song? And well, so she had
43:35
her daughter brought home Purple Rain and played at some point she heard Darling Nikki.
43:39
And at this point the record had been out for like a year or
43:43
something, so it wasn't breaking news. But I guess it wasn't her household
43:46
that there was this very explicit song on the record, and it led her
43:52
to kick off this whole campaign against explicit music. We can thank Prince for
43:55
the explicit warning sticker that used to here on you know, CDs and now
44:00
we see it as the e on streaming services. And she made a list
44:06
of the filthy fifteen, the most offensive songs from the mid eighties. As
44:09
she was campaigning with all of these other mostly right wing women women at the
44:15
time, they formed this parental resource group I forget the full acronym, but
44:22
basically an advocacy group to try to warn parents about the scandalous music that was
44:28
being released. And Prince was at the very top of that list. Little
44:31
did they know that just that just boosted sales even more. You don't tell
44:37
a kid you can't get that. It's like and the best was D Snyder
44:43
when they it goes to Washington and there's Al Gore and D Snyder, who's
44:49
an intelligent guy, and he had this whole speech written up and it's on
44:52
YouTube people can see. I mean, he just so great. He just
44:55
flips his hair back like that. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing that.
45:04
Oh boy. Andrea Swinson is the author of Prince in Purple Reign forty years
45:07
due out. Let's see May twenty first, so very soon, very soon.
45:12
Yeah. Yeah, well, this episode will go up just before the
45:15
release dates, so people can go on to Amazon and either pre order it
45:19
or order it, depending on when you listen to this interview. Let's get
45:22
into we talked about the when Dove's Cry. Actually one more thing on that
45:28
one. No base on this track, right, he fought this is fascinating.
45:31
He fought in his mind over this one. So I guess there are
45:34
two different versions. Yes, we hear the one with bass, and is
45:38
that somewhere like on a deluxe edition. I don't know if it's ever been
45:44
released. Maybe I want to say bootleggers have probably circulated it, as they
45:50
say, but yeah, I don't think it was included on the Purple Rain
45:53
Deluxe that was put out a few years back. His reasoning is interesting,
45:58
why did he leave the base out? Well, so he you know,
46:01
yeah, there's these stories about him being in the studio and calling in various
46:05
members of his orbit and saying what do you think about this and kind of
46:08
toggling it off and on on the on the board and saying, you know,
46:13
I kind of think I'm leaning towards having it out. And it was
46:16
Jill Jones, who sang a lot of backing vocals for Prince in this period
46:22
and was in the studio with him a lot. She said, well,
46:27
you know, he said, if I could have it my way, I
46:29
would just put it out without the bass on it. And she said,
46:31
well, why don't you have it your way then, and you know,
46:35
kind of gave him that you know, external validation of like if you think
46:37
that's what it needs to be, then you should do it. And it
46:42
was doctor Fink actually, when I was interviewing him about it, said,
46:45
you know, the interesting thing about this is that the way that he tuned
46:47
the lin drum the electronic drums in that song, it was tuned down so
46:52
low that the rhythm of the drums is almost filling in in your mind where
46:57
the bass would be anyways, so it doesn't it's not immediately obvious that it's
47:01
missing, and it creates this kind of unsettling feeling when you're listening to the
47:07
song because something is just a little bit off, but it's kind of hard
47:09
to tell what it is. And Yeah, what a brilliant move. And
47:13
then of course it goes to the top of the charts. The book Down
47:16
Rock Podcasts will be back after this. I would put the next track behind
47:22
the title track is my second favorite from Purple Rain. Again, we would
47:28
talk about the singles I would Die for You, I mean amazing and it
47:34
was written before the film script, yet it mirrors a line in the film.
47:37
Can you talk about that and an interesting observation that you give in the
47:40
book regarding the film's director, Albert Magnoli and its ability to listen closely to
47:45
Prince's music and lyrics and bring them to life on screen. You talk about
47:50
that in the book. Yeah, you know, there's been so much,
47:52
you know, speculation over the years of what is autobiographical in the film Purple
47:58
Rain, and I really do think it speaks to Albert Magnoli's ear that he
48:02
was able to pick up on these themes that Prince was stating lyrically and put
48:07
them into a story where it feels so true that you don't know kind of
48:13
where the line is between fact and fiction. And Prince was so compelling as
48:17
a songwriter in building these worlds and these arcs and these characters. And I
48:23
think that's just such a great example of you know, he wrote this song,
48:28
he had these really striking lyrics, and you know, to have it
48:31
appear as something that his movie Dad is then you know, saying to his
48:37
family in the film as this kind of abusive, terrorizing character who's you know,
48:43
really struggling obviously emotionally with how to relate to his family. It's such
48:47
a compelling use of the lyrics and creating this like really cohesive story. Yeah.
48:53
I just love that. And I also loved the story about how when
48:58
Albert Magnolia came to Minneapolis and started working on the script, there was already
49:01
a script written, but Prince didn't like it, so he was hired to
49:05
kind of come in and basically reimagine it to be more authentic. Prince handed
49:10
him cassettes full of dozens and dozens of songs and said, well, here's
49:15
some do you think we could use these? You know, it's just wild
49:20
how prolific he was that He's just had these volumes of unreleased material at the
49:23
ready, and Albert Magnolia was really key in helping him to kind of refine
49:29
some of those, you know, lists of songs down into things like I
49:32
Would Die for You that could be really evocative in a film. He also
49:37
helped Prince to select Purple Rain as the title of the movie, which is
49:43
also just such a great story. He was at the the First Avenue Show
49:47
August eighty three when Prince debuted that song, and you know, Albert Magnoli
49:52
told the story about coming up to Prince afterwards and saying, what was that
49:54
one that was a really incredible song, And he said, I think it's
50:00
Purple Rain, and I'm thinking of calling maybe the album this or maybe it
50:04
could even be the film, And Albert Magnoli's like, yeah, yeah,
50:07
we're gonna do that. That is that is it? So I think,
50:10
yeah, he needs to get some credit there for coming in you know,
50:15
basically not even knowing Prince at all and being able to mostly through his music
50:22
pick up on so much of who he was and what he wanted to say.
50:25
You talk about all the music that he wrote. And in the book
50:29
there's the chapter on Paisley Park and how was it the when they went to
50:35
get in you there, they had they had a guy he had to break
50:39
the lock or whatever it was. Yeah, it was like it was like
50:43
tapes and cassettes just like almost falling off, you know, like as soon
50:46
as you open the door, it's like it's all fallen out. It was
50:50
like pack with music, right, It's like hundreds and hundreds of hours of
50:52
videos and music in there. Yes, yeah, real, you know,
50:55
huge reels, analog tapes and then crazy video footage and hard drives and photos
51:05
and documents, lots of documents. Yeah. They had a vault in the
51:10
basement of Paisley Park that had a huge, you know, kind of classic
51:14
bank vault door, and then the room leading up to that door also over
51:17
the years became completely jam packed with stuff because at one point, I guess,
51:22
you know, Prince would he was kind of known for firing people that
51:27
worked for him, and he would go through these periods where there were not
51:30
that many people even working at Paisley Park and it would kind of be this
51:34
little skeleton crew. And at one point, all the people that knew the
51:37
code for the vault had been fired, so no one even knew how to
51:40
get in there. So they just started leaving the tapes at the door to
51:43
the vault, and it just kept amassing more and more and more and more,
51:45
and it's, yeah, it's really wild to think about, you know,
51:49
just the volume of material that existed. Yeah, he opened it or
51:53
he had it built in eighty nine eighty seven as well. It just it's
52:01
just the yeah, the amount of I mean, since he passed away,
52:05
there's there's been so much music that's come out. Yes now thankfully, you
52:10
know, the the archival teams that went into Paisley Park after he passed,
52:15
they realized pretty quickly that the conditions of that basement were not ideal, especially
52:21
the pre vault room that was just overflowing with stuff, right, like no
52:24
temperature control or anything like that. Yeah, yeah, And they said they
52:28
even smelled like a kind of acidic smell in the air, which could indicate
52:31
that some things were starting to deteriorate, and that there had been leaking at
52:36
one point, and just kind of a nightmare scenario for any libraryan or archivists
52:40
to uncover. And so they moved all of that to an Iron Mountain facility
52:45
where it's been properly stored and is in the process of being cataloged and digitized.
52:50
And just thank thank you know, thankfully that that was able to happen
52:53
in time to rescue all of this material and properly preserve it, because gosh,
52:59
I hope eventually someday that all ends up in like the Smithsonian or you
53:02
know, somewhere. Oh, I'm sure where it can be really studied and
53:07
appreciated on the level that it needs to be. Yeah, I'm sure there
53:10
are a lot of biopicks out there. Now. Do you know of any
53:14
anything in the works? Has it been talk about that? So there's been
53:19
a couple of things announced recently. There's a Broadway musical in production that is
53:24
going to open in Minneapolis in twenty twenty five and then go travel probably to
53:30
Broadway next I would think. I think they're staging it in Minneapolis at one
53:35
of the theaters here. And then they did announce that there is going to
53:38
be a biopic. I don't know a lot of details about it. I
53:43
think it was basically just a report that it was in the works. I
53:46
don't know when that would come out or you know, obviously the big question
53:51
in both of those is who's going to play prints is what a daunting role
53:54
to have to assume? So yeah, I haven't heard any details beyond that,
53:59
but there has been a lot of movement on these kind of bigger projects
54:02
that people have been wondering about for many years. Sometimes those can sometimes those
54:07
can come to fruition quickly, but sometimes like the Elton John movie that was
54:10
that went on for years and years and years, there were several actors that
54:15
were rumored to play him, and then finally they had the actor that they
54:19
eventually picked. But so you just don't know. But boy, that would
54:22
be quite a story. I mean, it's his life story, it would
54:27
it would be great. And with the Bob Marley film, which was amazing,
54:30
they got an unknown actor. So you could go one way or the
54:34
other on that. But you're right, yeah, daunting, daunting to play
54:37
Prince. Yeah a baby, I'm a star. The backward loop vocals at
54:40
the start is the revolutions, Lisa Coleman saying, so like, fuck them,
54:45
man, what do they know? Come on, baby, let's go
54:49
crazy. This is interesting as far as how that song develops overtime live,
54:57
So this would be extended as long as twenty minutes. That's wild. Yeah,
55:01
that became kind of the show piece of the Purple Rain tour that they
55:05
would stretch it further and further and further. And you know, Prince was
55:07
such a restless musician and creative person that you know, by the time the
55:13
Purple Rain Tour rolled out, he was over this material. You know,
55:15
he had moved on. He had around the world in the day, the
55:19
next album fully recorded in the can, and he was already starting to think
55:22
about his next movie and is the soundtrack to that movie, And he was
55:27
working on more side projects, like with the band The Family. So the
55:30
idea of having to play these songs over and over again was like a nightmare
55:34
for him. And you can see in the live performances of Baby I'm a
55:37
Star, that's him stretching that band as far as they can go and saying,
55:42
all right, we're gonna jam on this one chord for ten minutes.
55:46
Let's see what happens. Let's build up a groove that is so funky that
55:51
we're just gonna put everyone in a trance, and he would be directing them
55:54
like James Brown, you know, on the one and give me four,
55:58
and give me twenty four, all these crazy things to keep them nimble and
56:01
to keep them, you know, on their toes. And it's just such
56:06
a great example of you know, how restless and just forward thinking he always
56:12
was at any time. But it also became kind of famous for that's one
56:15
of the cameos would happen. So when he played his run of shows in
56:20
la during Baby I'm a Star. One night, that was when both Bruce
56:22
Springsteen and Madonna joined Prince on stage, and there's some really good stories about
56:28
that as he's basically trying to make Bruce Springsteen look dumb by miscueing him and
56:32
cueing the band to do all these crazy counting things behind him as he's trying
56:37
to play his guitar, and the band's going, come on, man,
56:40
it's the boss. Are we going to humiliate him? Bruce's version of Purple
56:45
Rain after Prince passed is great. And then he would he make it made
56:49
a joke about how wasn't it it was a Dancing in the Dark that was
56:52
number two and it never made it to number one. Because I think maybe
56:57
when Duff's Cry was number one, I can't remember, but it was some
57:00
funny joke in May. Now speaking of so this is interesting, speaking of
57:04
live and how obviously Prince was just so such a creative person. I can't
57:07
imagine him. I could just see him just going nuts playing the same songs
57:12
every night? Did he did he mix up the set list a lot?
57:15
Like? Was he the type of person I can't imagine that he would be
57:17
like, Okay, you got to finish with this song every night, you
57:22
got to play the hits? Did he just play whatever he wanted to play?
57:24
Kind of like a like what's an example? I mean, I'd think
57:28
of Grateful Dead or like a Van Morrison, like you don't know what to
57:31
expect? I mean later for sure? Yeah, okay. The Purple Rain
57:35
Tour though unfortunately it was for him, fortunately for everyone else because it was
57:38
a great show, but it was so scripted because there was so many elaborate
57:44
stage elements, and this was at a time when you know, something is
57:49
simple to us now is changing out. You know, a color scheme for
57:52
lights actually required like a lot of planning and technical supplies. So I had
57:58
talked to his who ended up being a creative director for many years alongside him
58:02
Roy Bennett, and he said, you know, there was just so many
58:06
moving parts and little sets that he had built and different parts of the stage
58:08
that would move around and accommodate these different little scenes that it had to be
58:14
the same every night because it was there was just too much going on.
58:16
But then, you know, you can kind of see him rebelling against that.
58:20
By the late eighties he went on what he called the Nude Tour,
58:23
where it was all just stripped down, no huge, crazy stages, no
58:28
crazy you know, multi moving thing you know parts. At one point,
58:34
like in the Love Sexy Tour, it literally had a little car he would
58:37
drive out on stage, like it got so crazy. Well, he's very
58:38
Bruce Springsteen. Like, actually, now what am I saying? I'm a
58:42
huge Bruce fan. That's what Bruce would do. You know, all of
58:44
a sudden, you come out of nowhere with a solo acoustic album and then
58:46
a tour. It's just him. It's like, oh, where's the e
58:49
Street Man? Ya? You know, right? But that's that is the
58:53
the artist's mind. They can't do the same thing over and over and over
58:57
again. Yeah, that's yeah. Yeah, well let's we finished with the
59:01
title track. It's Purple Rain. I mean, it's just a brilliant piece
59:07
of work. This is the Joni Mitchell thing is fascinating. You mentioned it
59:09
early. This tell me about this. I never knew this. There's a
59:15
connection with Joni Mitchell on this song. Yeah, and you know, part
59:17
of this is like my theory about it, and just speaking at length with
59:22
Wendy and Lisa about their shared admiration of Joni with Prince that that was something
59:29
that really bonded the three of them together musically. But what really resonated with
59:35
me is I was going through this whole period of his career and really thinking
59:37
deeply about it was you know, at that show at First Avenue in August
59:43
eighty three. The only other song on the setlist that sounds anything like Purple
59:46
Rain is his Jony cover A Case of You, And it's really spare and
59:53
beautiful and kind of atmospheric and slow, and it just un it kind of
1:00:00
puts this little breathing space in the set and it's just like a really tender
1:00:05
moment. And when you get to the end and you start, you know
1:00:08
that those iconic opening chords of Purple Rain. Those are all Jny chords to
1:00:15
me, I mean there, and Wendy has talked extensively about this. It's,
1:00:19
you know, all these eleven and thirteen chords that create all these beautiful,
1:00:23
sometimes kind of odd and disorienting harmonies within themselves, and it's these voicings
1:00:30
that paint this beautiful tapestry you know, of colors and and I think you're
1:00:35
hearing that in the way that she performed those chords and the arrangement of the
1:00:40
chords that you know, she and Prince came up with together at the rehearsals,
1:00:45
and then just the way that that song unfolds and tells all these stories
1:00:51
in such a mesmerizing way. I think it's it's just such a great encapsulation
1:00:54
of his appreciation for Joni and for the way that he could take an inspiration
1:01:01
like that and channel it into something so unique and beautiful and so him.
1:01:08
But it doesn't sound like anything else he had released up to that point.
1:01:12
So yeah, it's just such a such an interesting part of his career and
1:01:16
his story, and it of course lived you know, on and on and
1:01:21
on. That was the song that people wanted to hear when when he was
1:01:23
playing concerts throughout the rest of his life. The Minnesota Vikings thing. Now,
1:01:29
tell me about this of why they did this. I love this story
1:01:32
too. I love this so so much of the music that was performed at
1:01:37
that First Avenue show, it was all being recorded, you know, for
1:01:40
the film, for the album, and it was full of all these local
1:01:44
people that loved Prince and came out to all the things that he did.
1:01:47
But most of that song or most of that setlist was brand new, so
1:01:52
they weren't familiar with it yet, so they were silent. They you know,
1:01:57
there was no clap of recognition as these now iconic songs are familiar with
1:02:01
it. They're just like huh, you know, like cool. So it
1:02:06
was you know, they were kind of stunned into silence. And David Z,
1:02:09
Bobby Z's brother, who was a producer, is a producer and you
1:02:15
know, was really close with Prince and helped him a lot. He actually
1:02:19
helped Prince record his demos. Like as he was starting to chop around to
1:02:22
labels, he was outside of First Avenue in this recording truck and he was
1:02:29
capturing you know, the not just the band, but also the room and
1:02:31
the reactions and everything, And when it came time to put the soundtrack together,
1:02:37
he's like, well, we have to add something to capture, you
1:02:39
know, excitement around this material. So he took her recording of a Minnesota
1:02:44
Vikings game and took the applause and the cheering out of that and put it
1:02:47
into Purple Rain. I love that. I absolutely love that. You know,
1:02:52
one other really cool piece of trivia. I apologize. I don't know
1:02:54
if it's in your book or not, but the Stevie Nicks comments about she
1:03:00
she could have been on this song according to her, right right, Yeah,
1:03:05
they had come so close to working well, they did work together,
1:03:07
but they wanted to actually write together. She had her song stand Back released
1:03:15
the year Purporian was being made. I think it came out in eighty three,
1:03:19
and that was really closely inspired by Little Red Corvette, and she actually
1:03:23
it was so close that she had to call Prince and ask him permission to
1:03:30
rip him off basically yeah, and then he plays on it, right,
1:03:32
he like went right from he gets off the phone and he's like there and
1:03:37
like an hour whatever it was, and he's playing the sinse on that I
1:03:39
believe yep. Showed up at the studio, laid down the since so I
1:03:44
think we were maybe in the studio together for twenty minutes and then he's off
1:03:46
into the night again. But so they had wanted to, you know,
1:03:51
from that experience, actually collaborate more closely together on like co arranging or co
1:03:54
writing a song. And she had the opportunity. She was presented with that
1:04:00
early demo recording of Purple Rain, and she turned it down and she was
1:04:03
just intimidated. She said. It was like she felt like I wasn't gonna
1:04:08
be able to live up to the expectations that things, is what she said.
1:04:11
That's wild, That is wild. Yeah, So calling this his greatest
1:04:16
is debatable, you know among fans because it just just speaks to how amazing
1:04:20
his catalog of work is. But where do you put it, like personally,
1:04:26
for you, where do you place this album? Ooh? Yeah,
1:04:30
there's a lot of debate in the Prince fan community about what we consider quote
1:04:35
unquote to be his best versus his most commercially successful. And it's kind of
1:04:42
considered lame to be a fan of Purple Rain because he had so many other
1:04:45
compelling periods of his career. But for me just speaking as you know,
1:04:50
someone that studied his career so closely and thinking critically about this album. It
1:04:57
is such a cohesive artistic state. And I think Prince really responded well to
1:05:02
constraints as much as he fought against having any constraints and any boundaries and anything
1:05:09
that he ever made when he was focused on a specific project and it was
1:05:14
for a purpose and that purpose was defined and he knew what he was on
1:05:18
a mission to do. I think that's when you see some of his most
1:05:23
just amazing work because he you know, he had this idea for the film,
1:05:28
he knew what it was going to be about, he knew generally what
1:05:30
the characters are going to be, what he wanted to say in these songs,
1:05:33
and it allowed him to go into these worlds and really open up and
1:05:38
explore, you know, what he could deliver emotionally in that story, what
1:05:43
he could introduce musically. And I think just as a as an album,
1:05:47
this collection of songs is just it's such a definitive work of art. You
1:05:51
know, it really stands as a set in a way that is so rare,
1:05:56
especially now that everything is so fractured into singles and drips and drabs of
1:06:02
releases and to have that you know, really old school classic album. I
1:06:09
know that was something that he really valued and he spoke about throughout his career
1:06:12
that he considered himself to be of that you know, generation of artists that
1:06:16
was really making a set of music for people. And Purple Orange is one
1:06:20
of the ultimate albums in that it, you know, really delivers on what
1:06:25
it wanted to promises from the beginning. Yeah, there was one song that
1:06:30
he performed at that concert that was intended for the album he left off.
1:06:33
Wasn't there one? Oh yeah, Electric Intercourse, Yeah that was one.
1:06:40
That was one. So but so what are nine tracks in all? I
1:06:43
think on this album? So yeah, I mean it's yeah, there's there's
1:06:48
there's no fillers in this. I mean, this is the Yeah, it's
1:06:50
a work of art. But I tell you that that follow up album I
1:06:55
Love, I Love Around the World in a Day and that that, But
1:06:59
that just shows you there's no way he was going to make a Purple Rain
1:07:01
Part two. So it's like this is totally Raspberry Beret and pop Life.
1:07:08
I mean those are just yeah, there's just the sound he's changed constantly and
1:07:14
just prolific. I mean he through the nineties into the two thousands. I
1:07:17
mean, it's amazing to think what he would still be doing now. Yeah.
1:07:21
Yeah, So Prince in Purple Rain forty years So it's doubout May twenty
1:07:26
first through Motor Books and you can find out where books are sold. So
1:07:29
tell us where people can find you online? Tell us about the podcast.
1:07:32
You know what else you got going on? Where can people find you?
1:07:36
Yeah? So I'm I have a website that's just my name andres Finson dot
1:07:42
com sso in and then I'm online all over the place that slingshot Annie.
1:07:48
The podcast has been so fun to work on. We do basically seasons that
1:07:54
are around releases that are coming out. So we've done a episodes about nineteen
1:08:00
ninety nine Signing the Times. There was a full vault album that got released
1:08:05
called Welcome to America that prints recorded in twenty ten, so we did a
1:08:10
season around that, and then our most recent season was about Diamonds and Pearls.
1:08:13
That box set came out last year, and it's so fun to me
1:08:16
to get to talk to a lot of people that were really active in like
1:08:21
one year of Prince's life and just nerd out about how much he was doing
1:08:26
in these like really finite periods of time, and how many different you know,
1:08:30
side projects and vault tracks and things he just had pouring out of him
1:08:34
all the time. So that's what the podcast is. No additional seasons yet
1:08:40
announced, but it's been an ongoing project and just a really really fun thing
1:08:45
to work on. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, as
1:08:47
they say, that's right, just the official Prince podcast. It's called YEP.
1:08:53
I'll put a link to the podcast the website in the show notes so
1:08:57
people can go there. Andrea, thank you. This was a great discussion
1:09:00
about an amazing album and film. Thank you, Thank you Eric for inviting
1:09:05
me. I mean, I could obviously talk about this endlessly, but I
1:09:10
really appreciate your questions and your comments about the book. This has been such
1:09:14
a really fun thing to work on. That's it. It's in the books.