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Prince's Genius For Happy Accidents In The Studio [Highlight From Episode 320] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a highlight from a recent episode of book don Rock.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Our guess is John McKay's the author of Prince's Sign
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: of the Times. Prince could turn a mistake into art.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Michael Bland, his drummer Princess Drummer from the nineties, told
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: you there was no such thing as an accident in
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the studio.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the things the book does is that
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: for those listening who decide that they don't like Prince
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: and that's okay, I would still encourage you. They out there, well,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: I don't understand it. Species, I don't really understand.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: But something wrong with them, what's going on?
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I can't help them. But what fascinated me was that
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: the other musicians that Prince has got in common with,
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: and Prince was also around that time a Sign of
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: the Times that was mooted to do a record with
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Miles Davis, And so when I went into research for
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: the book, I became fascinated by Miles Davis as well.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: And the reason I mentioned Miles Davis here in an
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: answer to your question, which I will come to answer
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: your question, is that Miles Davis didn't talk when he
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: worked with bandmates about mistakes. He talked about interesting choices,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: and you know, he would talk about if you play
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: a wrong note, make it sound like you meant to
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: play it. The same note in Jay Graden that I
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: mentioned a minute ago, said that he would when he
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: played a wrong note or a mistake note, whatever you
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: want to call it, he would didn't play it as
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: part of a sequence to make it sound like that's
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: what he'd meant to do all along.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Isn't that amazing?
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: It is amazing. And so the happy accident, as I
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: call it, is something that I became fascinated by and
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: just the opportunity to kind of write about how you
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: know that the several songs on sound at the times
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: where quote unquote mistakes are turned into making it sound
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: like it's meant to sound. So the Ball of Dorothy Parker,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Susan Rogers, who was his engineer at the time, had
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: installed a new console and this sound was dull and flat,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: and Prince just didn't even comment on it. So she'd
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: kind of made a quote unquote mistake, and he said, oh,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: the console sounds, you know, different. But again, part of
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the reason that the Ball and Dorothy Parker sounds so
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: weird maybe to do with that Forever in My Life,
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: which again is got central stage of the movie. There's
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: a refrain that he sings as part of the chorus,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: and that is an accident, and it's turned into a
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: recurring theme. And again, you know, I interviewed I was
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: lucky enough to interview Patricia Russian, the great Patrician Russian,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: and she talked about Freddie Washington's base playing on Forget
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Me Notes, and that was actually the start of a mistake. Now,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: I don't think anyone could listen to Forget Me Notes
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: by Patricia Russian, which has been sampled to turn into
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: number one hits by George Michael and by Will Smith,
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: and go that was a mistake. You know, that's someone
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: who's an A grade musician, knowing what to do and
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: knowing how to turn it into gold.