Prince: A Life in Music

Playlists

I. LUSTFUL AMBITION (1958-1982)

Track                                            Title

1    Games

94 East, Minneapolis Genius (recorded in 1975)

2    Soft and Wet

Prince, For You (1978)

3    I Wanna Be Your Lover

Prince, Prince (1979)

4    Head

Prince, Dirty Mind (1980)

5    Dirty Mind

Prince, Dirty Mind (1980)

6    Uptown

Prince, Dirty Mind (1980)

7    Cool

The Time, The Time (1981)

8    Sexuality

Prince, Controversy (1981)

9    Nasty Girl

Vanity 6, Vanity 6 (1982)

10    If a Girl Answers (Don’t Hang Up)

Vanity 6, Vanity 6 (1982)

11    1999

Prince, 1999 (1982)

12    Lady Cab Driver

Prince, 1999 (1982)

13    Little Red Corvette

Prince, 1999 (1982)

II. HAUGHTY HEIGHTS (1983-1986)

Track                                            Title

1    Purple Rain

Prince and the Revolution, Purple Rain (1984)

2    Darling Nikki

Prince, Purple Rain (1984)

3    When Doves Cry

Prince, Purple Rain (1984)

4    Erotic City

Prince and the Revolution, B-side of Let’s Go Crazy (1985)

5    The Glamorous Life

Sheila E., The Glamorous Life (1984)

6    God

Prince, B-side of Purple Rain (1984)

7    Baby, I’m a Star

Prince and the Revolution, Purple Rain (1984)

8    The Ladder

Prince and the Revolution, Around the World in a Day (1985)

9    Hello

Prince and the Revolution, B-side of Pop Life (1985)

10    Paisley Park

Prince and the Revolution, Around the World in a Day (1985)

11    High Fashion

The Family, The Family (1985)

12    Under the Cherry Moon

Prince and the Revolution, Parade (1986)

13    Kiss

Prince and the Revolution, Parade (1986)

III. SOULFUL STRUGGLES (1987-1993)

Track                                            Title

1    If I Was Your Girlfriend

Prince, Sign o’ the Times (1987)

2    Thirteen

Madhouse, 16 (1988)

3    Bob George

Prince, the Black Album (scheduled for release in 1987)

4    Anna Stesia

Prince, Lovesexy (1988)

5    Batdance

Prince, Batman (1989)

6    New Power Generation

Prince, Graffiti Bridge (1990)

7    Still Would Stand All Time

Prince, Graffiti Bridge (1990)

8    Gett Off

Prince and the New Power Generation, Diamonds and Pearls (1991)

9    Cream

Prince and the New Power Generation, Diamonds and Pearls (1991)

10    Go Go Dancer

Carmen Electra, Carmen Electra (1993)

11    My Name is Prince

Prince and the New Power Generation, the Symbol Album (1992)

12    You Will Be Moved

Mavis Staples, The Voice (1993)

13    7

Prince and the New Power Generation, the Symbol Album (1992)

IV. INDEPENDENT CRUSADE (1994-2003)

Track                                            Title

1    Interactive

The Artist, Interactive CD-ROM (1994)

2    The Most Beautiful Girl in the World

The Artist, stand-alone single (1994)

3    Gold

The Artist, The Gold Experience (1995)

4    The Exodus Has Begun

The New Power Generation, Exodus (1995)

5    Betcha By Golly Wow

The Artist, Emancipation (1996)

6    Comeback

The Artist, The Truth (1998)

7    Don’t Play Me

The Artist, The Truth (1998)

8    Undisputed

The Artist, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic (1999)

9    Cybersingle

Prince, download on NPGOnlineLtd.com (2000)

10    The Everlasting Now

Prince, The Rainbow Children (2001)

11    One Nite Alone

Prince, One Nite Alone (2002)

V. FREEDOM’S REIGN (2004-2016)

Track                                            Title

1    Musicology

Prince, Musicology (2004)

2    3121

Prince, 3121 (2006)

3    Black Sweat

Prince, 3121 (2006)

4    The One U Wanna C

Prince, Planet Earth (2007)

5    PFUnk

Prince, download on PrinceFamsUnited.com (2007)

6    Ol’ Skool Company

Prince, MPLSound (2009)

7    Cause and Effect

Prince, audio stream on TheCurrent.org (2010)

8    If I Was a King

Andy Allo, Superconductor (2012)

9    Live Out Loud

3rdEyeGirl, download on 3rdEyeGirl.com (2012)

10    Way Back Home

Prince, Art Official Age (2014)

11    Baltimore

Prince, audio stream on SoundCloud (2015)

12    Black Muse

Prince, HITnRUN Phase Two (2015)

To Kristin, for the music in my life

To my sisters, for joining me for the show

To Sarah B., for a ticket on the purple bus

PREFACE

I was swept away in the deluge of Purple Rain. The album and movie hit during my senior year in high school, and as they reshaped the pop culture, they grabbed a part of my soul. For the next thirty-two years, I closely followed the artist’s evolutions, even as he dwelled in the wilderness.

It was a fascinating ride, but it came with a challenge: a dizzying volume of activity and material. During the course of his forty-year career, Prince flooded the market with over a hundred albums worth of music. (It’s reported that he stashed away at least another one thousand cuts in his famed vault.) He built a cottage industry of supporting stars, made movies, staged retail ventures, launched a dozen websites, and mounted over twenty major tours. And he had a different look at every turn. His life and career were nothing if not prolific.

With all that action, it was sometimes hard to follow the plot. Often it was only with hindsight that we could see the motives behind his moves. Only with time and distance could we hear the full story in his songs.

In writing this book, I’ve tried to recapture the spirit and substance of the incredible event that was Prince’s career. In the process, I’ve attempted to draw out the methods to his madness. And without sacrificing completeness, I’ve sought to make the arc of his story plain.

To present that narrative, I’ve used his creative output as the plotline: five playlists encompassing sixty-two songs. These songs are not necessarily his greatest or most popular, but they serve as markers of his evolution—signposts on the landscape of an immense career. Each was chosen to represent a chapter of his personal or professional evolution. Taken together, they form a travelogue of his eventful journey.

To borrow a line from Prince, this is not music, this is a trip.

I

LUSTFUL AMBITION (1958-1982)

Track 1: Games

94 East, Minneapolis Genius (recorded in 1975)

Whether it was for greatness or for torment, the boy’s destiny was certainly marked. His father, John L. Nelson, was an impassioned pianist who lived for his after-hours gigs with a jazz trio, and he gave his son his stage name: Prince Rogers. If an odd name—the mantle of a father’s dream—wasn’t enough of a cross to bear, the young black child was also saddled with an unusually diminutive stature.

In the gray Minneapolis suburb that was his home, life for a little black Prince often grew bitterly cold. His parents split up when he was ten, and throughout his adolescence, the gentle, afro-ed youngster bounced between addresses. His relationship with his father was tumultuous, and his mother, Mattie Shaw, was frequently absent. He had siblings around—one full sister named Tyka (two years his junior), four half-brothers, and three half-sisters—but many of those connections were thin and sometimes frayed.

One fixture in his young life was his father’s upright piano. Off limits when he was younger, it became an alluring venture and sometimes escape. The quiet, reclusive boy spent hours alone at the keys, picking out phrases like the theme from the TV show Batman.

For a stretch, Prince lived with his father, but when he was fourteen, friction between the two drove him out. Following a bumpy stay with John’s sister, he was taken in by Bernadette Anderson, a family friend from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church that was a centerpiece of the local black community. There Prince shared a bedroom with Bernadette’s son André. Like Prince, André fancied himself a musician, and together, the two established a virtual training camp in the Anderson’s basement. They immersed themselves in the music of Carlos Santana, James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, and Jimi Hendrix and picked up every instrument they could get their hands on.

Prince’s cousin was married to a record producer, and through him, Prince and André were enlisted for a small-label project in Minneapolis, a loose collection of session players called 94 East. (The recordings remained in the can and were later released against Prince’s will after he’d hit it big.) Recorded in 1975—when Prince was seventeen—the group’s instrumental track Games features the teen’s earliest released performance. It’s a drawn-out groove that highlights his disco-soul roots and the extended jamming that characterized his musical formation.

The sessions with 94 East revealed the fruits of Prince’s reclusive self-instruction. On Games, he busted some convincing rhythm guitar. On other tracks, he contributed keyboards, lead guitar, and drums. (André played bass.)

By high school, Prince and André had formed a band called Grand Central (later renamed Champagne when one of their musical idols—Larry Graham, the bassist for Sly and the Family Stone—created Graham Central Station). The group played school dances and neighborhood parties. Before long, they were writing and performing their own material, and they evolved the band into a pretty serious operation that included slick costumes: suede suits stitched with their zodiac signs. The quiet Prince who played lead guitar was a Gemini.

The pint-sized, black kid with a strange name and broken family had a lot of voids to fill and something to prove; and behind his shy eyes, a massive plot was beginning to form. With these early events, the rock gods offered music as a salvation, and Prince decided he would shoot straight for the stars. Frustrated by his size, Prince Rogers Nelson would be gigantic. Mocked for his unusual name, he would put it in lights. Disregarded at home, he would be loved by millions. Prince would be king.

From a very early age, Prince had a strong sense of destiny. All it took was self-discipline and lots of hard work. Putting the wheels in motion, he capitalized on his high school’s topnotch music program and poured himself into music theory, stage band, and an important course called The Business of Music. Although he showed promise on the basketball court—where he was a highly skilled ball handler and a pivotal sixth man in spite of his size—Prince quit the high-school team and redoubled his efforts on guitar. Strict dedication became the order of the day. He took lead control of his and André’s band, and when not running rehearsals, the puritanical teenager was more interested in practicing an instrument than hanging out with friends or wasting himself on parties, drinking, or drugs.

By the end of high school, Prince was ready to make his move. He doubled up on his credits—going to school for longer hours—and graduated six months early. On the eve of graduation, Prince confided to a classmate that he was about to be a star.

Track 2: Soft and Wet

Prince, For You (1978)

While still in high school, Prince brought his band into a local, eight-track production studio with hopes of cutting a record demo. The owner of the studio, an entrepreneurial British transplant named Christopher Moon, took notice of Prince’s standout skills and pulled him aside with ideas for a partnership. They hatched a deal that gave Prince unlimited access to the rudimentary production setup in return for shared profits on any outcomes. The opportunity meant walking away from his band, and the star-struck teen didn’t look back.

Prince spent most of his eighteenth year practically living in the studio. Holing up alone in the small facility, he often stayed there for entire weekends, catching some brief sleep on a couch. He spent months upon months learning to master the studio console and improving his dexterity on a growing list of instruments. Between musical drills, he worked on dance spins and perfected his autograph—dotting the i with a cute little heart—in preparation for his ascent. He roughed up some marketing ideas with Moon and decided to drop his last name.

With Moon’s assistance, they prepared some demos of Prince’s music. Moon weighed in on the lyrics, pitching Prince on the idea of using sexual double-entendre. He figured some highly suggestive, but not too explicit language would get them past radio censors and generate big-time sales off the wink-wink, nudge-nudge buzz. It just might be the angle to launch the eager teen’s career.

One of the first outcomes of this lyrical approach was the naughty innuendo of Soft and Wet. Taking complete solo command for the first time, the self-reliant kid used Moon’s lyrical framework to build an entire song on his own—writing the music, recording each individual instrument and vocal line, then arranging the whole, amazing thing together, all by himself.

Pleased with the result, Prince struck out to New York in search of a record deal. When he immediately began running into walls, Moon referred him to Owen Husney, a local Minneapolis ad guy and concert promoter who had some Hollywood connections. The professional marketer honed Prince’s presentation and secured some meetings with the majors.

The strength of the demo and a great pitch about the next Stevie Wonder touched off a bidding war, and in 1977 Warner Bros. signed him to an historic deal. Under the advocacy of Warner Bros. Chairman Mo Ostin, Prince was granted three albums instead of the standard single-LP contract and, following a studio test secretly observed by the management team, he was also awarded the uncommon clause of being able to produce his own work.

So it was that an unknown multi-instrumentalist with a one-word name became the youngest producer in the label’s history. In the 1970s, the fact that he was black made it all the more astounding. From the first moment of his career, Prince was a unique event.

In the hands of his new management and a new record company, Prince set up shop at a California studio and went about the work of crafting a debut album. Driven to do it all himself, he spent exhaustive time in the studio—twelve to fourteen hours a day—recording and re-recording every instrumental and vocal track. He rabidly embraced the new synthesizer technologies that were available to him and used them to create a new sound that would be uniquely identifiable as his own. He multi-tracked the synths into full ensemble sounds and used them to create rhythmic accents almost like horns. As it turned out, the keyboard textures he instituted on this first record set the tune for much of pop music in the eighties, a style that became known as the Minneapolis Sound.

Prince’s debut album, entitled For You, was released a year later, into a culture consumed by Saturday Night Fever and Grease. The lead single was Chris Moon’s lyrical brainchild, Soft and Wet, and it hit the radio waves on June 7, 1978, Prince’s twentieth birthday. True to its design, the suggestive title caught the wary but titillated eye of deejays and helped to advance the single to No. 12 on the Soul Singles chart.

Beyond that fleeting notice, however, Prince’s first album didn’t see much success. Nonetheless, critics and industry watchers were upbeat. Although much of the songcraft was uninspiring, it showcased the prodigy’s amazing capabilities. By multi-tracking his own vocals on the album’s intro, he created an almost classical chorale. At the record’s close, he tore up some heavy electric guitar. In between, he shuffled across a bridge of pop, soul, rock, and disco.

After all was said and done, he was still one of the most exciting events in modern pop