Prince was surprisingly popular in my upper-Midwestern 1980s high school days. I'm not sure how much my peers appreciated his supreme funkiness, but lots of them were Vikings fans, and since Prince was an MSP local who was obsessed with the main Vikings uniform color, it all somehow resonated as a fun purple-themed regional sub-culture mashup.
The article says that Prince went out for football in high school, but realized, to his disappointment, that he was too tiny.
Prince was a half year older than me, and I can recall, painfully, numerous occasions on which my Los Angeles Rams' defensive front four of the Fearsome Foursome lost to the Vikings' front four of the Purple People Eaters.
Wikipedia explains:
The Purple People Eaters was a nickname for the defensive line of the Minnesota Vikings from 1967 to 1977, consisting mainly of Alan Page, Carl Eller, Jim Marshall, Gary Larsen, and Doug Sutherland.
The term is a reference to a popular song from 1958, the efficiency of the defense, and the color of their uniforms. The motto of the Purple People Eaters was "Meet at the quarterback."[1]
The Purple People Eaters mainly consisted of:
Defensive tackle Alan Page, 9 Pro Bowl selections (1968–1976), NFL MVP (1971), Pro Football Hall of Fame[2]
Defensive end Carl Eller, 6 Pro Bowl selections (1968–1971, 1973–1974), Pro Football Hall of Fame[3]
Defensive end Jim Marshall, 2 Pro Bowl selections (1968–1969)[4]
Defensive tackle Gary Larsen, 2 Pro Bowl selections (1969–1970)[5]
Larsen was replaced in 1974 by Doug Sutherland.[6]
Marshall said that the players disliked the name "Purple People Eaters" and called themselves "The Purple Gang", but "we've got to ride with it because it's our handle".[7] The group was a major factor in the post-season success of the Vikings from the late 1960s through the 1970s.[8] The Purple People Eaters were one of the most identifiable front fours in National Football League history, with the "Fearsome Foursome" of the Los Angeles Rams during the 1960s and early 1970s, the "Steel Curtain" of the Pittsburgh Steelers during the 1970s, the "New York Sack Exchange" of the New York Jets during the 1980s, and the 1985 Chicago Bears "Monsters of the Midway".
Eller and Page were inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Many fans, players, coaches and sportswriters argue that Jim Marshall should be in the Hall of Fame as well.[9]
The irony of the Rams is that, while they were a dominant team in the 70s, they were hamstrung by being in such a weak division; despite its name, the NFC West contained the recent expansion teams Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints, neither of whom was able to win the division until much later (1980 and 1991, respectively). Therefore, they would win the division, then lose to the Vikings in the playoffs, which they did 4 times, including 3 where a trip to the Super Bowl was on the line.
For a team with so much history, it's quite amazing that the LA Rams didn't win a Super Bowl until February 2022, which they won by 3 despite playing in their home stadium.
I liked Prince...at least his greatest hits...and your YouTube link shows off his talent with the guitar. It is a tragedy what's happened to black music since the 80s. My teenage years saw the emergence of Tamla Motown; ‘commercialised’ blues and gospel with a scattering of gems in its back catalogue of punchy love songs written by (recently deceased) Lamont Dozier together with the Holland brothers. Tamla laid the foundations for the exquisitely engineered Dance and Disco music of the ‘70s and ‘80s. I Wanna Dance with Somebody sung by Whitney Houston (but engineered by Narada Michael Walden) is an example as good as it gets. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/imagine-theres-no-muzak
While My Guitar Gently Weeps....I'll maybe get hung out to dry here but George Harrison was the great underrated Beatle. In fact the best of the four for my money. All Things Must Pass.
An interesting question, since the Beatles stopped performing live early, is what would have been their mature concert list?
Their January 1969 rooftop concert concluded with their third take on "Get Back," a worthy finisher, but probably not what they would have played at Wembley for a paying 80,000 customers, although I could imagine it close to the last.
Here's a Reddit response to what they would have played at Woodstock in the summer of 1969:
What Would The Setlist Be, If The Beatles Played At Woodstock?
My version of it would be 8 songs and 2 songs for each member, and no Abbey Road stuff because it isn’t finished yet.
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Paul)
With A Little Help From My Friends (Ringo)
Taxman (George)
Dear Prudence (John)
Yellow Submarine (Ringo)
Revolution (John)
While My Guitar Gently Weeps (George)
Hey Jude (Paul)
The last 3 sound about right. McCartney is still doing "Hey Jude" as his closer more than a half century later.
Beatles tribute bands have given the most thought to this. With the fine one I saw about 20 years ago, the real barnburner was "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." My vague recollection is that they finished their main set with the Harrison/Clapton guitar rocker, then walked offstage to cheers, and then came back and did an encore of the inevitable "Hey Jude."
The last three, I agree. My other 5 would be selected from the Rubber Soul, Revolution and Let it Be albums. But the All Things Must Pass triple album is the only Beatles thing I still listen to 50 years on.
Your comment about tribute band selection is interesting. I've long thought that Greatest Hits radio stations do the best (or least worst) job of curating the best of Rock. Better than the Rolling Stone 500.
Rolling Stone likes to be too cool for the room, so they will make controversial selections to drive engagement. Radio stations don't have that luxury; they need to play the hits within the constraint of their format.
Unlike Hey Jude and too many other live songs, someone had the sense to bring that HoF tribute to a climax and end before we got numb. Where did Prince's guitar ejaculation land?
Prince appears to have had a big guy in the first row working for him who caught the guitar. He'd earlier caught Prince when he leaned off the stage backward. Like I said about Prince becoming a pain pill addict in his later years, he put on a great show, which took a toll on his body.
That said, I really have never gotten the Ringo hate/dismissal. The Beatles did not become big until they jettisoned their old drummer and replaced him with Ringo. The Beatles very name emphasized "beat" and how important the beat and therefore the drums were to their songs. And the Beatles took the unprecedented move of elevating the drumset (and therefore Ringo) to a height behind them during performances so you could see the drums. Ringo also sang a lot on the Beatles records and soloed some of the big songs too. Finally, Ringo's playing style has been praised by later drummers such as Max Weinberg (Bruce Springsteen's drummer) as innovative and technical.
I assume a lot of the Ringo hate is because he was the least mystical/most commercial Beatle--the one who seemed like he was just a celebrity doing a job and having fun, as opposed to the "deeper" meaning Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison had in their personas. Ringo had hit songs after leaving the Beatles and his band made money touring (unoriginally named "Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band"), and he even acted in the Thomas the Tank children's show as well as in some caveman movie. Like Chris Isaak, he failed to develop the aura of tortured/weird/romantic artist and fans never forgave him for it.
I think Ringo will outlive them all, although once when John was told that Ringo was the best drummer in the world, he replied that Ringo wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles 🤣
> Max Weinberg (Bruce Springsteen's drummer)
Also for Meat Loaf on his best-selling album, but is probably best known for being Conan O'Brien's bandleader.
Honestly I never got the appeal of the Beatles but I did adore Ringo’s solo attempts. Of course I was 7 years old but even today I turn it up when I hear it.
All I knew of him: great guitar, forgettable lyrics, creepy narcissist.
I recall he strictly forbade anyone to look at him in his nightclub... and that stupid symbol, making people refer to him as "the artist formerly known as Prince."
As I’ve got older my musical tastes have converged on consensus. For example best British rock bands in my view are the Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin, Clash, and Pink Floyd. ChatGPT gives the same list only substituting Queen for the Clash.
But the one musician who defies my valiant attempts to enjoy his music is Prince. He was a superb songwriter but:
1) his voice was emotionless, with the exception of Purple Rain
2) he lacked a collaborator (a British “best mate” in the Sailer taxonomy) to rein him in
3) his arrangements were often poor, and the mix was often hideous. I don’t understand the technicalities but a lot of prime early 80s Prince sounds like the inside of a tin can
Here is Warren Zevon performing Raspberry Beret with The World's Most Dangerous Band backing him up in 1990. It only sounds odd because as you alluded to, Prince tends to write songs for women, not men.
Never knew he wrote those songs. But makes sense for Manic Monday; it references 1920s film star Rudolph Valentino. As with Under the Cherry Moon, Prince seemed to have a love of old-timey movies.
Although Prince makes it weird by having the female singer imagine kissing Valentino by a "crystal-blue" stream, when all of Valentino's movies were in black and white. But then again that just reemphasizes that its a dream sequence. And it also demonstrates the singer's disenchantment with her unemployed boyfriend who kept her up late Sunday night with sexual demands, since she's dreaming about another guy.
The Glyn Jons drum mic technique used only three high quality microphones which, in combination with the fewer available tracks and analog equipment gives a natural sound that is timeless. It was flawed though. The low end of Bonham's kick had to be removed lest the phonograph needles of the era skip and fly.
In my estimation the all time champ of drum recording was the recently deceased Steve Albini. He remained adamantly analog all the way into the digital era and used a large number of high quality microphones to reproduce exactly what he heard from the band in the studio.
The irony of that 72-second hook is that it was extended specifically for the video; on the album Around the World in a Day the hook is 23 seconds.
If you look closely at the video the woman in the raspberry beret who gives Prince his guitar is the actress Jackie Swanson. She is no longer famous (and perhaps never was) but she is probably best known for playing Woody's wife on Cheers.
You're right, but Nos. 1 & 3 are not such an issue in one of my favorites of his, the B-side How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore. (Yeah, there are [very] muffled drums and some incidental backup singing, but basically it's him and a piano.) I can't find the actual original version easily online despite what some YouTube videos claim...
Marian Edelman was or is a children’s rights advocate. I’ll bet she (with Hillary’s support) helped lay the legal groundwork for our current transkid horror show. Sounds like iSteve material.
"“While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” is depicted as a triumph over white racism:"
Of course. Because they can't be grateful. That would be too humiliating. That's why the most "radical" thing about World Wide Woke in general and The NYT in particular is their ingratitude. But they should be grateful, just as they deserve to be humiliated. Maybe that day will come. Stranger things have happened in history. If it does they'll certainly have it coming.
"But there’s also pain—in his wincing face, his apartness: a small, soigné Black man onstage with these rumpled white rockers…. Suddenly, this triumphant performance is given this other dimension of insecurity and insistence in the face of all doubters—the white rock establishment, his uncomprehending parents, the demons in his head.""
Yawn, Snore. These people live to hate whites. How weary one gets of it all, and of them. "...rumpled white rockers." How dare they get old and kindly invite him on stage. I always thought that that was THE most hateful and ungrateful performance I've ever seen. It was just smug and hateful virtuosity to the point of overkill, where the virtuosity is lost in the smugness and hate. "Take THAT whiteness! And bow before my poc virtuosity!" Yawn, Snore.
It's pretty tiresome. Blacks certainly played a huge role in the development of rock and roll but basically checked out of music that involves playing an instrument decades ago, with a few stragglers still playing as well as a handful of newer artists that probably have a much larger white fan base than anything else. A black arts organization mentioned in an iSteve post a few weeks ago about the Indianapolis Museum of Art put on a black rock festival and gave it the humble title "I Made Rock and Roll."
This is a really nice article. I'd never have guessed Sailer was a Prince fan. I always enjoyed Prince music, but was a bit put off by media representation of his public persona, probably unwarranted.
I was living in Minneapolis off and on throughout the 90's and "CJ", the local gossip columnist devoted to following Prince's every move made him out to be very weird and insecure.
Every time Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis showed up at a night club with a large entourage, Prince had to show up downtown the next night with an even bigger, flashier crew, according to CJ.
It's likely she was harsh on Prince because it was widely known he disliked her (I think he even publicly slagged her once), and repeatedly refused to speak with her.
By the early '00, he had pretty much stopped showing up in public, instead throwing impromptu parties at his house/studio out in Chanhassen. He'd announce a party at 9pm on his website and open the gates at around 11pm. Sometimes he'd show up and play a couple songs, sometimes not...it gave off a weird vibe to me.
His lyric from " Let's go crazy"; R we gonna let de-elevator bring us down?
Oh no - let's go!
...hauntingly prescient since they found his body in the elevator in his house.
Prince absolutely killed that Superbowl halftime show, and he knew it too. You can see him almost overcome by the moment at the end of Purple Rain. Prince played Purple Rain in the rain. What other rock star can say such a thing?
> Mostly, he just really liked girls, constantly recruiting as his protégées lovely teenagers who could sing, for whom he’d compose their one hit song before growing bored with them until his next Pygmalion project came along.
Probably most famously Susanna Hoffs, for whom he wrote Manic Monday, gifting the Bangles their first hit. Hoffs is no longer active on Twitter, but she used to perform a portion of that song every Monday morning for her followers. The last time was June 26, 2023*.
As an aside, if you are curious if a 65-year-old woman can still be hot, you would be doing yourself a favor to see Hoffs in action.
Thank you. For future reference you can link to your post directly like I did below*. Also, I was a fan of Jami Gertz from back in the day. Did you know that she and her husband own the Atlanta Hawks? She has represented them in the NBA Draft Lottery** a few times.
I've never understood the need for my favorite artists/performers to be swell guys in their personal lives. If Kim Jong-il's Pulgasari (1985) were the best film of all time, what, I'm supposed to not enjoy it? I think the need for a personal connection with the performer is a feminine instinct. Whitney Cummings said one of the great things about dating older men is that when you ride in the car with them you get to hear your favorite songs by officially disgraced artists.
Prince liked imagining himself as some kind of 1920s film heartthrob. His washed out skin and pencil-thin mustache seemed fit for such cinematic time. As a black man who could conceivably pass as white (especially with his good hair), that must've been some kind of fantasy. Under the Cherry Moon is his love letter to such old time Hollywood films (where *both* brothers get a hot white girl, natch!)
Of course, the irony is Prince was dreaming about being a film star from the 1920s -- when there was no sound in movies. One of the greatest musicians of his era dreaming about being a silent celebrity.
EDIT: the whole "Prince changed his name to a symbol" thing began as a protest against a recording contract, since there was some kind of clause stipulating he had to perform as "Prince" or they controlled his name during the length of the contract. But Prince crafted it into some kind of weird artistic statement that people remembered. Perhaps it was, again, Prince, the musician, dreaming about being a celebrity without sound - even in his name .
Despite growing up in the 1980’s I never really got into Prince until a few years ago. It was a combination of Purple Rain stopping everyone in a crowded bar in Wisconsin, along with the later discovery of that HoF video of while my guitar gently weeps that brought me to the Prince respecter camp.
I'm uncertain where you got the daytime hours only thing or what year that began, I'm 58 and used to listen way back.
June 22, 1976, KMOJ-FM was created and began operating “on-the-air.” The station call letters, “KMOJ” were inspired by the Swahili word “UMOJA” which means “Unity.” At its birth, the community-based radio station’s 10 mega-watt transmitter was only able to broadcast in the immediate area of the public housing of north Minneapolis, but it wasn’t long before people in south Minneapolis were trying to pick up its signal, and KMOJ was recognized as “The Heart and Soul of the Cities.”
Went to a late night party at Paisley Park after a show at first avenue one night, what a time to be in my twenties, his neighbors must have bristled at the intrusion.
Would love to hear the dialogue as the Jehovah's witnesses knocked on his door, that church is unassuming and nearby.
Never understood nor embraced the prince fixation as being a musical Wonder but did find America an amazing tune
It sounded like he was throwing shade at america, being objective?
Very enjoyable column, Steve.
Prince was surprisingly popular in my upper-Midwestern 1980s high school days. I'm not sure how much my peers appreciated his supreme funkiness, but lots of them were Vikings fans, and since Prince was an MSP local who was obsessed with the main Vikings uniform color, it all somehow resonated as a fun purple-themed regional sub-culture mashup.
OK, that makes a lot of sense.
Prince was a huge jock, except for being 5'2". Charlie Murphy's monolog on the Chappelle Show about playing basketball vs. Prince is famous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff8LEx9Mw54
The article says that Prince went out for football in high school, but realized, to his disappointment, that he was too tiny.
Prince was a half year older than me, and I can recall, painfully, numerous occasions on which my Los Angeles Rams' defensive front four of the Fearsome Foursome lost to the Vikings' front four of the Purple People Eaters.
Wikipedia explains:
The Purple People Eaters was a nickname for the defensive line of the Minnesota Vikings from 1967 to 1977, consisting mainly of Alan Page, Carl Eller, Jim Marshall, Gary Larsen, and Doug Sutherland.
The term is a reference to a popular song from 1958, the efficiency of the defense, and the color of their uniforms. The motto of the Purple People Eaters was "Meet at the quarterback."[1]
The Purple People Eaters mainly consisted of:
Defensive tackle Alan Page, 9 Pro Bowl selections (1968–1976), NFL MVP (1971), Pro Football Hall of Fame[2]
Defensive end Carl Eller, 6 Pro Bowl selections (1968–1971, 1973–1974), Pro Football Hall of Fame[3]
Defensive end Jim Marshall, 2 Pro Bowl selections (1968–1969)[4]
Defensive tackle Gary Larsen, 2 Pro Bowl selections (1969–1970)[5]
Larsen was replaced in 1974 by Doug Sutherland.[6]
Marshall said that the players disliked the name "Purple People Eaters" and called themselves "The Purple Gang", but "we've got to ride with it because it's our handle".[7] The group was a major factor in the post-season success of the Vikings from the late 1960s through the 1970s.[8] The Purple People Eaters were one of the most identifiable front fours in National Football League history, with the "Fearsome Foursome" of the Los Angeles Rams during the 1960s and early 1970s, the "Steel Curtain" of the Pittsburgh Steelers during the 1970s, the "New York Sack Exchange" of the New York Jets during the 1980s, and the 1985 Chicago Bears "Monsters of the Midway".
Eller and Page were inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Many fans, players, coaches and sportswriters argue that Jim Marshall should be in the Hall of Fame as well.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_People_Eaters
The irony of the Rams is that, while they were a dominant team in the 70s, they were hamstrung by being in such a weak division; despite its name, the NFC West contained the recent expansion teams Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints, neither of whom was able to win the division until much later (1980 and 1991, respectively). Therefore, they would win the division, then lose to the Vikings in the playoffs, which they did 4 times, including 3 where a trip to the Super Bowl was on the line.
For a team with so much history, it's quite amazing that the LA Rams didn't win a Super Bowl until February 2022, which they won by 3 despite playing in their home stadium.
I liked Prince...at least his greatest hits...and your YouTube link shows off his talent with the guitar. It is a tragedy what's happened to black music since the 80s. My teenage years saw the emergence of Tamla Motown; ‘commercialised’ blues and gospel with a scattering of gems in its back catalogue of punchy love songs written by (recently deceased) Lamont Dozier together with the Holland brothers. Tamla laid the foundations for the exquisitely engineered Dance and Disco music of the ‘70s and ‘80s. I Wanna Dance with Somebody sung by Whitney Houston (but engineered by Narada Michael Walden) is an example as good as it gets. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/imagine-theres-no-muzak
While My Guitar Gently Weeps....I'll maybe get hung out to dry here but George Harrison was the great underrated Beatle. In fact the best of the four for my money. All Things Must Pass.
An interesting question, since the Beatles stopped performing live early, is what would have been their mature concert list?
Their January 1969 rooftop concert concluded with their third take on "Get Back," a worthy finisher, but probably not what they would have played at Wembley for a paying 80,000 customers, although I could imagine it close to the last.
Here's a Reddit response to what they would have played at Woodstock in the summer of 1969:
What Would The Setlist Be, If The Beatles Played At Woodstock?
My version of it would be 8 songs and 2 songs for each member, and no Abbey Road stuff because it isn’t finished yet.
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Paul)
With A Little Help From My Friends (Ringo)
Taxman (George)
Dear Prudence (John)
Yellow Submarine (Ringo)
Revolution (John)
While My Guitar Gently Weeps (George)
Hey Jude (Paul)
The last 3 sound about right. McCartney is still doing "Hey Jude" as his closer more than a half century later.
Beatles tribute bands have given the most thought to this. With the fine one I saw about 20 years ago, the real barnburner was "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." My vague recollection is that they finished their main set with the Harrison/Clapton guitar rocker, then walked offstage to cheers, and then came back and did an encore of the inevitable "Hey Jude."
The last three, I agree. My other 5 would be selected from the Rubber Soul, Revolution and Let it Be albums. But the All Things Must Pass triple album is the only Beatles thing I still listen to 50 years on.
Your comment about tribute band selection is interesting. I've long thought that Greatest Hits radio stations do the best (or least worst) job of curating the best of Rock. Better than the Rolling Stone 500.
Rolling Stone likes to be too cool for the room, so they will make controversial selections to drive engagement. Radio stations don't have that luxury; they need to play the hits within the constraint of their format.
Unlike Hey Jude and too many other live songs, someone had the sense to bring that HoF tribute to a climax and end before we got numb. Where did Prince's guitar ejaculation land?
Prince appears to have had a big guy in the first row working for him who caught the guitar. He'd earlier caught Prince when he leaned off the stage backward. Like I said about Prince becoming a pain pill addict in his later years, he put on a great show, which took a toll on his body.
Harrison's sitar -- psychedelic enchantment
"My Sweet Lord" -- tedious proselytizing.
As the old joke goes:
Lennon was the brains.
McCartney was the heart.
Harrison was the soul.
And Ringo played the drums.
That said, I really have never gotten the Ringo hate/dismissal. The Beatles did not become big until they jettisoned their old drummer and replaced him with Ringo. The Beatles very name emphasized "beat" and how important the beat and therefore the drums were to their songs. And the Beatles took the unprecedented move of elevating the drumset (and therefore Ringo) to a height behind them during performances so you could see the drums. Ringo also sang a lot on the Beatles records and soloed some of the big songs too. Finally, Ringo's playing style has been praised by later drummers such as Max Weinberg (Bruce Springsteen's drummer) as innovative and technical.
I assume a lot of the Ringo hate is because he was the least mystical/most commercial Beatle--the one who seemed like he was just a celebrity doing a job and having fun, as opposed to the "deeper" meaning Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison had in their personas. Ringo had hit songs after leaving the Beatles and his band made money touring (unoriginally named "Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band"), and he even acted in the Thomas the Tank children's show as well as in some caveman movie. Like Chris Isaak, he failed to develop the aura of tortured/weird/romantic artist and fans never forgave him for it.
As the Beatles were getting ready to head home after their first stateside tour, a reporter asked "How did you find America?"
Ringo said "We turned left at Greenland."
(No turn is required for a great circle route, but I still smile at the reply.)
I think Ringo will outlive them all, although once when John was told that Ringo was the best drummer in the world, he replied that Ringo wasn't even the best drummer in the Beatles 🤣
> Max Weinberg (Bruce Springsteen's drummer)
Also for Meat Loaf on his best-selling album, but is probably best known for being Conan O'Brien's bandleader.
Honestly I never got the appeal of the Beatles but I did adore Ringo’s solo attempts. Of course I was 7 years old but even today I turn it up when I hear it.
My favorite Beatle was George Martin
All I knew of him: great guitar, forgettable lyrics, creepy narcissist.
I recall he strictly forbade anyone to look at him in his nightclub... and that stupid symbol, making people refer to him as "the artist formerly known as Prince."
I belatedly notice he was a good guy after all.
"The artist forever known as Narcissist."
There was a good guy in there somewhere. Just as there was, on occasion, an astute critic of the record business. But it was buried by the narcissism.
As I’ve got older my musical tastes have converged on consensus. For example best British rock bands in my view are the Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin, Clash, and Pink Floyd. ChatGPT gives the same list only substituting Queen for the Clash.
But the one musician who defies my valiant attempts to enjoy his music is Prince. He was a superb songwriter but:
1) his voice was emotionless, with the exception of Purple Rain
2) he lacked a collaborator (a British “best mate” in the Sailer taxonomy) to rein him in
3) his arrangements were often poor, and the mix was often hideous. I don’t understand the technicalities but a lot of prime early 80s Prince sounds like the inside of a tin can
Prince's "Raspberry Beret" might have one of the best hooks ever, but there's something thin and unfinished about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7vRSu_wsNc
More meaty guitar, please!
Like Dylan, he wasn’t always the best interpreter of his own songs.
The Bangles with Manic Monday, Sinead O’Connor with Nothing Compares 2U, and I Feel for You by Chaka Khan are all very good.
Here is Warren Zevon performing Raspberry Beret with The World's Most Dangerous Band backing him up in 1990. It only sounds odd because as you alluded to, Prince tends to write songs for women, not men.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heDRZuRZSNc
Never knew he wrote those songs. But makes sense for Manic Monday; it references 1920s film star Rudolph Valentino. As with Under the Cherry Moon, Prince seemed to have a love of old-timey movies.
Although Prince makes it weird by having the female singer imagine kissing Valentino by a "crystal-blue" stream, when all of Valentino's movies were in black and white. But then again that just reemphasizes that its a dream sequence. And it also demonstrates the singer's disenchantment with her unemployed boyfriend who kept her up late Sunday night with sexual demands, since she's dreaming about another guy.
Little Red Corvette is great, but is it all it could have been?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7vRSu_wsNc
Prince's sound was formed in the eighties, with the synth and studio equipment from that time.
They liked the sound artifical back then, and loved those new drum machines, and synth samplers. But now it sounds a bit trite and old fashioned.
Today we either like real instruments. Or those who like computer sounds, they want to have much more boom.
Luckily they not only relied on the sound, but also had great melodies and harmonies. Hence the 80ies are still a much loved period of pop.
Why doesn’t John Bonham’s drum sound miked up by Glyn Johns in 1969 not sound trite and old fashioned?
I don’t know either.
There is no fooling the human ear, at lest not the ear that likes music.
It is not only the sound, but the relentless timing of the computer drums is much less pleasing than a human drummer.
Although this is why they loved the drum machine so much in the 80ies: always on time.
The Glyn Jons drum mic technique used only three high quality microphones which, in combination with the fewer available tracks and analog equipment gives a natural sound that is timeless. It was flawed though. The low end of Bonham's kick had to be removed lest the phonograph needles of the era skip and fly.
The drum sound of the 80s was artificial. It was called "gated reverb" https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/503751/how-phil-collins-accidentally-created-sound-defined-1980s-music. It sounded cool the first couple times but then as dated as a 1970s lime green kitchen.
In my estimation the all time champ of drum recording was the recently deceased Steve Albini. He remained adamantly analog all the way into the digital era and used a large number of high quality microphones to reproduce exactly what he heard from the band in the studio.
The irony of that 72-second hook is that it was extended specifically for the video; on the album Around the World in a Day the hook is 23 seconds.
If you look closely at the video the woman in the raspberry beret who gives Prince his guitar is the actress Jackie Swanson. She is no longer famous (and perhaps never was) but she is probably best known for playing Woody's wife on Cheers.
You're right, but Nos. 1 & 3 are not such an issue in one of my favorites of his, the B-side How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore. (Yeah, there are [very] muffled drums and some incidental backup singing, but basically it's him and a piano.) I can't find the actual original version easily online despite what some YouTube videos claim...
"his arrangements were often poor"
I beg to differ. Case in point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kawlt8Ncll0&t=7s
Just the drums alone. But, really, the whole thing.
I agree. Hard to argue Prince was bad at arranging and producing. He was innovative. It might not be to everyone's liking
Terrific article.
Marian Edelman was or is a children’s rights advocate. I’ll bet she (with Hillary’s support) helped lay the legal groundwork for our current transkid horror show. Sounds like iSteve material.
"“While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” is depicted as a triumph over white racism:"
Of course. Because they can't be grateful. That would be too humiliating. That's why the most "radical" thing about World Wide Woke in general and The NYT in particular is their ingratitude. But they should be grateful, just as they deserve to be humiliated. Maybe that day will come. Stranger things have happened in history. If it does they'll certainly have it coming.
"But there’s also pain—in his wincing face, his apartness: a small, soigné Black man onstage with these rumpled white rockers…. Suddenly, this triumphant performance is given this other dimension of insecurity and insistence in the face of all doubters—the white rock establishment, his uncomprehending parents, the demons in his head.""
Yawn, Snore. These people live to hate whites. How weary one gets of it all, and of them. "...rumpled white rockers." How dare they get old and kindly invite him on stage. I always thought that that was THE most hateful and ungrateful performance I've ever seen. It was just smug and hateful virtuosity to the point of overkill, where the virtuosity is lost in the smugness and hate. "Take THAT whiteness! And bow before my poc virtuosity!" Yawn, Snore.
Throw the guitar up & split, without even a nod to fans or fellow musicians who invited you to center stage.
It's pretty tiresome. Blacks certainly played a huge role in the development of rock and roll but basically checked out of music that involves playing an instrument decades ago, with a few stragglers still playing as well as a handful of newer artists that probably have a much larger white fan base than anything else. A black arts organization mentioned in an iSteve post a few weeks ago about the Indianapolis Museum of Art put on a black rock festival and gave it the humble title "I Made Rock and Roll."
This is a really nice article. I'd never have guessed Sailer was a Prince fan. I always enjoyed Prince music, but was a bit put off by media representation of his public persona, probably unwarranted.
I was living in Minneapolis off and on throughout the 90's and "CJ", the local gossip columnist devoted to following Prince's every move made him out to be very weird and insecure.
Every time Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis showed up at a night club with a large entourage, Prince had to show up downtown the next night with an even bigger, flashier crew, according to CJ.
It's likely she was harsh on Prince because it was widely known he disliked her (I think he even publicly slagged her once), and repeatedly refused to speak with her.
By the early '00, he had pretty much stopped showing up in public, instead throwing impromptu parties at his house/studio out in Chanhassen. He'd announce a party at 9pm on his website and open the gates at around 11pm. Sometimes he'd show up and play a couple songs, sometimes not...it gave off a weird vibe to me.
His lyric from " Let's go crazy"; R we gonna let de-elevator bring us down?
Oh no - let's go!
...hauntingly prescient since they found his body in the elevator in his house.
Prince absolutely killed that Superbowl halftime show, and he knew it too. You can see him almost overcome by the moment at the end of Purple Rain. Prince played Purple Rain in the rain. What other rock star can say such a thing?
> Mostly, he just really liked girls, constantly recruiting as his protégées lovely teenagers who could sing, for whom he’d compose their one hit song before growing bored with them until his next Pygmalion project came along.
Probably most famously Susanna Hoffs, for whom he wrote Manic Monday, gifting the Bangles their first hit. Hoffs is no longer active on Twitter, but she used to perform a portion of that song every Monday morning for her followers. The last time was June 26, 2023*.
As an aside, if you are curious if a 65-year-old woman can still be hot, you would be doing yourself a favor to see Hoffs in action.
* https://x.com/SusannaHoffs/status/1673387947083857931
I mentioned Susanna in a Steve post at Unz last year:
Comment #257
https://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-in-alabama-white-tide-rushes-on/#comments
Thank you. For future reference you can link to your post directly like I did below*. Also, I was a fan of Jami Gertz from back in the day. Did you know that she and her husband own the Atlanta Hawks? She has represented them in the NBA Draft Lottery** a few times.
* https://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-in-alabama-white-tide-rushes-on/#comment-6120480
** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BTwcFL9R6g
I've never understood the need for my favorite artists/performers to be swell guys in their personal lives. If Kim Jong-il's Pulgasari (1985) were the best film of all time, what, I'm supposed to not enjoy it? I think the need for a personal connection with the performer is a feminine instinct. Whitney Cummings said one of the great things about dating older men is that when you ride in the car with them you get to hear your favorite songs by officially disgraced artists.
Axiom of long standing:
If you want to admire an artist, don't learn too much about their personal life.
Prince liked imagining himself as some kind of 1920s film heartthrob. His washed out skin and pencil-thin mustache seemed fit for such cinematic time. As a black man who could conceivably pass as white (especially with his good hair), that must've been some kind of fantasy. Under the Cherry Moon is his love letter to such old time Hollywood films (where *both* brothers get a hot white girl, natch!)
Of course, the irony is Prince was dreaming about being a film star from the 1920s -- when there was no sound in movies. One of the greatest musicians of his era dreaming about being a silent celebrity.
EDIT: the whole "Prince changed his name to a symbol" thing began as a protest against a recording contract, since there was some kind of clause stipulating he had to perform as "Prince" or they controlled his name during the length of the contract. But Prince crafted it into some kind of weird artistic statement that people remembered. Perhaps it was, again, Prince, the musician, dreaming about being a celebrity without sound - even in his name .
I liked that second movie of Prince's, but nobody else did.
Did Prince live most of the year in Minneapolis? It would be unusual for a rock star to stay in his hometown, even without the winters.
He definitely lived most of the year in Minneapolis, but you couldn't blame him if he spent the winter in, say, L.A.
Maybe he toured in winter?
I can't imagine giving a crap about any of this.
Despite growing up in the 1980’s I never really got into Prince until a few years ago. It was a combination of Purple Rain stopping everyone in a crowded bar in Wisconsin, along with the later discovery of that HoF video of while my guitar gently weeps that brought me to the Prince respecter camp.
I'm uncertain where you got the daytime hours only thing or what year that began, I'm 58 and used to listen way back.
June 22, 1976, KMOJ-FM was created and began operating “on-the-air.” The station call letters, “KMOJ” were inspired by the Swahili word “UMOJA” which means “Unity.” At its birth, the community-based radio station’s 10 mega-watt transmitter was only able to broadcast in the immediate area of the public housing of north Minneapolis, but it wasn’t long before people in south Minneapolis were trying to pick up its signal, and KMOJ was recognized as “The Heart and Soul of the Cities.”
Went to a late night party at Paisley Park after a show at first avenue one night, what a time to be in my twenties, his neighbors must have bristled at the intrusion.
Would love to hear the dialogue as the Jehovah's witnesses knocked on his door, that church is unassuming and nearby.
Never understood nor embraced the prince fixation as being a musical Wonder but did find America an amazing tune
It sounded like he was throwing shade at america, being objective?
https://youtu.be/5wMijqk2cPw?si=TEAUtldmIFehfSdk
Just found this nifty version by Sheila e
https://youtu.be/um4sJhdyWGU?si=pd6rdfYmtKIiS3JP
His take on drugs wee bit absurd; my cousin tried reefer for the very first time now he's doing horse and it's June
How many potheads graduate to heroin in months, that's Reagan mythology and hardly worth criticizing
but a timeless tune nonetheless
https://youtu.be/8EdxM72EZ94?si=ltIPepqN6fExL9Hs