Hey, Sound Opinions listeners, if you support us on Patreon, you get to listen to our podcast ad-free on Patreon. One, two, three, four. You're listening to Sound Opinions, and this week we revisit our classic album dissection of Purple Rain by Prince. I'm Jim DeRogatis. And I'm Greg Cott. Let's get right into it.
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in July of 84. Do you remember where you were when this album and film came out? I do. This anniversary gives us the perfect reason to revisit our classic album dissection, figure out why it works, why it's a masterpiece, and why all these years later. People are still listening to it and still talking about it. Purple Rain was the record that more than any other release in Prince's career made him a superstar, a worldwide phenomenon. No small feat considering that in 1982...
He had released 1999, an album that established the sound of Minneapolis. He had come out of Minneapolis as an artist associated with R&B. He was a guy who posed in women's lingerie on his third album cover, Dirty Mind. 1980 and got a lot of critical acclaim but it wasn't really until those twin blockbusters 1999 and Little Red Corvette in 1982 that he became a pop star. Purple Rain took it a step above.
Not only was there a movie associated with the making of this record, there was this tremendous music. 13 million copies sold at the height of the blockbuster era, Jim. Springsteen, Michael Jackson, artists selling tens of millions of albums.
Prince was right there with him, and in many ways was the leading edge of the cutting edge when it came to the mainstream pop stars of that era. And I'm especially thinking of his guitar playing on this record. I think it was a real revelation to people who saw him as this keyboard-heavy R&B.
musician prior to this. You know, his guitar playing, the combination of Hendrix and Santana, Ernie Isley, Eddie Hazel of Parliament Funkadelic, he was bringing in all these predecessors and at the same time being a complete original with it. and that guitar was all over this record.
We've heard again and again and again Thriller being credited with the album that broke down racial boundaries for this era and genre divides mixing funk and soul and R&B and pop and rock. Yeah, that was true, obviously, and it outsold. Prince, yet Purple Rain is the album I would take to a desert island. Prince had better taste. The rock he adopted was cooler rock. He really understood the new wave, the cutting edge of rock and roll in that era. The funk he liked was dirtier funk.
I mean, he was coming from Clinton. You know, there's a couple of trademarks with Prince. He was making phenomenal use of the Lynn drum machine, one of the earliest drum machines at that time. It's a big part of his sound. There are certain synthesizer patches, the earliest digital synthesizers, that are a big part of his...
sound, but when you think 80s music, so much of it is dated, and it is hamstrung by the technology. I think that the sounds he crafted on Purple Rain, which all have a sort of psychedelic sheen, whether it's a pop song, a rock song, or a funk song, they all all are kind of filtered through this Beatles psychedelic notion, which would really flourish in the next two albums he made.
That's one thing and also there's just the timelessness He had a certain beat and a groove that that was his and his alone and it hasn't aged a day I would posit that a big part of the success is the fact that he, probably for the only time in his long career, had a band that he was letting in and actually incorporating in the songwriting and in the recording. This was a one-man band previously up to this point who made the records on his own in his home studio, had a wonderful touring band.
when it came to writing the songs and recording them, he didn't let other people in. Now he had a phenomenal group. Some musicians, notably the keyboardist Matt Fink, Dr. Fink, who'd been with him for a long time, and he really trusted. Two newcomers who were very notable. Lisa Coleman initially came on board with keyboards to replace Gail Chapman, who'd been the touring keyboardist. Wasn't long after that, Wendy Melvoin was brought on to replace Des Dickerson on guitar.
gave him that moment in Wizard of Oz, you know, where it goes from black and white to technicolor. That's what Wendy and Lisa brought to Prince and the Revolution on Purple Rain. Wendy and Lisa continued to record as a duo in Los Angeles after leaving Prince in the late 80s, releasing a string of fine albums together. They also did a lot of soundtrack work for TV shows, including Heroes and...
Nurse Jackie, for which they won an Emmy. We're very pleased to have Wendy and Lisa with us now to talk about their career with Prince and the making of the Purple Rain album. Lisa, welcome to the show. Thank you. And Wendy, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. Glad to have you both here. Let's start with how you guys hooked up with Prince. Lisa, you were first on board coming on to play keyboards in the band after Prince's touring keyboardist left. Yes.
Gail Chapman was the original girl in the band. And due to her religious beliefs, it... It became very difficult for her to continue with Prince and the direction that he wanted to take. But me being the demon that I am, I jumped right in with great pleasure. Maximum insalubriation. intentions i uh no i had no idea what i was getting into actually i thought i was going to be a piano player but yeah i i joined on at dirty mind i actually started
in the recording process with Dirty Mind before we even played any gigs or anything like that. He was working on Head, of course, so that was my first vocal. That's a way to start. So let me get this straight. You join Prince's band. He wants you to wear lingerie on stage, and he's asking you to record a song called Head.
And what was your reaction to all this? And I'm like, okay. Oh, God, I thought it was... Wait till I get to tell my story. Go. I... thought of it more in terms of a really punk rock kind of situation or that's where I took it for myself to get through to survive because I wasn't really a girly girl at all. But yeah, I got into it because of, well, I liked the music. I liked...
his groove factor, and I liked his rude boy attitude. When you got to go to Minneapolis and see how these guys actually lived, I mean, it had to become clear that there was the big act on stage, and then there were the real people, right?
You would think. Because anybody who later built a studio in Chanhassen, see, having lived in Minneapolis, you go out there. I mean, it's in the cornfield. How cool and how alien and wild are you? You know, you're out and, you know, the big excitement in Chaska was to go to this. 7-Eleven for a Slurpee. My philosophy about Prince and having Paisley Park out in the cornfields is that he's the king.
He's the king of Minneapolis. That's part of his backyard. That was part of the culture conflict between us because growing up in Hollywood where everybody was just a freak and androgynous and just totally cutting edge going to Minneapolis. That was a rare breed out there, and Prince was really super freaky compared to the kids at White Castle or something.
When he looked at me and wanted me to doll it up and get dressed up, it was sort of like old school to me. Yeah, that was vintage for you. Yeah, that's not so cool. If you're that, you're like trendy, and that wasn't cool. You're a poser. It's too trendy. and leaves the band next. How long was it before, Lisa, you were able to bring Wendy in? That was right before, while we were recording 1999, Wendy came to Minneapolis. But then when it really clicked with Prince, I think it was the 1999 tour.
where our brothers and sisters and everybody came to meet me in New York, and Wendy was in my hotel room playing guitar, and Prince heard the guitar coming. from behind my door and knocked on the door. He's like, who's playing guitar in there? He thought it was really good. And I said, oh, it's Wendy. And he came in and he was like, play something.
She just like it was an acoustic guitar and she just strummed like this huge, beautiful chord that he was just like, how do you do that? But then the other side of it was then she was at Soundcheck the next day where Des. had been having some... Dissension among the ranks. Yeah, he was really angry and he didn't show up to sound check. And so Prince knew when he played guitar and he said, will you check my guitar while I go walk around the hall and see how it sounds? So she.
He said, do you know how to play controversy? And I said, yeah, sure. I'm much more from a fan perspective. I'll just go back quickly. When I was 13 and my twin sister and I used to sneak out of the house and we used to go to a club in Hollywood called the Starwood. I remember we were dancing, I was 13, pretending to be 16, 17, still underage, but you know. And I heard this song on the dance floor, Soft and Wet.
I ran up to the DJ at the time and I was like, oh my God, who's that girl that you're playing? And he was like, oh, no, that's not a girl. It's this kid from Minneapolis. His name is Prince. He's 19, blah, blah, blah. And that's where it started for me. Cut to when I found out that Lisa got a call to go and try out for this guy, Prince, who she had no idea who it was, and I had already been like...
Completely versed and flipped out for this guy. And then I go into the Coleman's house and she has a cassette of the Dirty Mind record and puts on. head I couldn't believe oh my god you're playing with Prince do you know what you're doing and then cut to they're playing in all these little clubs in town like they played flippers which is this like it was a roller skating rink here in Los Angeles
that doesn't exist anymore. I mean, I couldn't believe it. And then as, you know, time went on, blah, blah, blah. I'm, you know, out of high school. I'm 18.
I fall in love with Lisa at a younger age. We become a couple. And then he asks me to play Do You Know How to Play Controversy? And I... of course tried to keep my sh you know what together and i couldn't and i but i did and then you know whatever i went home and she calls me on the phone like a week and a half later and says i think prince is calling you
And I was like, what? And that was kind of like the beginning of it. And then it was shortly thereafter that we started recording the songs to Purple Rain. When we get back, we'll continue our classic album dissection of Prince's Purple Rain with Wendy and Lisa. What fun to hang out with them. And Greg and I will each share one of our favorite tracks from the album. That's in a minute on Sound Opinions.
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Island. Goose Island Beer Company, Chicago's beer, and Sound Opinions is. Welcome back to Sound Opinions. I'm Greg Cott. He's Jim DeRogatis. We're in the midst of a classic album dissection of Prince's 40-year-old album, Purple Rain. We've been talking with Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, members of Prince's band, The Revolution at the time. And one of the things that was so unique about the album is how collaborative Prince was in the studio during the making of Purple Rain.
Now in the past, he'd done everything himself, and then he'd have the band out on stage, but with Purple Rain, all that changed. For this album, he brought the revolution into the songwriting process and gave them songwriting credits on the album, which was pretty rare for Prince. So, Wendy, what was the reality of this for you two?
Well, it was a reality for me and Lisa, but it didn't pay the bills. How's that? Yeah, that was pretty accurate for the most part. There were a couple songs on the album, I think, that Prince... did do by himself. I think Darling Nikki was all by himself. Which you can kind of tell because it's got that fierce, like ridiculously crazy quality. I can't tell you what you did to me, but me body will never be the same.
But other than that, we were always set up in a warehouse, which was the tradition anyway, but we were seriously camped out in a warehouse with some 24-track machines. And we were working out these songs, writing the songs, and we would really write them as a band. We were so tight by that time, and Wendy fit in so well and added such a beautiful color.
in her guitar playing and her funk abilities you know she had the perfect combination of groove and like nice beautiful chords which is really indicative of that in that record purple rain the whole well the song itself the opening chords are wendy you know with her beautiful big chords with like
a chorus effect on it and I remember Joni Mitchell asking her like what is that tuning you're using for those chords and it was just regular standard tuning and a lot of guitar players ask Wendy what are those chords because they're so thick and beautiful and using like all 11 or 12 strings it's a six string guitar but we would all look at each other and and just kind of know where
things would happen bobby would hit the symbol at just the right time and and you know prince would kind of guide us and like bring it up break it down go let's try going to a g here let's try go you know and we just carved it out and then i think we booked a gig at First Avenue and videotaped it and recorded that show. And I think that's the majority of where the album comes from.
It means forever, and that's a mighty long time. But I'm here to tell you there's something else. The afterworld. A world of never-ending happiness. You can always see the sun. Day. so when you call up The basis of those tracks were those live recordings of that First Avenue show. And it's interesting because the script for the movie, I guess, was kind of being written as he was recording, right? And the band was a big part of the movie.
So it was almost like the band was written into Prince's life and he says, oh, you know, hey, maybe I'd involve these guys more. So it was a case of like art imitating life or life imitating art one way or the other. It seemed like there seemed like some kind of a cross pollination there.
Yeah, exactly. It's sort of funny because, you know, like how the guy who used to do the voiceovers for movie trailers and before Prince made the movie, he lived the life. And it was really true. It was kind of how. It all happened kind of at the same time. Prince had had an idea to make a movie for a long time, but it was kind of a different movie. It ended up that that movie didn't get made. It evolved into this Purple Rain idea.
That was the battle of the bands. It was like kind of like a West Side Story kind of inspiration for him with, you know, like I've been abused by my mommy and daddy situation. So it started out as one thing and it ended up kind of being. Rock and Roll West Side story. Well, in terms of the musical contributions, I think it's become something of a critical shorthand. Since Prince took such a turn with Purple Rain and much more toward the new wave, for lack of a better term.
side of things. And since you two were new forces relatively in the band, a lot of that's been credited to you. People have said, you know, Prince brought a lot of the new way of rock and roll, synth rock kind of sound into what he was doing because Wendy and Lisa came on board.
Do you take credit for that? I think that we were instrumental in influencing him, and Lisa and I were... cinephiles and musicologist freaks and we were from a different city and we were close to him and we came became this triumvirate and he relied on everything musically that he in us that he knew he didn't have and we became a great combination and we were absolutely more than willing to give him what we had well so
I'll tell you my take on that because I think the song Computer Blue does not get written unless you two are in the group. Wendy? Yes, Lisa? Is the water warm enough? Yes Lisa. Shall we begin? Yes Lisa. You had a tremendous amount of influence in that group. I think you're right. I think you're right about that. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that is my guitar line.
And the three-part suite and all that stuff, that seems to me like Lisa's classical training right there. Prince didn't have any classical training that I know about, you know? I mean, it's a very ambitious track. Well, and the song is credited to Prince, Wendy, and Lisa, Dr. Fink. You know, there's this songwriting credit shared. He did start spreading the credits around. And, you know, it was really just out of, like...
You know, we were young and we were really inspired and we hung out together. You know, we would hang out and play records for each other. Like, have you heard this thing? And have you heard that? And it was... It was fantastic. Those were the days. Just hang out. Yeah, just how it is. Maybe if you're in your college dorm or something, we were just... We were our college years for sure together. For sure. We were just hanging out. Can you remember anything you were listening to when making...
Purple Rain? Lisa and I were listening to... It would be things that you wouldn't really necessarily think had any influence, but they were so... Ambitious themselves. Symbiosis. Symbiosis. The Bill Evans record with Klaus Augerman was a big record that Lisa and I were listening to. And we also, you know, turned him on to... a lot of Peter Gabriel. Lisa and I were big security people and all those records. There were like Ricky Lee Jones or Ricky Lee. Of course, Joni Mitchell. Joni.
We would drive around in my car, which had like the biggest, most amazing stereo system in it. And we would drive around and listen to Vaughn Williams. And he really got turned on to classical music and got into listening to baller. And yeah, it was really interesting. Well, you had this relationship with him on a number of levels. Wendy, I heard a story about you that I think Des might have.
told it to us, where you were just the character in the studio. You know, your ability to sort of loosen him up. Apparently there was an incident where Prince was playing keyboard shirtless and you started pulling his armpit hair. while he was playing, and he started saying, stop that, Wendy, and next thing you know, you kind of have this fake fight with him.
All the other band members are supposedly standing around in awe going like, I can't believe she just did that. Yeah, that's definitely something I do. I used to do it to his chest hairs. Yes, I did it all the time. I also was the one who used to tell him if he played something.
That was cheesy to me. I'd say it sounded like porn music and he wasn't allowed to use it on the record. So, yeah. Well, this is fascinating, not for the personal angle so much as the fact that Greg and I as critics, you know, huge Prince fans, but many of the problems.
of his records in the last 10 or 15 years, we've always gotten the sense that there's nobody around Prince who can come up to him anymore and say, you know, that ain't cutting it. You know, the idea of having Najee play on your record, not cutting it. Not cutting it. There's nobody.
in Prince's camp that can pull his chest hairs and get away with it. Nobody can do that, and yet you two... He wouldn't let anybody near him to do something like that unless he was married to you. He's cut so many people out of his life, professionally and personally, and yet you two, you've always told him straight.
Yeah, I mean, there will always be a connection there and there will always be a healthy amount of anger towards each other and a healthy amount of respect for each other. And I just hope that at some point he can... Let us back in naturally. I just don't know. Prince, call me. I miss you, honey.
Oh, my God. It's a three-year blur for Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin. They live to tell about it. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure having you guys, Wendy and Lisa. Thanks for being on Sound Opinions. Thank you so much, you guys. Thank you. You're listening to Sound Opinions and our classic album dissection of Prince's 1984 blockbuster, Purple Rain.
You know, Greg, in thinking about Purple Rain's influence, there's no bigger testament, I think, to its greatness other than the number of groups that have covered music from this record, which range... All over the map. From the Chicago punk band Apocalypse Hoboken to the Indie-Tronica combo Chairlift. From Mariah Carey to Of Montreal. There is so much in that sound that so many different people can take different...
things and not even have anything in common. The song I want to play, though, shows that Prince was still dangerous in this period. Now, in a lot of ways, we're not talking much about the movie, in part because I think it's a pretty rotten movie.
silly movie it's just you know you see it once and you don't really ever see Purple Rain again one thing that isn't shown in the movie is that dangerous side of Prince and yet it's there on Purple Rain we heard Wendy and Lisa talking a little bit about the song Darling Nikki
which stands out because it is one of the tunes that Prince worked on by himself alone in the studio. I think in that context, the tunes that are Prince solo songs work well with the group songs because they're, you know, it's an album. It's a different flow. This song became notorious when Tipper Gore, wife of the then soon-to-be future Vice President Al Gore, and her parents' music resource council made this public enemy number one, along with a handful of other tunes.
led directly to the stickering of You know, parental advisory warning, which so what? Right. That's like buy me instead because I'm a nasty record. You know, the thing that people forget is that major chain stores across America would not sell anything that had one of these stickers in retrospect.
I always thought Darling Nikki was a filthy song, and then I finally actually read the lyrics, and, like, there's nothing in them, you know? I mean, compared to an M, and Eminem has more nastiness in one couplet than Prince doesn't have any in this entire song.
Yes, it's a song about a groupie who is hot to trot who wants to jump Prince's bones. I find it not sexist or pandering at all because the woman is in charge throughout, and he is basically left as a limp dish towel on the floor at the end of this.
He doesn't know what hurricane named Nikki hit him. And there's a certain amount of self-deprecation in a lot of ways. It's like John Lennon's song, Norwegian Wood. It's about something happened to me last night. This woman ran me over. I feel like I got hit by a Mack truck. And now I'm going to sing. about it. So in that regard, it's a very sweet song, except there is this dirty, sexy, funky beat. So I'm going to play Darling Nikki. Here it is on Sound Opinions.
I met her in a hotel lobby. I had a meeting with a magazine. She said, how'd you like to waste some time? And I could not resist when I saw little Nicky grow. Darling Nikki by Prince and the Revolution from Purple Rain. We are in the midst of our Purple Rain classic album dissection. Mr. Cott, what are you going to lay on us?
Well, Jim, I'm going to go a little bit more mainstream, a song that actually got played on the radio. Darling Nikki, because of some of those objections that Tipper Gore raised, didn't get near any radio stations, but most of the rest of the songs on this record got played a lot on mainstream. mainstream radio. And one of the biggest hits, of course, was When Dubs Cry.
Listen to this song again and tell me what you hear and tell me that it doesn't sound absolutely contemporary. Like this song could have been released in 2009 and still fit on the commercial radio spectrum today. I think it shows what a brilliant ear Prince had for music and the kind of chances he was willing to take with his music at the time of his greatest commercial success. And I think that's why this album holds up. And what's missing from the song?
A bass line. Absolutely. Weird to have this huge dance track without a bass line. It is so amazing to hear that song now and realize the first thing that hits your ear is all the sense of space that's within the song. And he did pull that bass line out of there.
recorded with the band. The bass was in there. He pulled it out, and everybody said, well, what's missing here? And he says, exactly. That's what this song needed. I think that that adds sort of a weird vibe to this song, and at the same time emphasizes what made this album.
and this song in particular is so great. It opens with this very intense bit of guitar playing from Prince, and I think that's one of the factors that I think made Purple Rain such a great crossover record, because he not only had those R&B synths in... there, but he had that heavy guitar attack. And then he adds a vocal line underneath that guitar that almost sounds like a distorted grunt, a groan of some sort. It's Prince's voice clearly, but it's distorted to the point where it almost
Sounds like another instrument. Then he adds that drum machine that was such a big part of this song, and finally he comes in with that classic keyboard line over the top. Yet you have this amazing sense of an almost avant-garde track because it doesn't have that traditional...
bottom that you associate with a dance single. So when you talk about producers like Prince Paul, the Dust Brothers, Bomb Squad with Public Enemy, DJ Muggs with Cypress Hill, Timbaland, all these producers who in later decades brought... a sense of the avant-garde into the pop mainstream. I think they were all referencing what Prince was doing in the early 80s, and in particular on a track like this, which was a huge hit, but at the same time still sounds amazingly fresh and experimental.
It's When Doves Cry from Prince from the Purple Rain album on Sound Opinions. When we get back, we'll pay tribute to Prince and play a couple of tracks that have been released since the artist's death. That's in a minute on Sound Opinions. And we're back.
We're finishing up our classic album dissection of Prince's Purple Rain for the album's 40th anniversary, and we'd like to take some time to acknowledge the artist's passing. After that, we'll play a couple tracks that have been released since his death. You know, you ain't kidding, Greg. By my count, there have been 12...
albums since Prince's death, some of them deluxe editions of albums we already had, but with as many as three dozen or more new tracks added. And this is from a mountain of unreleased music that... That is supposed to be 8,000 songs? I'm not surprised at all. Since his death in 2016, people have been mourning him, but the music lives on. I was at Paisley Park three times, and each time there would be different engineers there.
And I go, hey, you're different from the guy I met last time. They go, well, Prince pretty much wears his engineers out. It's 24-7. He's in here all the time recording stuff. Prince would play me tons of tracks that never came out. I can only imagine how much stuff is in those vaults. It's an amazing overflow of material. And in some cases, I'm listening to some of the stuff and I'm going... This is pretty good. I hope this comes out someday. And we're starting to see some of that overflow.
You know, some of it is pretty good. Some of it is weird and at least illuminating of the artist's process. And some of it you're like, there's a reason. this wasn't released, right? You know, because we have to remember, despite that wonderful conversation that we just revisited with Wendy and Lisa, it was rare for him to take advice from even the most trusted people in his...
Right. You know, and somebody like Prince, all of these superstars need somebody to say, hey, hey, hey, Roger, maybe this one ain't as good. You know, maybe reconsider this or this one we need to work shed a bit more. Every artist needs that, and we say that as writers. We are made better by good editing, yes? Absolutely, and that's the role that Wendy and Lisa played in what many consider his greatest album, and the revolution early on.
in his career were those people. But the thing is he could play every instrument himself. He could pick up an instrument and make something, make us get music out of it, even if he wasn't particularly... Technically trained on that instrument. It was an incredibly instinctive musician. One of his engineers told me, what's his best instrument? She goes, it's his bass, his bass player. Nobody talks about that. He's an incredible bass player. He's got that feel for the funk.
You know, he used to talk to Larry Graham a lot. Remember that gig he did where he was just a band member at the Aragon Bowlroom in Chicago backing Chaka Khan and Larry Graham? And he was just in the background being a band member, playing bass, as I recall. And he loved it.
You know, at his concerts, you'd never see him. I mean, he'd pick up the guitar, but I saw an entire show where he never once touched his guitar. And people were going, well, how did he play the guitar? Well, he did all this other stuff while he was up there. The track I want to focus on from the posture... flood of music that's come out is from that 1999 box set that came out a few years ago. To me...
That had 35 additional tracks from that era. You know that we talk about artists having a certain... point in their career where they're extremely prolific. They're just writing, writing, writing. And as a result of that, you're going to cull a bunch of good tracks that make up a masterpiece. That was the case during the 1999 era. In fact, when I...
reviewed the record for the Chicago Tribune, I said, he's got a second album in here that should have come out. There's enough material here to warrant a second album that it was that good. And I also happened to talk to Des Dickerson, who was working with him around that time. The track I'm going to play is one that Dickerson had an incredible influence on. Dickerson, as the guitar player in the early incarnations of Prince's band, was a new...
He loved rock and roll, man, and he brought that vibe. to what Prince was doing. When you think about a Dirty Mind record, like that sort of vibe, Des was very influential. Well, and we had talked to him once in a way earlier incarnation of Sound of Biddy. Right. And, you know, he worked with Prince on this particular track.
They were in the studio together. It had a very new wave vibe to it. It was in a major key. It was funky, but it also had pop elements, soul things. He was bringing together all these musical elements. that didn't make sense on paper, but the way Prince did it with the falsetto vocals and this guitar thing that he had going on at the time, there was a fresh energy. Dickerson was deeply admiring of the way Prince took those
ideas and ran with it. And Prince, of course, ends up recording the entire track himself. He doesn't use anybody else but Prince. Cuts Des out, yeah. And he gets this amazing track called Can't Stop This Feeling I Got, which I thought, man, if you put that out.
At that time, this would have been a huge hit because it would have fit right in with that sort of new wave vibe that was going on in the early 80s and would have brought a new dimension to his music. Recorded in spring of 1982 at his home studio. pre-Paisley Park era, right? This is before Paisley Park was built. It later surfaces on Graffiti Bridge in 1990 in an expanded, more produced arrangement. But I want to focus on...
the one from the 1999 Super Deluxe set, which is really stripped down. It's just Prince in the studio from 1982. Here's Can't Stop This Feeling I Got from Prince. It ain't a Can't stop this feeling I got one of the overflow from the 1999 era, and man. It's a keeper for me. Yeah, it's interesting that you went to the stripped-down Prince, because so did I. When the originals album came out in 2019 on what would have been Prince's 61st birthday, it was restricted to title.
I think a lot of people didn't hear it. And now it's streaming everywhere, right? So the idea was these are the original demos of songs that Prince wrote. for other artists. A lot of them were people in his circle, right? The Time and Apollonia, Sheila E., you know, and then there were a couple of outliers, the Bengals, Manic Monday. We all love that. Nothing compares to you.
You know, immortalized by Sinead. Originally, he wrote it for the family. And then there's this one, Greg. Now, you are a Prince super duper fan. I don't know if you even know of this song. You're my love. All right. He wrote it for Kenny Rogers. Okay. Kenny Rogers, the gambler, right? The chart-topping country pop artist, right? And believe it or not, it comes out as a single, the B-side to a tune that Kenny recorded on his 14th album.
studio album with Ronnie Millsap. They don't make them like they used to. Goes to number one on the country charts. I say this in the year of Beyonce's Cowboy Carter, right? Prince got there first, okay? Even the Prince. Now, you know what Prince dedicated hardcore fans are like, right? The websites, the blogs, right? This is the first song he recorded under his nomade songwriter, Joey Coco, which would...
Which would surface numerous times. There were several, yeah. Yeah, there were several. Now, this is, you know, he writes this the same year, wrote it, recorded it, you know, out in Chanhassen at the home recording studio, out past... Minneapolis in the cornfields the same time as you should be mine so it's an artist at the height of his power it's not like he needs like extra cash I don't think what's he doing I'd love to read more about the story of how he
comes to be hooked up with Kenny Rogers. I couldn't find a whole lot. Illuminate us, if any of you Prince Superfans are listening. Is the song any good? See, I think the story was so great. I just wanted to tell it. And to illustrate, you know... Prince loved first and foremost music. He went past every genre. He had some interesting fondnesses, you know, like who would have expected that deep?
love of psychedelic pop from the mid-60s, right? Merging with the obvious love of funk. But, you know, country, it's a fairly straight country ballad, which is to say it's a little... cheesy. You know, when we hear Prince's version, you'll be able in your head to hear Kenny Rogers doing it. I just would love to hear this stuff, but it illustrates...
You know, first and foremost, the guy was a songwriter. If he'd never recorded a single thing, he would have given us so many immortal tunes that others would have made their own, Sinead famously. Anyway, You're My Love by Prince from the... Originals album. That's pretty darn original, ain't it, Greg? Well, you know, it's Prince doing his take on country, or what he thinks is country. His take on middle-of-the-road country pop.
He did love that stuff. And again, this reminds me of one of the tracks that Prince played for me when I was at Paisley Park for the first time was a cover of a Shania Twain song. So, you know, that country pop thing in the 90s was, you know, he was listening to that stuff. He goes, I can do something with that song. That's a great hook, a great melody. I like that song. But Kenny Rogers is 10 or 15 years past his prime when Prince comes to the rescue as Joey Coco. Yeah.
Was he 10 or 15? I think so. What era was this? What year was that? He records it at the same time as early 80s. Kenny Rogers was still pretty huge. Yeah, I get it. But The Gambler was what? Ten years before, probably. No, no, no. Five years. Not that much. Kenny Rogers was still pretty hot. The thing is... Prince was hot. People wanted Prince songs at that time. I guess Kenny's brother, you know, released the 13th Floor Elevators albums.
Well, there you go. Layla Rogers. Well, Kenny Rogers was a bit psychedelic, too. I know. What condition is your condition? Exactly. That wraps up our classic album dissection of Purple Rain and our... chat about posthumous prints.
As always, though, we want to hear from you. What do you think of that classic album? What do you think of what we've got from Prince since his passing? Leave us a voice message on our website, soundopinions.org, with your thoughts. Mr. Cott, what do we have a... the show next week next week jim it's uh it's the big one oh yeah
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