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Prince: Sign “O” The Times Revisited

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It’s possible that ‘Sign “O” The Times’ (the single) had the same effect on one generation of music lovers as ‘Waterloo Sunset’, ‘Arnold Layne’, ‘Purple Haze’ or ‘Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields’ (all released between March and May 1967) did on another.

Released on 13 March 1987, it’s hard to think of another top 10 single of the 1980s with as much as space in it (and uncharacteristically deep reverb on Prince’s vocals, presumably utilising the famous Sunset Sound echo chamber). Apart from his guitar and voice, it was all performed on a Fairlight synth/sampler.

Adorned with a back cover featuring Cat Glover, the single drew lyrical inspiration from various news items read in The LA Times during the week of Monday 14 July 1986: Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ program, the AIDS crisis, the investigation into January’s space shuttle disaster and the inner-city drug wars.

Lisa Coleman reports that she heard Prince’s amazing programmed drum groove blasting out of the venue speakers during a soundcheck in Denver in early July 1986.

Famously barred from releasing a three-album set by Warner Bros. – a process outlined in detail in Duane Tudahl’s wonderful recent book – Prince regrouped, quickly creating new material and then making the title track his new double album’s centrepiece.

Sign became the sound of summer 1987 in my corner of west London. Prince had been on my radar before – Parade was a definite sleeper – but this was it. And yet it still seems one of those ‘classic’ albums that gets talked about more than listened to.

So I listened to it. In one sitting. Probably for the first time in about five years. It’s probably even better than I remembered it. Has anyone ever captured a ‘party in the studio’ vibe better than Prince on ‘Housequake’ and ‘Play In The Sunshine’? And usually he only had Susannah Melvoin and engineer Susan Rogers for company. Of course this was in a sense a throwback to classic Little Richard and Chuck Berry, as well as James Brown tracks such as ‘Get Up Offa That Thing’.

He begins each side with groundbreaking tracks for him that took a while to record. We’ve discussed ‘Sign’. Then there was ‘It’, actually his first song exclusively using the Fairlight (apart from his guitar and vocals). Then ‘U Got The Look’, which was drastically sped up at the eleventh hour, ratcheted up a few semitones. Then ‘The Cross’, written and recorded the day after the infamous Los Angeles earthquake of 12 July 1986. Prince’s drums on this track speed up a lot – Rogers reportedly noticed but decided not to point it out.

Rogers also reports that she occasionally badgered Prince about the seemingly ‘lo-fi’ nature of these recordings, but he didn’t budge, and the album benefits from that ‘unfinished’ quality, even if it features a lot less bass than most modern music.

Sign features probably Prince’s greatest music, but we could all debate which tracks could have been left off. I could do without ‘It’, ‘Forever In My Life’, ‘Slow Love’, ‘The Cross’, ‘Adore’ (and would have preferred ‘Power Fantastic’, ‘Dream Factory’, ‘Crucial’, ‘Sexual Suicide’ and ‘Good Love’, but Prince had long jettisoned them by early 1987…).

Also why does the superb album design get short shrift? It’s a key part of the package. Hail photographer Jeff Katz and graphic designer Laura (niece of Tommy) LiPuma.

Book Review: Prince And The Parade & Sign ‘O’ The Times Studio Sessions by Duane Tudahl

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Could Prince have thrived in this current age of the ‘bedroom’ musician?

On the evidence of Duane Tudahl’s superb new book – documenting every single studio session that produced the classic albums Parade and Sign ‘O’ The Times, plus countless others too – the answer would be a resounding ‘no’.

As Tudahl points out in his wonderful follow-up to ‘The Purple Rain Studio Sessions’, Prince’s genius very much depended on a coterie of talented, fiercely committed back-room staff, particularly Susan Rogers, Peggy ‘Mac’ Leonard, Coke Johnson and David Rivkin (brother of Revolution drummer Bobby), not to mention the constantly-on-call band mainstays Eric Leeds, Matt Blistan, Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, all of whom are interviewed at great length.

But there’s absolutely no doubt who’s the boss and the book doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable truths about Prince’s methods and manners. However, it’s an embarrassment of riches for the fan and valuable historical document, not to mention a great, gossipy read.

We join the book at the beginning of 1985, smack bang in the middle of the Purple Rain tour. We learn how he quickly tired of its routine and looked ever forward, taking particular inspiration from Sheila E and other collaborators, ducking into studios around the country often straight after a gig, usually recording between 2am and 6am (Sheila’s album Romance 1600 was almost exclusively put together in this fashion).

We also learn that there were three huge equipment trucks on the tour – one that contained reels of tape, one with the stage gear and one that contained only Prince’s instruments, so that he could record anywhere, anytime.

Tudahl tells the whole story of the fascinating Los Angeles night of 28 January 1985, when Prince won three awards at the American Music Awards but then failed to repair to A&M Studios for the ‘We Are The World’ session (he offered a guitar solo to Quincy Jones but was turned down!), instead going out to party at Carlos ‘N Charlie’s Mexican restaurant.

The evening had huge repercussions and began a period of press barracking – he was even lampooned on ‘Saturday Night Live’, with Billy Crystal blacking up and singing ‘I Am The World’. Tudahl has access to a huge number of candid interviewees who provide a kind of making-of guide to other key side projects from the period: St Paul Peterson talks in detail about the recording of The Family and his subsequent fall-out with Prince; Jill Jones describes the painful, hugely drawn-out period working on her underrated 1987 solo record; Eric Leeds describes how the Madhouse albums came about.

Then there are the fascinating details: we learn the full story of how ‘Kiss’ came together, with Prince getting inspiration while playing basketball on the Sunset Sound court; how the expansion of The Revolution in February 1986 was somewhat of a result of Prince’s fascination with ‘twins’, probably inspired by his fiancée Susannah Melvoin’s relationship with her sister Wendy.

We get a real sense of Prince’s incredible progression as a musician, especially through the early days of 1986, and learn all of the relevant details about his collaboration with Miles Davis. We read how the US bombing of Libya on 14 April 1986 affected Prince, inspiring a talk with Jill Jones, the viewing of a film about Nostradamus called ‘The Man Who Saw Tomorrow’ and subsequent removal of some of the more frivolous material on Jill’s album. We also learn how the LA earthquake of 12 July 1986 inspired the classic song ‘The Cross’.

And there are fascinating nuggets about how he saw his own work – he reportedly told Eric Leeds and Susan Rogers on 29 July 1986 that he thought his lyrics to ‘Adonis And Bathsheba’ were possibly his best, though Leeds and Rogers certainly didn’t agree… Both reasoned that Prince protested too much only when he was unsure of himself.

There are also the fascinating machinations of how the Sign ‘O’ The Times album finally came together, after numerous false starts, tracklist changes and the Warner Bros. top brass – led by Lenny Waronker – refusing him a triple album. No detail is spared in the section on the ‘sacking’ of Wendy and Lisa, subsequent hiring of Cat Glover and reformatting of Prince’s live unit.

The period is an absolute whirlwind, and the mind boggles how much all of this studio time cost Prince and Warners. But finally the impression we are left with is that this book gets as close to the ‘real’ Prince as we are ever going to get – it’s not for the faint-hearted fan, but a fascinating, rewarding journey if you can take it.

As someone who regularly worked on a completely one-to-one basis with him, Susan Rogers often had the best seat in the house, and she offers rich insights into his family background and psychology. The section on Prince’s lonely recording session of Christmas Day 1985 will linger long in the memory.

But all of this is only scratching the surface. We haven’t even mentioned the making of ‘Under The Cherry Moon’. It’s another wonderful book and enormous achievement by Tudahl. We await ‘The Lovesexy/Batman Studio Sessions’ with baited breath.

‘Prince And The Parade/Sign ‘O’ The Times Era Studio Sessions’ is published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Author Duane Tudahl discusses the writing of the book in this podcast.

Prince: The Lovesexy Tour @ 30

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I haven’t kept many VHS cassettes, but two vids that definitely won’t be hitting the charity shop any time soon are Prince’s ‘Lovesexy Live: Volumes 1 and 2’ (currently unavailable on DVD…).

The Lovesexy tour kicked off 30 years ago this week, on 8 July 1988 at Paris’s Palais Omnisport. The seven-month jaunt, taking in Europe, North America and Japan, was arguably Prince’s greatest ever.

A spectacular in-the-round stage set was designed as a kind of ‘fantasy island’, half a playground and half a dreamscape, with curtains, a mini basketball court, brass bed, swing set and a Ford T-Bird which Prince ‘drove’ around the stage at the start of the show.

The Lovesexy tour band: left to right, Cat Glover, Dr Fink, Boni Boyer, Miko Weaver, Eric Leeds, Prince, Levi Seacer Jr., Matt Blistan, Sheila E

Taped on the last night of the European tour – 9 September 1988, at the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, Germany – ‘Lovesexy Live’ still makes for a thrilling watch. Firstly, the music: this band could turn on a dime. It’s hard to imagine any other set of musicians from the era pulling off the ‘Adore’/’Jack U Off’/’Sister’ medley. Prince’s guitar playing is at its best, with creamy, delay-drenched distortion and tight, tasty Telecaster.

And of all the ’80s ‘pop’ acts who incorporated jazz into their work, Prince may be the most successful. In collaboration with his superb horn section (Eric Leeds on saxes, Matt Blistan on trumpet), he often went back to the source: Ellington’s ‘Things Ain’t What They Used To Be’ and Charlie Parker’s ‘Billie’s Bounce’ infiltrate ‘Blues In C/If I Had A Harem’, and Blistan occasionally quotes from ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing’). Meanwhile Sheila E brings the Bay Area jazz/rock sound so beloved of Prince. Her solo feature is a highlight of his ’80s live work.

Then there’s the ‘story’. The Lovesexy show is structured like one of those old Warner Bros gangster pictures – in the first half (lucky for us), we see an ‘evil’ Prince, seduced by the sins of the flesh and tempted by drugs, money and criminality, giving him an excuse to dust off Black Album standouts ‘Superfunkicalifragisexy’ and ‘Bob George’.

Then there’s punishment, atonement and spiritual conversion. Yes, y’all, the second half of the show is ‘God stuff’. But if you don’t go along with it, the music is enough of a spiritual experience anyway. Anyway, Prince certainly seems genuinely transported during ‘Anna Stesia’ and ‘I Wish U Heaven’.

Europe couldn’t get enough of the tour. There were no less than seven nights at London’s Wembley Arena and a series of famous after-show gigs, particularly at the Camden Palace on 25 July when Mica Paris was picked out from the crowd to sing ‘Just My Imagination’ and Ron Wood joined Prince onstage for a memorable ‘Miss You’.

Ticket sales were not so good in the States (14 September to 29 November) where apparently Prince struggled to sell out many arenas, despite it being his first major tour there for over three years.

But normal service was resumed when the Japan leg kicked off in early February 1989. The last night of the tour on the 13th was apparently an exceptionally emotional one.

When Prince got home to Minneapolis, he commenced work on the ‘Batman’ soundtrack, another project about the duality of man. It’s not hard to see where his head was at as the ’80s drew to a close.