1982 Part 1: "Vanity 6," "What Time Is It?" And The Value Of Respect
1982 Part 1: "Vanity 6," "What Time Is It?" And The Value Of Respect
The creative process often involves just seeing what’s laying around and making something out of it. This is why so many artists, writers and musicians, when asked “Where do you your ideas come from” dodge the question. Mostly it’s as Terry Pratchett described how he got the idea for Discworld: “The idea had been lying in the lumber rooms of legend for centuries. All I had to do was grab it and run away before the alarms went off.”
It's the same with Prince. There are any number of stories out there about Prince’s need for immediate access to recording equipment. People say things like “he would record with a plastic comb and an old Coke bottle if that’s all that was around.” Prince’s longest-serving band member, Morris Hayes, talks about how impatient Prince was in the studio. Hayes would want to dial through sounds in his keyboards and make sure the tone was perfect, and Prince would stop him and say “That one. That’s the one, let’s go.” Even Prince himself, when asked how he decided whether to use a drum machine or acoustic drums on a song, said “Whichever the engineer can set up first.” Once he had an idea, he cast about for literally anything that might be vaguely correct to express that idea. That way of thinking was both an expression of his genius and his greatest Achilles’ heel. When you start treating people that way, things go wrong pretty quickly.
With that in mind, imagine what would almost certainly happen in early 1981 when Prince must have thought to himself, “I should do another project like I did the Time. Except this time, I’ll do a girl group.”
Spoiler Alert: The Following Story Is Sad
Once he had this idea, he did what he always did: Looked around and found a way to express that idea. So he grabbed Jamie Shoop, Susan Moonsie and Loreen Moonsie and began to plan their first album. How did he choose these women? They were around. They were (in order): Prince’s assistant, his girlfriend, and her sister.
The good news: all of them were available to participate in the project. The bad news: none of them were singers, or even had any singing experience.
This whole story, I have to say, makes me sad. There is a fundamental lack of respect for the people he intended to send on stage, and the whole purpose of this nonsense seems to be exploitative in nature. For example, from the beginning he envisioned them going on stage in lingerie. Oh! And he wanted to call them “The Hookers.”
FFS, Prince.
Vanity Enters The Scene
Brenda Bennett, Vanity, Susan Moonsie
The project went on hold when the “Controversy” Tour kicked off. At some point, Loreen Moonsie drifted away from the project. During the tour, a model (not a singer, mind you, a model) named Denise Matthews kept pestering the tour’s photographer for backstage passes until finally the poor guy relented. Prince met her, and immediately decided to put her in the girl group in Loreen’s place as the lead singer. In accordance with his penchant for renaming people, he decided her stage name would be Vagina. Denise decided she would absolutely not be going on stage with the name Vagina, so Vanity was used as a compromise solution.
Jamie Shoop also left the project, so Prince looked around, and grabbed one of the hair and makeup staff on the tour, Brenda Bennett, and put her in the group as well. Probably unbeknownst to Prince at the time, Bennett actually did have experience singing in a touring band.
The band acquired the somewhat nonsensical name Vanity 6.
Vanity 6 The Album
The process of recording “Vanity 6” was basically the same as Prince used with Morris Day, only with less input from the group. Again, objectification, not respect. To his credit, he again came up with some fantastic backing tracks, and did his best to write for the people who would be performing the music later.
What that means, in the final analysis is that there isn’t a whole lot of singing on the album. “Nasty Girl” was the most sung track, and is still the most listenable thing on the album, but frankly most of the album is just a solid half hour of cringe. One highlight is “Drive Me Wild” where Susan Moonsie gives a William Shatner style performance where she talks about how she’s “ A brand new convertible child / I’ve never been driven baby, you’re the first.”
It's weird, but you’d think those words were put in her mouth by a young man in his early 20’s with a throbbing 10 inch ego, would you?
Anyway.
Vanity 6 The Tour
Vanity 6 were the first opening act on the tour supporting “1999.” They performed in front of a curtain, behind which their band played. Their band, by the way, was The Time, playing an extra half hour set of music for (I think) no extra money. So for free, basically. Also backstage was a singer named Jill Jones, who sang Susan Moonsie’s parts, because Moonsie just could not do the parts live. Also by this time, Moonsie was no longer dating Prince. But Vanity was.
See? The whole thing is just….sad.
Time For Some Better Music
The Time had coalesced quickly into a live band that regularly upstaged Prince’s band on tour. This probably explains why The Time’s second album “What Time Is It?” was produced with just Prince and Morris in the studio again.
On the whole, it’s another good album, although not quite as good as the first album. That said, “Wild and Loose” and “777-9311” are excellent extensions of the style of the first album. The latter, in particular, is probably an underrated gem, if only for the fantastic mixture of acoustic drums and the Linn drum machine.
In Celebration Of: Jerome Benton
One thing that the band had going for it during the recording of “What Time Is It?” that it did not originally was the presence of Jerome Benton as a member of the band. He’s usually credited as either “valet” or “valet / percussion,” but really what he is there for is to be Morris Day’s hype man, and in this role he was (and remains) one of the best.
He originally started out as a roadie for the Time, carrying gear and fetching burgers. There was a moment in a song where Morris says, “Somebody bring me a mirror!” During a show, Jerome pulled a large mirror off a bathroom wall, and on cue brought the bathroom mirror out instead of the small hand mirror usually used in the bit. Morris rolled with it, and combed his hair while Jerome held the mirror, and just like that, 40-odd years of schtick was born. Jerome brought the final polish to Morris’ cartoon-character coolness, the last defining element of his stage persona. Jerome was immediately made a full member of the band and they became a fantastic comedy double act.
How Do You Write A Balllad For A Cartoon Crooner?
The one true ballad on “What Time Is It?” is still a staple of Morris Day’s live act, even though it wasn’t a huge hit. This is because there are few slow songs that can really contain Morris Day’s character as well as “Gigolos Get Lonely Too.”
Morris has described it as an attempt to do a ballad that also appealed to the men in the audience. I’m not sure it hits that mark in the way he means. That said, it’s an excellent example of how to walk the line between a straight and comic performance, ultimately producing a performance that is both at once.
Opening For Prince On The “1999” Tour
Truthfully, compared to the prior tour, this one seems to have generated far less backstage friction. Only one incident truly stands out. On March 24, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis missed the gig. They had been producing another artist (against Prince’s explicit order to not do so), and they were snowed in, unable to get a flight to the San Antonio show. Prince stepped in on bass, playing off stage during the Time’s set while Jerome mimicked playing bass, and Lisa Coleman filled in on keys.
The result is that Jam & Lewis were fired from The Time. Who fired them is up for some debate, if you’re willing to assume Prince wouldn’t lie about something like this. Prince said that as The Time was Morris’ band, not his, he did not and could not fire anyone from that band. Everyone else – Morris Day, Jam and Lewis themselves, the other members of The Time who were in the room and even the engineer in the studio where it happened – say Prince fired them.
The Time persisted only a while longer, but the classic lineup would not be there for the band’s real breakthrough. But that is a few weeks from now.
NEXT WEEK: Prince’s first monster hit lands on an unsuspecting world as “1999” sets the stage for the rest of Prince’s career.
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