1982 Part 2: I Could Have Sworn It Was Judgement Day: “1999”
1982 Part 2: I Could Have Sworn It Was Judgement Day: “1999”
Party Over
I have talked before about my trouble keeping up with these essays, but there is another problem that will become clearer over the course of the next decade worth of Prince’s music. It’s often difficult to tell the story of any particular album or project in isolation. So many things happen simultaneously. A brief example without spoiling anything to come is the year 1985.
In March 1985, the Purple Rain tour was nearing its end, and there is a recently released live album that documents the show from Syracuse, NY. During the Purple Rain tour, the next album, “Around The World In A Day” was produced. It was released in April, only a few weeks after the Syracuse show. Meanwhile, Prince’s next film was also in pre-production. Shooting for “Under The Cherry Moon” would begin in early June 1985. So my dilemma is always to determine what was important. In the above example, what is the most important moment of the first six months of 1985?
The point is it’s very rare in Prince’s life to find a single moment that changes the course of everything after. That’s why I’m going to devote so much time to a weekend in October 1981. Without it, Prince would probably have struggled for his breakthrough crossover moment for years. Warner probably would not have been willing to produce the film “Purple Rain,” even under the tenuous arrangement they finally agreed to, and the rest of his career would be unrecognizable. Too bad it was such a crappy weekend for Prince and the band.
No Satisfaction
At some point during the “Dirty Mind” tour, Mick Jagger caught Prince’s show and loved it. He also understood the realities of the music business and knew that Prince’s daring approach to basically everything meant that Prince just wasn’t getting in front of the number of people he should have. Mick decided to help out with that and invited Prince to open for the Rolling Stones for two dates in L.A.
Opening for the Stones is one of the most infamous jobs in popular music, second only to opening for Iron Maiden. It’s a Faustian bargain. It’s not like anyone can really say “no” to opening for the Rolling Stones, and yet you say “yes” knowing full well that every single one of the multitude you will play for has no desire whatsoever to see you that day. At best the audience sees you as an annoyance – a minor impediment to the beer vendor hearing your order, perhaps. At worst the audience sees you as an insurgent presence – an obstacle to seeing the Rolling Stones that must be removed.
On October 9, 1981, Prince walked out in front of almost 95,000 people to open for the Rolling Stones. Billled to follow Prince was George Thorogood and the Destroyers, then the J. Geils Band. Prince was definitely the odd man out on the bill. It took about ten minutes for the crowd to turn on him.
Note the visible debris to the right of Prince and under the left hand monitor cabinet
The audience was mostly white, mostly working class, and mostly male. Among them was a strong contingent of the Hell’s Angels, old “friends” of the Stones since Altamont, and I’m sure we all know how well that went.
It was Mark Brown’s first gig with Prince’s band, and he insists it wasn’t instantly ugly. A quick look at the setlist gives a few clues as to what may have offended the rowdier members of the audience. First was “Bambi,” which while somewhat risqué, did have that mighty guitar riff driving the song, then “When You Were Mine,” which was seemingly expressly written for this kind of audience. It seems like Prince was trying to structure the set and choose songs that would play for the people he knew would be out there. Why, oh why, then did he choose to follow “When You Were Mine” with “Jack U Off?”
The predictable result was lots of jeering, some entirely hateful slurs thrown at Prince, followed by cups, beer bottles, and other rubbish. Prince made it through part of “Uptown,” and then turned and left. Morris Day was there, and said Prince was “unprepared” for and “shocked” by the violent reaction of the crowd. Prince was in tears as he fled the arena on his way to the airport to go back to Minneapolis.
The show’s promoter and Mick himself both called Prince, and finally they and Dez Dickerson convinced Prince to come back for the second night he was contracted for. On Sunday 11 October, Prince went out again. Unfortunately, local radio had covered the story of Prince being driven off stage quite heavily in the day between shows, which had the (I presume) unintended side effect of essentially declaring open season on Prince. The second night was considerably worse than the first. In addition to food and drink, there were shoes flung at the band, and a somebody yeeted a full bottle of Jack Daniels at Prince, which fortunately missed its target. The second gig, like the first one, was cut short.
Note the much greater level of junk on the stage. It got much worse than this but this seems to be the last picture taken before the really heavy stuff was launched at the band.
I Can't Stop, I Ain't Got No Brakes
He rarely spoke about those gigs, especially to the press. The only quote I could find was: “The reason I left was because I didn’t want to play anymore. I just wanted to fight. I was really angry.” Which does not illuminate his thought processes much. However, his actions following those events are revealing. When he left the arena Sunday night, he swore he would never open for anyone ever again, and he never did.
He also withdrew from engaging the media. There are not many interviews with Prince out there, and those that did finally see print are not necessarily reliable sources of information. Most of the time, Prince forbade taking notes or recording the conversation, a process which produced something closer to Gonzo Journalism than Entertainment Tonight. The journalist could record what it felt like to talk to Prince, could give a general feeling of his mood at the time, but it would be unreasonable to expect direct, accurate quotations.
The last effect of the ill-fated Rolling Stones gigs was a tremendous acceleration of Prince’s output. He took that humiliating experience and somehow turned it into creative fuel. It sounds like the kind of crappy motivational poster that I violently disagree with when I say it like that, but I believe in a strong pragmatic streak in Prince’s mind, and from that perspective, the increased output makes sense. If he never wanted to open for anyone ever again, he was going to need hits. Lots of hits. Big ones. Crossover hits. And he needed them before he went on tour again.
On October 27 1982, twelve months after he was driven offstage in Los Angeles, “1999” was released, and Prince became one of the biggest pop stars in the world.
Just Roll The Tape, Peggy
With a few exceptions, from here on out, Prince never went into the studio for sessions directed toward any specific album, unless it was for the purpose of mixing, editing, or occasionally, when he needed a single song for the purpose of filling out an album (one true exception to this being ‘Diamonds And Pearls). So it’s not really accurate to talk about the 1982 recording sessions as being “for 1999.”
Prince’s already-imposing work ethic basically went Super-Saiyan after the “Controversy” tour. Prince’s engineer at the time, Peggy McCreary, was permanently on standby, and recording at the Kiowa Trail house was nearly constant.
The sheer number of songs recorded between January and August 1982 is daunting. For example, the week before I write one of these essays, I try to listen to all the material I intend to write about. I confine myself to official releases only, for a variety of reasons, but mostly to keep the volume of material manageable. For this entry, it took me eight and a half hours to get through it all. If you drop out the two hours of concerts that are included in that number, it’s still six hours. And that’s just stuff officially credited to Prince. I don’t mind saying here, in print, that I have no idea how I’m going to deal with 1987, but I hope to be able to apply whatever lessons I learn there to the much larger problem of 1993-1995.
This period of time produced “1999,” which was a double album, Vanity 6’s first and only album, and The Time’s second album “What Time Is It?” and a sizeable number of other songs. Some of them were meant for one of the above three projects, and some of them were seemingly recorded for the purpose of clearing an idea out of his head. Occasionally, there were songs that I personally think he created only to try out a new technique or to test the limits of what a piece of technology could achieve.
There is a feeling, both on the album itself and in the “outtakes” that Prince’s plan for crossing over into pop territory involved developing a sound that would identify him in an instant. In “Purple Music,” a song first officially released on the Super Deluxe version of “1999,” Prince says this explicitly: “Don’t need no cymbals / No saxophone / Just need to find me a style of my own.” One of the hallmarks of that sound was the Linn LM-1 drum machine, which would define the sound of Prince’s percussion for the rest of the 1980s.
In Celebration Of The Linn LM-1
Legend has it that soon after the “Controversy” tour, Prince came to rehearsal with a box under his arm. He handed the box to Bobby Z and said something like “This is your drum kit for the next album. Learn how to use it.” Then he left the room. I’m inclined to doubt Bobby Z’s introduction to the Linn played out exactly like that, but it’s pretty clear that the sentiment was more or less accurate. More than any other album Prince produced, “1999”’s drums were powered by the Linn.
I’m not going to spend much time or space talking about the LM-1, but if you’re at all interested in the history of EDM or the evolution of pop music, it is well worth your time to look into it. Prince most likely went for the Linn for three reasons: first, it was new; second, it could be programmed in advance to play whatever rhythm you wanted or hooked up to triggers and “played live;” third and most importantly: Stevie Wonder had one.
The LM-1 was the first drum machine to use samples of acoustic drums rather than fully synthesized drum sounds. This produced a unique effect: the individual drum impacts sounded close to live drums, but the patterns and speeds felt like computerized drums. For an artist like Prince, who liked combining ideas normally thought to be opposites, having drums that sounded like a robot playing live drums had a natural appeal.
As a side note, if you want to hear Prince’s use of the Linn in a situation close to isolation, listen to “When Doves Cry.” For a large part of the song, the arrangement consists entirely of the Linn and Prince’s voice.
Some Notes On Those Who Failed To Make The Cut
Especially since his death, there has been a lot of interest in the contents of Prince’s vault of unreleased music. While he was still alive, he would occasionally refer to the amount of material he had shelved. When Arsenio Hall asked him in 2014 about the vault and how much material was in it, Prince replied “You would look different when it was finished. It would take a looong time.”
He was not exaggerating.
The first taste of what still remained in the vault came in 2017 when the deluxe edition of “Purple Rain” was released, but to be honest, that release was positively anemic compared to the Super Deluxe version of “1999.” Released two years later, it set the standard for any “Expanded” releases that would come after it. The whole thing is on Tidal, but if you listen to it and like it, I really would suggest picking up a hard copy, if only for the DVD of a show from Houston late in the “1999” tour.
“1999 Super Deluxe” includes a little over two hours of previously unreleased material. I won’t go over each song (partially because some of them are early versions of songs released later), but here are some highlights.
Rearrange
Several of the vault tracks in this release are the kinds of songs that I usually don’t care for too much simply because they are “songs about music” that come off as manifestos or even advertisements for themselves. The quintessential song of this type is thankfully not a Prince song, but if you’ve ever heard “Disco Inferno” you know what I’m talking about.
“Rearrange” works for me in spite of this, partially because it’s so catchy and has something more to say than simply “my new music sounds cool and unique.” It’s not the best song in the set, but it has stayed in my jogging playlist.
Yah, You Know
Like many of these outtakes, I can understand how this one did not make the cut. It simply doesn’t sound different enough. In fact, it sounds like several other songs by other artists. I was having trouble coming up with the song I thought it sounded like, so I played it for my partner. She came up with at least two songs, neither of which was the one I was thinking of. Basically, if you had a Venn diagram of “Freezeframe” by J Geils Band, “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell and the Blues Brothers cover of “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love,” somewhere in the middle you’d find “Yah, You Know.” Even so, it’s catchy as hell, and a rare sardonic Prince track.
Possessed
The first time I saw “Purple Rain” it was on a VHS tape I bought from the bargain bin at Wal Mart. The picture and sound were not exactly pristine, even by VHS standards, but even so, I was glued to the screen. So much of the music was a little different from the albums I had, and then there were songs I had never heard before.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s mostly a long form music video, and even conversational scenes are often shot inside a night club with a music video more or less happening in the background. In one of those scenes, I heard a little five-note run I hadn’t heard before. I rewound the tape and listened again. It was one of the best musical hooks I’d ever heard. I had no idea what the song was. I couldn’t find a title that sounded right in the list of songs in the credits.
It was the late 90’s, so after 45 minutes or so on the internet, I found a geocities fansite with a clip art starfield, a muddy swodge of pixels I presumed to be an image of Prince and a comic sans banner reading “He writes SO MANY SONGS!” and absolutely nothing else.
So that was unhelpful.
There was one other fan of Prince I knew in my program at university. So I asked Moon Baby (yup, dude’s name was Moon Baby) and he happened to know that the song was called “Possessed.” He also had an mp3 (from Napster!) of the song. It was a very low-quality bootleg, but the hook was unmistakable, and there was also one of those patented Prince raggedy rhythm guitar lines. Somehow, I got the impression that the song was a B-Side to some single from “Purple Rain” but I could never find it released anywhere.
“Possessed” became my White Whale.
In 2017, “Possessed” was included on the Deluxe version of Purple Rain. I was elated. Finally, a proper, clean version of my favorite unreleased song. Alas. The version included was a re-recorded version from a session at Sunset Sound in 1984 (the same one that produced “When Doves Cry” I believe). It felt like a sanitized disco version of the song. This is, in fact, the one I heard on my VHS tape, but the quality was so low on both the tape and Moon Baby’s bootleg that I never noticed they were different.
Finally, the “real thing” was released on the Super Deluxe of “1999”. And yes, it’s everything I thought it was all those years. It is, more than any other abandoned song of the 80’s, a hit song. Seriously, this is a hit. Song. How did this not make it onto an album or the B-Side of literally ANY single? I’m still gobsmacked. If there is no other Prince outtake you ever listen to, listen to the 1982 version of “Possessed” and be completely baffled at his failure to release it during his lifetime. Apart from joining the Jehovah’s Witnesses, this is probably Prince’s greatest, stupidest mistake.
And Now, Those Who Did Make The Cut
As an introductory note, it’s worth noting that this is the first album in this series that I can recommend without any kind of reservation or qualification. “1999” is a great album through and through. Every song may not be of equal quality, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and altogether it’s amazing. It fully deserves its classic status.
1. 1999
The first song on the album was also the last recorded. When Prince played the album for his management, they didn’t feel like there was a lead single. Plenty of other songs would be hits, but they didn’t feel like there was a thematically unifying song that could carry the banner for the whole album. Prince told them they were crazy, they didn’t know what they were talking about, and time would prove them wrong.
Then a few days later he came back with “1999,” placed it first on the album and titled the album after it. I doubt he ever apologized for being wrong.
It absolutely encapsulates the rest of Prince’s work in the 1980’s. The scratchy wah-wah funk guitar line coupled with the straight ahead rock n roll beat, the David Bowie-esque flirtation with disaster, and the strong participation of his backing band (not quite yet called “The Revolution,” in spite of the rumors) all combine to essentially herald Prince’s arrival as a pop star, and one of the Holy Trinity of the 1980’s music scene.
2. Little Red Corvette
There is a strong influence of Lisa Coleman on the keyboard lines in “Little Red Corvette” that I don’t think is talked about enough. When she left the band, you didn’t get these sorts of chords in arrangements. She had a way of smearing the chords together that worked for songs like these, and provided a nice counterpoint to Fink’s staccato runs. Also of notes on this track is the guitar solo, partially because it’s often misattributed to Prince. In fact, it’s Dez Dickerson’s guitar work featured on the track, which is interesting in itself. It’s not often you have a guitarist as good as Prince willing to hand off the guitar solo. If you check out Dez’s work beyond his time with Prince, you will see that the confidence Prince had in his abilities was not misplaced.
3. Delirious
This is a track that was really better live than on the album, as good as the album version is. The album version is a swirling, chirping cartoon of a pop hit, but when live it took the sliding bass line that’s almost buried in the mix and brought it forward, added an extra helping of swing, turning the song into a barrelhouse boogie that brought the house down every time. Which isn’t to say I don’t like the album track. I never skip it when it pops up on my jogging playlist.
4. Let’s Pretend We’re Married
It really says something when the first four tracks of an album are all able to be released as singles. The driving synth bass with the delicate, almost lilting melody makes for one of the most underrated songs in Prince’s discography.
5. DMSR
Ah, the mighty DMSR. Even when he was reluctant to sing any of his racier songs, somehow he still couldn’t quite leave DMSR behind. I think it had a lot to do with the bass line, which is about as pure Larry Graham as Prince ever got. It was still in the set as of 2005, when I saw him in Chicago, and it still blew the roof off the dump.
6. Automatic
If there was ever a true attempt by Prince to create a “robot rock” track, this is definitely it, and it works like a dream. It sounds like a combination of Gary Numan, Little Richard and a half-gallon of ecstasy. At nine and a half minutes, it is a bit long, but on a double album you can get away with things like that.
7. Something In The Water (Does Not Compute)
The frantic, jittery nature of this track makes it one of the most emotive of Prince’s early performances. Possibly due to the nature of the arrangement, it does not seem to have been played live much on tour until the 2000’s when it saw a resurgence, especially when 3rd Eye Girl came on the scene, so expect to hear more on this hidden gem….in about 8 months or so.
8. Free
As Prince’s politically naïve, overly hopeful ballads go, this one pretty much takes the biscuit. It’s not really my sort of thing but it’s hard to deny it’s effective. It definitely makes you want to sway back and forth with your lighter in the air. It’s a better song than “I’m Proud To Be An American,” but if I heard some graying country-western washup croaking this one out in Branson, I would not be surprised.
9. Lady Cab Driver
A great song, with a hard-driving drum line, some fantastic guitar work and clever lyrics, but it was soon (and rightly) superseded by other songs. It’s a shame, because it’s not often Prince writes songs at “street level” so to speak.
10. All The Critics Love U In New York.
Obviously written as a response to his position as a critical darling, it’s one of Prince’s best songs that was never a hit, and it stayed in rotation for Prince’s entire life. You could always find it popping up in setlists any time Prince was suddenly talked about as having made a “comeback.” The lyrics definitely indicate how Prince felt at this time in his life about people who wanted to pat him on the back. “They won’t say that you’re naïve / If you play what you believe / In New York.”
11. International Lover
Oh Lord. This is perhaps the one true stinker of the album. I’m not sure the song itself is bad, it’s just not a great fit for Prince. I’m not sure why he reclaimed it from Morris Day, for whom it was obviously originally intended. There is an alternate take on the Super Deluxe “1999” where the melodramatic line “This is your pilot, Prince speaking” was clearly spoken as “This is your pilot, Morris.” I assume this song was replaced by “Gigolos Get Lonely Too.” It’s a shame, because it’s clear at this moment in his career, Prince could easily have come up with a better ballad in no time. And In fact, he did, as we’ll soon see.
B-Sides
Increased output in general naturally led to a proliferation of non-album B-Sides, and this group of singles had some of the best.
How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?
Once again we have a song so good it was almost criminal it didn’t rate its own single. In this case, however, I completely understand why it failed to make the album. This is a very spare song, a plaintive blues banged out on an electric piano, the only embellishments being Prince’s voice and the slow rhythm of a single, muted bass drum. The recording is practically live: you can hear Prince’s feet on the pedals of the piano. If the true test of a song is in the number of ways it can be reinterpreted, then “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?” passes with flying colors. Prince himself often performed it with fuller arrangements, and Alicia Keys in particular does an amazing cover that deserves a listen.
Horny Toad
This one definitely came from the same vibe that produced “Jack U Off” and later “Courtin’ Time” this song is the classic piano boogie song filtered through the lens of New Wave, and if the lyrics are puerile, the song itself is so danceable you barely notice.
Irresistible Bitch
Another song that, while problematic, is a stone cold banger. There are several versions of this song that were released, the version that appeared on the B-Side of “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” is a re-recording one in September 1983 during sessions for songs later to be included on “Purple Rain.” It also features Wendy Melvoin on backing vocals, a very early appearance on a Prince recording.
The "1999" Tour
The tour supporting “1999” was Prince’s first time routinely filling arenas, and it criss-crossed the U.S. from the winter of 1982 to April of 1983. It changed Prince’s career, and also his outlook on his work, how to create it, release it and promote it. The production value of this tour compared to his last was remarkable. From a simple proscenium setup with a standard rock n roll backline to a multi-leveled set where Prince would descend rom the ceiling as an upper deck was lowered down behind the drums. Poles were provided for him to slide down to the main level of the stage. A bed rose and fell on the upper level as well, with Prince demonstrating suggestive yoga poses as it descended below.
Now that he knew he could generate this level of success, exposure and enthusiasm, Prince’s mind naturally moved on to whatever would come after this. How do you get bigger than filling arenas? What more can you do? It seems reasonable to assume he looked to the mega stars of the past. What did Elvis do once he could fill any stadium he wanted?
Why of course he went to the movies….
NEXT WEEK: A hat trick of Purple Rain era associated artists! Appolonia 6, The Time and the fantastic Sheila E.
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