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“
P
rince was very excited,” The
Revolution’s drummer Bobby
Z remembers of the night
they introduced Purple Rain to
the world. “He was saying, ‘We’re going to
make history.’ That’s what he was pushing
us to do.”
Prince and his newly christened band
were in the dressing-room of First Avenue,
the black-painted lobby of a former
Minneapolis bus depot which Bobby
recalls as a “revered” stage for the city’s
musicians. While Prince regularly tried out
new songs there, on any given night in its
smaller annex, The Replacements, Hüsker
Dü or Soul Asylum might be playing too.
On August 3, 1983, Prince and the
Revolution broke off from filming Purple
Rain and recording its soundtrack album to
play a 45-minute benefit gig for their
choreographer, Loyce Holton. They ended
with Purple Rain, a slow-burning,
10-minute ballad which began on acoustic
guitar and erupted into an electric frenzy.
With minimal overdubs, the performance
closed the album and film which sent
Prince onto 80s pop’s Olympus. Purple Rain
also completed the musician’s mission to
reclaim rock for black musicians, and fuse
it with anything else he felt like.
“One of the great successes we
experienced was not to just be thought of
as a black R&B band,” Revolution
keyboardist Lisa Coleman believes. “We
had struggled for a couple of years, trying
to write one song for a black music station,
and one for a rock station. But Purple Rain
the song was played on every kind of radio
station, from country to Americana to rock
ballad. And it’s just so perfect that it came
from Prince, who nobody knew what to
make of. Are you serious? Who is this guy?”
The question went to Prince’s heart,
Coleman believes: “He never wanted to
lose his black audience, that was really
important to his identity. Because even
within the black community, there was
tension about how light his skin was,
whether or not he was gay. Can we really
call him one of us? That mentality was
important to him, but he also was trying to
grow beyond that. I think it was a struggle
for him, all of his life.”Having been reduced to tears by bigoted
Stones fans when he supported them in
androgynous garb in 1981, the Purple Rain
album sleeve saw him astride a motorbike
sporting a Little Richard pompadour,
while on the record he was a Hendrix-like
virtuoso, in defiant riposte to music which
had buried its black roots.
The Revolution first heard Purple Rain at
the Minnesota warehouse where they
recorded most of the album. “It was on
Highway 7, out in the boondocks,” says
Coleman. “He was messing around on
guitar, calling out the chords. And then
Wendy [Melvoin, the band’s teenage
rhythm guitarist and backing singer]
started playing the chords in her Wendy
way, and he loved it! The intro is Wendy,
and her voicings on those chords are
beautiful and Joni Mitchell-esque. I came
up with the string parts. During the course
of that day – maybe a
day or two? – it just
came out of us.”
A Record Plant
mobile recording
truck was outside
First Avenue when
they turned up that
August. Inside, it was
hot as hell. “It was
pushing 90 degrees Fahrenheit and dense
with cigarette smoke,” Bobby Z explains.
“It was a toxic environment.” Coleman
remembers the club being “packed with
people”. The band were exhausted from
the album and film, adding to the
heightened atmosphere. They’d also be
playing music the crowd hadn’t heard.
After Melvoin’s opening acoustic
chords, Bobby Z’s drums – mostly
acoustic, and triggering Linn drums later
added to in the mix – accompanied Prince’s
singing for the first two minutes. “It’s just
a back-beat and him from his guts,” Bobby
says. “It’s just so raw for him. I remember
those two minutes. Because the room is
silent except for the pattern you’re playing.
He was in the moment, and you’re in it
with him, and it was a special place to be. It
was a whole different planet.”
“That night it was on fire,” says Coleman,
“and nobody’s singing along. It was just sodifferent for Prince, almost a country song.
But it got to them by the end, and his guitar
solo was so beautiful. I get chills thinking
of it. I always kept my eyes on Prince, in
case he needed something, but I could see
the faces and wide eyes in the front. It was
like a kid seeing Santa Claus.”
Coleman knew how they felt. “I
remember Prince’s guitar solo affected me.
And then when the ‘woo-hoo-hoo-hoo’ part
came in, and we got the crowd to sing it,
that was mind-blowing. Plus I was having
this emotional reaction to the beauty of the
music,” she laughs. “Just keep playing your
part! Pay attention...”
There’s as much tension as release in this
atypical rock epic (nearly nine minutes
long on the album, after Prince cut a verse).
Coleman’s string arrangement – played on
her Obie FX keyboard on the night, with
a string quartet added in the studio – hasa classical, calming quality, as Prince’s
voice and guitar clamber for the heights.
“It is that contrary motion that made it
cool,” Coleman considers. “The verses are
so intimate and personal, like he’s trying to
talk to you. He liked the strings coming in
slowly, and their warmth. And then, at the
end vamp, where they’re going down and
he’s going up, maybe it’s keeping it from
flying away completely. It’s repetitive, and it
keeps saying, ‘I’m here with you.’ And then
his guitar solo is pleading, ‘Please be here.’”
“You’ve got this dirge or ballad beat
behind it,” Bobby Z reflects. “You’ve got
pleading in the vocals. You’ve got agility
and spins and pirouettes in the guitar solo.
And then the strings pull your heart-
strings. Purple Rain is like a Stairway To
Heaven. It’s non-religious, but people feel
reverent about it. Even if you walk in on a
casino and some crappy band are playing
it, it still has something different.”It was the epic ballad that reclaimed rock for black musicians, enjoying airplay everywhere from
country to rock radio. Lisa Coleman and Bobby Z look back on Prince’s masterpiece...Prince & The Revolution
Purple Rain
“Purple Rain is like a Stairway
To Heaven. It’s non-religious but
people feel reverent about it.”
Words: Nick HastedPRINCE’S ACTING
CLASS: “OUR
TEACHER PUT ON
JANE FONDA
EXERCISE VIDEOS
EVERY DAY”
By the time of his
breakthrough with
1999 , Prince was
committed to pop
videos, and the
creation of the
Revolution as a band of
outrageous characters.
The Revolution were
also signed up for
acting and dance
classes. “We drove our
acting teacher so
crazy,” Bobby Z laughs,
“that eventually he just
put on Jane Fonda
exercise videos every
day! But he would also
give us skits, and
Prince was part of the
acting classes. He was
an excellent student!”
Such apparent idiocy
was crucial preparation
for the big screen.
“With Prince it wasn’t
guess-work,” says
Bobby. “Yeah, he was
magical, yeah he had
all these skills. But he
did the real work too.”24 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
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