The BBC has a great chart summarizing Prince’s 30-year career. I completely agree with them on how impressive he is live and inconsistent on recordings. His performance at Coachella sounded interesting according to what I read from the AP story. Too bad his company is rather hasty with the C&Ds over people trying to show his performance of Radiohead’s “Creep.”
Still, it’s his birthday. I don’t want to wrangle over copyright matters. Prince is a very talented guy who helped put Minneapolis-St. Paul on the music map with the Replacements and Husker Du in the Eighties.
He’s a complicated person like everyone else. However, I think his positive attributes easily outweigh all the stories about his fickleness and the name debacle in the Nineties. Trust me, do a quick a experiment to see how many Hippies rush to the defense of John Lennon when you bring up that guy’s flaws.
I will close a the story explaining why my opinion of Prince changed.
Originally, I thought he was another boring R&B artist in the Eighties. Going to a high school with a large Black population in 1984-85 made his music hard to avoid too. Since Michael Jackson had become a worldwide star, Prince was now their guy—like how all cliques have an “in joke” or certain music they enjoy which makes them stand apart from everyone else. For example, Goths had The Cure until Standing on the Beach, Metalheads had Metallica until …And Justice for All, so on. Prince was a style-over-substance artist to me. Another act propped up by MTV until the channel’s attention was diverted to the next big thing.
Two things happened to change my feelings of annoyed to respectful. Musically it was his shift after Purple Rain. It wasn’t apparent to me until Sign ‘O’ the Times but Prince began to incorporate Psychedelia, Power Pop and Rock to his work or I finally started to notice it. This probably expanded his fan base yet alienated many Blacks which was inevitable due to the growth of Rap in my opinion.
The other shift was more impressive. In 1986, MTV sponsored a contest to promote Prince’s new movie and album. At a certain time, the network would display a special phone number and the 10,000th caller would win the opportunity to have him debut Under the Cherry Moon in his or her town, city or wherever. Afterwards, Prince and the Revolution would perform at an exclusive after-show party for the winner and guests. Most people were cynical on the outcome. MTV is based in NYC and the odds did favor this taking place in a major metropolitan area—or they’d fix it to make it so. Surprisingly, MTV kept the actual result. I’m sure there was still a collective “Crap!” amongst the MTV employees when the 10,000th call came from Lisa Barber of Sheridan, WY. Thankfully we skeptics were proven wrong. What could’ve been a standard fish-out-of-water comedy turned into the coolest public relations move Prince ever did. I caught his arrival at the town’s airport. Martha Quinn was there to interview him after he debarked from his private jet. Then in the middle of Quinn’s usual inane questions, Prince said “excuse me” and ran back to greet the crowd behind the fence, shaking hands as he went. Later on I saw MTV’s live update of the party from Sheridan’s Holiday Inn where it looked pretty lively. If it were a mere publicity stunt, then Prince should’ve been given an Oscar because no one could fake the level of excitement and sincerity he showed. Too bad he didn’t put it into the movie. It tanked.
On the upside, the coinciding album Parade contained one of his biggest hits, “Kiss.” Which was incidentally covered by today’s other birthday boy, Tom Jones, who is now 69.