 |  |
| Purple Haze In the 1980s, it wasn't something you had to explain. Back in the days of Purple Rain, 15 years before 1999 would become a quaint memory, everybody liked the oddball guy with the Little Richard hairdo and fondness for women's skivvies. And why not? Songs like "Controversy," "1999," "When Doves Cry" and "Purple Rain" not only pushed the boundaries of pop music in new directions, they drew all kinds of booty to the dance floor. Blending funk, new wave, rock and pop, they were irresistible nuggets of well-crafted grooves, bolstered by the tiny guy's James Brown-meets-Jimi Hendrix stage moves and a sense of style that mashed New Romantic frills with '70s pimp daddy flair. Weird as Prince could be then, he wasn't nearly as androgynous as Michael Jackson or sexually obvious as Madonna. And with his mastery of guitars, keyboards, percussion and voice, he came across as a bonafide musical genius beneath all the puffery. Of course, things change. And as pop music fans turned towards the hardankle power of rap and the disheveled abandon of alternative rock, they had less patience for a pop star in stilletto heels and an unresolved God complex. Didn't help that the hits stopped coming, either. 1988's Lovesexy was an adventurous record. But it unfolded like a 70-minute acid trip — especially compared to the compact pop tunes on his previous albums (the tiny tyrant didn't even allow track markers to be placed on the CD, forcing listeners to experience it from beginning to end everytime they put the disc in their players). And then there was that thing about his name. Let's just say it takes a lot of, um, confidence to change your name to something people can't pronounce (one newspaper where I once worked even created a special symbol in their word processing system just to accommodate the little twerp). But somehow, through it all — Graffiti Bridge, an oddball marriage, his insistence on releasing several uneven albums a year when one great one would do — I remain a Prince fan. For me, it's a simple equation. No pop artist in recent memory has combined composing, performing, musicianship, producing chops and style like Prince. He can write and produce a classic ballad like "Purple Rain," play a guitar solo like Jimi Hendrix, do the splits like James Brown, play a keyboard solo as bad as Billy Preston and do it all with an unmussed coif while wearing heels high as a Rockette's. Let's see Michael Jackson try some shit like that.
True enough, my devotion has led to some embarassing episodes — like trying to defend the 3-CD exercise in musical masturbation that turned out to be 1996's Emancipation (I still think there was a kickass two-CD set in there, somewhere). Or paying $30 for a shitty-sounding bootleg of a live concert in Europe, only to run out and pay another $30 for a disc that promised to be better (it wasn't). I even spent $19.99 to watch him work a concert hall with Lenny Kravitz, ex-Sly Stone bassist Larry Graham and a cast of many on New Year's Eve (Ringing in the new Millennium with a past-his-prime pop star and a glass of bad ginger ale; that's a level of pathetic that's off the charts). But us fans of The Tiny Purple One learned our lesson a long time ago. There's no defending a guy who wears eyeliner, lavender lace and high heels while singing simultaneously about God and fucking your brains out. You either get it, or you don't. And, frankly, I'll take Prince's panty-waisted Lothario act over Eminem's unbridled homophobia and misogyny any day. Pop music fans may have stopped paying attention to Prince somewhere after 1989's Batman soundtrack, but that's their own loss. They missed out on the brazen, in-your-face funk of "My Name Is Prince," (from 1992's symbol record); the exhuberant, guitar- powered group jam "I Rock, Therefore I Am" (on 1996's Chaos And Disorder); the muscular syncopation of "Pheremone (on 1994's Come); the powerhouse slow jam "I Hate You" (from 1995's The Gold Experience) — not to mention funktified remakes of Joan Osborne's "One Of Us" (on Emancipation) and Sheryl Crow's "Every Day Is A Winding Road." (on last year's Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic). And there's the players: superstar drummer Michael Bland, Chaka Khan-style vocal gymnast Rosie Gaines; jaw-dropping bass virtuouso Rhonda S. and funky keyboard man Tommy Barbarella. They're all lesser-known than the backup musicians from Prince's heyday like Wendy n' Lisa, Sheila E. and Morris Day, but their abilities far outstrip the cohorts Prince turned into '80s-era footnotes years ago. Let's not forget his success behind the scenes. Besides handing The Bangles and Sinead O'Connor the biggest hits of their career, he single-handedly played nearly all the instruments on the funkiest album of all time — The Time's What Time Is It? — also playing most of the instruments on most of his own records. And take it from a former pro musician: other artists have nicked everything from vocal recording techniques to drum machine patterns by listening and re-listening to Prince's aural experiments (George Michael fans can check the sped-up vocal licks at the end of his 1987 jam "Hard Day" for evidence). To put things in perspective, can you imagine Fred Durst, Justin Timberlake or Christina Aguilera cranking out at least an album a year — sometimes two or three — every year for more than two decades? I rest my case. |
|
Pearl Jam |
| Discuss Prince with freaks much like yourself. We've started a discussion for people like you. Please join in and reveal the crowning achievement of your artist worship. |
| Some believe Eric Deggans to be just a funky drummer turned rock journalist turned television critic. Not so! Eric is many more things, including the founder of the Dangling Chads, a group of renegade Florida voters who swim each morning with dolphins in Tampa Bay to protest the election of "Dubya." |
| more prince at nude as the news |
|
Pearl Jam |