Tabla de contenidos para Prince en Prince

Life: The period between birth and death, or the experience or state of being alive; Genius: Exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability. Exceptionally intelligent person or one with exceptional skill in a particular area of activity. Very clever or ingenious; Legend: Someone very famous and admired, usually because of their ability in a particular area. Musical Geniuses are born just like everyone else. In fact, any type of genius, in any field, starts life in the same way as you and me; where the path diverts from mere mortal to talented individual to complete genius is worth investigating. Prince was a masterful polymath who flirted with his audience both on record and onstage. He possessed an unmatched gift of all the ingredients needed to be the ‘ultimate pop star’. He…

On August 25th 1982, The Time’s second album What Time Is It? was released. As before, Prince isn’t mentioned anywhere on the credits but production is credited to The Starr Company. It was around this time that certain fractures started to appear with The Time. Although What Time Is It? is a Time record it was essentially all recorded by Prince himself. The band wanted more input, particularly in recording songs, but as ever with Prince’s ferocious appetite for recording by the time they had expressed a grievance for being shut out Prince had already recorded most of the songs already. Those in particular that were becoming frustrated were Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. During the Controversy tour Jam and Lewis had flown to Los Angeles to work on their own material, but they…

For many musically minded people and casual critics, this period of Prince’s career was his peak. Of course, this needs a closer look - and as ever with Prince, things are not quite what they appear to be. The notion that Prince spent time in the recording studio and came out a few months later with an album called Sign o’ the Times would be impressive to say the least. It’s one of the greatest albums of all time, certainly by a single individual, and if this was the case then countless documentaries could have been produced from fellow musicians and collaborators telling us all how he managed to do it. Prince though didn’t stop, so there is no cut off from one album to the next. He simply recorded every…

Rehearsals at Paisley Park were always fluid because Prince loved to jam. Often ideas would be formalized through this kind of extensive session. He gave the band members time to develop and often when a groove was hit he signaled to the engineer to quickly record that particular piece. Many of Prince’s sounds and melodies were found because free flowing music could lead to something that Prince could latch onto and develop further. Prince had a rough new band in place as he worked through the winter of 1990. He retained Rosie Gaines on vocals and keyboards and Michael Bland on drums. Newly drafted in were Tommy Elm who Prince renamed Tommy Barbarella, playing keyboards and replacing Matt Fink. Prince chose the name because of the hairbands Tommy wore to…

As the new millennium was celebrated Prince, now Prince once more, began more concerts at Paisley Park. At many of these he took time out from the performance and expressed his opinions on matters such as dates, times and birthdays. He questioned these a lot during this period, a direct influence many felt from Larry Graham. The shows were mainly advertised through his website and performed in the usual fashion of starting around 1am and going through until around 4am. It again is quite astonishing the level of commitment to performing that he had. It made no difference if there was 2000 people in front of the Paisley Park soundstage or whether there were just 100, the performance was the same, a full on energetic display with blistering guitar solos…

If 2006 and its achievements were not enough, Prince hit 2007 with one of the most breathtaking and legendary performances he had done so far on mainstream television. On February 2nd 2007 Prince played at the Super Bowl XLI press conference. He then performed the Super Bowl XLI Halftime Show in Miami Florida two days later on February 4th. The event was watched by an estimated 140 million television viewers. It was ranked as the greatest Super Bowl performance ever. At the press conference on 2nd February 2007, Prince walked on to the stage and asked the crowd of mainly sports journalists, who were not interested in anything musical at all, if they had any questions. The second someone asked a question Prince blasted his Telecaster and performed an incredible…

As the recording contract stated Prince was to have an executive producer present on the making of his debut album, Tommy Vicari was flown in to meet Prince and subsequently co-produce For You. Vicari was an experienced producer and engineer, having previously engineered a host of records for names including Quincy Jones and Santana amongst others. He was ten years older than Prince and would, in the months ahead, prove to be a sort of mentor to him. As with previous people who encountered Prince, Vicari found that he had an ability to learn the knowledge he had been shown, absorb it, then reproduce it and move on to the next level. Vicari would later go on to engineer and co-produce Warner’s 1993 compilation The Hits The B Sides during Prince’s…

From dark to the light would be a good way of describing Prince’s next phase in his career. He was held in constant high esteem by critics and fans alike - there was no one to match him - but even he was getting bored with his own genius; it’s no surprise then that he was heading to some sort of epiphany as he tried to make sense of his life to this point. It’s usually at this juncture in a pop/rock star’s career that things start heading away from the music and into other avenues of distraction, whether that be drugs, alcohol or such like escapism. In reality Prince only had music and that was what he turned to and expressed himself through. Prince was music: he lived it,…

Prince continued with promotional activity for Diamonds and Pearls as the year drew to a close in 1991. He featured in many publications including Black Beat which was published in January 1992 and Vogue which was also published in January. The images from the Vogue shoot would eventually be used on The Hits/The B-Sides album. There was also an excellent documentary entitled Prince Rogers Nelson as part of the BBC’s Omnibus series broadcast in the UK on 13th December 1991. It’s one of the most accurate and engaging documentaries on Prince and his work and captures brilliantly the mystique and musicianship of Prince in all his guises. It was made in collaboration with Paisley Park and Prince submitted archive and unseen footage. Of all Prince documentaries this one is the most fulfilling…

Chaos and Disorder was released on 9th July 1996. The liner notes reveal that this album was intended as a demo, which give an indication to the feeling of the album. It could even have been intended as a light warning to the quality and content of the songs on the record. The album was recorded over just ten days in January 1996. It’s highly charged from start to finish: it was basically made in anger, which is no surprise, and this sets the tone of the album. There was little or next to no promotional activity apart from a couple of TV appearances, one on The Late Show with David Letterman and one on The Today Show. The album is essentially a collection of polished demos with fragments of…

Fans wanting a return to a ‘standard’ Prince album would have to be patient as Prince released his next offering through the NPGmusicclub. He now released a full-on jazz-funk instrumental which was recorded in a single day on 6th February 2003. The band for this album session were Prince playing guitars, keyboards and percussion, Eric Leeds on tenor and baritone saxophone, John Blackwell on drums, Renato Neto on piano and synthesizers and Rhonda Smith playing electric and acoustic bass. N.E.W.S, as in North, East, West and South, was written as his ‘27th studio album’, although this is far short when you consider the amount of recording he had completed to this point. Released on the website on May 26th, and of course by NPG Records, N.E.W.S. contains just four tracks, each…

It now looked like the latest website, Lotusflow3r.com, the one with a major launch and the promise of so many great things, was in fact on course for closure. Prince was not adding anything substantial to it, and coupled with his recent claims that ‘the Internet is over’ it looked like a foregone conclusion that he was moving on. This statement of course was not meant to apply generally, as some reports suggested; he was speaking from his own perspective and from a musical one. Prince now traveled to Europe for a string of concerts and festival headline performances. The first was two nights headlining the Montreux Jazz Festival. Prince headlined on July 18th 2009 and went through probably one of the best guitar led concert performances he had ever done.…

Prince continued his plans for his new feature film and the accompanying soundtrack. He was now determined to try and move away from Purple Rain and quickly onto the next album; he didn’t want to be forever labelled with Purple Rain. With such a ferocious output of different styles of music, he wanted his next album out quickly, allowing him to move forward. On 22nd April 1985 Prince released Around the World in a Day, his seventh studio album. Again attributed to Prince and The Revolution, it was a complete and deliberate departure from the commercial sound of Purple Rain, with more experimentation with psychedelic styles and opulent textures. Prince requested that the record company release the album with minimal publicity and purposely withheld accompanying singles until at least a…

The New Power Soul tour of Europe was essentially a continuation of the US tour as it only had a two-month break. On paper this is slightly misleading as The Artist continued to play clubs and other venues like Paisley Park as and when he decided to. Nine concerts were played around Europe starting in Marbella on 8th August 1998. The shows were spontaneous with no two the same, with a few songs added in for one-off appearances. Most of the ‘Prince’ concert favorites were kept in each show with other songs changed around. A piano sit-down section was also different most nights. Considering that The Artist hadn’t toured Europe for a while the audience reaction to the shows were incredible. He was still a huge live draw and had such a reputation…

Back in the US Prince continued with appearances before launching his next tour, which would be entitled ‘Hit n Run’. These concerts however didn’t start officially until February 2014, leaving Prince time to perform at various places in the US. He played for two nights in New York at The Winery on August 23rd and 24th 2013 before spending some time writing and recording back at Paisley. Shortly afterwards Prince headlined three nights in California at Mohegan with a huge backing band and full horn section. 3rd Eye Girl also joined him on set and it became a full-blown rock show. Many speculated after the brilliant Mohegan Sun show that Prince would launch a full-scale tour showcasing the expanded band of the NPG, his band leader skills, and the pure rock…