Lovesexy. He’s also on all of Madhouse 8, “Sixteen” from 16, Jill Jones’s “All Day, All Night,” “Interesting” by Mavis Staples, and “Get It Up” and “The Stick” from The Time. And he drummed with The Rebels.
Fink played his last gig in Yokohama, Japan, on September 10, 1990. Prince asked him to play two gigs in South America in January 1991. When he couldn’t commit because of production responsibilities, he was replaced by Tommy Barbarella, and the NPG was born.
After leaving Prince, Dr. Fink released one LP: 2001’s jazz/funk collection Ultrasound. He also remixed the 2001 Cookhouse Five CD, a release of the December 1975 94 East songs.
Gayle Chapman (1978–1980)
Keyboardist Gayle Chapman was listening to For You when a voice told her that Prince would need a band to play live. She prepped for months before she got an audition. And then she waited another three months before she got a call from Prince asking her to come to a rehearsal. When she asked Prince why she got the gig, he said because “you have blond hair, blue eyes and you can sing.” And because she was a funky white chick.
Chapman’s keyboards filled the group’s sound and fit in well with the band, but the same could not be said of Chapman herself. She was a member of The Way International, and her unorthodox Christian beliefs put her in conflict not only with the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle but also, more specifically, with Prince’s flaunting of sexual and social norms. Things came to a head on the Rick James tour as Chapman was getting hit on by James and had to wear increasingly risqué lingerie onstage to perform increasingly erotic acts with Prince. Chapman left, deciding to attend a retreat with The Way rather than some hastily called band rehearsals.
Chapman was with the band on the first two tours, through May 3, 1980, at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland. She doesn’t appear on any released recordings but did sing “You,” “If I Love You Tonight,” and “Turn Me On” for The Rebels. After leaving Prince, she worked in different fields but continued singing. In 2013, she was singing The Rebel songs as part of a “One Night with Gayle” performance in Seattle, Washington.
Lisa Coleman (1980–1986)
Lisa Coleman, the second half of the breathless conjunction Wendy & Lisa, joined the early Prince band in May 1980 when original keyboardist Gayle Chapman decided she’d rather not simulate fellatio onstage every night during “Head.”
Lisa is often credited with being the most important member of Prince’s bands, the one with the most immersion in the creative process and the greatest impact on his musical outlook. At the very least, her involvement has probably been the best documented.
Coleman grew up in the Los Angeles music industry. Her father is legendary Wrecking Crew member Gary Coleman, who worked with scores of artists, from Aretha Franklin to the Monkees to Marvin Gaye. In 1973, the elder Coleman created the kid group Waldorf Salad, featuring Lisa and her siblings David and Debbie and Jonathan Melvoin, Wendy’s brother. The group released one single, “Look at the Children/Doncha Know,” on A&M Records. Not surprisingly, this slice of shrill un-funkiness did not feature as one of Grand Central’s cover songs.
Mike Melvoin and Gary L. Coleman were part of The Wrecking Crew, the faceless LA session band that backed countless hits during the 1960s. In 1973 Melvoin created the kid group Waldorf Salad, featuring his son Jonathan, brother of Prince-realm twins Wendy and Susannah, and Coleman’s kids Lisa, Debbie, and David, the latter of whom cowrote “Around the World in a Day.” (Author’s collection)
Prince and Lisa met in May 1980. Lisa heard through friends at Prince’s Los Angeles management group that he was looking for a new keyboardist. She made a demo tape and sent it to Prince, and he was waiting at the airport in Minneapolis when her plane arrived. He gave her an impromptu three-hour audition. He was smitten, and she was soon a member of the band. Prince took to wooing her on songs such as the unreleased “Lisa,” but she is a lesbian, so that didn’t work out.
During the summer of 1980, Lisa was around the home studio as Prince recorded Dirty Mind and at least another album’s worth of still unreleased material. She is credited with singing background vocals on “Head,” and it’s believed that she and Matt Fink wrote the core of the song, uncredited. She first appeared with the band on October 24, 1980, at the live-audience Hollywood studio recording for the “Uptown” and “Dirty Mind” videos. Her first live show was the December 4 Buffalo start of the Dirty Mind tour. Her last gig was the September 9, 1986, Yokohama show.
In addition to bringing Wendy into the band, Lisa is credited with expanding Prince’s cultural (LBGT) and musical (1960s rock and psychedelia) horizons. At times, such as the 1986 Rolling Stone cover interview, she and Wendy literally spoke for Prince. Much of this expansion happened during what many consider the Golden Age of Prince, the period from the May 1983 initial Revolution rehearsals through about June 1986, when the fun stopped being fun. This period includes the Purple Rain filming, movie release, album, and subsequent tour and the Around the World in a Day, Parade, and Dream Factory sessions.
Wendy’s first studio work with Prince was in April 1981 on The Time. She cowrote “The Stick” with Prince and sang background on that tune and “Cool.” She sang vocals on about fifteen released songs from Controversy through Sign ’o’ the Times, most famously the first line of “1999,” and the 2017 release “Our Destiny.” She played keyboards on a like number of tunes from Controversy through Sign ’o’ the Times plus non-LP tracks, including both versions of “4 the Tears in Your Eyes.” She reappeared twenty years later on “The One U Wanna C” and “Resolution” from Planet Earth and gets cowriting credit on “Computer Blue,” “17 Days,” “Mountains,” and “Power Fantastic.”
Lisa, with Wendy, interacted with Prince a few times after the Revolution broke up, but they never really seemed to make up. In 1996, Prince sent “In This Bed Eye Scream” to the duo for suggestions, but the feedback wasn’t figured into the apologetic Emancipation tune. The LP booklet dedicated the track to “Wendy and Lisa and Susannah” in backward text. In 1998, Prince announced the Roadhouse Garden project, a Revolution reunion based on 1986 tracks. This got unhinged when Prince supposedly said that Wendy and Lisa would need to renounce their sexuality before the project could proceed. They didn’t, and it didn’t. The duo joined him for four songs at the 2006 Brit Awards on February 15, 2006. The spectacle of the event seemed to overshadow the music, which was one of Wendy and Lisa’s complaints with The Revolution’s final performances.
Brown Mark (1981–1986)
Mark Brown was a bassist for the Minneapolis band Fantasy. The band played 7th St. Entry on a semi-regular basis, and Prince was a semi-regular audience member at these gigs. Prince auditioned Mark Brown and installed him as his new bass player in July 1981, renaming him Brown Mark.
Brown Mark’s first gig was at the hometown-friendly Sam’s in Minneapolis on October 5, 1981, in a show billed as the band Controversy. His next shows were at the less friendly Rolling Stones opening act gigs a few nights later. The crowd unnerved him, but Brown Mark stayed through the end of the Revolution in the fall of 1986.
Brown’s tenure was one marked by slights perceived and otherwise, which came to a head during the Purple Rain period. According to Brown Mark, the Purple Rain tour made Prince a multimillionaire but made Brown only $2,200 a week plus a $15,000 bonus