the band’s October 2016 appearances at Coachella’s Desert Trip (aka Oldchella), but the band didn’t follow suit and instead debuted a frequent Prince cover: The Beatles’s “Come Together.”
Prince played a few Rolling Stones songs live. “Miss You” debuted at an August 13, 1986, aftershow at Busby’s in London, accompanied by Stones guitarist Ron Wood. “Honky Tonk Women” made numerous aftershow appearances and was recorded live in studio on June 14, 1993, for The Undertaker video.
The Beatles
The Beatles are the most important popular band ever—so important that they have two books in this series. Among their many influential achievements, they insisted on performing their own material, were as comfortable on the screen as onstage, established the LP as a work of art rather than a few singles with some added filler, made studio creation as valuable as live performance, and started their own (still successful) record company. These successes (and many more) had both direct and indirect effects on Prince (and everyone else in the music industry).
There’s debate about Prince’s early feelings about The Beatles. Wendy claims he hated them or at least what they seemed to stand for in his mind. Matt Fink, a big Beatles fan, never heard Prince disparage them. This minor controversy arose from the media reception for Around the World in a Day, which compared the LP to the 1967–1968 Beatles for its trippy cover, diverse musicality, and psychedelic feel. The fact that Prince’s LP, like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was intended as a stand-alone release with no singles did nothing to discourage the comparisons. Prince bristled at the association and said the album wasn’t influenced by The Beatles and further questioned if they could “hang” in 1985.
It can be difficult to hear a direct Beatles musical influence on Prince. There are always “Beatlesesque” references to “When You Were Mine,” but I hear more of The Beatles’s love of Motown in the song. Mitch Ryder gave a Detroit spin to the song in 1983, but the tune was tailor-made for late-period Supremes. Alternately, it’s hard not to hear The Beatles directly in “Raspberry Beret” or especially “Take Me with U,” and I’d love to have heard John and Yoko record the latter.
Prince’s earliest live work with a Beatles song was the 2004 solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He started playing a handful of Fab Four tunes in 2006. “Come Together” was played most often through 2011, typically as a medley with “7.” In 1989, Prince recorded a dance version of “Day Tripper” with Margie Cox on lead vocals for the unreleased Flash album. The same session included a cover of Hendrix’s “Fire,” which leads one to believe that Prince was listening to the 1988 Hendrix release Radio One, which included both songs.
6
Ain’t Nobody Bad Like Me The Time
In addition to the right to coproduce his own music, Prince’s early agreement with Warner Bros. included a provision for producing other artists. It’s likely that Warner Bros. saw this as a way to stroke Prince’s ego. It’s unlikely that they saw it as leading the way to dozens of non-Prince albums, including a literal Vanity project.
Prince first tried to create another band in the summer of 1979, recording his touring band as The Rebels. This studio project was never released, but Prince seemed to learn that he preferred hiring people and telling them what to do rather than working with other people or helping artists find their own voices. He would need to make his own groups if he wanted his extracurricular visions realized.
According to manager Alan Leeds, Prince’s impresario inspiration got a jump start with the 1980 film The Idolmaker. It’s the story of Bob Marcucci, the Philadelphia label owner who discovered and molded stars such as Fabian and Frankie Avalon. And as a child of the 1970s, Prince undoubtedly saw the “Johnny Bravo” Brady Bunch episode in which Greg is set to be a rock star because he “fit the suit.”
The Time never quite fit the suit, at least not in the same way as Vanity or Apollonia, but they were Prince’s first and greatest alter-ego creation.
Flyte Tyme
Prince was adamant that he didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a black artist: He wanted to be a popular artist. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to make “black” music. To do that without damaging the Prince brand, he created The Time.
The Time project brought together drummer Morris Day with members of Prince high school rivals Flyte Tyme. In the late 1970s, Flyte Tyme featured vocalist Cynthia Johnson, but she left to sing for Lipps Inc. (“Funkytown”). Replaced by Alexander O’Neal, the Prince-recruited Flyte Tyme in 1980 included keyboardists Monte Moir and Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis on bass, and drummer Garry “Jellybean” Johnson. All but Johnson were asked to join Prince’s new band then called The Nerve. For drums, Prince turned to Morris Day, who was in another local band: Enterprise (aka Enterprise Band of Pleasure).
Day’s participation was the result of a choice Prince offered Day. Day wrote the music for Dirty Mind’s “Partyup.” Prince said he’d pay Day $10,000 for the song or get him a record deal. Day chose the latter. Day brought along guitarist Jesse Johnson. Johnson had moved to Minneapolis in 1981 and auditioned as bassist Andre Cymone’s replacement. Prince preferred him on guitar rather than bass and asked him to join The Nerve.
O’Neal recorded a few songs with Prince in early 1981, including “Rough,” but the two fell out, as O’Neal wanted more money and didn’t appreciate that Jellybean had been left behind. O’Neal was booted, Day became the singer, and Jellybean was hired as drummer. Problem solved, as The Nerve became The Time. O’Neal went on to enjoy a 1987 number one R&B single, “Fake,” written and performed by Jam and Lewis.
For all these machinations, when it came time to record the band’s first LP in April 1981, only Day appeared on the album.
The Time (1981)
Prince recorded The Time’s debut album in April 1981. The sessions took place at his Kiowa Trail Home Studio, although credits claim “Time Studio.” The studio fiction is extended to production and songwriting, both credited to Prince pseudonym Jamie Starr. The album contains no songwriting credits, part of the marketing fiction that The Time is a real band and not just Prince.
Prince plays almost everything on the six-track LP. Day sings and plays drums on “Girl,” “Cool,” “Oh, Baby,” and “The Stick.” Dr. Fink plays keys on “Get It Up” and “The Stick,” and Lisa Coleman sings background on “The Stick” and “Cool.” Otherwise, it’s Prince.
All but one song is written by Prince: Dez Dickerson’s “After Hi School.” “Get It Up,” “Girl” (unrelated to his 1985 B-side), and “Oh, Baby” are Prince solo songs. The latter is left over from the Prince sessions. “Cool” was cowritten with Dickerson, and “The Stick” was cowritten with Coleman, who was living with Prince at the time.
The songs here are looser and longer than anything Prince would release until 1999, with half of the tracks over eight minutes. But they’re also more generic soul/funk, simpler lyrically and musically than just about anything in the official Prince catalog. The highlights are the two cowritten tunes, both rising above standard funk workouts.
The Time was released on July 29, 1981. It hit number fifty on the top 200 and number seven on the soul chart and spawned three singles. “Get It Up” reached number six on the soul chart, “Cool” reached number seven, and “Girl” hit number forty-nine. Collectively, the singles outperformed soul chart singles from Prince’s first three LPs. The Time remains unanthologized, and the A-side and B-side edits remain unavailable on CD.
The Time made their live debut on October 7, 1981, at Sam’s (later First Avenue) before embarking as the Controversy opening act on November 20