the World in a Day (1985)
As Tag Team sang, “Whoop! There it is!” That pretty much describes Prince dropping Around the World in a Day (ATWIAD) just ten months after Purple Rain. But Prince was on top of the world, and Warner Bros. let him have his way, but the relative underperformance of ATWIAD, which was decidedly not Purple Rain volume 2, would portend future release battles.
ATWIAD is the second LP credited to Prince and the Revolution, but the full band is on only three songs: “Pop Life,” “America,” and “The Ladder.” Unlike many Prince LPs where the first hit is a late addition, “Raspberry Beret” is the earliest existing song, given a run-through in April 1982. The balance of the LP was written and recorded prior to and during the Purple Rain tour, with the final tracks recorded on December 23 (“The Ladder”) and December 24 (“Temptation”) 1984 in and around the St. Paul Civic Center.
The songs are easy to like, but the album is hard to love, the disjointed recording schedule reflected in the mishmash of styles. Like his best tracks, “Raspberry Beret” is both nothing-but-Prince and a song pulled from our collective consciousness, easy, breezy, and portable. This might be the song that people remember Prince for 100 years from now. The other highlights are the brash “Temptation,” a first foray into a blues style that would reappear with the mid-1990s NPG, the manic “America,” and the deceptively aggressive “Paisley Park,” which is the emotional heart of the LP.
Of the second-tier songs, “Pop Life” is likable fluff, the brief “Tamborine” sounds like a template for the Time’s “Release It,” and the title track, adapted from an original song by Lisa’s brother David Coleman, is jerky and Middle Eastern trippy, a sound Prince would revisit. There are two clunkers here. On “Condition of the Heart,” Prince noodles around on the keys for three minutes before entering histrionic diva mode, while “The Ladder” attempts to replicate the grandeur of “Purple Rain” but with annoying sax riffs that sound lifted from mid-1970s Paul Simon albums.
On the strength of Purple Rain, the un-funky ATWIAD reached number one on the pop charts but only number four on the black charts. The intent was to release no singles, but as the LP floundered, that changed, and “Raspberry Beret,” “Pop Life,” and “America” were released in the United States and “Paisley Park” in other territories. The first two songs hit the US top ten on both charts.
Each single had non-LP material. “Raspberry Beret (New Mix),” “She’s Always in My Hair,” “She’s Always in My Hair (New Mix),” “Pop Life (Fresh Dance Mix),” and “Hello” have all appeared on collections. “Pop Life (Extended Version),” “Hello (Fresh Dance Mix),” “Girl (Extended Version),” and the luscious twenty-one-minute, forty-six second, version of “America” remain uncollected, as do a mono French promo version and a UK twelve-inch “Remix” of “Paisley Park.” All await a deluxe ATWIAD release.
There was no tour for this album, time being consumed filming Under the Cherry Moon and recording Parade. All songs were played during the Parade tour except “Tamborine,” which was only ever played twice, and “Temptation,” which was never played at a concert. However, it was rehearsed (for what?) at the video shoot for “America” on October 27, 1985, in a scorching version that makes you sorry it wasn’t a tour regular.
Parade (Music from the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon) (1986)
At this point, one must ask, when did Prince sleep in the mid-1980s? In February 1985, still on the Purple Rain tour, he finished Sheila E in Romance 1600. Ten days after the April 7 tour ended, he began recording Parade (Music from the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon), which bled into Mazarati, which bled into Jill Jones. Back and forth from Los Angeles to Minneapolis, he completed Parade, recording “Anotherloverholenyohead” at Sunset Sound during a December 16–26 session, and then developed his jazz sound at four- and seven-hour jam sessions before completing the unreleased The Flesh EP on January 22, 1986. And he starred in and directed a major motion picture that fall. And he was juggling about five girlfriends. And that’s before he really cranked into high gear on his next project.
By the fall 1986 European Parade tour The Revolution was a tight, almost flawless band, but with Wendy, Lisa, and Brown Mark previously expressing a desire to leave the band, there is a rote, anti-climactic element to most of the performances. The exception is the one-off gig at Paris’s New Morning Club on August 24, notable for the debut of a handful of songs and the only performance of the brief jam “Susannah’s Blues.” (Courtesy Thomas de Bruin, unused-prince-tickets.com)
Parade was released on March 31, 1986, less than a year after ATWIAD, reaching only number three. The stark black-and-white cover is the first since Controversy with a close-up of Prince. The album is the last credited to Prince and The Revolution, but the full band features on only four tracks. Parade also offers the first Clare Fischer appearance on a Prince album. His orchestration expands nine tunes, so the LP might better be credited to Prince and the Clare Fischer Orchestra.
Parade is a solid album, if a bit underdeveloped in its thought process and hesitant in its experimentation. The album features one unqualified classic, “Kiss,” and one of Prince’s best-loved songs, the gentle piano ballad “Sometimes It Snows in April,” often quoted after Prince’s death. “Girls & Boys,” “Mountains,” and “Anotherloverholenyohead” are all concise slices of pop funk à la Sly and the Family Stone. The other songs feel like clever rhythms and orchestration in search of fleshed-out songs, as six of the tracks clock in at under three minutes, with the cluttered “Life Can Be So Nice” stretching out to three minutes, fourteen seconds. Prince seemed to recognize this issue as he incorporated movements into songs on the subsequent Dream Factory and Crystal Ball projects. Maybe the opening “Christopher’s Tracy’s Parade,” “New Position,” and “I Wonder U” (total time six minutes, twelve seconds) should be considered a suite.
The LP produced four international singles, led by the first single “Kiss” (see chapter 12). The LP version of “Mountains” was released on May 7, 1986, and reached number twenty-three on the pop charts and number fifteen on the black charts. An “Anotherloverholenyohead” edit also did well on the black charts, hitting number eighteen. An edit of “Girls & Boys” reached number eleven in the United Kingdom.
All single non-LP versions have been collected on CD except “Mountains (Extended Version),” “Alexa de Paris,” and edited and extended versions of “Anotherloverholenyohead.” “Alexa de Paris (Extended Version)” appeared on the UK “Letitgo” single but not on any CD collection.
The Parade live era started with ten US Hit N Run shows from March until the official tour started on August 12, 1986, at London’s Wembley Arena. It comprised nineteen shows in Europe and Japan, ending on September 9, 1986, at Yokohama Stadium. The shows focused on a mixture of ATWIAD and Parade material with a smattering of earlier hits. All the songs were played during the tour, except “Do U Lie,” which debuted in 1988. B-sides “Love or Money” and “Alexa de Paris” were each played a handful of times.
The Yokohama show marked the last group appearance for Wendy, Lisa, Bobby Z., and Brown Mark and the end of Prince and The Revolution.
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