done that before. Prince left Alphabet Street and ventured down Symbol Alley. But even there, he could have chosen something pronounceable, such as $ or % or *. Instead, he changed his name to a symbol that didn’t represent a sound; it just represented him.
And this is where he was subjected to public ridicule: he couldn’t be called anything, so he could be called anything. People wrote O(+> and started calling him The Artist, The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, TAFKAP, Squiggle, Symbol, Symbolina, Glyph, and The Artist Who Formerly Had Hits. His employees called him “boss” until he told them they were thinking of Bruce Springsteen. Then they just called him “Hey.”
And the jokes flew. “What’s small, purple, and needs to see the doctor?” “Prince.”
The name change is peculiar, but it’s a purple herring, a flawed lens through which to view the whole Prince story. Rather than obsess about this one fact, this book looks at the bigger picture and focuses on Prince, his music, and those who made the music with him.
Whether this text calls him Prince or Symbol (or other names), it’s nothing to get hung up on: it all points back to the same Purple Yoda.
2. Paisley Park
After Prince left his father’s house in the early 1970s, he moved into Andre Cymone’s basement. His bedroom doubled as his recording space and his band’s rehearsal space. In 1987, he re-created this hybrid adolescent playground at Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
Paisley Park was more than just Prince’s home and recording studio; it was one of his Big Ideas, a primary lifestyle choice, along with the New Power Generation (NPG) concept. While the NPG was about “making love and music,” Paisley Park was “a place in your heart” that “speaks of profound inner peace.”
The main Paisley Park complex was Prince’s go-to recording, rehearsal, and performance venue from 1987 onward, and hosted artists such as Neil Young, R.E.M., and The Muppets, but no one has figured out the intent of this unused outbuilding nicknamed “The Egg.” (Photo by Femke Niehof)
The Chanhassen studio was the most long-lasting of the Paisley Park creations. The name first applied to the Flying Cloud Drive Warehouse Studio in Minneapolis, where Prince recorded in 1984. It was then given to the Around the World in a Day song “Paisley Park” and then an unreleased instrumental on an early configuration of The Family. It also became the name for Prince’s music label (Records), business (Enterprises), and movie production company (Films).
Paisley Park Studios officially opened September 11, 1987, but was christened on New Year’s Eve with a charity concert featuring Miles Davis. The site included a soundstage, used for concerts and tour rehearsals and film and video productions. The location was open for outside business until 1996. Prince performed about 150 public concerts at Paisley Park.
Prince called Paisley Park home for most of the time from 1987 on, leaving for Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and other locations for about five years in the late 2000s. He also owned more than a dozen other properties around Minneapolis and at various times owned houses around the world, including Spain and Turks and Caicos.
Famously, Prince died at Paisley Park.
3. The Vault
Central to the Prince mythology is the Vault. Like Paisley Park, the Vault is both in your heart and an actual physical location. The physical Vault is the place in Paisley Park where Prince kept his recordings, his Grammys and Oscar, and his flying unicorn pictured on the back cover of Prince. Okay, that last part isn’t true, but Prince raised such unrealistic hopes when he claimed his best material is still in the Vault.
The exact contents of the Vault are not known to the public. Prince claimed the Vault should be plural, so even if the main Paisley Park Vault is cataloged, who knows what else exists and where?
Sadly, the Vault was not maintained to archival standards. Associates report that Prince would record over tapes, add to older tracks, and leave materials on the floor or unprotected. After Prince’s death, representatives of Prince’s estate moved the contents of the Vault to a secure facility in the Los Angeles area, over the objections of Prince’s heirs. Since Prince didn’t leave a will, it’s impossible to know which he would have valued more: keeping the recordings at Paisley Park or ensuring the existence of the recordings.
The Vault probably contains three types of recordings: studio, rehearsal, and live.
Studio recordings include alternate versions of released songs, including demos and guide-vocal songs for other artists, and unreleased songs. In the most extreme form, the Vault might include half a dozen versions of a song. For example, “We Can Funk” exists as 1983’s “We Can Fuck,” released in 2017, as an unreleased version from 1986, and as the Graffiti Bridge track featuring George Clinton.
Since Prince recorded most studio material himself, rehearsals are most often prep for live shows, either Prince teaching songs to band members or the band practicing the live set. Prince became fond of streaming rehearsals in the 2000s. Rehearsals are typically my favorite Prince recordings because they give some insight into how Prince thought about songs and how he interacted with other musicians. Prince recorded almost all live shows for training purposes, like a corporate telephone call. The fact that he did this holds out hope for future releases similar to Bob Dylan’s thirty-six-CD The 1966 Live Recordings. For our purposes, “live” means concert performances, including Paisley Park shows, non–lip-synched TV appearances, and NPG Music Club sound checks.
All three types of recordings are referenced in this book as released or unreleased. Released recordings have been sold or shared by Prince in physical form or online, commercially or promotionally. Unreleased songs have not been legally available. Some are circulating among regular fans, some reside only with elite collectors, and others are known by name only, often through copyright research.
Due to Prince’s legal wishes, this volume does not discuss bootleg releases, although multiple chapters could be dedicated to the subject.
4. The Revolution
It borders on heresy, but I’ll say it: The Revolution is overrated. In Prince’s four decades of live performances and recordings, The Revolution was around for just a bit over three years. The group appears on only about a dozen Prince recordings and never recorded an album independently. The main advantages The Revolution had over Prince’s other pre-NPG bands is that he named the group and that Purple Rain gave the members face recognition. The Revolution is beloved more than critically considered—which is how nostalgia works.
This isn’t to say that the music produced during The Revolution period isn’t amazing—it is—or that the group wasn’t competent as a backing rock band. But they weren’t as strong a backing band as the nameless 1988 band, the NPG 1995 and 2002 configurations, or even 2013 3rdEyeGirl.
The Revolution is important, but, like the name change, it’s not the end of the story.
5. Sex
When I told people I was writing this book, the first response was usually, “He must have had some life!” followed by a wink. They said this because they were too polite to say, “Wow! He must have had a lot of sex with beautiful women!” If the name change is Prince fact number 1, then sex is a close 1A. But I guess you make your bed and you lie in it. Or you do it in the kitchen on the floor, standing in the tub, in the bedroom on the dresser, in the pantry on the shelf, or on the pool table.
Yes,