“Please access another experience.”
So sayeth the ‘NPG Operator’ during segues on the album, The Gold Experience.
Prince has ‘accessed another experience,’ but who would have imagined that was how it was going to go down? Stunning, really.
In 2014, I was preparing an essay in connection with the 30-year anniversary of Purple Rain. During that process, news hit that Prince and Warner Brothers Records had reached an agreement regarding the master tapes to Prince’s albums released by WB from 1978 to 1996.
After a two-decade struggle, the masters were back with Prince, and the “reunion” with WB was to include a new album as well as a deluxe, re-mastered version of Purple Rain. I decided to table my essay until the re-issue happened.
It never did.* Not that I was surprised. Despite the press release, as an artist, Prince was never cool with looking back.
Now, instead of writing specifically about Purple Rain, I was left to figure out how to encapsulate 32 years of “The Prince Experience.”
It seems near impossible! The story of how Purple Rain the album, the movie, the singles, and B-sides changed me is an essay unto itself. There are countless songs among the 600 or 700 I’ve heard that mean something. I’ve got a story for nearly every album. Lovesexy changed my life just as much as Purple Rain did.
What do I leave out and possibly risk that you, dear reader, will not understand just how much this man, his music and his lyrics affected me?
While I err on the side of honoring the man with ‘positivity,’ I cannot ignore that being a devoted “fam” (short for family, which is what Prince was known to call fans) could be as frustrating as it was joyous.
I stayed with him through the breakup of his -still- most beloved band, The Revolution, the controversial nude cover of Lovesexy, the half-hearted incorporation of rap into his early ’90s sound, and two ‘flop’ movies (although I personally adore Under the Cherry Moon).
Even at the height of the Warner Brothers “war,” I bought the records that featured packaging that all but outright said, “This album is nothing more than a contractual obligation.”
You’d think the lack of ‘fam’ consideration in releasing music that he knew wasn’t his best, as well as changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol while scrawling “slave” on his face would have had me running for the hills.
Not me. I saw past all of it. Perhaps my own Gemini nature (my birthday is the day before his) allowed me to understand the duality of both the music and the man better than most people. Something permeated to me. I “got it.” I might roll my eyes sometimes, but I “got it.”
I intuitively understood what was going on spiritually and contractually with the “name change.” Even on the deliberately uneven records, there were several tracks of value to be found. I knew I’d be missing something if I skipped one album. I bought everything no matter what.
As a result of never ‘losing touch,’ I got to experience what I consider the best period of time to be a Prince ‘fam’, which was belonging to the NPG Music Club from 2001 to 2006. I was a charter member.
Through the club, Prince gave exclusive access to unreleased songs of the past as well as freshly recorded songs. Even better, for his tour in 2002, members not only got dibs on the first few rows at concerts, but also were welcome to sit in on his sound checks.
In each city, depending on how much time the sound check would take, Prince would engage in “group talk” with ‘fams.’ It was the first ever instance of ‘fams’ having such a direct and personal line to an artist of “superstar” magnitude.
After eighteen years of devoted following, I would finally see Prince live at the Murat Theater in Indianapolis. Before my show date occurred, I’d read about the sound check “rap sessions” on the club community chat board and truly couldn’t wait for the evening.
I anticipated my first sight of Prince might cause me to ‘flip out’ like I did when seeing other musical favorites in concert after years of waiting. To my great surprise, it was the opposite.
I did not feel a “star” walked onstage. It was as if I was seeing an old friend.
To my disappointment, he didn’t have enough time to sit among the 75 club members (with plus ones) for a “group chat,” but he did talk with us quite a bit.
After ten minutes or so, he and his band launched into their rehearsal of “The Everlasting Now,” a fantastic song from one of his greatest, most cohesive and underappreciated albums (likely due to its spiritual and religious themes), The Rainbow Children.
Don’t ask me how this is possible, but none of us got up and danced despite “the funk in our face!” I suppose we felt the need to be respectful of his sound check and kept our butts in the seats.
Still, I couldn’t help myself from moving if I wanted to. So I jammed out in my chair, “lettin’ the head bob,” singing and tapping my finger in the air ‘on the one.’ The second time the chorus came around he looked right at me, pointed and smiled. I like to think he saw my enthusiasm.
After the song ended, a man in the front row called out, “Hey, Prince, can I play guitar?” Without missing a beat, Prince held out his guitar and motioned to the man to come onstage.
Prince stepped off to stage left as the man started playing Prince’s classic “The Cross” — amazingly well, I might add.
Prince got this truly mischievous little smile on his face when the guy started to sing. You could see he absolutely loved what was happening. Standing next to a keyboard, Prince moved behind it and started backing the guy up on the keys!
To have witnessed this moment made my affection for Prince even deeper. Now I knew Prince meant it when he called us ‘fams.’ We were not his ‘fanatics.’ We were his family, even if strangers. I knew he valued our appreciation of him and his music.
Nine months later, a box set encapsulating the entire 2002 tour was released. It was exciting enough that four songs from the concert I attended were on the set, but there was an even bigger surprise in store.
Members of the club had been asked to share their concert experiences on the NPG Music Club community chat board. As a writer, it was a no-brainer to submit something.
When I opened the packaging for One Nite Alone…Live! and pulled out the liner notes for a first look, the booklet literally fell open to a page where I came face to face with a credited quote from ME!
I was floored. Hundreds of people wrote into the club website. 30 people, if that, were included in the liner notes. I was one of them.
It doesn’t get much cooler than that.
I had another fantastic Prince concert experience in 2004, but by 2006, the NPG Music Club folded. Three years later, the LotusFlow3r website seemed a promising “re-brand” but disappeared quickly. Prince declared the Internet “dead.”
Direct access to Prince’s musical output faded as well as the ‘fam-favored’ concert perks. 20TEN remains the only “official” Prince album I missed in 32 years, mainly because it was only available overseas. I chose not to ‘rip it’ out of respect.**
As I said to many people in the week following April 21, 2016, it’s hard to fathom that Prince’s boundless energy is no longer in a physical body.
The majority of his music is so vibrant, funky and rockin’ that it’s nearly impossible to feel sad if I’m listening. I remain more stunned than sad over the idea that Prince’s flow of creativity on this plane has stopped and he has ‘accessed another experience.’
While there may not be fresh music in the future, every ‘fam’ knows there is plenty of ‘unheard music’ in the form of whatever is in the legendary Prince vault.
As much as I have awaited the re-masters of classic recordings with bated breath, and a time when floodgates of unreleased music from every era of his career would be open, the reporting at the time of Prince’s transition, that Prince did not leave a will, concerned me in terms of who will benefit from all of it.
That Prince, in fact, didn’t leave a will, doesn’t surprise me. An early NPG Music Club note from him detailed he was “done with contracts” pointing out that first syllable in the word is “con.”
Still, after all those years of fighting to get his music back, the idea of it being improperly exploited or sold is a disturbing thought for this ‘fam.’ It’s none of my business, but I would like to see the profits go to a place that is proper and honors Prince.***
My Prince experience is of a man and music that had direct and powerful communication with my soul. I will continue to access my previous Prince experiences on record and film, and I’m sure this is not the last I will write about my lifetime of loving Prince and his music.
In 2016, as I was meditating on what to say in this essay, I heard — clear as a bell in Prince’s voice — “U honor me with ur words.”
Whether him or not, I felt that to my core.
Prince impacted my life with his sounds and words and now (and in the future), I honor and remember him in return with my own.
Prince, eye wish u heaven.
Peace and B Wild. o(+>
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*The remastered version of Purple Rain was released posthumously in 2017.
**20TEN has since been commercially released, and is one of my favorites.
*** Legalities and control issues with respect to The Prince Estate have been ongoing for years now.
The Estate was on a roll for a while with the release of Super Deluxe Editions of 1999 and Sign o’ the Times, and a masterful marketing of an unreleased 2010 album, Welcome 2 America, but for a year or so, has been stuck in a rut of uninteresting re-releases.
As much as I appreciated the sonic upgrade and deluxe box set packaging for Prince and the Revolution LIVE 1985, I have to agree with most fams that the Purple Rain era gets more exposure at the expense of Prince’s other albums and unreleased material than is probably necessary.
Having said that, given 2024 is the 40th Anniversary of Purple Rain, I expect we’re in for another floodgate to open where that era is concerned.
I’ll be shocked if we don’t see the 1983 First Avenue concert (which comprised the basis for the Purple Rain album) released, possibly in conjuction with an even bigger, better expanded edition of Purple Rain than the one released in 2017.
I’d also be surprised if 2024 doesn’t see the release of a long-awaited Prince documentary that Netflix has reportedly been preparing.
I won’t complain if the Estate delivers all the right goods that have been hidden or unavailable in primo form until now, but this fam is more eager for revisits to the Parade and Lovesexy eras, and hopefully some attention paid to upgraded re-releases of long out-of-print albums Prince produced for Jill Jones and The Family.
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This essay was originally published on The Huffington Post, April 28, 2016.
This 2023 version has been revised to account for the passage of time.
