Speaker 1: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis.
Speaker 2: This is the story about a murder.
Speaker 1: It's the story of a band member with a gun
Speaker 1: shoved in his face, a bodyguard selling his boss's story
Speaker 1: for drug money. It's the story of an earthquake, a
Speaker 1: cop stuck with a dirty AIDS infected needle, of a
Speaker 1: beating with a baseball bat. It's the story of a
Speaker 1: revolution and a Sign of the Times. It is, of course,
Speaker 1: a story about Prince, a man who might be the
Speaker 1: greatest pop musician of all time, a man who made
Speaker 1: great music, some of the greatest music ever made. Unlike
Speaker 1: that music, I played a few at the top of
Speaker 1: the show that wasn't great music. That was a preset
Speaker 1: loop from my melotron called Brown Mark's Lament MK one.
Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
Speaker 1: rights to live in on a Prayer by bon Jovi.
Speaker 1: And why would I play you that specific slice of
Speaker 1: slippery when wet Cheese? Could I afford it? Because that
Speaker 1: was the number one song in America on February eighteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, And that was the day that Prince
Speaker 1: released the song Sign of the Times, his first single
Speaker 1: in four years. Without his legendary band The Revolution, a
Speaker 1: song from an album about death, rebirth, change, crime and
Speaker 1: strife from one of the greatest to ever do it.
Speaker 1: On this episode, Bodyguards, drug habits, guns, gangs, and oh yeah,
Speaker 1: an ejaculating guitar and I mentioned the ejaculating guitar and
Speaker 1: of course Prince, I'm Jake Brennan and this is disgrace slant.
Speaker 1: As Prince stood up in the audience to accept the
Speaker 1: first of three American Music Awards in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: His bodyguard, Charles.
Speaker 1: Huntsbury aka Big Chick, stood up with Big Chick came
Speaker 1: as advertised six foot eight, three hundred or maybe four
Speaker 1: hundred something pounds, depending on who you asked. There's a
Speaker 1: big white dude in a big white Sanda beard wearing
Speaker 1: a big old black wife beater. He was not just
Speaker 1: a protector, but he was an ally, the kind of
Speaker 1: guy who, when he walked into an establishment alongside a
Speaker 1: black member of Prince's band, would immediately clock the racist
Speaker 1: shit heads inside say without hesitation, this is my friend
Speaker 1: and if you little pussies have a problem with him,
Speaker 1: then you have a problem with me. Big Chick was
Speaker 1: Prince's big shadow and Prince, all five foot two of them,
Speaker 1: though a little taller tonight on account of those heels
Speaker 1: he was wearing, cut a path to the stage with purpose,
Speaker 1: where representatives of the previous generation the Beach Boys, handed
Speaker 1: him his award. He strolled to the mic and said, simply,
Speaker 1: said very much.
Speaker 2: No one else brought.
Speaker 1: Their bodyguard with them to the American Music Awards that night,
Speaker 1: But there was no one else like Prince, not that night,
Speaker 1: not any night. But on January twenty eighth, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: the evening of the American Music Awards, no one could
Speaker 1: do what Prince could do, which specifically was beat Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson in his unbeatable album Thriller in the Favorite Pop
Speaker 1: Album category. Right now, Prince was no longer in the ascendant.
Speaker 1: At twenty six years old, Prince was at the mountaintop.
Speaker 1: The album for which he won those awards, Purple Rain,
Speaker 1: was also the soundtrack to the movie of the same name,
Speaker 1: released the year prior, a number one movie that generated
Speaker 1: two number one singles, When Doves Cry and Let's Go Crazy.
Speaker 1: But the most impressive statistic was that now, in January
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty five, the album Slash soundtrack Purple Rain
Speaker 1: had just ended its twenty four week streak at number
Speaker 1: one on the Billboard Album Chart. Twenty four weeks, that's
Speaker 1: six months. If you don't want to do the math,
Speaker 1: and you're not alone. Prince didn't want to do the
Speaker 1: math either. Prince just wanted to do things the way he.
Speaker 2: Wanted them done.
Speaker 1: Doing it his way was how he made his first
Speaker 1: album For You back in nineteen seventy eight, while he
Speaker 1: was still just a teenager. He produced it, arranged it,
Speaker 1: and performed everything entirely by himself. Doing it his way
Speaker 1: was how he made his third album, Dirty Mind, at
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty. That record's raw, funk and brazen lyrical content
Speaker 1: was so game changing that the Village Voice rock critic
Speaker 1: Robert chris Gau wrote, and I quote, Mick Jagger can
Speaker 1: just fold up his penis and go home. And his
Speaker 1: way was also the only way when it came to
Speaker 1: training his band, The Revolution. The rehearsals went on for
Speaker 1: hours with no interruptions. And you better learn to play
Speaker 1: that bass with one hand so that if you get hungry,
Speaker 1: you can make a sandwich with the other hand and
Speaker 1: not miss a beat. You want bathroom breaks, go ask
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen if he's hiring and speaking to Bruce.
Speaker 2: Let's get back to.
Speaker 1: The evening of January twenty eighth, nineteen eighty five, because
Speaker 1: on this night, immediately following the awards ceremony, the Boss
Speaker 1: and every other major artist in the room are headed
Speaker 1: over to A and M Studios in Hollywood. There they'll
Speaker 1: record a charity single to benefit famine in Ethiopia called
Speaker 1: We Are the World but not Prince corneass supergroup charity
Speaker 1: songs follow that under things Prince does not want to do.
Speaker 1: What do you mean Prince isn't coming? Quincy Jones was pissed.
Speaker 1: The iconic arranger and producer had assembled a who's who
Speaker 1: of talent for this song, Michael Lionel, Cindy Huey, Bobby, Billy, Tina,
Speaker 1: both Kennies. But if he didn't have Prince, the man
Speaker 1: of the hour, the man who dominated popular culture for
Speaker 1: the last six months, and what did he really have?
Speaker 1: Prince's manager, Bob Cavallo could sense Q's patience wearing thin,
Speaker 1: so we threw him a bone. Prince says he'll come
Speaker 1: play guitar on that track. Quincy Jones was now straight
Speaker 1: up offended.
Speaker 2: I don't need him to play guitar, Bob.
Speaker 1: We've got fucking guitars, and Bob Cavallo panicked. He lied
Speaker 1: and told Quincy that the real reason Prince couldn't make.
Speaker 2: It it was because he was sick.
Speaker 1: And then he hung up and called his client Prince
Speaker 1: and made it very clear that because of that lie,
Speaker 1: it was imperative that Prince lail for the evening. Prince
Speaker 1: heard this kind of thing his whole life. Do this,
Speaker 1: don't do that. As a kid, his father forbade him
Speaker 1: from playing his family piano, and because his father, an
Speaker 1: accomplished jazz musician, saw himself as the talent in the family,
Speaker 1: and the one with the talent was the one who
Speaker 1: get to play. And of course Prince was not just
Speaker 1: as good as his father, but far better. He had
Speaker 1: that pure God given ability from an early age. But
Speaker 1: I firmly believe that it was this gatekeeping that drove Prince,
Speaker 1: first as an unknown and then as an award winning icon,
Speaker 1: to prove not just to his dad but to the
Speaker 1: whole world that he could play better than anyone on
Speaker 1: any instrument. And by the time of Purple Rain, that talent,
Speaker 1: that fame, and that power it was a potent combination
Speaker 1: that any twenty six year old would find hard to handle.
Speaker 1: As Wendy melvoy and the Revolution's other guitarist, said, Prince
Speaker 1: at this time was quote almost like a kid with
Speaker 1: too much candy unquote. And Prince was and sharing his candy,
Speaker 1: not with Quincy Jones or Kenny Rogers or Kenny Loggins
Speaker 1: or Kenny whoever the fuck. So not only was Prince
Speaker 1: not participating in We Are the World, he was going
Speaker 1: to ignore the advice of his manager go hit the
Speaker 1: town and party like it was well, you know. First
Speaker 1: off was Carlos and Charlie's, a Mexican joint on the
Speaker 1: Sunset step Prince and the Revolution. That's Wendy Melvoyne, along
Speaker 1: with keyboardists Lisa Coleman and Matt doctor Fink, bassist Mark
Speaker 1: Brown aka Brown Mark, and drummer Bobby z. They had
Speaker 1: the run of the place and after some food, they
Speaker 1: all transitioned upstairs to l Pravado, which, yes, movie Ben
Speaker 1: was a private club where the band could be treated
Speaker 1: like the VIP rock star as they were. But Wendy
Speaker 1: and the rest of the Revolution weren't feeling the VIP vibe,
Speaker 1: especially while their peers were collaborating on a collective good deed.
Speaker 1: Prince told him the chill to the victor, go the spoils. Besides,
Speaker 1: who is gonna find out. It was late when they
Speaker 1: left the club and Prince, flanked by his shadow of
Speaker 1: Big Chick and his other bodyguard, Wally Safford, slipped into
Speaker 1: a car outside on the strip. As they did so,
Speaker 1: the other rear passenger door flung open and a man
Speaker 1: with a camera jumped inside and began snapping photos.
Speaker 2: Prince was startled. He threw up his.
Speaker 1: Hands in front of his face and then just blurted out,
Speaker 1: get the film, get the film.
Speaker 2: And the photographer quickly bailed. Pauling ass on foot down.
Speaker 1: Sunset bodyguard Wally Safford gave Chase and the sight of
Speaker 1: this very capable man, a man who learned his trade
Speaker 1: from the Nation of Islam and had paid his dues
Speaker 1: protecting hot shot bands from the Commodore's to Parliament, funking
Speaker 1: delic set more paparazzi running out of the shadows. Wally
Speaker 1: didn't care about the rest of him. He just wanted
Speaker 1: that fucker who had taken the photos of Prince in
Speaker 1: the car. Wally closed in, and the photographer stopped, turned
Speaker 1: around and took a swing at Wally's head with his
Speaker 1: long lens camera. Wally's memories of hanging around Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: as a kid came flooding back. He ducked, then rose
Speaker 1: and drilled a shutterbug right in his eye, knocking them
Speaker 1: into some bushes. The next morning, just as manager Bob
Speaker 1: Cavallo had predicted, and just how Wendy and the others
Speaker 1: had feared, the story was all over the papers. Wally
Speaker 1: Safford was arrested. Prince was disgraced, exposed as a selfish
Speaker 1: outlier who is now being hit along with his bodyguards,
Speaker 1: with a fifteen million dollar lawsuit. Big Chick freaked out.
Speaker 1: This was more than the usual crowd control bullshit he
Speaker 1: normally dealt with. He worried the next time it would
Speaker 1: be worse, the next time someone would really get hurt.
Speaker 1: His next move shocked Prince as much as that paparazzo
Speaker 1: who jumped into his car. Big Chick quit, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't out of Prince's.
Speaker 2: Life just yet.
Speaker 1: Big Chick had an equally big cocaine problem, and in
Speaker 1: order to pay for that problem, he sold a scandalous
Speaker 1: story about his one time boss to the National Inquirer
Speaker 1: for a quick buck, and the resulting article would play
Speaker 1: a huge part in how the general public's perception of
Speaker 1: Prince began to shift. But you can't really blame Big Chick.
Speaker 1: The wheels were already in motion as early as the
Speaker 1: night of January twenty eighth, nineteen eighty five, the night
Speaker 1: of the American Music Awards and of We Are the World.
Speaker 1: The Prince may have reached the mountaintop, but that meant
Speaker 1: that there was nowhere to go but down. And so
Speaker 1: as a photographer nursed his wounds, as the La Times
Speaker 1: ran the kind of headline that Bob Cavallo could have
Speaker 1: written himself, and as the lawyers started to come for
Speaker 1: Princess Wallet, all of it so clearly pointed to the
Speaker 1: next phase of Prince's career, the backlash. Four years earlier,
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one, nineteen year old Mark Brown, just
Speaker 1: out of high school, had yet to flip his name
Speaker 1: around to create the stage name Brown Mark.
Speaker 2: He had also yet to.
Speaker 1: Be drafted by Prince for a role in the Revolution,
Speaker 1: but being a Minneapolis kid playing bass in a band
Speaker 1: on the city scene, of course, Mark already knew about Prince.
Speaker 1: Everybody in the Twin Cities knew about Prince. He was
Speaker 1: the local prodigy, the one they called the kid, a
Speaker 1: sonic wizard who was putting their Midwestern town on the
Speaker 1: musical map. Prince was the success story that all other
Speaker 1: Minneapolis funk and R and B bands measured against when
Speaker 1: they dreamed of scoring their own big break. At the moment, however,
Speaker 1: Mark wasn't thinking about big breaks or about Prince. He
Speaker 1: was thinking about the gun aimed at his head, a
Speaker 1: gun that had been pulled on him by his own bandmate.
Speaker 1: Mark was used to this sort of thing, the threat
Speaker 1: of violence that was always bubbling under the surface, especially
Speaker 1: in the north side of town, where a local disc
Speaker 1: jockey DJ Kyle Ray have been shot dead the year prior.
Speaker 1: But to have your own bandmate pull a gun on
Speaker 1: you and threaten to pull the trigger all over creative
Speaker 1: differences that was fucked up Mark with the guy would
Speaker 1: in the argument over how to play the song or
Speaker 1: whatever bug was up his ass. Besides, the gun was
Speaker 1: all for show, the tool of an insecure musician who
Speaker 1: is likely overcompensating. Mark knew then and there that it
Speaker 1: was time for a change. Change was good, it was healthy,
Speaker 1: change was survival. And when change literally came calling, Mark answered.
Speaker 1: The phone rang not at Mark's house, but in the
Speaker 1: rehearsal space where he and his group Fantasy were in
Speaker 1: the middle of a band practice. It was none other
Speaker 1: than Prince calling for Mark. No shit, Prince asked Mark
Speaker 1: if he would come audition for his band tomorrow night,
Speaker 1: and this required careful exit strategy to avoid another gun
Speaker 1: to the face when Mark broke the news to the
Speaker 1: rest of his band, and when it came to showing
Speaker 1: up a Prince's place to audition, that also required another
Speaker 1: kind of strategy, this one even more delicate than the last,
Speaker 1: because everybody in Minneapolis knew about Prince, and I'm not
Speaker 1: just talking about the kid's musical talent. They'd all heard
Speaker 1: the gossip. The Prince was a freaky motherfucker, as freaky
Speaker 1: as they came. Just look at the cover of his
Speaker 1: latest record, Dirty Mine Dudes, wearing a trench coat and
Speaker 1: black briefs and rocking that mustache, singing songs about oral
Speaker 1: sex and incest. In that falsetto rumor had it, there
Speaker 1: was one particularly shocking and taboo initiation right the Prince
Speaker 1: made all of his auditionees perform, or so one of
Speaker 1: Mark's friends told him, and that friend further told him
Speaker 1: that Prince's house where the audition was to be held,
Speaker 1: was not a house, but instead a compound right by
Speaker 1: armored tanks and German shepherds. As Mark would discover firsthand,
Speaker 1: the craziest part of Prince's house was the automatic driveway
Speaker 1: gate opener that split the black chain link fence in two.
Speaker 1: And there were no tanks, no dogs, and no sexual favors required.
Speaker 1: Prince was Prince, which is to say, he was just
Speaker 1: cool as shit, and yes, Mark Brown aka Brown Mark,
Speaker 1: passed the audition. A few years later, in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: Mark was doing the thing live in the Dream, an
Speaker 1: integral part of the Purple Rain Tour, which was, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, more than a tour, it was a daily
Speaker 1: grind which consisted of the following. You pull into a
Speaker 1: new city, set up the equipment, and soundcheck for hours.
Speaker 1: The sound check is like its own show, and often
Speaker 1: it doesn't end until that night's audience starts to arrive. Next,
Speaker 1: you grabbed dinner, but you don't get to savor it
Speaker 1: because you got to rush back to the.
Speaker 2: Venue where sometimes over one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: Pe people are waiting to see you perform. The show
Speaker 1: is two hours long, give or taken. It's huge, as
Speaker 1: huge as the loads. The Prince's custom made guitar shoots
Speaker 1: over the crowd one hundred feet into the air, all
Speaker 1: that white ivory, liquid, soap, ejaculate and I'm not even
Speaker 1: fucking kidding here. This is the thing that happened. Prince
Speaker 1: had a guitar that he could make come in a
Speaker 1: jack u castor he called it.
Speaker 2: Look it up.
Speaker 1: But after you know, the load is blown and all that,
Speaker 1: the night's not over, because next you have to play
Speaker 1: yet another full set, this time at an after party
Speaker 1: at a club somewhere in town, and that takes you
Speaker 1: into the wee hours of the morning, and some nights
Speaker 1: you get lucky. Some nights Prince wants to record new
Speaker 1: music instead, which he does in the mobile recording truck
Speaker 1: that is part of the touring caravan er, maybe at
Speaker 1: a local studio, you know, don't forget.
Speaker 2: On many days you also have to fit into that
Speaker 2: a tenerary.
Speaker 1: Another show, a full two hour set in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: perform for sick children because contrary to do is freaky reputation,
Speaker 1: Contrary to all that negative press he received over the
Speaker 1: We Are the World bullshit, Prince was as charitable as
Speaker 1: they came. But he didn't do it for the publicity,
Speaker 1: not like the rest of them mugging for the camera
Speaker 1: in that video that was playing every day on MTV.
Speaker 1: They were the ones who made a brighter day. Prince
Speaker 1: was out here doing the work, real work for real
Speaker 1: people who needed it, while Quincy Jones's crew was mugging
Speaker 1: for the cameras and patting themselves on the backs.
Speaker 2: It didn't matter.
Speaker 1: Many were now approaching Prince with the same kind of
Speaker 1: skepticism that Brown Mark once had, because stirring the pot
Speaker 1: was that new National Inquirer article courtesy of the tell
Speaker 1: all payday earned by Prince's former shadow Big Chick, who
Speaker 1: took the three thousand dollars check you receive for spilling
Speaker 1: his supposed guts and promptly snorted it.
Speaker 2: Up his nose.
Speaker 1: The headline of that article read, the real Prince He's
Speaker 1: trapped in a bizarre, secret world of terror. They said,
Speaker 1: Prince lived in an armed fortress, not with a girlfriend
Speaker 1: or a wife, but with a food food taster who
Speaker 1: ensured that every meal was safe for the Purple Ones consumption.
Speaker 2: They said the Prince had.
Speaker 1: Walled wall portraits of Marilyn Monroe, that he talked to
Speaker 1: them as if they were real. They said about his
Speaker 1: erotic song Darling Nikki, you know the one that US
Speaker 1: Senator Al Gore's wife, Tipper Dean pornographic and wanted censored
Speaker 1: thanks to the financial backing of the Beach Boys Mike
Speaker 1: Love The one and the same we resent to Prince
Speaker 1: with an American Music Award in nineteen eighty five, that
Speaker 1: little weasel. But I digress, they said the National Inquirer.
Speaker 1: They said that if you played the weird backwards section
Speaker 1: of Darling Nicky in reverse, you'd hear a creepy satanic message. Prince,
Speaker 1: of course, didn't publicly reply to all of this, just
Speaker 1: as he didn't publicly share that he performed shows on
Speaker 1: the regular for kids in need. Instead, he let the
Speaker 1: mystery play out, mystery being the thing that sells. Copies
Speaker 1: of The Inquirer are sure, but mystery sells records too, like.
Speaker 2: Around the world in the day.
Speaker 1: The follow up to Purple Rain, released just weeks after
Speaker 1: that record breaking tour ended. It too, went right to
Speaker 1: number one on the album chart, even as Prince's reputation
Speaker 1: was taking hits on all fronts. Unlike Purple Rain, Around
Speaker 1: the World in a Day, only held the top spot
Speaker 1: for three weeks. So Prince tried a new tactic that fall.
Speaker 1: He granted Rolling Stone and interview to show that he
Speaker 1: wasn't what everyone had made him out to be, and
Speaker 1: also to show that truth could be stranger than fiction, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, the backwards section of Darling Nikki. That wasn't
Speaker 1: some subversive satanic message. In fact, you play that part
Speaker 1: in reverse and you hear a message about God. That
Speaker 1: right there, that was fantasy versus reality, and reality at
Speaker 1: that moment and all of its beautiful and ugly forms
Speaker 1: was playing out in real time on the streets of
Speaker 1: Prince's beloved Minneapolis.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after this. We're We're, We're.
Speaker 1: John Scruggs, the self appointed leader of the Black gangster
Speaker 1: Disciple Nation aka the Disciples, told Sandra White to bring
Speaker 1: her twenty two revolver to tonight's meeting. It was October thirteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, just after midnight. Sandra White did as
Speaker 1: she was told, as any loyal disciple would do. When
Speaker 1: John Scruggs spoke, If Scruggs said jump, you asked how high.
Speaker 1: So White showed up with the gun and then listened
Speaker 1: carefully as Scruggs laid out the plan to her and.
Speaker 2: The rest of the group.
Speaker 1: Three weeks earlier, their street gang had robbed a gun
Speaker 1: store in their hometown of Minneapolis. The crime was almost perfect,
Speaker 1: but the cops managed to get their hands on sixteen
Speaker 1: year old disciple well, Christine Krites, and Scruggs was concerned
Speaker 1: that she had turned snitch. That's why Christine Kritz had
Speaker 1: to go. Sandra White and the others would make that happen.
Speaker 1: They were to take her out tonight with Sandra White's gun.
Speaker 1: John Scruggs laid it all out, follow Christine Krit's home
Speaker 1: and shoot her dead. This was their mission. Sandra White,
Speaker 1: Mary Braxton, and Grayland Williams did as John Scruggs told them,
Speaker 1: and they followed sixteen year old Christine Kritz back to
Speaker 1: her place, stopping just shy at her front door at
Speaker 1: the tennis courts near Martin Luther King Junior Park in
Speaker 1: South Minneapolis. There, Graylen Williams took hold as a twenty
Speaker 1: two He thought again of John Scruggs's orders, follow her
Speaker 1: home and shoot her dead.
Speaker 2: This was their.
Speaker 1: Mission, as grayln Williams did so. Sandra White and Mary
Speaker 1: Bruxton lit a joint and try to look nonchalant, and
Speaker 1: they didn't even notice the moment when Williams pulled the
Speaker 1: gun to Christine Kritz's head and pulled the trigger. Nine
Speaker 1: months later, in the summer of nineteen eighty six, Prince
Speaker 1: was reading all about the murder of Christine Kritz in
Speaker 1: the arrest of the Disciples gang and the impending trial
Speaker 1: on the pages of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Kids killing Kids.
Speaker 1: Prince thought, man, what the hell was going on? The
Speaker 1: crime rate in his hometown was reaching a fever pitch,
Speaker 1: but it was obviously just a small part of a
Speaker 1: larger narrative happening everywhere. He turned the page to read
Speaker 1: about ballistic nuclear missiles locked cocked and ready to fly,
Speaker 1: US bombs and Libya aids, drugs and famine. Another page,
Speaker 1: the ongoing investigation into the Challenger space shuttle explosion. Another page,
Speaker 1: an earthquake out West in nineteen eighty six. The fault
Speaker 1: lines weren't just out in southern California. They lay beneath
Speaker 1: the ranks of the Revolution, many of whom were beginning
Speaker 1: to feel iced out by the new members Prince was
Speaker 1: bringing on board, including Susannah Melvoyn, Wendy's twin sister, who
Speaker 1: was also princess fiance at the time. Those shaky fault
Speaker 1: lines were also undermining Prince's unwavering desire to change. Creatively speaking,
Speaker 1: he knew this, just like Brown Mark knew it as
Speaker 1: a musician on the come up with a gun in
Speaker 1: his face.
Speaker 2: Change was survival.
Speaker 1: Just look at Miles Davis. You change your clothes, you
Speaker 1: change your sound. Do you think Miles gave two shits
Speaker 1: about what Columbia Records thought about bitches Brew. Change is
Speaker 1: why Prince refused to repeat the playbook for Purple Rain,
Speaker 1: moving on to psychedelia, funk and pop for Around the
Speaker 1: World in the Day in the underrated Parade. But by
Speaker 1: doing so it cost him first with R and B fans,
Speaker 1: who accused Prince of turning his back on black music,
Speaker 1: and then it cost his bottom line too. Neither album
Speaker 1: sold nearly as well as Purple Rain and the movie,
Speaker 1: for which Parade also doubled as a soundtrack. Under the
Speaker 1: cherry moon was a box office bomb. And now that
Speaker 1: commercial failure was putting unexpected pressure on his construction of
Speaker 1: Paisley Park, his sixty five thousand square foot complex twenty
Speaker 1: minutes outside Minneapolis, which included three private recording studios. It
Speaker 1: was nearing completion, a complex into which Prince had sunk
Speaker 1: ten million dollars. Financial pain, box office poison, the disgrumpled
Speaker 1: members of his own band. None of it could stop
Speaker 1: Prince from finding energy in change. But there was another
Speaker 1: form of energy right now, a dark energy wrestling with
Speaker 1: the light, the energy of total existential dread, staring him
Speaker 1: dead in the face. Every time he opened a newspaper
Speaker 1: or turned on the TV. Prince tapped into them, both
Speaker 1: the light and the dark, and he used them to
Speaker 1: power his next move, which was happening behind closed doors
Speaker 1: in the one place where Prince felt capable of real transformation,
Speaker 1: the recording studio. So hold up to understand this, I
Speaker 1: have to make sure you understand exactly how Prince worked
Speaker 1: in the recording studio and how his process differed from
Speaker 1: his peers. First of all, and I don't mean to
Speaker 1: get into another Prince versus Michael Jackson thing here. But
Speaker 1: as legendary producer Jimmy Jam observed, when Prince went into
Speaker 1: the studio, he would leave at the end of the
Speaker 1: day with a classic song like nineteen ninety nine fully
Speaker 1: written and recorded.
Speaker 2: Now, when Michael.
Speaker 1: Went into the studio, he would leave at the end
Speaker 1: of the day having spent the entire session obsessing over
Speaker 1: the volume of the handclaps on the track. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying there's anything right or wrong about either method here,
Speaker 1: I'm just illustrating the difference. As Jimmy Jam's example demonstrates,
Speaker 1: Prince's genius was largely rooted in inspiration. But and this
Speaker 1: is the second thing, Prince's genius was also the result
Speaker 1: of impatient You know why Prince used real drums on
Speaker 1: some songs and a drum machine on others. The call
Speaker 1: was made based solely on whichever one is. Engineer Susan
Speaker 1: Rogers got set up.
Speaker 2: First, if the.
Speaker 1: Drum machine was plugged in and ready to rock, the
Speaker 1: drums were made by a machine, he simply could not
Speaker 1: wait for a drummer to get his or her shit together.
Speaker 1: And Third, when inspiration struck at any time of the
Speaker 1: day or night, he called Susan again, his engineer who
Speaker 1: would meet him in the studio to get to work.
Speaker 1: It was like a constant flowsting. And there's one particular
Speaker 1: kound of a day in the studio when Prince recorded
Speaker 1: four songs simultaneously without saying anything to anyone, without having
Speaker 1: anything written down. He had susan roll tape, and then
Speaker 1: he sat behind the drums and recorded the drum track
Speaker 1: for one song, and the tape kept rolling, and he
Speaker 1: proceeded to record the drum track for the next song,
Speaker 1: and so forth, and then he went back and put
Speaker 1: down the bass for the first song, and then the
Speaker 1: next song, and he get the idea. He started at
Speaker 1: four pm, and nine and a half hours later, at
Speaker 1: one thirty am, he had four brand new who completed
Speaker 1: songs with all the instruments, all the vocals, the whole nine.
Speaker 1: And these are the first four songs on the Parade album.
Speaker 1: If you want to go take another listen now that
Speaker 1: you know how they were made. By September of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, six months after the release of Parade, the
Speaker 1: new songs he was recording were really piling up, and
Speaker 1: there were so many that he planned for his next
Speaker 1: release to be a triple album. Bruce Springsteen's new five
Speaker 1: record live box set set the precedent as far as
Speaker 1: Prince was concerned. But Springsteen was just coming off of
Speaker 1: the incredibly successful Born in the USA, A triple album
Speaker 1: from a guy like Prince whose last two records had underperformed.
Speaker 2: That was the kind of thing that gave.
Speaker 1: The executives at Warner Brothers heartburn. But Prince was unfazed.
Speaker 1: He kept his head down and his vision tunneled. Warner Brothers,
Speaker 1: like his father, could go ahead and try and tell
Speaker 1: him what he could and couldn't do, and ditto for
Speaker 1: his fans, clamoring for another purple rain, for a return
Speaker 1: to his dirty mind, roots to anything that wasn't what
Speaker 1: he'd been doing. He used it all. He used the
Speaker 1: pain of whatever was going on between him and Susannah.
Speaker 1: He knew the relationship was ending, just as the revolution
Speaker 1: was ending. But there was another revolution happening right here
Speaker 1: in the studio where Prince was alone save for his
Speaker 1: loyal engineers, Susan Rogers. He told Susan rolled tape, and
Speaker 1: he laid down a pattern on the mL one drum machine,
Speaker 1: and then to the Fairlight digital workstation for a bubbling
Speaker 1: synth sound and a bluesy bassline, and he kept building
Speaker 1: more tracks, more instrumentation, but then he abruptly stripped most
Speaker 1: of them away, until the song was reduced to just
Speaker 1: the drums, the fairlight, and his guitar, most likely his
Speaker 1: iconic Honer MadCat Telemodel. And he mixed the music down
Speaker 1: onto a cassette, popped it into the tape deck of
Speaker 1: his Ford Thunderbird, hit the gas, and wrote around town.
Speaker 1: Listening to the mix while writing lyrics. In his head,
Speaker 1: Prince thought again about the Disciples gang. He thought about
Speaker 1: bombs and missiles, of health crisis and society on the brink,
Speaker 1: and the collective pain of a world that needed healing.
Speaker 1: He was calling this one the sign of the times.
Speaker 2: He knew he was onto something.
Speaker 1: New, something that could match the power of Purple Rain,
Speaker 1: even if it sounded completely different, So much so that
Speaker 1: he did something he didn't normally do. He played the
Speaker 1: song for Lenny Waronker, then president of Warners, the father figure,
Speaker 1: the Gatekeeper, and Lenny listened. Four minutes and fifty six
Speaker 1: seconds later, when the song ended, Lenny was speechless. It
Speaker 1: totally freaked me out, he later said, When I heard
Speaker 1: the record I thought, oh my god, he's gone to
Speaker 1: another just another zone. It was just unbelievable. On March
Speaker 1: thirty first, nineteen eighty seven, a police officer in Baltimore
Speaker 1: was placed on medical leave after being stuck with a
Speaker 1: hypodermic needle hidden in the pocket of the purp. He
Speaker 1: just arrested a purp who had tested positive for the
Speaker 1: AIDS virus. Over in Chicago, elementary school students fearfully passed
Speaker 1: through an infamous playground on their way to class. We're
Speaker 1: just months earlier, a kid was attacked by a local
Speaker 1: street gang, beaten so badly with a baseball bat that
Speaker 1: he lost an eye. In New Jersey, twenty one men
Speaker 1: went on trial for running drugs, gambling, and other illegal
Speaker 1: activities out of the Hole in the Wall luncheonette in Newark,
Speaker 1: allegedly as part of the Luksey organized crime family. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: nightly news broadcasts from coast to coast continued to report
Speaker 1: on the fallout from President Reagan's recent admission that the
Speaker 1: United States government had been trading arms with Iran in
Speaker 1: return for hostages. On that same day, March thirty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, Prince released sign of the Times, his
Speaker 1: ninth studio album, which led off with the title track
Speaker 1: that Warner Brothers president Lenny Warniker had described as unbelievable,
Speaker 1: and that song, which had been released as a single
Speaker 1: a month prior, was as timely as anything Prince had
Speaker 1: ever released. It was as potent in eighty seven as
Speaker 1: Marvin Gaye's What's Going On was in seventy one or
Speaker 1: Stevie Wonders Living for the City was in seventy three,
Speaker 1: and as a number one single on the R and
Speaker 1: B chart. It was also sweet revenge against those who
Speaker 1: kept calling him out for crossing.
Speaker 2: Over into the pop world.
Speaker 1: Sign of the Times. The album was not a triple album,
Speaker 1: as was originally intended under its working titles Dream Factory
Speaker 1: and Crystal Ball, but instead a double album, the first
Speaker 1: of Prince's career, and like many of the greatest double
Speaker 1: albums in history, The Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street
Speaker 1: the Clash is London Calling. Sign of the Times is
Speaker 1: an eclectic set of songs that tackled not just the
Speaker 1: hot button issues of the day, but sex, god, love.
Speaker 2: And everything in between.
Speaker 1: Over at the Village Voice, home of the Dean of
Speaker 1: rock critics Robert Chriscau, who just seven years earlier had
Speaker 1: told Mick Jagger to check his dick into a nursing home.
Speaker 1: Sign of the Times became the biggest winner in the
Speaker 1: history of the paper's influential year end Passant Job Writer's poll.
Speaker 1: It beat out Springsteen's.
Speaker 2: Tunnel of Love for the number one.
Speaker 1: Spot by an even wider margin than Michael Jackson's Thriller
Speaker 1: had beat RIM's Murmur in nineteen eighty three. But although
Speaker 1: Michael was nominated for his album Bad alongside Prince for
Speaker 1: Album of the Year at the thirtieth Grammy Awards a
Speaker 1: year later in March of nineteen eighty eight, neither artist
Speaker 1: won that trophy went to U two for their blockbuster
Speaker 1: album The Joshua Tree. Prince again was unfazed. It didn't
Speaker 1: matter that Sign of the Times didn't win a bunch
Speaker 1: of awards the way that Purple Rain once had, Nor
Speaker 1: did it matter that it didn't sell as well as
Speaker 1: Purple Rain.
Speaker 2: Hell didn't sell as well as.
Speaker 1: Parade or around the World Day either, But it once
Speaker 1: and for all established Prince as a megawak craftsman an artist,
Speaker 1: in addition to his existing status as a megawalk performer. Baby,
Speaker 1: he was a star, but he was a star in
Speaker 1: his own way, not how anyone else wanted him to be.
Speaker 1: And back at the American Music Awards in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: on the night of the recording of We Are the World,
Speaker 1: the night that one of his bodyguards was arrested in
Speaker 1: another quit. While accepting the award for Favorite Pop Album,
Speaker 1: Prince told a screaming crowd in that deep bedroom voice
Speaker 1: of his quote, for all of us, life is death
Speaker 1: without adventure. Adventure only comes to those who are willing
Speaker 1: to be daring and take chances unquote, venture, change, impatience, inspiration.
Speaker 1: Anything less than all that would be a disgrace. I'm
Speaker 1: Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland, all right. Thanks for
Speaker 1: keeping it purple with me in this week's episode. Just
Speaker 1: a reminder to Apple podcast listeners, make sure you get
Speaker 1: those auto downloads turned on. This week's question of the
Speaker 1: week is which artists best nailed their moment? Was it
Speaker 1: Prince with Sign of the Times? Was it Stevie was
Speaker 1: Living for the City? Was it Marvin Gaye with What's
Speaker 1: going On?
Speaker 2: Was it someone else? Public Enemy?
Speaker 1: Lauren Hill lots to choose from hit me up and
Speaker 1: let me know six one seven nine O six six
Speaker 1: six three eight. We'll get into it in the after Party.
Speaker 1: Leave me a voicemail, send me a text. You might
Speaker 1: hear yourself on that bonus episode of the after Party coming.
Speaker 2: Up right after this episode.
Speaker 1: You could also send your answers to me at disgrace
Speaker 1: sampod on Instagram, X and Facebook.
Speaker 2: Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 2: Spotify and.
Speaker 1: Win some free merch All right, here come some credits.
Speaker 1: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
Speaker 1: found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
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Speaker 2: He's a bad, bad man.