All Along The Watchtower
40 Years On, A Deluxe Love Letter To Prince
Let the record reflect that the first time people heard “Purple Rain” played live, nobody clapped. It was August 8th, 1983, and Prince and the Revolution were doing a benefit gig to help out a local dance studio where his band worked out their choreography. Furthermore, that iconic solo? Improvised on the spot. And he was just 25 years old.
All of this leaps up from just a couple of the 176 pages Twin Cities journalist Andrea Swensson has pieced together for “Prince and Purple Rain 40 Years” – a lavish and nicely designed volume that thrusts a bucket under the Niagara of Prince’s recorded output. It’s a big ask, even 40 years on. Minneapolis’ favorite son rarely slept as he approached his commercial peak, and probably would have required a squadron of assistants to capture all the details of how this much music came to be. And even if he had lived to comment on this or any of the other anniversaries that will be attached to the album’s release, Swensson makes it clear in her preface that he probably wouldn’t have cared.
Having been summoned out to Paisley Park following her production of a local radio special celebrating Purple Rain’s 30th, the writer was treated to audience with the great man himself. But the vibe that night had little to do with nostalgia – even though Revolution drummer “Bobby Z” Rifkin was also in attendance.
“What I think Prince wanted to communicate to Bobby and me that night, flanked by his latest band and with two albums’ worth of just-recorded material blasting out of his studio speakers, was that he had no desire to stop and dwell on the past. Milestones like this one were, at best, meaningless to him and, at worst, a distraction from the creation of what needed to come out next.”
For the rest of us, however, we have Swensson’s book to mark the occasion. For a start. the photos here span the iconic to the rare, and the text covers not only the period surrounding the record, but the artistic march towards the “Purple Rain” era as well. Interviews with band members and a track-by- track examination are all there inside a package that comes in a handsome slip case that also features a foreword by SNL star Maya Rudolph. There’s even an extended section that covers the B-sides and the extra tracks that appeared in the film version which, lest we forget, nabbed Prince an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
The story of the movie, a project that was part of his extremely shrewd calculation to superstardom, is also well chronicled here. As a contingency to negotiating a new management contract, Prince put it to his team that he’d only renew if they could land him a major studio deal. It was an audacious move. “1999,” had sold well, but even bands like Culture Club had shifted more units at the time that Prince was hatching his master plan. But as the MTV generation swelled into full flower, executives at Warner Bros. were persuaded that the film idea had some merit, and cameras eventually began to roll. The gamble paid out, and by the summer of 1984 Prince would hold #1 spots on the singles and album charts as well as the box office.
As a document of all this activity, Swensson’s book is a deft and welcome keepsake – capturing the moment when the artist formerly known as just a Pop star made his move to go global and step outside his role as simply a musician. In the future, there probably will be more exhaustive observations of the period as more material springs from his legendary vault. But for now, this in-depth examination of his career zenith is a consequential reminder of just how much Prince had on offer.
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Interview with author Andrea Swennson
Tracking Angle: How do you think the film has held up over time?
Andrea Swensson: I watched it actually in a theater full of Prince fans, and it was the first time I'd really sat down and watched “Purple Rain” from start to finish in many years. And there was something really thrilling about it as a concert film. The live performances are still so electric and it just puts you in that room with the band and it feels really exciting. And then I think as time has passed the plot has just become a little bit more and more cheesy. It's kind of overwrought and there's a couple cringeworthy moments. But I think overall the performance by Prince as an actor for his first time ever appearing on screen (is) impressive. He was so dedicated to that role and to making this whole thing happen, and I really enjoyed watching it.
TA: One interesting thing you pointed out in the book was how there was a definite push to capture Minneapolis as a viable music scene and I’m not sure the film has gotten enough credit for trying to work that angle.
AS: Prince had this Vision to have a movie for years before he got to this stage. He had the resources to do it and I think even in his earlier drafts of the screenplay and stories that he was thinking up was all rooted in this experience of coming up in the Minneapolis scene and the competitiveness between his band in the 70s, which was Grand Central, and then some of these other teenage bands like Flyte Tyme. Jimmy Jam's band was called Mind & Matter and I think he had a real desire to capture that friendly competition and the way that it propelled the scene forward and kind of inspired people to really show up and do their best. I think that part is absolutely captured in the film.
TA: Have the reissues that have been released over the years been as exhaustive as they could have been at this point?
AS: There was one kind of expanded reissue of purple rain that came out right after Prince died in 2017 and it did include some vault material, but it wasn't as deep and as directly tied to the production of the film as the fans were hoping for. So there's definitely some known recordings that exist…some of them have been bootleged and some of them have been teased by Paisley Park at some of these fan events. Jill Jones originally had a much bigger part in the film. She plays the waitress, and she was supposed to be kind of another offshoot love interest. And there was a part where she and Prince sit down at the piano and play a song called “Wednesday.” And when I interviewed her at Paisley Park for one of the celebrations, we got to play the whole recording of her singing with Prince playing the piano and it was really moving. So I think there's a really strong desire in the fan community for a proper super deluxe reissue of “Purple Rain” and I'm not sure if that will happen or not. But they definitely would have plenty of material to pull from.
TA: A lot of people, even hardcore journalists might have been intimidated to meet him, but what was your experience.
AS: Just shaking his hand and you know finally saying hello to him was very surreal because I'd heard so many stories from other journalists about what their experiences were like. He could be pretty…antagonistic with journalists. Especially a hometown journalist if you wrote something that he didn't appreciate or especially if you were extremely critical of him. He was not afraid to call people out and basically read them the riot act. And there definitely was a little bit of that. I had done something around the (30th) anniversary of “Purple Rain” and he obviously did not celebrate birthdays or anniversaries and really saw no reason to be looking back at all. He had so much music that he was getting ready to release and I think it did rub him a little bit the wrong way. But at the same time, he had started watching my work more closely and I think he just wanted to let me know that. Then once he joined Twitter, he would tweet out links to the things I was writing which was very surreal um he put my name in all caps with the link to whatever I had written was like hot off the press! It was just kind of funny. (So) once we got over the thing where he kind of teased me a little bit about the anniversaries, he was so kind and so disarming. You know you hear all these stories about how strange he is and he just seemed so normal to me. He was very down to earth…very easy to talk to, very mellow (and) funny. It was really just a joy to be in his company.
