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Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 7:37:36 pm
To: "The Live 4 Love Mpls Prince Yahoo! Group" <Live_4_Love_Minneapolis@yahoogroups.com>
From: "~*[[PFL]]*~" <qaidsharif@yahoo.com>
Subject: [Prince-4ever] A Prince by Any Other Name
A Prince by Any Other Name
The tail end of 1993 marked a crisis point for Prince and Warner
Bros., the company that had made him a star: several months after the
artist unveiled his unpronounceable new name , album sales were down and record execs were growing impatient. In an exclusive excerpt from the upcoming biography Prince: The Music and the Masks , author Ronin Ro tells the tale of how all of this calamity very nearly spelled the end of a decades-long partnership.
By Ronin Ro
Courtesy of St. Martin?s Press.
Adapted from Prince: Inside the Music and the Masks, by Ronin Ro, to be published this month by St. Martin's Press; © 2011 by the author.
He still owed Warner five albums. He could give them that much vault material whenever they wanted. Then, as , he could release new stuff on a smaller label. It?d be a dream come
true, to finally release as much music as he created. ?I just wish I had some magic words I could say to Warner?s so it would work out.?
During one meeting, a Warner executive said, ?We don?t want any more Prince albums.?
?That?s the name on the contract,? he answered.
?That?s not the name people know you by now.?
If he was going by , they wanted ?s new work. But he said, ?You didn?t sign him.?
Claiming he?d stop playing old Prince songs added to Warner?s
frustration. Mo Ostin, Waronker, and other top executives and attorneys
met to discuss his ?retirement,? his refusal to submit new music, and
his name change. He was retaliating for Gold Nigga, they felt, hoping to use ?alternative media? for new projects while
handing them old stuff. Some in the room called it breach of contract.
But?thanks, some said, to Russ Thyret?they wouldn?t take immediate legal action. If anything, they were relieved. For once, he wasn?t in their
face, asking them to release more music. They could also create a
stopgap greatest-hits collection.
That summer both sides retreated from a potential legal battle. They
told Prince about the greatest-hits collection. He reluctantly supported it. Though his Paisley Park Studios vault held about 500 unreleased
songs, project producer Gregg Geller of Warner Bros. didn?t use many.
Warner filled it with classics like ?When Doves Cry? and ?1999,? and
rare single B-sides. But Prince soon stepped forward to offer four
unreleased numbers: his new song, ?Pink Cashmere,? his late-80s ballad
?Power Fantastic,? his smooth new dance-rap ?Pope,? and his 50s-inspired new rocker ?Peach,? most of which featured playing by the New Power
Generation. He even threw in his live version of ?Nothing Compares 2 U,? with Rosie Gaines, recorded during an invitation-only Paisley Park
event with revamped music.
Some reporters claimed Prince was discarding a celebrated trademark.
But Prince felt when the lights went down in a concert hall, and he
spoke into a microphone, ?it doesn?t matter what your name is.? Jokes
and references to ?Symbol Man,? ?the Glyph,? and ?What?s-His-Symbol?
crept into stories. As did accusations this symbol was part of a
renegotiation strategy or scheme to escape his contract. Prince claimed
he was just drawing a line in the sand. ?Things change here.? He was
seeing which media outlets respected him. And if something frustrated
him, Prince remembered that Muhammad Ali saw reporters and fight fans
call him Cassius Clay for years. Privately, however, Prince knew this
decision was shrinking his audience even more.
?It was the worst period of my life,? he later told Salon.com. ?I was
being made physically ill by what was going on.? But he had started on
this path and couldn?t give in. He had to keep putting on a brave front. He told another writer at Paisley Park, ?Here there is solitude,
silence. I like to stay in this controlled environment.? People were
saying he was out of touch. Fine. He?d create 25 to 30 albums and ?catch up with Sinatra so you tell me who?s out of touch.? Detractors could
say what they want. ?One thing I ain?t gonna run out of is music.? A
magazine wrote that fulfilling his Warner contract with vault songs
while releasing new ones somewhere else as didn?t ?hold much promise as a legal theory.? And before Prince knew
it, the media had a new name for him. After a British journalist
described him as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, others adopted the phrase. It seemingly ridiculed his decision, but American newspaper
writers used it, too. So did TV stations. He frowned. ?I?m not the
Artist Formerly Known as Anything. Use my name.?
By July 1993, he wanted to release a song as on another label. Warner chairman Mo Ostin said no. They could find a way ?but they?re afraid of the ripple effect, that everybody would want to do it,? Prince felt. But Warner wasn?t the only problem. It was the
entire industry. ?There?s just a few people with all the power.? After
declining to play the MTV Music Awards ?suddenly, I can?t get a video on MTV, and you can?t get a hit without that.? He came to respect Pearl
Jam, who had recently decided not to film any more videos.
Unable to release music as , Prince decided to cram new music into other media. August 21, he premiered Glam Slam Ulysses, a play that offered a modern take on Homer?s Odyssey in his new Glam Slam club in Los Angeles (his renovated club). The
production cost several hundred thousand dollars and included 12
dancers, and 13 new songs. But the Los Angeles Times called it ?silly.? Once it flopped, Prince kept moving these new songs from one project to another.
Around him, people felt Prince was wasting money on what insiders
called ?things of little or no commercial value.? These included the
erotic stage version of Ulysses, a cheaply packaged ?poly-gender fragrance? called ?Get Wild,? stage
sets and rehearsals for tours he never took, and videos. If someone told him no, he grew exasperated. A business manager urged him to spend
less, and he told her, ?I don?t need a mother.?
Alternative media could also mean movies. So Prince agreed to provide
songs for director James Brooks?s latest film. The 53-year-old?s debut
as writer-director, 1984?s Terms of Endearment won three Oscars, including best picture. His 1987 film Broadcast News frowned on network news stations and infotainment. His latest, I?ll Do Anything, was a father-daughter story with Nick Nolte, Tracy Ullman, and other
cast members singing songs. Prince handed Brooks all-new works called
?Wow,? ?Make Believe,? a title track, ?Don?t Talk 2 Strangers,? ?My
Little Pill,? ?There Is Lonely,? ?Be My Mirror,? and ?I Can?t Love U
Anymore.? He offered two others, ?The Rest of My Life? and ?Empty Room,? but Brooks rejected them early in production. (By August 1993, Brooks
had finished the film. Columbia Pictures held the first test screening.
?Audience response was calamitous,? Time reported. ?One hundred people walked out, and opinion cards showed they hated the songs.?)
September 7 and 8, Prince was in London, with Rob Borm, director of the ?Gett Off? video, filming his shows. But just as Prince was about to
take the stage, according to Bruce Orwall in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Borm asked about the $450,000 Paisley Park still owed him for the
?Gett Off? video. ?You should know better than to talk to me about
money, especially before a gig,? Prince snapped. Prince went onstage to
perform, but his attorney and business manager soon delivered similar
lectures. Facing angry creditors, Borm called his own attorney for
advice. The lawyer advised Borm to pull his crew, come home, and start
negotiating for payment. The tour ended by September 1993. And back
home, Prince finally dismissed his band, the New Power Generation.
That same month, there were changes at Warner. A corporate realignment plan now had Prince?s longtime supporter Mo Ostin reporting to Warner
Music Group chairman Robert Morgado instead of the company?s top man, as Ostin had for years. Fearing a loss of autonomy, Ostin resigned. His
departure inspired more resignations and realignment plans, leaving the
world?s largest record company nearly para
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