Purple Rain

Without soul, Prince would be just a great song and dance man. which he is, but he's much more than that.---Bono at the 1988 Grammys accepting Album of the Year for The Joshua Tree.

During the summer of 1984, I was a 13 year old kid who didn't pay a lot of attention to music. Like most people, I liked music, but only as entertainment. To me, it was something to be enjoyed but not deeply felt. Then, in August of 1984, I went to see Purple Rain at the Ready Theater in Niles, Michigan. I would never feel the same way again.

I was certainly aware of Prince prior to Purple Rain. I thought 1999 and Little Red Corvette were "fun" songs. So, as I walked up to the ticket taker who asked me if my parents knew I was going to an 'R' rated movie ("Yes." I lied.), I was only expecting to have a good time. I had no idea that I would exit the theater forever changed. That was the night I discovered art.

For those who have not seen it (Philistines), Purple Rain tells the story of an up and coming Minneapolis musician struggling with family issues while trying to make it big. Viewed now---through the prism of hindsight---it's easy to see the flaws in the film. The screenplay is rudimentary, the style and direction dated, the acting of the female lead (Appolonia Kotero) is amateurish, and the whole enterprise is casually misogynistic. However, everything that was great about it at the time, is still just so. Mostly, I'm referring to the music, of course.

I can still recall the first time I heard the lead single from the Purple Rain soundtrack, When Doves Cry on the radio. It was a few weeks prior to the release of the album and film, when my mother was taking me to a friend's house to hang out. Then, out of the speakers like a shot, came this grinding guitar noise with a man's distorted groaning over the top of it, followed by a tense drum machine and "Dig if you will the picture..." My first thought was "what the hell is this." I wasn't even sure that I liked it, but I was certain that I had never heard anything like it before (or since for that matter). And if you would have asked me what it sounded like, I would have probably replied, "The Future."

I am still convinced to this day that it's the greatest song I have ever heard. It has everything, rockin' guitars, great lyrics, a commanding vocal, a spellbinding beat, and so on, and so on. But, what makes it truly special to me, is that it sounds like the whole world in 5 minutes and 52 seconds. It is intensely personal and poetic:

How can you just leave me standing alone in a world that's so cold?
Maybe I'm just too demanding
maybe I'm just like my father too bold
Maybe you're just like my mother
she's never satisfied
Why do we scream at each other?
This is what it sounds like when doves cry

While it's rarely the case, sometimes your biggest hit is indeed your best song. So it is with Prince and When Doves Cry.

So, I was well primed for the movie on that warm August night. But I was completely unprepared for the level of talent and artistry that I was about to witness. I have no idea whether Prince would have become a great actor or not had he put more time into it. I do know that as a screen presence, he was magnetic. Elfin, cat-like, and strikingly, well, striking, I had never seen anything like him before. And oh, the performance scenes! Dancing like James Brown, playing guitar like Carlos Santana, and singing with that 3 octave voice, he was more like an alien than a person of this Earth. His music made some nods to the past (Sly and the Family Stone in particular), yet sounded wholly original. And I wasn't the only one who noticed. At the end of the movie when Prince takes the stage and performs Purple Rain, the theater crowd was waving their hands in the air and singing alone. He had transformed that movie house into some sort of communal experience. It was staggering.

For an album with such a lofty reputation, it's hard to believe that there are only nine songs on the soundtrack, but every one of them is a gem and several are out and out classics. Other than Doves, there is the great guitar showcase, Let's Go Crazy, the soaring title track, the shimmering I Would Die 4U, and the pure pop tune, Take Me With U. All were hits with Doves and Crazy going all the way to number one and Purple Rain and I Would Die 4U cracking the top 5. Hell, even the deep tracks were memorable. The ecstatic Baby I'm A Star, the lush The Beautiful Ones, the freaky Computer Blue, and the really freaky Darling Nikki, are all standouts in their own right. For that summer and the next several months that followed, it was Prince's world and we just lucky enough to be living in it.

However, it wasn't just his talent, tunes, or appearance that made Purple Rain Prince's magnum opus, his genius move. No, it was the thing I saw in his eyes that I didn't quite understand while I was watching the movie that first time. It was hunger. A hunger to be more than just great, but to be legendary. With Purple Rain, Prince became exactly that, legendary.

As I said before, I wasn't the same after leaving the theater. After that fateful night, I skipped lunches at school so I could save money to buy the rest of his albums on cassette (yeah, I'm old). I plastered my room with Prince posters (which didn't help me with the ladies, not one bit), and every subsequent release date of a new Prince album became an occasion for mad partying in my little world. Some have criticized Prince for being too prolific, for releasing too many records and not leaving enough time between releases. I understand that criticism, but I can tell you that his decision to put out a new album every year is a big reason why I survived high school. Because, no matter how much I dreaded each new school year, I always knew I would have at least one thing to look forward to.

I've had the good fortune to see Prince in concert twice. the first time was in the old Rosemont Horizon in Chicago on his Lovesexy Tour. That night, when the house lights went down I was literally trembling with anticipation. Thinking about it now is kind of embarrassing, but that's what you do when you're young, isn't it? That show was great, but it was the second concert at Detroit's Fox Theatre on the Diamonds and Pearls Tour that was truly remarkable.

Of course, the performance was tremendous. Prince hopped from instrument to instrument, outplaying whatever member of his crack band that he took over for. But the real magic occurred when the show appeared to end. The house lights came up and slowly people began to file out of the auditorium. But I noticed that the roadies were really taking their time unplugging instruments and so forth, so I turned to my friend and suggested that we wait a minute before heading for the door. Then, one of the roadies turned to the crowd and made the "raise the roof" motion with his hands. So, instead of moving away from the stage, we began moving toward it, shouting and clapping as fanboys do. And then it happened--- he came back. At this time we had moved up over 30 rows and were only 8-10 feet away as his royal badness proceeded to electrify the crowd for another 30 plus minutes. About half through the encore, I turned for a moment and looked behind me at the balcony about 50 feet back and 70 feet up, and it was rocking up and down like we were hit with a 5.7 on the Richter Scale. The place felt like it was ready to lift off.

Now, I know in the years since, Prince's albums have been consistently inconsistent in quality. He really hasn't had an all out masterpiece since 1989's Sign O' The Times (although The Love Symbol album, The Gold Experience, and the massive 3-disc Emancipation come close). Far too often, his most recent releases have been too backward looking and retro to reach the heights of his 80's albums. But, I can forgive him for all of that and more. Because I can still remember that night leaving that run down movie theater, my head abuzz, alive to a whole new world and thinking that anything is possible. What more could I possibly ask for?

Sumo-Pop
January 2, 2010