Come free?
Mayte, who admitted to having had help writing the fax by someone whose name wasn’t Prince, wrote: “All I can say is that it’s unlike any music he’s done before. All one word titles and strange.
He seemed happy when he played me the sequence but when I asked him, “what are U going 2 do with this new music now that U have retired?” He looked me in the eye and said, “I’m going 2 give it 2 my friends.” I don’t know what friends he’s talking about.
But I remember once he told me, “Music should be free – just like air.” Did he mean – the way it’s played or paid 4? I’m really afraid he’s not going 2 release any more new albums because now we’re rehearsing only the new music. With just Michael, Sonny, Tommy and Mr. Hayes.”
Considering Prince’s newfound attitude of “music should be free”, it is amazing that the Come album escaped bootlegging. During much of the eighties, Prince freely handed out cassettes of new songs to friends and acquaintances, but by the mid-1990s he had tightened up this practice. So did he really give Come to his “friends”?
The name-change
Adding to the confusion of who would be getting his new music, Prince’s publicity firm announced on 7 June 1993, his 35th birthday, that Prince had changed his name to the symbol of his latest album. 
’s intention was to fulfill his Warner Bros. contract with “Prince” recordings from the vault while continuing to record and release new material as “.”
The media avalanche that followed was filled with derision and mockery. Among fans and in some media articles there was speculation that Prince was seeking to escape his contract with Warner Bros. by changing his identity and then arguing that the label’s agreement was with “Prince”. When Prince made the announcement in May 2000 that he was discarding the symbol name, he basically admitted as much. At a New York press conference, he said that the name had been a means of escaping “undesirable relationships” – that is, his contract with Warner Bros. He wanted the freedom to put out more material under his new name. Warner Bros. might have wanted Prince to put on the brakes, but he had other ideas.
When completed work on the side-project Goldnigga with The New Power Generation in late June 1993, his plan was for Warner Bros. to release it by summertime. For Warner Bros., the time had arrived to draw the line. They told that the company had no interest in the album, but instead wanted a reasonable pause in new music to allow for the release of a greatest hits package. They presented the best-of concept to , who with some reluctance agreed to support it.
The movie that didn’t happen
On 14 June 1993, , with Michael Bland and Sonny Thompson, recorded an EP entitled The Undertaker that included a prelude of Zannalee and a new version of Dolphin. The recording of The Undertaker was filmed and released as a home video in March 1995, albeit with some changes made to Dolphin. also recorded a different version of Space with his side-project Madhouse, 7 July 1993.
Knowing that Warner Bros. would not allow him to release a new album only about eight months after the release of the album, Prince was still thinking of other ways to let his fans hear his new music. He contributed six previously unavailable songs to The Hits/The B-Sides, including Peach and Pope from Come. He then made a new configuration of Come, presumably removing or replacing the tracks he had given to the hits compilation.
: Come (June-July 1993)
Track list unknown
During June and July 1993, developed an untitled film project with director Parris Patton. The film was shot at Paisley Park and featured music interspersed with dramatic footage. General Hospital star Vanessa Marcil and Nona Gaye, daughter of Marvin Gaye, starred in the leading roles.
“The movie is about the relationship between two girls,” Vanessa Marcil told Soap Opera Weekly. “We deal with racial, social and sexual issues. Most of the action takes place in this underground club. Prince is the performer there.”
The film project was never completed, but the performances of Loose and Papa from the movie turned up in The Beautiful Experience TV movie in 1994.
On 12 July 1993, the premiere of Glam-O-Rama was cancelled and it would be over a month until it actually opened under a new name, Glam Slam Ulysses.
On the same day as the cancellation, Alan Light talked with again for the interview published in Vibe in 1994. Alan Light noticed that was fixated on one thing: “He has too much music sitting around, and he wants people to hear it.”
Come live
Some lucky fans got a chance to hear some of ’s new music on the Act II tour of Europe, which started 26 July and ended 7 September 1993. At some of the concerts, he played Come, Endorphinemachine and Peach in a row, leading to the belief that those three songs were actually the opening tracks of the May 1993 Come configuration. Dark also made a rare appearance.
Before launching into Come, would usually quote the lyrics of What’s My Name and give a little speech. At Wembley Stadium in London, 31 July 1993, he said: “The only reason why I retired is because I can no longer give the music to someone else to give to you. I wanna come to your house and give it to you myself. You don’t need no records. Next time bring a tape recorder. When it’s over, press save.”
“People say I make too much music,” he continued. “People say you can’t keep up. But I’m under the impression I make just enough music. I’m under the impression, can’t nobody keep it up like you.”
Other Come tracks performed during Act II, usually at aftershows, included Race and Pope. What’s My Name and Dolphin were played during a soundcheck in Paris. On 7 September, Prince played a live medley on BBC Radio One that included Pope and Peach.
Fans were very pleased with the Act II tour. Gone were the hated Game Boyz, leaving more room for exotic dancer Mayte. The NPG Hornz were also featured more prominently. Along with the new songs played, it had finally become exiting to be a Prince/ fan again.
Glam Slam Ulysses
While was in Europe, Glam Slam Ulysses finally opened 21 August 1993 at Glam Slam in Los Angeles. The 65-minute show was described as an “interactive musical theatrical production” inspired by Homer’s classic Odyssey. The choreography was by Jamie King, and Carmen Electra and Frank Williams danced the lead parts.
The production combined dance performances with videos and featured ’s most exciting studio recordings in years: Strays Of The World, Come (chopped into three parts), Interactive, Dolphin, Pheromone, Dark, Loose, Space, Poem, What’s My Name, Endorphinemachine, Race and Pope.
However, the critical response to the show (not the music) was unmercifully negative and the show only ran for two weeks, until 4 September 1993. Plans to tour US nightclubs were abandoned.
Although he had very little interest or involvement in the hits compilation prior to leaving, expressed some interest in taking on a more active role in the project upon returning from Europe. Warner Bros. preferred to avoid delays and actually paid not to get involved. When The Hits/The B-Sides was released 14 September 1993, helpfully backed it up with the announcement: “Greatest-hits albums are for artists who are dead, physically and professionally.”
Fans, however, were excited to finally get the guitar rocking Peach, which was also released as a single 18 November 1993 with an accompanying video featuring Mayte and just Michael Bland and Sonny Thompson from the band. The song failed to chart.
On Pope, fans were once again invited to “every time U want it I’ll be live, bring a date, I mean computer, when it’s over press save”. This practice never became allowed at concerts, though, and in 1995 stated his reason why in the song Feel Good: “Come to the show and bring a tape recorder ‘cause you oughta have a copy of the – yo! Wait a minute, no, in 1999 I’ll be free, so…”
A 12” remix of Pope appeared on a vinyl promo-single.
Back in the studio
During the autumn and winter of 1993, recorded a lot of new songs and reworked some of the Come tracks. Much to the dismay of his band, he changed Come and Race from band recordings to solo recordings, remixed Loose and edited Space and Dark, making them shorter
In early 1994, worked on making a movie entitled The Beautiful Experience which featured some of his new music. To coincide with the TV premiere of the movie, hoped to release an EP of the same title that included seven songs from the movie, including Come. However, Warner Bros. would only allow him to release just one song, so The Beautiful Experience instead became an EP with seven different versions of the same song.
In February 1994 he made an untitled configuration of new music that included Come and Endorphin Machine before deciding to just have Come and the new tracks be two separate albums.
On 6 March 1994, Holland’s largest radio network, Radio Veronica, began broadcasting a tape with eight unreleased songs, which they had purchased. Subsequent broadcasts followed in several other European countries. The tape included a shorter version of Interactive that included a middle piece with the NPG operator who would later figure prominently on The Gold Experience album, as well as Pheromone, which had been extended with a few lines that would end up in Poem.
The devolution of Come
By now, it had been a year and five months since the release of ’s last album. The time had finally come to present Warner Bros. with a new album for release. On 11 March 1994, delivered a scaled down configuration of Come to Warner Bros. Gone were potential hits like the title track and Dolphin. But it wasn’t all bad. It still retained the guitar rocking tracks Interactive (segued from a version of Poem that now had an actual poem in it), Endorphine Machine, Loose and Strays Of The World, plus the funky, highly danceable tracks Pheromone and Race (now edited for length). Thankfully, this configuration got bootlegged.
Prince: Come (11 March 1994)
1. Poem (3:36)
2. Interactive (3:05)
3. Endorphine Machine (3:49)
4. Space (4:30)
5. Pheromone (4:23)
6. Loose (3:26)
7. Papa (2:48)
8. Race (4:17)
9. Dark (6:03)
10. Solo (3:50)
11. Strays Of The World (5:18)
The opening track, Poem, could be interpreted in three ways. On the surface, it was just urging a female to come, but it could also be heard as guiding the listener onwards to the actual beginning of the album with Interactive (“keep going” and “you’re almost there”), while at the same time teasing Warner Bros. with lines such as “isn’t that what you want” and “imagine what you look like from across the room.”
The provocation certainly sparked a strong reaction from Warner Bros. “The company was so upset with that album. People said it was a piece of shit,” remembered Marylou Badeaux (Vice President at Warner Bros).
Ostin and Waronker bluntly told that the album was unacceptable. They asked for the title track and The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, as well as two or three other really strong songs. agreed.
On 16 March 1994, recorded Let It Go, that would be included on the final configuration of Come, and on 22 March 1994, he recorded a video version of Endorphine Machine that was later included in the Interactive CD-ROM game.
An exciting time to be a fan
The Beautiful Experience-film starring Nona Gaye premiered on the British Sky One TV channel on 3 April 1994 followed by broadcasts in many other countries. It was a science fiction movie set in a future where ’s website actually had something to offer: “Over 500 experiences” for only $19.99!
Besides the videos for Loose and Papa from the abandoned 1993-movie, The Beautiful Experience also featured a video version of Interactive with the NPG Operator in the middle, a charming video featuring the entire band in a long version of Race, and an extremely cool dance video of Pheromone starring , Mayte and the hot choreographer Jamie King. The new version of Come and the old version of Poem could also be heard in the movie.
Combined with bootlegs of the radio tape, the Glam Slam Ulysses show and Act I and Act II performances of Come songs, fans had heard all of the songs from the Come album by now. had indeed succeeded in finding alternative ways to let his music reach the fans.
And the fans liked the new music and the image he presented in the videos. It was his most guitar rocking music since Purple Rain and he was back to being the mysterious, dark, brooding and sexual, yet spiritual person his fans had first fallen for back in 1984. Now all that remained was the critically loved and chart-topping comeback album that would prove to the world, not just his fans, that the Prince the world had fallen in love with was finally back in full force.
The 4th Come configuration
In mid April, recorded a maxi-single version of the song Come before making a new configuration of the Come album, which he brought with him on a trip to Europe, where he met with three journalists in Monaco, 2 May 1994. One was from Q, the other from Max and the third was Alan Light from Vibe once again. wanted them to check out two albums that may or may not see the light of day: The next Prince album, Come, scheduled for an August 1994 release, and the first collection, titled The Gold Album, both pressed on CDs with hand-drawn cover art.
“Now you have two albums from two different artists in your hands,” told one of them.
“First comes the Prince album, which includes Endorphinmachine, Come and Dark,” noted Alan Light. “ skips back and forth between tracks. It all sounds strong – first rate, even – but he seems impatient with it, like it’s old news.”
Prince: Come (April 1994)
Track list unknown, but includes Come (The Beautiful Experience version), Endorphinmachine and Dark
Supposedly this configuration included two versions of Come, concluding with the maxi-single version of Come which would then continue into the hidden track, Strays Of The World.
While in Europe, played some concerts in Monaco and Paris, 3 – 6 May 1994. He played Come, Endorphinmachine and Space in a row, leading to speculation that those three songs were now the opening tracks on Come. He also played Race, Dark, Peach and a rare performance of Solo. While in Paris, Prince performed Endorphinmachine on the TV channel Canal+.
The final devolution of Come
Before turning Come over to Warner Bros. on 19 May 1994, decided to make further changes to the album. Strays Of The World was replaced with the weaker Letitgo. Pheromone, Race, Dark and Letitgo had annoying bits of Poem added at their beginnings, and what was left of Poem was retitled Orgasm and placed at the end of the album.
refused to include The Most Beautiful Girl In The World because it had been released as a song and Come was going to be a “Prince” release. Endorphinmachine and Interactive were removed from the album on the same grounds. reasoned that those were now “” songs because of their inclusion on the soon to be released Interactive CD-ROM game. These decisions left with a very short album, which may explain why he decided to include the maxi-single version of Come on the album instead of the shorter, original version.
Prince 1958-1993: Come (May 1994)
1. Come (11:13)
2. Space (4:28)
3. Pheromone (5:08)
4. Loose! (3:26)
5. Papa (2:48)
6. Race (4:28)
7. Dark (6:10)
8. Solo (3:48)
9. Letitgo (5:32)
10. Orgasm (1:39)
Warner Bros. wasn’t satisfied with the album submitted. They thought that it was worse than the last configuration they had received. They asked for Shhh, as several radio programmers were aware of it from The Beautiful Experience video and there was a great deal of interest in the song. said no, leaving Warner Bros. no other option than to accept the album as it was since released.
delivered The Gold Experience into Warner Bros. around the same time as this new version of Come. He proposed that Warner Bros. should release Come by “Prince” and, a few weeks later, The Gold Experience by “,” and he wanted both to count toward the fulfillment of his contract. The idea didn’t meet with much enthusiasm, however. Flooding the market with material was exactly what the executives wanted to avoid. Nor were they optimistic about releasing music with an unpronounceable symbol, rather than the powerful “Prince” trademark on the front cover. They agreed to release Come; The Gold Experience would have to wait. Again, was furious and complained that the label was censoring him.
The release of Come
On 7 June 1994, the CD-ROM game Interactive was released. It included the version of Interactive with the NPG Operator as an audio track and videos of Interactive and Endorphinmachine. An instrumental version of Race and an a capella version of Race were also included.
Meanwhile, had embarked upon a summer tour of clubs in Minneapolis, Miami, Los Angeles and New York. The tour lasted from 28 May to 26 July 1994 and included performances of a slightly different sounding Space, Papa, Race, Dark and Peach, as well as a short version of Interactive and Endorphinmachine, which he also performed on the TV channel VH-1 on 26 June 1994.
Warner Bros. decided that Letitgo should be the first single from Come. refused to shoot a video to support the single that was released 9 August 1994. A maxi-single followed with remixes that had no involvement from , but the single’s Edit version of Letitgo starts off without the annoying Poem-intro of the album version, so if you splice the beginning of the edit with the ending of the album version, you get the original song.
Originally, Come was supposed to be the b-side of the Letitgo single, but Warner Bros. considered Come a strong contender for its own single and replaced it with Solo.
Prince 1958-1993: Letitgo single (July 1994)
Letitgo (Edit) (4:15)
Solo (3:48)
Alexa De Paris (Extended Version) (4:54)
Pope (3:28)
Letitgo only reached number 31 on the Pop Chart and number 10 on the R&B Chart. put the blame on Warner Bros. in an interview with The Guardian in March 1995. "If they don't want to promote a song, they don't make the effort to cross it over into other markets and the fans don't get to know it," he said.
"Now if Letitgo sold two million like The Most Beautiful Girl In The World did, people wouldn't be saying that I'm slippin'," he added in The Voice in March 1995. "But to sell two million, the dudes gotta PRESS two million copies, see what I mean?"
Come was released 16 August 1994 and it was not the comeback album fans had hoped for or even expected based on the bootlegs. The new, longer and sexually explicit version of the song Come would have been fine for a maxi-single release, but not as an opening track of an album. It seemed to have no other purpose than to provoke Warner Bros. at the cost of disappointing the fans that loved the original version.
Gone were all the guitar rocking tracks with the exception of Loose!, transforming the album from a funky rock album to an ordinary R&B album. At least the middle section of the album was still intact, so fans finally got Space, Pheromone, Loose!, Papa, Race, Dark and Solo in good sound quality.
If had never released Come in any form, it would have gone down in history on par with the mythical Black Album from 1987. But instead of just skipping the album and moving on to his newer, equally unreleased album, The Gold Experience, unfortunately felt Come should be his next album to see release, despite the fact that he was actually consciously devolving it by removing songs with every new configuration he made. Why he would want to release a shadow of the former masterpiece that was Come remains one of the universe’s great, unsolved mysteries.
Critical reaction
Fans weren’t the only ones who were disappointed by a “Prince” album yet again. The reviews of Come were fairly negative. Many critics labeled it as Prince’s “sex album,” picking up on the sexual contents of songs like Come, Pheromone, the Poem-bits and Orgasm. They complained that the lyrics were too explicit and sexually preoccupied, while most of the music was dismissed as uninspired or lackluster.
Simon Price wrote in Melody Maker: “This, the last recording under the name Prince, is apparently his parting gift to Warners: An album containing no feasible singles. Touché.”
Not everyone was all-negative, though. Ian Cranna of Q agreed with the fans’ assessment: “In the middle of it all comes a run of more tenuously related tracks, which are actually pretty good. There's the harder, up-tempo excitement of Loose, the bumping equality rap of Race, the '60s Southern R&B-style lament of Dark and the poppy, bouncy funk of Letitgo. This segment also includes the album's one genuinely shocking track, Papa.”
Chuck Arnold of Philadelphia Daily News wrote: “It marks a return to his more bare-bones pre-New Power Generation days, although NPG members do play here. This back-to-basics approach results in some of his best dance music in years.”
Jim Walsh of St. Paul Pioneer Press was probably the one person most pleased with Come: “Dead or alive, Prince - and Come, his most powerful record in years - provides pleasure and warmth in a cold, cold world.”
Despite Jim Walsh’s enthusiasm, Come became a commercial failure. It reached number 15 on Billboard’s Pop Chart, which was ’s lowest position for an album of new music since Controversy in 1981. The record peaked at number two on the R&B Chart. It sold around 345,000 copies in the US, making it the poorest selling album of ’s career up until then.
Neither nor Warner Bros. did much to promote Come. Much like the case with the greatest hits collection in 1993, ’s heart wasn’t in the Come album. The former masterpiece had quite simply ended up as contract filler.
’s Come singles
In the middle of September 1994, set to work on a Space single. The initial track lists were:
Prince: Space single (19 September 1994)
Space (Universal Love Remix Edit) (4:00)
Pop Life (Kirky J Remix Edit) (4:36)
Prince: Space maxi single (21 September 1994)
Space (Universal Love Remix) (6:10)
Space (Funky Stuff Remix) (5:41)
Space (Funky Stuff Remix Dub) (4:47)
Space (Acoustic Radio Remix) (4:41)
Space (Album Version) (4:31)
Pop Life (Kirky J Remix) (6:13)
When it was released on 1 November 1994, had removed the Kirky J Remix of Pop Life, but otherwise it was the same. Despite some very good new recordings of the song, the single failed to enter the Billboard Pop Chart and reached only number 71 on the R&B Chart. There was no video to support the single.
The unreleased Dolphin had a video, however. It was released to TV on 30 September 1994 without a single for it to promote. had “slave” written backwards across his cheek in the video, which also featured his band and Mayte dressed as an angel. Keyboards had been added to Dolphin since it was last heard in Glam Slam Ulysses.
also worked on a Come EP that autumn. He recorded Come (18 & Over) of which an edit called simply 18 & Over was released on Crystal Ball in 1998. A video was made which was shown on The Gold Experience Tour in 1995 along with a video for Zannalee.
Prince: Come single and maxi single (pre 14 October 1994)
Track lists unknown, but 7 versions of Come, incl. the original version, the Beautiful Experience version and Come (18 & Over). The B-side was Dark.
A song entitled Alone In The Dark was offered to the From Dusk ‘til Dawn movie soundtrack in 1995 and it may or may not be identical with the Dark remix So Dark, of which an edit was released on Crystal Ball in 1998.
Although the Come EP wasn’t released, that didn’t stop from working on yet another single from Come that wouldn’t see release. This time, the chosen song was Loose!. recorded a remix of Loose! entitled Loose Dub. It was renamed (Lemme See That Body) Get Loose! and credited to his alter ego Tora Tora when it appeared on a give-away NPG Artist Sampler cassette on The Gold Experience Tour in 1995. Another version of Loose Dub was released as Get Loose on Crystal Ball in 1998.
The final Come tracks
’s final TV-performances in 1994 were Peach at MTV Europe Music Awards, 24 November 1994, and Dolphin on CBS’ The Late Show With David Letterman, 13 December 1994. A home video of a 1993 Act II tour aftershow, The Sacrifice Of Victor, was released in March 1995, featuring a live version of Peach. The video is currently on show at Lotusflow3r.com.
The European Gold Experience tour started 3 March 1995 and lasted until 31 March 1995. During the rest of 1995, gave concerts at Glam Slam Miami and at Paisley Park, before embarking on a Gold Experience tour of Japan 8 – 20 January 1996 and of Hawaii 17 – 19 February 1996. Endorphinmachine, Letitgo and (Lemme See That Body) Get Loose! were a fixed part of the set list, which occasionally also included Race, Dolphin, a playback of Orgasm and a shortened version of Peach with a changed second verse: “Summertime, feelin’ fine, here she come, lookin’ fine, here she come, dressed in gold, get her done, ‘fore she gets too old, her hot pants can’t hide her cheeks, she’s a peach.”
At aftershows, also occasionally played Come (18 & Over), Dark (with a sax solo by Eric Leeds) and Zannalee. At the end of the tour, disbanded The NPG, signaling the end of an era.
The Gold Experience had been released 26 September 1995 and it contained the Come-era tracks Endorphinmachine and Dolphin. Unfortunately for fans, had decided to ruin Endorphinmachine by remixing it and adding an annoying cowbell, and Mayte speaking Spanish at the end of it, before releasing it.
A similar fate befell Zannalee. A new, horribly overproduced version of it was released on Chaos And Disorder, 9 July 1996. had also changed the lyrics, leaving out the line “then we watch a movie, one o’ them dirty kinds.” This version was performed live on The Today Show on the day of the album release.
The final Come tracks to see the light of day was the full version of Interactive, What’s My Name and Strays Of The World on Crystal Ball in 1998. Thankfully, had not messed with those three, great tracks.
In 2005, a live version of Letitgo recorded at Paisley Park 22 October 1995 became available as a download from Prince’s now defunct NPG Music Club website.
Thanks to:
BorisFishpaw, Virgo, Gavin H., JediMaster, IstenSzek and Simonmillar
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to let WB see which one would sell more. Prince vs 
FREE THE 29 MAY 1993 COME CONFIGURATION! 
