Considering the insurmountable talent that was present in The Time,(songwriting,showmanship,musicianship,etc)...could they have made it on their own without..or after Prince, or was he the only reason behind their success?...

I think they definetly could have made it!

Jam/Lewis/Jesse/Morris/Monte they could have made it.

they could've made it. I still ride around jamming "Gigolos Get Lonely Too" and "Cool". I'd love to see the Time perform today. Hopefully they're touring.

They most definitely would have been successful without Prince.

LexNevermind said:

He was the ONLY reason for any of their success. If you look at what Prince actually did for HIS group, they would not have done anything notable, if it wasn't for him.
They boomed during Purple Rain, Prince's doing, and they were playing his stuff.

bonedaddy said:

So do you think Prince & The Revolution coulda pulled off "The Walk" without a hitch?.. I saw the 1999 concert tour back in '83 Vanity 6, The Time, and Prince...The Time kicked Prince's ass and clearly was the crowd favorite...and ya gotta think with Jam a Terry becoming the most prolific songwriters and producers in history, they coulda wrote a hit album or five on their own.....

LexNevermind said:

They were clearly a great band, no doubt. What I am saying is that it was Prince's doing ultimately. So if it wasn't for him, then I don't see them getting the opportunities they had. It's all 'if's' and 'buts'

Well ths post asks could they have made without or after prince. Prince no doubt gave them there way into the mainstream. but i don't think there's any question that the time could easily done great after Prince and had great recored's of there own. With the producing talents of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and the incredible talents of Jesse Johnson, and one of the best front men ever in Morris Day as well as the very talted Monte and Jellybean. The Time could have been HUUGE! as Jay and Silent Bob say... "The Greatest Band of All-Time... Morris Day and The Time"

It's hard to say...Prince obviously set up the Time sound and songwise, but his patronage meant they hit the glass ceiling of the "protegee", so u could argue that he held them back.

It would have been interesting to see The Time as Prince's backing band. I wonder how that would have gone. All male, so that would have changed things a lot.

Morris' albums were great & Jesse Johnson as well as Jam & Lewis did very cool stuff on their own, too. The 5 tracks without Prince on "Pandemonium" kinda shows that a Time without Prince could have existed.

NOW:

All the aformentioned solo & collective stuff have the MPLS Sound created by Prince as a trademark. What they would have done WITHOUT Prince giving them this "sound" is hard to know.

Also, the fact that the current Time (i.e. without Jesse, Jam & Lewis) has been touring for 10 years without playing one single new composition & playing exclusively tracks composed by Prince shows that The Time is not much without Prince behind it.