Madhouse

I have 4 cd's from Madhouse: 8,16,24,24 (second version). But what was Prince's collaboration with this group ? did he play any instruments ? did he wrote the songs ?

8 and 16: Sheila E on drums, Eric Leeds on sax, Prince on everything else. Levi Seacer may have played some bass on 16. Only the 8 and 16 albums were officially released. The first set of Madhouse 24 tracks were just Prince and Leeds, I believe. The second Madhouse 24 configuration had Sonny T on bass and Michael Bland on drums.

Madhouse was a project from 1986/7 that Prince worked on mainly with Eric Leeds.

Two albums were officially released, both in 1987 - 8 and 16. 24(I) was recorded in 1988, but unreleased. 24(II) was recorded in Summer of 1993 with a line up of Prince/Levi/Michael B/Sonny T. Where as the previous Madhouse material was Prince with Eric, and sometimes Sheila E, Matt Fink and Atlanta Bliss.

There is one more official 'semi-Madhouse' release, which is Eric Leeds' first Paisley Park album 'Times Squared' from 1991, which began life as Madhouse '26' (after 24 had been abandoned) when Prince encouraged Eric to pick out 10 tracks to work on for the new album. When the project was complete, Prince felt it more suited Eric than the Madhouse moniker. Times Squared is written by Prince/Eric Leeds with Levi/Sheila on several tracks.


Edit: and what he said, I was typing away didn't see sg reply
[Edited 5/16/09 7:31am]

rel:1 21.1987 "8" Madhouse
1.One
2.Two
3.Three
4.Four
5.Five
6.Six
7.Seven
8.Eight

11.18.1987 "16" Madhouse
1.Nine
2.Ten
3.Eleven
4.Twelve
5.Thirteen
6.Fourteen
7.Fifteen
8.Sixteen

There is also a short unreleased movie, featuring Madhouse, named "Hard Life". Also from 1987.

TLM: Madhouse was a very interesting project. How did that come about?

EL: He called me one Sunday afternoon after the Parade tour and said “Do you want to come over to my house and play some jazz?” I go over to his house and he’s already got three or four tracks done. I had no understanding what this was specifically going to be because a lot of times we’d go into the studio together and do different things that would never see the light of day. I think the entire process of the Madhouse album was done in about three days and it was only when we got about halfway through it that he explained what he was going to do. It was kind of a double-edged sword for me, because it was obviously a project he was putting together to feature me; that I was going to be the ostensible prime attraction, which was great because of the visibility that it would give me.

But to be absolutely honest with you, I was never that crazy about that album, the first one particularly – the music was not that interesting. Once again, it was a very interesting and enjoyable project because the process and the manner in trying to do what he was trying to do and the way he got things out of me. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t stuff that I was particularly interested in listening to. There were some interesting parts. On the first album, Prince wrote all the songs and played all the instruments except saxophone – it was entirely his project. It was a wonderful opportunity, but the way it was marketed, [meant] a lot of people are under the impression that it was my music and it was much more of representation of what I am as a musician and it’s just not so - it was one hundred percent a Prince project and I was just playing the role of a saxophone player.

TLM: Prince went to great pains to hide the fact that it was a Prince record.

EL: This is what he came up with and I didn’t necessarily disagree with him on this point. He said “I’m not going to go so far as to say that this is jazz. This album will never get anywhere because the critics are going to blast it. They’re going to say ‘how dare this guy think he can make a jazz album.’ And if it comes out, I don’t want it to just end up with all of the Prince fanatics. I want to distance myself from this and see if we can get some form of an honest reaction without any preconceived notions as to my involvement with it.” So what it ended up with was all of these fictitious names [of band members and recording studio] that he came up with and then the whole marketing project became silly, because I was the only person that was going to have a real face. And the whole marketing ploy was based on me going out and lying to everybody about what it was about. After a while, it really became silly and to this day, Prince is aggravated over the fact that people found out that it was really his album.

TLM: Is that so?

Oh yes. I finally said: “Prince, give it a rest. Everybody whoever interviewed me about it was like “Oh yeah, I’m supposed to really believe that this isn’t Prince?” I would try to convince them but I don’t think I was fooling anybody. It became like an inside joke, like the fact that it was supposed to have been recorded in Pittsburgh, where I came from. And the fact that I lived in Atlanta and everybody in the “band” was supposed to be part time musicians who I knew from Atlanta. We came up with name, occupations – we put a whole back story to everything about the album – it was very funny. I realised that we had had created a monster when he had given the back story to his publicist and his publicist called me to put together the initial press release and in discussing it with the publicist, I realised that the publicist didn’t realise that it was all a lie! Prince had not let the publicist in on it! I said that’s perfect Prince, because if the publicist is going to make this work, he has to believe it. Regardless, it was very successful and the idea not to give the songs any names, just numbers was his, which was cute. And we had a top ten single (“Six”) out of it.



TLM: You did a second Madhouse album, 16.

EL: I really liked it except for two songs [Eric would rather not say what they are!]. That was a much more organic album. That came up from spontaneous sessions with Prince, myself, Sheila E and Prince’s bass player at the time, Levi Seacer. The four of us went into the studio over two or three days and just played and everything on the second Madhouse album came from those sessions. In fact, several songs that were one my first album (Times Squared) came from those sessions – “Andorra,” “Night Owl” “Overnight, Everynight, “ and “Kenya”. I made songs out of them with a whole lot of post-production work and a lot of chopping and editing and a lot of studio whizz-bang, but the basic tracks came from those sessions. 16 was more of straight-up, funk, R ‘n’ B album. I just thought that the music was better realised; it was more cohesive album. Unfortunately it wasn’t that successful.

TLM: Why was the planned 24 album such a troubled project?

EL: Prince did all the tracks himself and I think he started doing some of them when we were on the road doing the Lovesexy tour. When we were in Europe on the road in 1988 and there were a few off days, Prince would always go to London and work in the studio and I think some of the tracks came from those sessions. He called me into the studio after we got off the road – around December 1988 - and he had all the tracks done. I think I did all the horn parts in two days and he was with me for all the sessions. So we did the album and he did the mix on it and gave me a copy. I don’t recall what timetable he had in mind, but at that time, the relationship he had with Warners had started to turn [deteriorate] and things like Madhouse were hardly a priority for Warner Brothers. I think they were desperately trying to get Paisley Park records going as a viable label. If Prince had really wanted it released, it would have gotten released.



Several months went by and I never heard anything about it – Prince and I never had any conversations about it. And by spring of 1989 I asked Alan what was happening with the Madhouse album. Alan didn’t know what was happening, so I asked Alan to ask Prince about it. Prince’s answer was a little obtuse and that led me to believe that he was starting to lose a little interest in it. I wasn’t that crazy about that album. Once again, there were parts of it I liked, but as a whole it wasn’t something that held up for me. I also objected to the mix on some of the songs. Alan came back to me and said that Prince wanted to know what I thought of the album. I said that “Tell Prince that I’m not one hundred percent satisfied with the mix and if it’s okay with him, maybe he’d give me the opportunity to take a couple of songs and go into the studio and remix them.” I was a little surprised that Prince gave the go-ahead to that. Between the time I was going to book the studio to go in, Alan said: “Prince has changed his mind. He says ‘forget it.” He wants to start over.’” By now it was summer time and Prince was working on the Batman album [Batman Returns soundtrack] and he had to hurry up and finish - he was in overdrive getting that done. But he wanted to get started on the next Madhouse album.

So basically he had gone into the vault and made four cassette mixes on about three dozen pieces of stuff. And he gave them to me and said “spend a couple of weeks on this and if there’s anything you hear that could be the basis of the next Madhouse album, go into the studio and start to have fun. Do whatever you want to do with this stuff.” And I’m thinking, “he’s just given me the keys to his vault.” There was a lot of stuff that was a bunch of crap but some stuff was cool. So I started working on that and as the summer progressed, I expected him to walk in the door and say: “Let me hear what you’ve done and let’s start to focus on this.” But as time went by, I started to realise that he was letting me have this one on my own.



And all of the time, I was under the impression that this was going to be the next Madhouse album. One of the things I did do was take the long piece from the original 24 album called “The Dopamine Rush Suite” which was about 25 minutes long and I edited the hell out of it and made a seven-minute piece out of by taking out all the stuff I didn’t like. That ended up on the [solo] album. Basically I came up with my solo album. I made rough mixes and gave them to Prince and he said “I really like what you’ve done, but it doesn’t sound like Madhouse.” I said “How is it going to sound like Madhouse – Madhouse is you much more than me.” So I said: “What do you want to do?” And he said “I’m going to sign you to Paisley Park and it’s going to be your record.” I was hardly going to argue with that! But Times Squared wasn’t a hundred percent Eric Leeds album – it was a lot of my sensibilities and something that began as something else. It was a very interesting project and I was very grateful for the opportunity. I was very intrigued that he would allow me take what was ostensibly his music and take it into a completely different space. But it wasn’t until my second Paisley album Things Left Unsaid that the music was entirely mine.



TLM: But there were other attempts to record a third Madhouse album?

EL: Prince, me and a couple of other members of his band subsequently went into the studio. I’ve got two more Madhouse albums that were recorded in ’93 and as late as ’95 – stuff that never came out. By then his relationship with Warner was pretty much done and his interest in releasing music like that had pretty much disappeared. There were about three completely different versions of what would have been the third Madhouse album.

TLM: Where did the concept come for the intriguing album covers of a girl and a puppy?

EL: His own whack sense of humour. The fact that it was so completely off-the-wall, plus that was a girl [Maneca Lightner] he was with at the time!

TLM: Prince sent four of the original 24 tracks – “17 (Penetration),” “18 (RU Legal yet?”), 19 (“A Girl and Her Puppy),” and “20 (Jailbait)” to Miles for inclusion on his what would have been the album Doo-Bop.

EL: There was a song released later called “17” under the Madhouse name which was a completely different song. It was released on a sampler called New Power Generation. A lot of people got the mistaken impression that Miles had something to do with that Madhouse album and he didn’t. But Miles did play the songs live and go into a studio and record his own versions of them with his own band.

TLM: You also recorded some music for Miles that might have appeared on the album that became Doo-Bop.

EL: I did two songs for Miles in late 1990/early 1991 under Prince’s direction.
Miles and Prince would talk on the phone quite a bit. Miles was really interested in getting Prince to do something with him, but I don’t think by then, Prince was really interested in doing some tracks and giving them to Miles. I have a feeling that by then, Prince had lost a little interest in what Miles was doing and maybe at that point, he thought that what he wanted to get out of Miles, Miles wouldn’t have been able to realise. It might have been the sense that: “You know, I don’t want to get into a situation that might be embarrassing.” This all speculation because he never said anything like that to me, but knowing Prince I’ve always wondered if that might have had anything to do with it.

Prince looks at me and says: “Why don’t do you some tracks for him?” So I said: “He’s not asking me – he’s asking you!” And Prince says “Yeah, but I want to give him something”. “So I said “What do you want me to do?” and Prince said “Just go in the studio and have some fun and do something and send it to him. I’ll check it out first.” It was like “Maybe you can come up with something that I can then do some stuff with.” He left it open like that. Somehow it had been intimated that Miles was interested in Prince’s song “Nothing Compares 2 U,” so Alan suggested I do a track on that, so I did and a little thing of mine I called “Frame of Mind.”

OldFriends4Sale said:

punkofthemonth said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

There is also a short unreleased movie, featuring Madhouse, named "Hard Life". Also from 1987.

saw it . it's what got me into them in the first place . 8 is one of my favorite albums . the title track is especially dear to me "huh, huh huh..."

OldFriends4Sale said:

really intresting thread. I love the madhouse project. seems like eric wasn't that impressed with it as much as I thought he'd be.or maybe i'm taking it in wrong.

squirrelgrease said:

isn't that John Lewis far left?

squirrelgrease said:

PEJ said:

isn't that John Lewis far left?

carmy said:

really intresting thread. I love the madhouse project. seems like eric wasn't that impressed with it as much as I thought he'd be.or maybe i'm taking it in wrong.

Yeah funny thing that. I like the first album for the reasons he doesn't. I just thought it was so tight. The second one i cant abide all. All over the shop i feel.

DexterDayglo said:

PEJ said:

isn't that John Lewis far left?

KeithyT said:

PEJ said:

isn't that John Lewis far left?

and is that Bruce Campbell second from left

I just recently saw a video of theirs and lo and behold...The Game Boyz. lol I couldn't believe it. They sure had been waiting in the wings a long time. I knew they were in Glam Slam, but didn't realize they were around before that. Oh wait, wasn't Kirk in Purple Rain in an audience scene?

Love me some Madhouse. Love!

motherfunka said:

KeithyT said:

PEJ said:

isn't that John Lewis far left?

and is that Bruce Campbell second from left

FlamingRaindrop said:

KeithyT said:

and is that Bruce Campbell second from left

It looks like a cross between Bruce Campbell and Kramer off Seinfeld (looking shocked because theres 2 black dudes in the photo ) - you almost expect him to raise his chainsaw/arm and go nuts, Ash-style!
.
[Edited 5/28/09 21:36pm]

carmy said:

really intresting thread. I love the madhouse project. seems like eric wasn't that impressed with it as much as I thought he'd be.or maybe i'm taking it in wrong.

Man, from that Eric leeds interview, i have a lot more respect for Prince and a whole lot less for Leeds.
First off, i had no idea 8 was Prince alone with added horns from leads.
second, this is the one that had 8, and he didnt care for it. Yikes.

Lastly Prince is giving him oportunities left and right and he acts like a little bitch! double yikes.

Anyway, it speaks more for his own musical sensibilities than anything else.
Eric Leeds is a terrific musician, and added a lot to Prince music, but on his taste in music for me is now in question.

Now i see why i like the Madhouse albums that i like, the ones where Prince did basically everything. lol

My favorite Madhouse albums

8

16

first 24

I dont like the second 24 at all, like sugar free diet vanilla ice cream.

Times squared is a little more sophisticated than the second 24 but still tastes like sugar free diet vanilla ice cream to me.
[Edited 7/11/09 8:31am]