Okay, so it's widely known that Prince played the majority of instruments on their debut album... who did the guitar solo on Get It Up? Is that Jesse or Prince?

Have any members of The Time ever broken down who actually played what on those early albums? Did they play more on the second and third albums?

I always found it amusing when they performed Chocolate on some talk show back in 1990 and talked about how they wrote the song together as a band. I would've thought by then they would've been honest about Prince's contribution, especially seeing as by Pandemonium they were indeed writing some of their own material.

[Edited 7/16/16 3:00am]

MattyJam said:

Okay, so it's widely known that Prince played the majority of instruments on their debut album... who did the guitar solo on Get It Up? Is that Jesse or Prince?

Have any members of The Time ever broken down who actually played what on those early albums? Did they play more on the second and third albums?

I always found it amusing when they performed Chocolate on some talk show back in 1990 and talked about how they wrote the song together as a band. I would've thought by then they would've been honest about Prince's contribution, especially seeing as by Pandemonium they were indeed writing some of their own material.

[Edited 7/16/16 3:00am]

I believe Jesse Johnson is the only one who talked about the recordings.
Morris Day might have a little. And Lisa Coleman did too. Lisa said she and Morris were in on a lot of the creation of the early Time music.

Prince did the vast majority of the music.
Morris Day played drums on probably a bit over 1/2 the songs.
Dr Fink did keyboards and synth on songs

Dez Dickerson wrote songs and played guitar on some songs
Lisa Coleman worked with Prince on songs did vocals and some instruments

Jill Jones did backing vocals.
Terry Lewis did something on the 1st album

Jesse Johnson did guitar on some Ice Cream Castle songs and drums along with Morris & Prince on If the Kid Can't Make U Come

I suspect a lot of the Time members were in the studio during the creation of songs.

I supsect in 1990 Prince had them continue the 'deception'

http://prince.org/msg/7/419862 Prince & the Time (Controversy) era 1981-1982

http://prince.org/msg/7/421121 Prince & the Time(What Time Is It?) 1982-1983

http://prince.org/msg/7/422477 Prince & the Time Ice Cream Castles 1983-1984

next to nothing lol

no but in all seriousness. outside of a few minor contributions from dez and lisa on the first album and a synth solo from fink, it was all prince and morris. by album 3, jesse was brought it. most if not all of this is detailed here princevault.com

It's always the same these threads. It starts out with an OP mocking The Time and giving Prince too much credit, more people chime in taking pot-shots at the protoge acts... someone quotes Princevault or some article/biography with incorrect info that was sourced by people who weren't in the room, but worked for Prince, and heard this thing or that thing... It can get complicated describing how many people can be involved in something and one guy, at the end of the day can legitimately be seen as having 'done it all', so I'll leave that alone for now. But I think it's clear that Morris Day and Prince are most heavily invovled, but a lot of people played key roles in developing the project, even if their contributions are unclear and maybe aren't on the final master. With each album more and more people contributed. There should be a number of Time outtakes in the vault. What roles the band members contributed to those are also unknown to us, but the early Revolution and The Time talk a lot about recording parts and Prince re-recording what they came up with for some reason or another. Who knows, really? It's something to look forward to though.

funksterr said:

MattyJam said:

funksterr said:

It's always the same these threads. It starts out with an OP mocking The Time and giving Prince too much credit, more people chime in taking pot-shots at the protoge acts... someone quotes Princevault or some article/biography with incorrect info that was sourced by people who weren't in the room, but worked for Prince, and heard this thing or that thing... It can get complicated describing how many people can be involved in something and one guy, at the end of the day can legitimately be seen as having 'done it all', so I'll leave that alone for now. But I think it's clear that Morris Day and Prince are most heavily invovled, but a lot of people played key roles in developing the project, even if their contributions are unclear and maybe aren't on the final master. With each album more and more people contributed. There should be a number of Time outtakes in the vault. What roles the band members contributed to those are also unknown to us, but the early Revolution and The Time talk a lot about recording parts and Prince re-recording what they came up with for some reason or another. Who knows, really? It's something to look forward to though.

When did I "mock" The Time? I started this thread to see if Prince really "did it all" or if that is an exaggeration. It really seems that nobody knows and unless Morris/Jesse and co come out and clarify who did what then I think it's a fair assumption to conclude that Prince likely did the majority of it. If this wasn't the case, I'm pretty sure the original seven would've come out and said as much by now. [Edited 7/16/16 9:51am]

Morris said Prince 'did really all of it'. He always gives Prince the credit, so that's all to it really. At the end of the day Prince gets all the credit. He really is the mastermind behind it, and what we hear on the records, particularly the first record, is pretty much just Prince with Morris on vocals and drums. Is that the whole story though? No not at all. I don't even think The Time, all agree on what is Prince on those records and what is someone else. Just as a lot of what is on Prince records from the period, are also not necessarily just Prince and/ or The Revolution. Morris Day is an essential (uncredited of course) member of The Revolution and The NPG if you think about it.

Well Prince may hav played nearly all the instruments on their early albums, it was definately them when they were playing live!