The show "I Love 1985" aired tonight on BBC2 in the UK. Although the program was about 1985, they showed video clips and pictures from throughout Prince's early career. The highlight of the Prince segment was an interview with Wendy and Lisa in which Wendy stated that she still believed that Prince had still not achieved his potential. I'm not sure if this program will be repeated on digital or cable TV sometime in the near future, but I doubt it will be repeated on terrestrial TV.

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Bart Van Hemelen (tenthousand@yahoo.com) adds:


There was a lot of remarkable stuff on the 1985 episode of the "I Love The 1980s" series -- Grace Jones (who also presented this episode), that Levi's 501 commercial with Sam Cooke and the craze for ripped second-hand jeans, Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming a star through "Commando", Bruce Springsteen going mega, the arrival of sampling in the charts (Paul Hardcastle's "19"), Dr. Martens shoes, Max Headroom, the obsession with spots, "Miami Vice", strong perfumes, game arcades and arcade games, Spitting Image, Live Aid -- but what knocked me off my feet was the small bit on Prince (he was included in the 1985 episode because that was the year he was at his most popular). And particularly the fact that Wendy & Lisa were giving most of the commentary.



In a commentary filmed especially for this series, they were looking very mature (which is some people's euphemism for "old", but not mine), and very much like a happy couple, finishing each other sentences and exchanging glances.



Mind you, plenty of fans will not like that they (and particularly Wendy) claim to have co-written the song "Purple Rain". Their story basically comes down to: "it was just a bunch of chords Prince had lying around until Wendy came up with the intro, and then it all glued and we knew we were on to something big".



Fans will also be not that happy with Wendy and Lisa's assessment that while Prince wanted to be more "entertainment", they toned him down and wanted less of that (implying they wanted him to be more of an artist).



Neither will their version of their split-up with Prince get much applause, since they claimed he fired them (which is part of the story, but not the entire one) and that the split was unavoidable since their relationship had become difficult ("it was a dark, angry period").



What fans will like however is their version of "Prince is a genius" (which was basically what Terry Lewis -- who was also interviewed for the series -- called him), which has them saying he was amazing and did his best work in the 1980s (okay, so some people will disagree), but that he still hadn't even scratched the surface of what he can actually do.



If anything, this short appearance by the two of them has made me long even more for Wendy and Lisa to sit down with the Uptown folks and take an indepth look at that time of their lives. And it wouldn't hurt for them to look at what has happened since and give their opinion on that, because they obviously know what they're talking about.