This was a great period for new music all round in the world of Prince. It was also a bit of a
rollercoaster as far as keeping up with his latest ideas. His plans seemed to change almost
daily. At the start of the European Gold Experience tour in March 1995, I also remember him
saying that he was going to stay on the road touring the world, and not go back to the USA
until 1999 when he would be free! (and there would be no new music released until that time).
Imagine that! 4 years with no new Prince album!!! Luckily he didn't follow through on this
promise/threat.

Boris, you're online!

You never did say if it so happens that you also remember the track list for the configuration that had Interactive placed before Come and Endorphin Machine spelled Endorphinemachine.

And I'm still wondering what configuration that had Poem segued into What's My Name? Do you think that would have been on The Dawn?

BorisFishpaw said:

I reread that just yesterday. He told that to both New Musical Express and Q magazine.

He said (in NME's 11 March 1995 issue): "I'm going to stay on the road until the contract ends. I've already booked Madison Square Garden in 1998. We're going to get loads of people down there. I can keep touring until then."

But he also told NME: "I'll just give them [Warners] one album every year for the next four years. I'm not going to take them to court. [...] I could give them four albums tomorrow but they don't want that."
[This message was edited Mon Jul 12 17:04:50 2004 by scififilmnerd]

scififilmnerd said:

Oh, it was identical to the one that had Interactive after Space, except for the different placing
of Interactive. I don't know which one came first though. I think they were both just test
sequences, trying out ideas as to where to place it.


It was segued that way for the Glam Slam Ulysses show, but I've never seen it used on any
version of Come. I think it's more than likely that it would have appeared on 'The Dawn' though.
In the context of an album, I can't see Poem being used halfway through, so I would guess
that it would likely be the opening track on one of the discs. (but that's just me speculating, with
no basis in fact).
[This message was edited Mon Jul 12 16:58:41 2004 by BorisFishpaw]

BorisFishpaw said:

Cool. I'll add that to the list.

BorisFishpaw said:

Speculation or not, it sounds highly likely to me, too.
[This message was edited Mon Jul 12 17:03:43 2004 by scififilmnerd]

scififilmnerd said:

This has just reminded me of when I first heard about 'The Dawn'. It was obviously a year or
two earlier, but the upshot was that at that time Prince was intending to fulfill his WB contract
by only giving them old material, and saving all the good new stuff for his own magnum opus:
'The Dawn', which would feaure 3 albums worth of brand new songs, and would be the debut
independant release for ''. WB were going to get 3 albums of old tracks entitled 'The
Vault vol.1', The Vault vol.2' & 'The Vault vol.3'. (which in itself is kinda odd cuz I'm sure he
actually owed them more than 3 albums at that time). The idea being that WB would continue
to release archive 'Prince' albums over the next few years while '' would be free to
release brand new albums over the same time period. Of course this all fell through, as it
became apparent that he wouldn't be free to release anything independantly of WB until 1999
when his contract ran out, even if he supplied them with the required amount of albums.

Interactive and Endorphinmachine definitely should have been on the same album.

BorisFishpaw said:

That certainly corresponds with this piece from Guitar World's November 1994 issue: "After losing money for some time, the former Prince's Paisley Park Records label (distributed by Warners) finally folds. Meanwhile, The Artist Who Formerly Owned The Label has at least three albums' worth of material in the can. Warners says it will release only one. So what happens? The artist announces that he is no longer Prince, that he has changed his name to . Thanks to a special dispensation from Warners, he is allowed to release his first work under his new identity - the hit single The Most Beautiful Girl In The World."

BorisFishpaw said:

Prince said back in 1993 - when his name change was announced - that his contract would be fullfilled with Vault material, recorded when his name was Prince, because the contract was with Prince, not . I've heard of The Vault vol.1-3, too, but I don't think the actual titles came about until later, like in 1995, I think. So that might explain why there was only three. Because the Black Album counted as an album, so following that, he did only owe them three albums.

BorisFishpaw said:

So how did it come about that he got out of the contract with WB early, releasing Emancipation in 1996, and others after that? Did his lawyer help renegotiate the deal, and what was in it for WB to let him go early (besides getting rid of a big headache I suppose)?

Chacmool said:

We don't know the exact details of Prince's deal with WB, but it must have happened mid-1995;
as up until that point, Prince was still saying that he wouldn't be free until 1999, and that the
Gold Experince would never get released until then either (when his contract ran out).

I expect he was freed early in exchange for some 'extra' things (like giving them the right to
issue another 'best of' at a later date). We do know that he managed to secure a special deal
for the release of 'The Gold Experience' where he retained the master tapes. Albums that were
used as 'contract filler' were: Come, The Black Album, Chaos And Disorder and The Vault... Old
Friends 4 Sale (plus WB's right to issue The Very Best Of). Prince also gave them a compilation
of love songs called 'When 2 R In Love', but WB declined it (the tracklist is unknown).

Prince was already into recording his next album 'Emancipation' by this point. 'The Dawn' was
put on the back-burner (again), but the 'idea' of releasing a triple album remained. He'd
wanted to do this ever since WB refused to release the original triple Crystal Ball album in
1987. Since he'd used up a lot of 'The Dawn's tracks already on the 'Come' and 'The Gold
Experience' albums, he expanded 'Emancipation' to take it's place as his triple "album he was
born to make".

After Emancipation had been released, 'The Dawn' was resurrected again, and Prince started
putting together yet another brand new version of it (whether it was still a triple album is
unknown), he recorded some new tracks for it like 'Welcome 2 The Dawn', but again the
project was shelved.
[This message was edited Tue Jul 13 1:07:03 2004 by BorisFishpaw]

Chacmool said:

I'm pretty sure Londell McMillan helped Prince renegotiate the Warner Bros. recording contract. Obviously, letting WB release The Vault... Old Friends 4 Sale was part of the deal to "free" Prince.

What was WB's incentive? Some thoughts, aside from the headache issue:

• Prince's music wasn't selling very well.
• It didn't help that Prince kept toying with the idea of satisfying his contractual duties with "old" music.
• As at least one other poster suggested, Prince may have been trying to hold back his best work from WB.

BorisFishpaw said:

Interesting... I wasn't aware of that. Do you have a source? (Note to self: I really need to order the new book by UPTOWN... a lot of the stuff in this thread is probably covered in there.)

Anyway, that would explain why, last time I checked, The Gold Experience was the only Warner Bros. album by Prince not in print (aside from The Black Album (1994), which was always intended as a limited-time-only release).

BorisFishpaw said:

The studio version that was removed from The Gold Experience shortly before its release was pretty weak IMHO, and I think Prince made the right decision to yank it.

matt said:

I always liked that version. But maybe that's because that version was my first exposure to the song. (I first heard it on the Now bootleg which contained the radio tape.)

Anyways, I'm off on vacation. My The evolution of COME & GOLD 1993-1994 post earlier in this thread is completely updated with all the subsequently revealed information. I'll check back in about a week or so to see if any new info may have showed up while I was away. See ya'll.
[This message was edited Tue Jul 13 6:00:15 2004 by scififilmnerd]

Chacmool said:

There are really two contracts we are talking about here. One was the recording contract with Warner Bros Records which was renegotiated with Londell and ended in 1996. The other was the publishing administration contract with Warner Chappell Music, which ended in 1999.

Another kind of interesting thing to do with these tracks is that, from what I heard,
Come & Endorphin Machine were recorded at the same time (segued in sequence) on
January 2nd 1993. In the same way that he'd recorded the opening tracks on Parade
in one continuous sequence several years earlier. So they weren't 'segued' together
at the mixing/sequencing stage, they were actually recorded that way (Space was
recorded at a later date, so that was a case of segueing at the mixing stage).

scififilmnerd said:

Oh wow, you're right!!! I had never noticed that, but I agree with you that they definitely sound strikingly similar.

Even the way the two songs start out:

BEAUTIFUL!!

NEW WORLD!!!

SciFi, I love you for starting this thread. It totally reminded me of how prolific Prince was during that time. Also, I had forgotten about a lot of planned projects, such as "The Vault I, II and III" and "The Dawn" (man, I really need to break down and make myself a 3-disc The Dawn compilation like some of y'all have, that's SO much hotter than Emancipation as a triple-disc set of 0(+> songs!!!).

Boris, obviously you also have been insanely helpful on this thread (and jillions of others) - thanks, man.

BananaCologne, thank you SO MUCH for posting the letter that Mayte wrote to Controversy...it's weird, because I've never read that letter before (I wasn't even aware of its existence, I don't think) but I've heard a lot of the things that it says somewhere before....especially that whole bit about how Prince killed off 7 images of himself in the "7" video, and that he had yet to explain this to anyone. Was that at the end of the "3 Chains of Gold" video by any chance?

theblueangel said:

No, not really. It ends with him burying symbols of Prince. I suppose the meaning was: "Prince is dead. Long live !"
Or something...

THIS THREAD IS DEAD. BUT THE SUBJECT LIVES ON HERE: http://www.prince.org/msg/7/105603

See ya there.