I recently heard a song from Wendy's and Lisa's first LP (self-titled) that I've never heard.

It's called "Honeymoon Express".

Did Prince help produce this tune? It sounds very prince-like.

I know he has influence on others, but I thought Wendy & Lisa left because they couldn't get along with him any longer, so why would they use his influence or style on their tunes, must less, let him assist in producing the darn thing.

Any thoughts?

Does anyone else like this song?

try to "trip is 2 fall"...a fantastic tune which sounds alot like da man!

bernie10 said:

They didn't leave, P booted them out. And as jonylawson said, yes, try 'to Trip is 2 Fall'. VERY cool song that wouldn't surprise me if he was the one who wrote it.

Don't you guys know anything about Wendy and Lisa? They wrote a major portion of the music during the ATWID and Parade eras... their sound was pretty unique, so if it sounds "Prince-like" it was becuase he used their influence.

Honeymoon Express is an awesome song... so are alot of other ones, off of all their albums.

If u think this sounds prince-like, try the second album. And they even let him remix Lolly Lolly the second single, so I don't think they were that desperate to avoid his influence - Would u b?

jonylawson said:

That's a VERY hard to find song there. It's great but hard to find...so is I'm leaving the problem... if you can get a copy...do so.

I don't think W&L were trying to get away from his sound at all. If anything I think they demonstrated that they were an essential part of the sound he had or at least trying to. Certainly proved they were much more than back up singers/musicians.

I am not certain of P's involvement. They do thank him and all...but I ? it as they had disbanded and there was a bit of animosity between them. I think it would have been hard to have P work on an album in which many of the songs were about the break up. I'd be interested to know if he did help them on it.

vivid said:

I wonder if they were actually in the studio with him when he remixed it or if they just sent him the tape and he sent it back with his changes and edits?

Some of the material from there first two albums was stuff never picked up by Prince & revolution. So it would have that sound. I have a live clip of P & the Rev playing a more upbeat and bouncy, "This is the life" live with Prince singing.
The split wasn't a mutual agreement. The Revolution was limited when it came to musicianship. In retrospect, Wendy and Lisa's biggest contribution was keeping Prince honest with himself. He mentions this in an interview during the Parade era? In my opinion, his music after the break was the most well rounded and experimental period. From 1986 to 1990 the man was ...too hot to handle...

After that were some bad decisions.

vivid said:

Oh, believe me. I've owned FATB and I loved every song on the CD.

Especially, "Always In My Dream".

wdrew said:

Prince kicked Wendy & Lisa out?

What was wrong with him?

LovesexyIsThe1 said:

Thank you!

Rev said:

Really the only music that was new during this period you mention was Lovesexy. Most of SOTT was done when The Revolution was still together. And Batman was hardly experimental. His most experimental prolific period was from 85 to 86 when Wendy and Lisa were working with him a lot in the studio. He even mentions this in the interview he did in 85 on MTV, "things go a lot quicker now that the girls help me..the girls meaning Lisa and Wendy."

Rev said:

I'd have to see this clip because neither of those albums were made during their time with Prince. The Revolution split up because Prince started treating Wendy and Lisa like shit when he was fighting with Susannah. They got tired of it and told him they were quitting, they were talked into staying and finishing the tour. Once the tour ended Prince disbanded the Revoluton to go in a new direction. It's not that hard people. And nothing chaps my ass more to read the Revolution was limited. No other band had to watch Prince for cues and were TIGHT as fucking hell like the Revolution. The new band is AMAZING but he doesn't have them hitting him 25 times or stopping with hand cues, the show is very rehearsed.

Wendy and Lisa did not leave. Prince disbanded the Revolution.

They were fired. It was not their choice.

EverlastingNow said:

I agree, the Revolution was the best band Prince ever had.

2 bad he fucked it up.

He actually hasn't found a better set of musicians since then.

EverlastingNow said:

I think Wendy and Lisa are credited on every LP after SOTT and that was in 1987, so it was the period from 1988 onward.

I've read in an interview a long time ago that Prince stated that the Revolution, along with Wendy & Lisa, was his best band.

okaypimpn said:

From an interview I saw with W&L it sounded as if they were not together when it was done.

I don't think The Revolution was Prince's best band and are very overrated. Don't get me wrong, I think Wendy & Lisa were/are extremely talented and definitely contributed to his creativity during that period but as for their sound live, I always thought it was kinda thin and flat. I think his current band overall has more of a punch live.

Pagey said:

Apparently you missed the Parade tour.

EverlastingNow said:

How right you are... huge CO-SIGN!

when asked in an interview about their albums having that so called "Prince-like" sound, Wendy responded:

" Well, the thing is - That was us playing on those Prince and the Revolution records, after all; we had a lot to do with the way those records sounded..." during that 84-86 period, Prince collaborated closely with Wendy and Lisa in the studio, Much more than any of the other band members...often he would start a track, and leave Wendy and Lisa to finish it; by the same token, sometimes Wendy and Lisa would compose a tune like Mountains, or Sometimes it snows in April; Prince would come in, check it out, and put his spin on it...

No mistake, Lisa & Wendy were very important and influencial to Prince.

That doesn't make them better musicians. My opinion of the Revolution includes Bobby Z. He was a joke. I've been to all the US concerts since Controversy. Wendy's PR performances were the weakest. Lisa and her improved greatly after they're split. I have all their albums.
Prince's growth, we all know the album were in the can long before WB would let them out. To point out L & W contribution to SOTT is dated by atleast a year. 87 & 88's concerts were some of the best. He did it with less players and still danced he's way around. Miko was one his best guitar players.
I've followed L & W all along. I've only seen them once in concert, but it was great show.

They're accomplished now. They were not then.

Hope this isn't too long a post-found an interesting article on wendyandlisa.com. Not sure on the date/year as the site is flash based so no direct link-but you can find it if you go there and click on the 5th girl bros. related icon from the top. You might've already read this, but worth a look.

Here's the entire MOJO interview with Wendy and Lisa (in case you don't wanna deal with the flash):

"WENDY MELVOIN AND LISA COLEMAN REMAIN THE CLOSEST THING to musical co-conspirators Prince has ever had. During their all-too-brief four-year (1983-87) tenure, the dynamic duo practically ghost-wrote by proxy large chunks of Around The World In A Day and Parade, the two albums that delve deeper into meticulously arranged psychedelifunk than any Prince music before or since. 'We had a very private, very deep relationship with him that noone else had at the time,' says Melvoin.

Coleman had been permanent tour keyboardist for Prince since 1980 when Melvoin, a childhood friend of Coleman's, was hired to replace guitarist Dez Dickerson just prior to the Purple Rain sessions. 'I was just in the right place in the right time,' says Melvoin. 'Prince heard me screwing around one day at a sound check and hired me on the spot.' Wendy and Lisa were Prince's George Martin, the ones he turned to when he required a complex arrangement, or when a half-baked musical notion needed rounding out.

'Prince would send us masters in LA, and we would work out the arrangements or whatever else, and then send it back to him,' says Coleman. 'Often, they would just be skeletons of songs, like [Parade's] Christopher Tracy's Parade, which was originally called Little Wendy's Parade. He never second guessed any of the work we did for him.'

Prince had become so reliant on Wendy and Lisa's input, in fact, that it lay behind his decision to give them the pink slip halfway through the Sign '0'The Times sessions. 'He had started to distance himself from the music, and told us he needed to go back to making music the way he used to make it,' says Coleman. 'We had actually recorded a lot of stuff for Sign '0'The Times, but he started from scratch, and none of it made it to the album.'

Embarking on their own career, the duo made two outstanding albums, Wendy And Lisa (1987) and Fruit At The Bottom (1989) featuring their unique blend of sweet melodicism and exotic dance floor grooves, followed by a veritable masterwork, Eroica which, like its predecessors, was generally ignored. 'They [the label] just didn't get it at all,' says Melvoin. 'The A&R guys who signed us loved the album, but the promo people were like, 'What is this?' We came up with a million ideas to try and market it, but they were at a loss. It wasn't our time, I guess.' A fourth album, produced by Trevor Horn, continues to languish in the vaults. Rather than lick their wounds, they embarked on a busy session career, which included playing on Seal's first album, and writing songs on the second. They also scored the Michelle Pfeiffer film Dangerous Minds, and are currently working on a movie called Soul Food with uber-producer Babyface. Production duties on Dionne Farris's album await them in 1997, and they are currently in negotiations with Dreamworks so they can finally get down to making records under their own names again.


As for their erstwhile mentor, he did dedicate Emancipation's In This Bed I Scream to them, a song that can only be construed as a plea for forgiveness and reconciliation ('How did we ever lose communication/How did we ever lose each other's sound?'). Informed of this, both are incredulous, but intrigued. 'It's so funny, because he had sent that song to us to see if we wanted to work on it,' says Melvoin. 'We gave him some suggestions about it, and he sounded like he was into it, but then we never heard from him again on the subject. He did call us recently, though, to invite us to a party, so we'll see. We'd definitely be willing to work with him again. We're just waiting for that 4am phone call.' "

So the remix could've been done with them sending him tapes, and him sending it back-back and forth that way like they used to. However, I think the tracks that sound the most Prince are probably due to these are the same women that had a larger hand in his music during those years than most people realize-so it's natural that after the seperation there's still that sound. As stated in the above posts, they WERE highly involved with ATWIAD and Parade. Wendy and Lisa also do a great job as composers for Crossing Jordan on NBC.

Personally, I have a major love for the Revolution-era songs, and part of this is certainly due to Purple Rain, but they're just such a great band-they had a vibe that can never be recreated by anyone. Given what happened, I think it's natural for that era to be held up so high-we still play "what could have been". The NPG are damn good in their own right-but I view the Revolution and NPG to the point as being almost different artists when it comes to Prince's history. Each band has it's strong points and weaknesses-different vibes for different eras.

For many people, myself included I'll always look at those albums and that era in awe, simply because of how much you could hear him being pushed as an artist-and when that happens, love or hate the outcome-everybody wins.
[This message was edited Mon Jul 12 23:06:28 2004 by subhuman09]

Good post. I read this a few years back and I'm glad you shared it with the rest of the class. Hopefully some of the naysayers will recognize, after reading this.

Peace.

Thanks! Glad you liked it. I hope when people read this they don't think we're taking away anything from Prince really, just making the story a little clearer. From how they sound in the story, Wendy and Lisa aren't either. They deserve more credit than just being hired hands during those years. More well known is the fact they got Prince into the Beatles during ATWIAD-a fact you can hear on more tracks than others, but very much an influence.

This also makes Prince come across as an artist instead of an asshole in this case. It makes a lot more sense for him to want to take chances on his own after his popularity is at the peak and want to prove things to himself. Trying the road alone again vs. just firing someone on a whim? He has an ego, but I don't think he's stupid. The music always comes first, so as great as it would've been to keep the Revolution going, if he starts to resent making music, what happens then?

If there's anyone that hasn't heard Wendy and Lisa's post-Revolution work, you should. Also check out their soundtrack work and Girl Bros.

LovesexyIsThe1 said:

I was thinking the same thing.

THAT was truly the best "hits" tour, without even trying to be.

For the record, 2 trip is 2 fall is a P tune. I have the original version. Grest song...