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Prince, More Or Less, Normal
Eccentric Superstar, After Years Of Odd Behavior And Mediocre Music, Gets Back To Where He Belongs
By ERIC R. DANTON
Courant Rock Critic

July 15 2004

Prince's tour this summer isn't technically a comeback, because he never really went anywhere.

Even at his weirdest and most inaccessible - and Prince has been both - the man who once changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol has continued to record and release music.

The quality of some of his recent albums is open to debate, and that's if you're even able to find copies of them. After very public squabbles with his record company in the '90s set him free, it seemed for a while as if you had to know someone who knew someone just to hear what Prince had been up to.

What he was up to wasn't always pretty - self-indulgent triple albums or excruciating jazz projects, released on his own label, that satisfied his own musical appetites and frustrated the dwindling number of hard-core fans still willing to buy anything bearing Prince's name. Or symbol. Whatever.

Then suddenly, this year, Prince, 46, returned to normal. Well, as normal as possible for an enigmatic dude who once filed suit against a fanzine devoted to him and has a thing for the color purple.

He opened the Grammy awards telecast in February with a medley of his hits. In March, he emerged from the wings to play an incendiary guitar solo during a tribute to George Harrison at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and his blistering licks took "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" to a new level of transcendence. Then in April, Prince released "Musicology," his best and most straightforward album in years, and despite his well-known antipathy for major record labels, he did it with the help of Columbia. The company is distributing the album, though Prince worked out a deal in which he retains ownership of it.

Now he's on a tour that stops Saturday in Hartford, playing tunes from the sizable collection of hits he has amassed over the past 26 years on brilliant, even landmark albums such as "1999," "Purple Rain," "Sign `O' the Times" and the so-called Love Symbol Album, adorned only with the symbol that Prince eventually took as his name to publicize his discontent with Warner Bros., his label at the time.

Despite his cultural re-emergence, the new Prince is a different purple icon than the old one. He used to sing two kinds of songs: those about seducing women and those about what he did with the seductees. He became a Jehovah's Witness a few years ago, though, and his new album features paeans to monogamy. He's also not performing his more explicit numbers, such as "Darling Nikki" or "Gett Off," on this tour.

"This culture is in big trouble," Prince told Rolling Stone magazine in May. "All you see on television are debased images. Whether you believe it or not, black people do not want to see pictures of people wearing bullet-proof vests. You saw the Super Bowl. I don't even need to say anything more about that."

Certainly not - it comes uncomfortably close to the stir Prince caused with the butt-less yellow pants he wore during his performance at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards.

That was more than a decade ago, of course, which is plenty of time for someone to change in significant ways. Along with his newfound spiritual devotion and rediscovered musical mojo, Prince has developed into a sharp businessman.

Not only does he retain ownership of "Musicology," but Prince hit on a savvy marketing scheme by including a copy of the album with every ticket purchased for his summer tour. That arrangement helped boost "Musicology" to platinum status with sales of more than 1 million copies.

It also prompted SoundScan, the company that creates the Billboard charts, to rule that in the future, albums sold with concert tickets won't count unless fans have the option to purchase a reduced-price ticket and forego the accompanying record. (Hartford fans don't have that option.)

"I want to make heart decisions in business," Prince told Rolling Stone. "If you can't do that, you're not free. I want to be able to dictate which way I'm going to go."

Even when Prince referred to himself as a "slave" to Warner (by scrawling the word on his face, among other methods), he still more or less dictated which way he wanted to go.

"People used to say, `Will you tell him to do something?' And I'd say, `No, you need to work around it,'" a Warner Bros. executive told Esquire magazine in 1995. "He has a vision. He has got to be able to do it his way. ... It's kind of like being an alien."

It will be interesting to see where he goes next. He's sold millions of records, won Grammys, entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and starred in "Purple Rain," a cult classic of a movie. It's hard to imagine Prince ever becoming anticlimactic, but he claims this is the last time he'll perform some of his best-known hits. Whatever follows will have to be impressive to measure up, but he can afford not to hurry.

As he told Rolling Stone, "I don't have an expiration date."

Prince performs Saturday at the Hartford Civic Center. Tickets are $76.75 and $49.25 for the 8 p.m. show. Information: 860-727-8010.(Construction limits access to the main entrance on Trumbull Street. Ticket holders may use the Church Street entrance. Those picking up tickets must still use Trumbull Street.)
Copyright 2004, Hartford Courant

The pic

[This message was edited Thu Jul 15 14:52:56 2004 by ThePurplePeopleEater]

In March, he emerged from the wings to play an incendiary guitar solo during a tribute to George Harrison at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and his blistering licks took "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" to a new level of transcendence.

believe it

Once more someone who knows not of what he speaks:



I mean, really! Did this guy ever listen to even 1 Prince album? I don't mean do research, just listen to 1 album! I mean, he's credited as a "rock critic" after all.

Just curious, who is the illustrator of that Prince picture? What is the credit on the page? I like it. I wouldn't mind owning an original or checking out their other work.

and why can't anybody find an audio copy of that kick ass solo. I NEED IT!!

PrinceOscar said:

DITTO!!!!! I havent even heard it yet.

Nep2nes said:

You should have taped it when it was on VH1 like I did. I've watched it probably over a dozen times now. You might try checking file-sharing sites, cuz I was able to download the Grammy performance.