The evolution of COME & GOLD 1993-1994

First, let’s recap what we managed to figure out regarding the evolution of the Come & Gold albums on the previous thread: http://www.prince.org/msg/7/101499

All track times for the Come albums are for the latest versions of songs that were made at the times of sequencing, but they are not confirmed, except for the March 11th 1994 configuration.

Released configurations are not included in this list.

It isn't known which of the Come configurations listed as 29 May 1993 and June-August 1993 actually came first. The only difference between them is the placing of Interactive, so both were probably made within a short period of time.

Prince: Come cassette (March 1993) – track list mentioned by BorisFishpaw
Come (4:44)
Endorphin Machine (3:51)
Space (5:32)
Pheromone (4:22)
Loose (3:22)
Papa (2:19)
Dark (6:26)
Dolphin (6:27)
Poem (3:36)

Prince: Papa EP (April 1993) intended 4 release on Prince's birthday 7 June 1993 - reported in Uptown #9 & by MTV News
Papa (2:48)
Come (4:44)
Peach (3:48)
Race (4:01)

: Come (29 May 1993) – date from “Mayte’s” fax to Controversy #42, track list mentioned by BorisFishpaw
Interactive (3:06)
Come (4:44)
Endorphinemachine (3:51)
Space (5:32)
Pheromone (4:24)
Loose (3:22)
Papa (2:48)
Race (4:01)
Peach (3:48)
Pope (3:28)
Dark (6:26)
Solo (3:48)
Dolphin (5:27)
Poem (3:36)

: The Undertaker (June 1993)
The Ride (10:53)
Poorgoo (4:26)
Honky Tonk Women (2:59)
Bambi (4:03)
Zannalee (Prelude) (0:47)
The Undertaker (9:43)
Dolphin (3:35)

: Come (June-August 1993) – mentioned by BorisFishpaw
Come (4:44)
Endorphinmachine (3:51)
Space (5:32)
Interactive (3:06)
Pheromone (4:24)
Loose (3:22)
Papa (2:48)
Race (4:01)
Peach (3:48)
Pope (3:28)
Dark (6:26)
Solo (3:48)
Dolphin (5:27)
Poem (3:36)

BorisFishpaw mentioned unknown configurations expanding Come to also include What’s My Name, Johnny, Zannalee and The Ride. Unless that actually happened on The Dawn, then those configurations would probably fit here.

: The Dawn (latter part of 1993) – mentioned by BorisFishpaw
Track list unknown but triple album introducing the NPG Operator segues and expanding Come to include the songs that would become The Gold Experience. The version of Poem that segues with What's My Name may or may not have been the opening track on one of the discs.

: The Beautiful Experience EP (early 1994) – mentioned by BorisFishpaw
Track list unknown but 7-track EP including Come and The Most Beautiful Girl In The World.

: Gold (1994) – also known as The Gold Album, track list mentioned by BorisFishpaw
1. Come (4:44)
2. Endorphin Machine (3:51)
3. Hide The Bone
4. Chaos And Disorder (4:11)
5. Listen 2 The Rhythm - later released with Mayte as The Rhythm Of Your Heart
6. Now
7. Right The Wrong (4:40)
8. Acknowledge Me
9. Ripopgodazippa
10. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World (4:37)
11. 319
12. Shy (5:04)
13. Billy Jack Bitch
14. Eye Hate U (6:15)
15. Gold (7:36)

: Gold? (1994) - also known as the Golden album?
Strength
Ripopgodazippa
Interactive
Space
Endorphin Machine
Days Of Wild
Now
Angie
319
The Jam
Gold

: The radio tape (6 March 1994)
The Beautiful Experience Medley (10:32)
Interactive (2:25)
Days Of Wild (4:03)
Now (4:46)
Poem (3:36)
Acknowledge Me (5:28)
319 (3:21)
Pheromone (4:36)

Prince: Come (11 March 1994)
Poem (3:37)
Interactive (3:04)
Endorphine Machine (3:50)
Space (4:30)
Pheromone (4:24)
Loose (3:27)
Papa (2:49)
Race (4:17)
Dark (6:08)
Solo (3:51)
Strays Of The World (5:07)

: The Gold Experience (March 1994)
NPG Operator (0:12)
Interactive (2:25)
NPG Operator (0:10)
Days Of Wild (3:47)
NPG Operator (0:18)
The Most Beautiful Girl In The World (4:25)
NPG Operator (0:20)
Now (4:30)
Acknowledge Me (5:27)
Ripopgodazippa (4:39)
NPG Operator (0:31)
319 (3:05)
NPG Operator (0:10)
Shy (5:04)
Billy Jack Bitch (5:32) OR (7:08)
Eye Hate U (5:54) OR (6:15)
NPG Operator (0:45)
Gold (7:23)

Prince: Come (April-May 1994) – track list mentioned by BorisFishpaw
Come (3:17) – Beautiful Experience TV movie version
Interactive (3:06)
Endorphinmachine (3:50)
Space (4:30)
Pheromone (4:24)
Loose (3:27)
Papa (2:49)
Race (4:17)
Dark (6:08)
Solo (3:51)
Come (11:13) - continuing into hidden track:
Strays Of The World (5:07)

: Heart (1994) – mentioned by Levi Seacer, Jr.
Track list unknown but acoustic album

: The Gold Experience (September/October 1994)
P. Control (5:59)
NPG Operator (0:12)
Endorphinmachine (4:07)
Shhh! (7:18)
We March (4:49)
NPG Operator (0:05)
Days Of Wild (3:46)
NPG Operator (0:18)
The Most Beautiful Girl In The World (4:25)
Dolphin (4:59)
NPG Operator (0:20)
Now (4:30)
NPG Operator (0:14)
319 (3:19)
NPG Operator (0:10)
Shy (5:04)
Billy Jack Bitch (5:32)
Eye Hate U (5:54)
NPG Operator (0:45)
Gold (7:23)

Prince: Come EP (pre 14 October 1994) – mentioned by BorisFishpaw
Track list unknown, but 7 versions of Come, including 18 & Over and The Beautiful Experience TV movie version

Prince: Loose! single (latter part of 1994) – mentioned by BorisFishpaw
Track list unknown but probably includes Lemme See That Body (Get Loose!). Possibly re-titled The Tora Tora Experience in 1995.

: Chaos And Disorder (late 1994)
Track list unknown but includes: 18 & Over, The Same December, I Like It There, Zannalee and Empty Room


Corrections-edits made updating the list with all the latest info revealed in the posts below:
[Edited 9/9/04 14:11pm]
[Edited 9/21/04 20:02pm]
[Edited 9/21/04 20:04pm]

My dear friend Virgo has been so kind as to supply me with a copy of her personal notes regarding Prince’s -period. The following information which is typed in bold letters come from her invaluable research. My own additions, comments and conclusions are in ordinary letters.

On April 10th 1993, Prince told journalist Alan Light: “We have a new album finished, but Warner Brothers doesn’t know it. From now on, Warners only gets old songs out of the vault. New songs we’ll play at shows. Music should be free anyway.”

- With “a new album” Prince is most likely referring to the early configuration of Come which Borisfishpaw on the previous thread recalled having seen on cassette, so I’ve changed the month from May to April on the list above.

Prince announced his retirement from recording on April 27th 1993. He would turn his creative talents to “live theatre, interactive media, nightclubs and motion pictures” instead. His contract with Warner Brothers would be fulfilled with songs from the vault.
Henry Hwang (who would become co-writer of Solo) was contacted by Prince’s people in April and then met with Prince in New York in May 1993: “He gave me a cassette of new songs. Then he told me a story about the relationship between a rock star and a fan – an intense erotic affair conducted through letters, spinning off into exercises of fantasy and dominance – sex between lovers who never met in the flesh. From this premise I wrote the libretto for a musical, Come, which incorporated the songs on his cassette.”

- The cassette, which Prince gave Henry Hwang, was most likely a copy of the first configuration of Come. Considering that the musical was to be called Come, it seems likely that Come was indeed the title of the collection of songs on the cassette/the new album Prince had mentioned in April.
Besides, what else could it have been called?

Prince recorded new one word-titled songs and refined previous recordings throughout May 1993 and by the end of the month, he made [a new] configuration of the Come album as evidenced by the fax to Controversy.

- Virgo has pointed out that the letter Controversy received by fax June 1st 1993 would have been faxed May 31st 1993 Minneapolis-time. As the fax says the sequencing was done two days earlier, I’ve changed the date of the second configuration of Come to May 29th 1993 on the list above.

The Paisley Park Power Trio (Prince, Michael Bland and Sonny Thompson) also recorded Strays Of The World, What’s My Name and Zannalee in May 1993. With two of those songs not having one word-titles, it is reasonable to assume that none of these tracks were intended for the Come album. Although Zannalee has a one word-title it is probably more correct to think of it as an The Undertaker outtake, as it was included in the Power Trio’s recording of that album on June 14th 1993, and like Strays Of The World and What’s My Name it wasn’t included on the Come album sequenced in May. Dolphin was also played in the Undertaker recording-session in June, but unlike Zannalee, Dolphin WAS included on Come in May.

- In Uptown’s Days Of Wild it says under 2 January 1993 that although many of the one word-titled songs “ended up in the Glam Slam Ulysses production, this project didn’t come into being until later in the year. Thus, there was no specific purpose to the initial sessions.”
Considering that Prince had recorded Come, Endorphinmachine, Pheromone, Loose, Papa, Dark and Dolphin by February 1993, the idea of doing an album consisting of one word-titled songs seems to have been quite the specific purpose behind the recordings – if not on 2 January 1993, then at the very least from later in January or from early February 1993.

- Uptown’s Days Of Wild further states under May 1993 that “Prince works on songs for the projected Glam Slam Ulysses show and Come musical throughout most of May.”
With Prince having mentioned a new album on April 10th 1993, it seems quite clear that the Come album came about before either Glam Slam Ulysses or the musical were conceived. In all likelihood, those ideas came about as means for Prince to get his new album out, because by April 10th 1993 he had already decided that he would not give it to Warner Brothers.
Therefore it seems quite likely that Solo is the only song that managed to get written specifically with the Come musical in mind before that project got scrapped.
It seems equally likely that Strays Of The World is the only song POSSIBLY written with Glam Slam Ulysses in mind.
With “Mayte” referring (in the fax to Controversy) to all the sequenced tracks having one word-titles, it seems very unlikely that she was referring to the sequencing for Glam Slam Ulysses, as some have suggested might be the case, because Glam Slam Ulysses also included the non-one word-titled songs Strays Of The World and What’s My Name.
So when Prince recorded Space, Pope, Interactive and Solo and updated Come, Papa and Race throughout May, he may indeed have felt inspired by the prospect of doing a musical, but the recordings were probably done first and foremost as additions and improvements to the Come album on which the musical was to be based. Also, keep in mind that Prince has a history of doing several different configurations of an album – adding, replacing and updating songs – before it finally gets released.
Thus, although Uptown’s Days Of Wild assumes that there was no album in 1993, all evidence points to the fact that there was indeed an album called Come. In fact, there were several configurations of it.

On June 7th 1993, Prince announced in a press release that he had changed his name to . He stated that his intention was indeed to fulfil his contract with Warner Brothers with recordings by Prince from the vault while continuing to record and release new material as .

- And with the Come album being the newest material at that time, it was probably indeed intended to be the first release credited to as suggested by Borisfishpaw on the previous thread. probably hoped to release it independently of Warner Brothers and when that turned out to not be possible, the album ended up just not happening.
Which is indeed sad, because it would have been a great, mostly guitar-driven album. Just look at the track list for the third configuration on the list above.
I made myself a tape of that particular configuration and it is recommendable. It is a perfect fit for a 60 min. tape – 7 tracks on each side. And it ROCKS!
[This message was edited Sat Aug 7 12:38:47 2004 by scififilmnerd]

recorded the track New World in late January 1994. It was inspired by the earthquake in Los Angeles on January 17th 1994. It was rumored that the song, which was then believed to be called Love 4 One Another, would be the b-side to the forthcoming single, The Most Beautiful Girl In The World.

See? I told you so.

In March 1994, delivered both the Come album and The Gold Experience to Warner Brothers, proposing they release Come first as a Prince album and then The Gold Experience a couple of weeks later as a album.
Warners said they would be happy to release both albums, but with a much longer interval in between. then withheld The Gold Experience.

- With this in mind, I have changed the March 11th 1994 and the April-May 1994 configurations of Come from to Prince albums on the list above.

By March 1994 I suppose it could be argued that the Come album qualified as vault-material and that was following through on his promise to fulfill his contract with Warners with songs recorded by Prince.
Of course, he also offered Warners The Gold Experience by , possibly because he saw no other way of getting his new music out as Warners had only allowed for the independant release of one song, The Most Beautiful Girl In The World.
At this point in the feud between Warners and , it was arguably Warners who made the bad decision by refusing to release the two albums as proposed by . Giving time to do further work on the albums didn't exactly improve on either album. At this point, Come and The Gold Experience supported each other perfectly and this double album-release not happening made the fans the losers of Warners decision.
But Warners eventually lost too. Had they accepted both albums without reservations at this point, both of them might have sold quite well following on the heels of 's popularity with The Most Beautiful Girl In The World. The changed configurations that Warners released much later didn't sell well at all !

Warners weren't satisfied with the delivered configuration of Come and asked for the title track as well as 2-3 other really strong songs, including The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, which denied them because it was a Gold Experience song.

- Yeah, like The Most Beautiful Girl In The World fits the concept of one word-titles!
Of course, neither did Endorphine Machine and Strays Of The World but STILL...

Anyway, this is where things get a little confusing as then removed Interactive and Endorphin Machine from Come, arguing that they were -songs, even though that they were no more -songs than the rest of the songs.
But I seem to recall reading that he removed them one at a time, starting with Interactive. So did make a configuration of Come that started with The Beautiful Experience TV Movie Version of Come which was then followed by Endorphinmachine and so forth, ending with Strays Of The World, after the April-May configuration listed above?
Or is the listed configuration indeed what he made, only Interactive isn't on it and is listed by mistake?

And THEN supposedly exchanged both The Beautiful Experience TV Movie Version of Come and Endorphinmachine with the long sex-version of Come AND excanged Strays Of The World with Letitgo, resulting in the released album-configuration.

Boris? Where are you?!
[This message was edited Sat Aug 7 14:04:30 2004 by scififilmnerd]

on my new favest thread.

Quite possibly my favourite thread on any board EVER!

Thanks, Gooey and gsh. And Banana for posting "Mayte"'s letter once more for new readers.

On April 30th 1994, The Beautiful Experience TV movie made its debut.

- And BOY, was it cool!
Imagine if could have afforded to bring The NPG Hornz and The Erotic City Dancers along for the Gold tour in spring '95...

On May 19th 1994, delivered the released configuration of Come to Warner Brothers. They still weren't satisfied and asked for his version of Shhh - "as several radio programmers were aware of it from The Beautiful Experience Video and there was a great deal of interest in the song," according to Uptown's Days Of Wild.
But refused to make further changes to Come.

- Well, at least Shhh fits the one word-titled concept, but the question is if the song would even have ended up on The Gold Experience if Warners hadn't asked for it for Come?

The question is when recorded the version of Shhh that ended up on Gold. BorisFishpaw thinks it was around before Warners expressed interest in May, and the version that ended up on Gold certainly sounds very much like the live-in-the-studio album version of The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, which was recorded prior to March 1994. But I can very well imagine simply having played it live because it had recently been released by Tevin Campbell and then when Warners asked for his Beautiful Experience TV movie-version of the song, he rushed The NPG into the studio to record Shhh for The Gold Experience, which he hoped to release independantly, just to spite Warners.
[This message was edited Sat Aug 7 14:58:42 2004 by scififilmnerd]

COME-interlude. I now use the COME-sample from the song as warning on my Yahoo Messenger. If anyone pages me (not alot of friends on today though) I hear the sample telling me to COME read it...

gooeythehamster said:

A new board of directors was installed at Warner Brothers on January 1st 1995. then met with them and offered them The Gold Experience and a live-set in return for the termination of his contract, after which he would release an acoustic album called Heart on his own NPG label.
At this point, Warners wouldn't allow to keep the master tapes for The Gold Experience, so no agreement was reached.

- There appears to be no information on the track list of Heart available whatsoever. One can't help but wonder if any of the tracks from The Truth actually date back to Heart.

But what about the live-set? Was a live-set actually made and how many CDs was it supposed to be? Or was it merely a conceptual offer and had WB accepted it, would have made a live-set, but they didn't accept the offer, so he didn't make any live-set?

Does anyone know? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?

Boris?

Bump. I love these kinds of threads...

Thanks, Squirrelgrease.

In May 1995, and Warner Brothers reached an agreement for the release of The Gold Experience. By now, was already working on Emancipation.

- Personally, I think should have just skipped The Gold Experience and released Heart or Chaos And Disorder instead. That way, we might have gotten Chaos And Disorder while that album still had a good configuration AND The Gold Experience would have become as mythical an album as The Black Album.
But, NO! We had to have that godawful version of Endorphinmachine!
And then we had to have that godawful version of Zannalee!

Which just goes to show that the sooner a new Prince album is released, the better, because if he has time to make changes while waiting for the release, the changes aren't always for the better.
[This message was edited Sat Aug 7 17:00:08 2004 by scififilmnerd]

In December 1995, offered Warner Brothers three albums of songs from the vault, entitled The Vault Vol.1, 2 & 3, in exchange for the termination of his contract, after which he would release Emancipation on his own NPG label.
No agreement was reached.

- Were The Vault Vol.1, 2 & 3 actually made? Or where they simply a conceptual offer and had WB accepted it, would have made them, but they didn't, so he didn't make them?

Does anyone know? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?

Boris?

In April 1996, and Mayte started work on their multimedia (book, cassette & CD) bedtime stories for children, entitled Happy Tears, to be released in November 1996 co-inciding with the expected birth of their first child.

- Does anyone know if a Happy Tears CD was ever made/finished?

I can well imagine Be My Mirror on there.

Meanwhile, delivered Chaos And Disorder and The Vault to Warner Brothers who were now eager to get rid of him because he was being too difficult and didn't sell enough records to make up for it. Sales of Come and The Gold Experience were considered disastrous.

- A big thank you to Virgo for supplying a wealth of information. Here's hoping some of you other orgers out there can supply some more details about it all.

gooeythehamster said:

Cool! how'd ya do that?

scififilmnerd said:

Is it possible the proposed live set could have been a compilation of the Glam Slam North, East & West recordings?

howcomeudontcallme said:

LoL
With the sample YOU sent me, silly. That what you mean? Or do you want me to walk you through the simple technological steps?

scififilmnerd said:

So do we know for sure whether Prince actually retained the rights to the masters for The Gold Experience? I seem to remember Boris saying that he did, but I've heard others claim that he didn't. Personally, I would put my money on Boris, given his demonstrated wealth of Princely knowledge.

The Dawn: I've never been able to find out any real concrete info about the '94-'95 "The
Dawn", other than it was supposedly a triple album. Prince only alluded to it on a couple of
occasions to my knowledge, so I've no idea how 'real' it ever was (was it sequenced at all,
or was it merely an idea that Prince planned to do but never finished?)

My impression was that it was being worked on around the same time as Come and early
versions of The Gold Experience, and consisted of mostly the same tracks. From what I've
heard, the initial Come/Glam Slam Ulysses configurations started to evolve into The Dawn
when Prince started recording so many tracks (most of which no longer had one word titles),
but it was shelved because A: WB wouldn't want or release a triple album. B: It would only
count as one album towards fulfilling his contract. and C: He didn't want to give WB all his
'best work' considering their current frosty relationship.

I think the idea was briefly resurrected for a short time when it looked like Prince would be
able to get out of his WB contract early (fulfilling it with 3 seperate Vault compilations) leaving
him free to release albums at the same time that WB were going to release archive
'Prince' albums. I remember him mentioning (...I wish I could remember exactly where and
when) that The Dawn would be the debut release, a magnum opus 3CD set (something
Prince had always wanted to do, but WB wouldn't let him). Of course this all fell through and it
looked like he would not be able to release anything independantly of WB until the year 1999.
He obviously decided that that was far too late to release all these tracks (a lot of them would
be 6 years old by that point), so he decided to use these tracks to fulfil his WB contract, and
started assembling single albums of the material again (Come, The Gold Experience, and to
some extent: Chaos And Disorder).

I think it's no coincidence that when he finally was free from WB he still made his debut ''
release a triple album: in the form of Emancipation. After which the idea for an album called
'The Dawn' surfaced again (it was going to be the follow up to Emancipation), but it's unknown
whether this new version was still going to be a triple album (probably not).
[This message was edited Sat Aug 7 23:55:27 2004 by BorisFishpaw]

There is yet another confirmed tracklist for an early version of The Gold Experience (at this
point still unnamed) most probably predating the March '94 configuration which included quite a
few tracks from Chaos And Disorder.
It had the following tracklist...

1. Come
2. Endorphin Machine
3. Hide The Bone
4. Chaos And Disorder
5. Listen 2 The Rhythm
6. Now
7. Right The Wrong
8. Acknowledge Me
9. Ripopgodazippa
10. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World
11. 319
12. Shy
13. Billy Jack Bitch
14. Eye Hate U
15. Gold

This is most likely the source for the recently surfaced '93-'94 outtakes that are newly circulating,
and may well be the pre-Radio Tape version of 'The Gold Album' listed earlier. 'Listen 2 The
Rhythm' is actually the same track that surfaced on Mayte's album as 'The Rhythm Of Your
Heart' (the intro heartbeat of which can still be heard as the outro to Chaos And Disorder on
the released album of the same name).

Interesting that Space has now been dropped from the initial Come / Endorphin Machine /
Space segue that had featured on almost all configurations containing those tracks up this
point. On a side note; (the original) Come and Endorphin Machine were actually recorded
segued together, in much the same way that he'd recorded Christopher Tracy's Parade / New
Position / I Wonder U as a single sequence for Parade. Space was recorded later, and was
segued onto Endorphin Machine in the mixing stage.
[This message was edited Sun Aug 8 0:23:40 2004 by BorisFishpaw]

BorisFishpaw said:

Has anybody ever heard an "electric" version of 'Welcome 2 The Dawn'? The track on The Truth album is listed as being the "acoustic version" as if there is more than one version.

scififilmnerd said:

Sounds like an early form of the released version of CB. No?

Very interesting thread. I'm glad 2 c most of u consider this era as one of Prince's better ones. He was so creative, & there was some sort of wilderness that reminded the Dirty Mind/Purple Rain era.

I notice that "Exodus" hasn't been mentioned here, which surprises me considering i always thought that Come, The Gold Experience, Chaos & Disorder, The Undertaker, Child Of The Sun AND Exodus were more or less all different aspects of what could have been a multi-CD album. The fact that the "Gold" outtakes "Funky Design" & "Mad" became Exodus outtakes was a confirmation of this 2 me.

shaomi said:

Yes, and Acknowledge Me, too. But in order to keep a sort of focus on this thread, I've narrowed it down to being about 's own planned releases so's it don't get too convoluted. Besides, there really aren't any unresolved questions in regards to the track lists of the Madhouse, NPG and Mayte albums he made during this period.

There may be about Kama Sutra, though. Haven't you all noticed how in The Beautiful Experience TV movie, Shhh continues into a 1 to 2 minutes instrumental piece that sounds very much like something off of Kama Sutra, but it isn't included on the released Kama Sutra. And WAS working on Kama Sutra in spring 1994.

I'd say that piece qualifies as an outtake.
[This message was edited Sun Aug 8 4:35:24 2004 by scififilmnerd]

shockadelica777 said:

I don't know those. Are those boots of the Glam Slam concerts in Minneapolis, Miami and L.A. in summer 1994? What's the track lists?

Could be, I suppose. Anything's possible.

wasitgood4u said:

Yes, it IS quite likely that if The Vault was sequenced, it evolved into the concept of Crystal Ball - Warners wouldn't release it, so he simply had to release it by himself. But there are LOTs of tracks on Crystal Ball I can't Imagine offering to Warners.

Most likely, The Vault Vol.1, 2 & 3 were more like The Vault... Old Friends 4 Sale in sound and content. Possibly, the released The Vault is but one of the three originally proposed discs, or it is the three discs pared down to one CD. The possibilities are many, which is why it would be really nice if someone out there could actually help narrowing it down a bit.

Chacmool said:

Considering that had made a big issue out of retaining the master tapes in previous negotiations with Warners for the release of The Gold Experience AND that The Gold Experience appears to be currently out of print, it appears likely that was indeed allowed to keep the master tapes for that particular album.

But... I don't know for sure.

But if he does have the master tapes and he wants to re-release the album, would he be able to do so without approval from Warners who made the initial release?