I was watching GB the other night... wife's away, no one around at night, can watch what I like, had got through UTCM, Rave and some concert from 1981 and fancied an experiment... It is all kinds of pimply shit... Poorly directed and edited, poorly acted, poor choreographed, terribly structured (a world away from the movie Prince originally intended it - I know, which may excuse the direction), and it struck me that the Batman interlude robbed Prince of the momentum he was taking into Graffiti Bridge and robbed it of its spark and intent.

SOTT and Lovesexy (with The Black Album completing the trilogy) should have been the launch pad for Prince's maturity as an artist, and all we got was a man in a rodent suit and a bridge that could hardly support itself let alone the movie it was carrying.

Any thoughts?

I think Prince wanted to fit in with the pop culture of the day as well be considered a highly respected artist among other musicians.

It's interesting isn't it, the choices he made at the time. I think you're right. I think his desire to remain relevant somehow influenced the releases of the time. It would have been interesting to see how GB would have turned out without the hiatus for Batman.

Both Batman and GB are insatiable pop records that appear to be aimed at an entirely different audience than SOTT and Lovesexy. I can remember getting something of a jolt the first time I put GB on. I couldn't believe how 'mainstream' it sounded; something I'd expected with Batman, what with the movie tie-in and all. In retrospect, it was a bit like listening to For You and Prince again - records designed to sell as opposed to records edsigned to express.

Also, GB seems to be a diluted version of Lovesexy. I always wonder if the muted response to the 'lovesexy message' Prince received in the US also had an affect on his next project.

There's definately a line drawn in the sand after Lovesexy, why that is, I think there are a number of reasons, not just one.

I do think Prince stuck with the Graffiti Bridge project far too long. It was self-indulgent right from the start (if you've read the original script), and if it had followed SOTT, I think the album might have been better (being more current material, rather than made up largely of Vault tracks and left overs), but the movie would've been equally as panned by critics and the audience as the released version.

It probably shows how much Prince believed in the Graffiti Bridge concept, because he stuck with it for a long time, through a lot of set backs and such, and as we know Prince is very changeable and into whatever he's doing in the now. There have been a lot of other projects (which I think are of higher quality) that Prince has thrown away on a whim.

That shows he really believed in GB, but because of how long it took to get out, it was a whole mish-mash of left over different projects and ideas which hurt the end product. In that way, I think it was some sort of cathartic release of the 80s and all those unfinished ideas he had, a lot from the end of the Revolution era. That was probably a trip up, but there's still great stuff there (I mean The Question Of U and Joy In Repetition alone are worth it!)

NouveauDance said:

And we can funk! My favorite!

they call me melody cool, i was here long b4 u LOL

Do you know, I think I preferred the self indulgent original script to the mess that was finally released... at least there was some sort of cohesion in that text.

You're right, of course, some marvellous stuff made it onto the album, but some of the versions are nonsense when compared to the originals. And, yes, I too am slightly perplexed by Prince's determination to see this particular project through whilst letting other, seemingly more interesting (at least musicallly) fall by the wayside.

BoySimon said:

that script is HORRIBLE


I think Prince really could have made a decent sequel to 'Purple Rain'.There are many things he could have done in the sequel....taken it to a whole new level.He just needed a good script!

But GB wasn't a sequel to Purple Rain. At least, in the original script I've read it isn't. It's an extension of the Lovesexy ideal, but without all the complexity of the original.

Jimmy Jam believed GB to be a movie about The Time, if you believe the Rapido interview from the time, no pun intended. It seems that the idea and its evolution took such a long time, became more than one project en route to screens, was left to stew whilst Batman was completed and we're left with a horrible MTV/Absolute Beginners homage with minor moments of amusement.

No I don't. Prince has always wanted to try something new and I personally applaud him for getting out there and doing SOTT and GB, not everyone liked it but enough of us did I see they haven't been forgotten by you.
[Edited 5/15/07 3:44am]

BoySimon said:

Jimmy Jam is correct.Since 1986,The Time had been talking about doing a movie of their own.At one point,they wanted Janet Jackson to co-star.By the late 80s,it was decided that Prince would be the director of their movie and Warners approved of this.However,at the same time,Prince was planning various movie projects of his own.'Graffiti Bridge' went through several scripts.In September 1987,Prince showed an early draft of the script to Madonna,whom he wanted to co-star with.She rejected it.(This is most likely the same script that you saw...Madonna's character was named "Ruby").In late 1989,Prince worked on another draft with girlfriend Kim Basinger.The finished movie is totally different from that draft.I think it's a rush job....he probably wrote the entire script in one day,lol.

SoulAlive said:

I think you mean Ruthie Washington.



[Edited 5/15/07 4:23am]

NouveauDance said:

Ahh yes...Ruthie! Thanks

Krystal666 said:

I was talking about this with another fan the other day. Prince used to set up new bounderies in music, at some point he started trying to fit in with pop culture and it wasn't the same anymore.

Let's be honest, commercially, Prince tripped up his own career by releasing LoveSexy after SOTT. Sales and single performance were a disaster. Batman pretty much recovered him from that and I don't think did anything to derail him artistically. The GB project is a progression of the LoveSexy ideal. The problem is that for the first time Prince was, as Entertainment Weekly described, "Singing to an audience that has already left him behind". The movie was based off old ideas (that were re-used badly) and the album is full of mostly old music. Prince attempted to tackle too much with too little resources and outstandingly fell over on his own tiny little heels. However, that fact it was such an amazing bomb is what snapped him back to attention for D&P.

Prince was tripping up his career before that but his resiliency made him able to make it not noticeable and he could move on. Things really stated though with the mismanagement of SOTT and not touring and poor choice of singles and lack of videos. Lovesexy was mired in a tour that was way too costly for it's own good. GB was certainly a set back coming off the success of Batman. AT this point in his career he was yo-yo-ing between successes and failures.

I believe the tipping point(s) were the success of the super mainstreanm and bland Diamonds and Pearls. While on one end, it's a commercail success, on the other you have a by the numbers album by one of the greats. At this time, the record industry felt like it needed to retain and help foster the carreers of mainstay artists like REM and Madonna by offering them HUGE multi million/multi album contracts. WHat's interesting is that these deals were offered so late (or rather past the"prime") of many of the artists getting these deals...though unlike Prince, most were still in the upswing of their carreers. Prince with D&P also appeared to be out of his slump and WB felt they should offer Prince a similar deal, as it was only fair and they still saw big albums coming out of him, though they weren't so sure, based on their workings with the oft times difficult Prince. But they were not about to let him go to another label.

They offered him a BIG contract that he really didn't understand. He thought it was bigger than what it really was, which was a tiered contract based on sales of his albums. Considering Prince's carreer, one could even say it was almost built to set him to fail. When Prince realized what the contrat really meant, he started the very public feud and changed his name to the symbol. While he has since rebounded, in many ways he'll never get over that stigma. Many people simply don't like him because he's an ass.

So long to the short...YES!

NouveauDance said:

I really believe the biggest reason GB didn't do very well was it seemed like a compilation soundtrack (to a movie no one saw) rather than a full album by Prince. A being tied to 2 movies back to back certainly could not have helped.

When Prince spoke about the Emancipation project, he talked of its longevity and the fact that it would need 'time to breathe' as an album, lots of singles and tour to aid sales, etc... In retrospect I wonder what would have happened in the States if he had applied this logic to SOTT. Eric Leeds has cited the decision not to tour this album in the US as a major mistake commercially, possibly artistically... can you imagine the buzz in a town that had just had the cinema release of SOTT with a scheduled concert for the next weekend?

Speaking from a European perspective, whilst the tour was overindulgent and expensive, Lovesexy was the pinnacle of his 80s achievements, live, and a massive success in Europe - both regards sales of albums and bums on seats. The album bombed in the US - cover dispute and hangover from the no-show of the SOTT tour. I just wonder at the way this affected Prince's perception of his audience at home... by that I mean in Europe people turned out to see him and 'got' his message. In the States, they didn't and they didn't. I always come back to the quotation ascribed to him "If I could just get one person to understand" (I may be paraphrasing here). The frustration he felt at the end of Lovesexy, again in my opinion, led to the wild goose chase that was GB, which, in turn, was ambushed by Batman. Ever since then Prince has spiralled all over the place, as far as his career is concerned.

I thought the idea that Prince signed a contract that was too big and one that he didn't fully grasp was well put. The ugly contractual fight that ensued in the early 90s will always leave a sour taste in the mouth as far as Prince is perceived by the majority of the music buying public. One that will taint his career for a while to come yet.

jtfolden said:

I remember Entertainment Weekly's review of the Graffiti Bridge film.It was BRUTAL ! To say that Graffiti Bridage is a full-length music video is an insult to videos.The film can barely muster the energy to get from one scene to the next.

just bought both BATMAN & GRAFFITI BRIDGE albums yesterday. agree that they could've been better. But that might b cuz they r both soundtracks.

SoulAlive said:

You know, I had similar feelings leaving the theatre for the first time. I went there with someone who had been a friend and huge Prince fan in high school and we both came out just sort of scratching our heads.

raveun2thejoyfantastic said:

Actually, if you cut it down to just the Prince sung tunes, I think GB is a rather strong album... more satisfying than LoveSexy, Batman, or D&P.

I think in terms of Prince's career in the US at that time period one must also take into account his touring, or shall I say non-touring, leanings at the time. There was no touring for ATWIAD, Parade (those hit and run shows do not a full US tour make), OR SoTT in the US. And the Lovesexy tour featured a lot of preaching/religious themes in those second sets. Him not touring for so long here and then bringing out that tour lost a lot of people. And this is not hindsight, I was there as a huge fan in those years and these types of things are what I began hearing when the public tide began to turn. In fact the Lovesexy cover itself was a big factor believe it or not. I knew a lot of folks who at that point said, "uh, enough for me!" Batman was more popular than Lovesexy really, at least in terms of populist/non-princefan opinion. Graffiti Bridge did hurt P, that coupled with Lovesexy was a blow most did not come back from. The few remaining people I knew that paid Prince attention at the time got lost with "Cream" and the assless pants on Mtv that year. After that it seemed like Prince was a cult artist, and sure enough the next tour ('93) I saw him in a venue so small I never dreamed possible to see someone of Prince's caliber.

Anyhow, this ain't gospel, just how it went down among folk I knew in my neck of the woods back then. The way I saw people's reactions flow Lovesexy did more damage than Batman, which did ok. But I think it cannot be underestimated how much it hurt Prince to not tour in the US from ATWIAD-Lovesexy, and then after the Lovesexy tour ('88) he didn't tour the US until 1993!!! I don't hear it discussed much, maybe because it's too United States centered, but this extreme lack of US touring really hurt him and his visibility here. Graffiti Bridge could have been counterbalanced with a killer tour that got critics talking and the damage of that movie/album would have been reduced. Even if we give him the Parade tour credit for those hit and run shows, he sho' nuff should have brought that SoTT tour to the US. That right there might have been the beginning of him tripping up his career, at least US speaking.

More theories another day...

Apologies to those who have made a few of the points I tried to make in my post. I missed a few replies when I was reading through, didn't mean to be rude and all...

Not touring in the US with the great SOTT show was a big mistake as Alan Leeds agreed recently in an interview. Yeah, he did go downhill from SOTT, but that could be called the creative PEAK of his career, so it was tough to top that. He came back strong in the early 90s with some other stuff and the Lovesexy album and tour were great, just not as great as SOTT and not commercially successful.

thebige said:

Yeah, and then after Lovesexy, he didn't tour the US for a really long time. I can't remember how long it was, but it certainly hurt his fanbase here.

It was a peculiar time, indeed. Prince at his artistic peak (arguably) and his commercial/marketing savvy low. Weird.

Let's face it Prince tripped up his own career by releasing atwiad and parade so soon after purple rain. He should have waited before releasing those albums.

carlluv said:

Why? The sales of Purple Rain were the exception, not the rule, and ATWIAD, Parade and SOTT sold in the same ballpark as 1999 had prior to the Purple Hype.
It was only with LoveSexy that he markedly went downhill in US sales and chart performance (Glam Slam and I Wish U Heaven failed to even chart at Pop radio).

The whole LoveSexy era, from the album cover to the stupidly cheap looking video for Alphabet Street, to the religious mumbo jumbo, to his "Singer Sewing machine looking clothes" (as I heard one person say) were just totally uncool with a majority of people and turned off a majority of a previously receptive audience.

It wasn't a matter of when he chose to release albums so much as WHAT he chose and how he marketed it.

;