This is a continuation of

http://prince.org/msg/7/299844 My Goodness: isn't the Black Album a really rather marvellous thing?

http://prince.org/msg/7/247006 The Black Album / Ecstasy / Lovesexy story


Ruperts Dance Club [Minneapolis Minn.]
Paisley Park studios [Minneapolis Minn.]

Prince
Warner Bro.
Ingrid Chavez
Karen Krattinger
Susan Rogers
Matt Fink
Gilbert Davison
Mo Ostin
Marylou Badeaux
Eric Leads

From the perspective of Warner Bros., the Black Album was emblematic of the label's concerns about Prince's career. Increasingly, his marketing decisions seemed designed to alienate the public rather than to increase his record sales; meanwhile, his material was becoming consistently less accessible. The company desperately wanted Prince to come up with catchy songs that would re-establish him as a potent hit-maker and guide him back towards Purple Rain-like levels of fame. What it got instead was The Black Album.

Despite Warners trepidation, plans for the release went forward and hundreds of thousands of vinyl albums, cassettes, and compact discs were pressed for distribution. As he often did just before putting out new albums, Prince went to a nightclub to audition it for an unsuspecting public. On December 1,1987- a little more than a week before its scheduled release-Prince went to Rupert's, a Minneapolis dance club. Entering undetected by the crowd, he made his way to the deejay booth and played songs without fanfare to see how club goers would react.



insert from: NightGod My source: Cat Glover

I filmed a behind the scenes video of her modeling shoot last year (the one many of you have seen on youtube), and spent a couple days hanging out with Cat Glover. She is very open and shared some amazing stories with me. This is one:

1987: Prince had never tried Ecstasy, and was curious about it after Cat told him what it felt like. He asked Cat to get him some (it came from her, where the common misconception is that it came from Ingrid). Cat was in LA when Prince made his request. She got some and flew in to MN and was staying at a hotel when Prince's limo showed up. While they were both in her room, Cat suggested Prince take half a dose "because he was so small". He took the full dose and told Cat to wait for him. He rode off in his limo and Cat didn't hear from him until much later.

Prince decided to go to a club while he was tripping. It was here that he met Ingrid Chavez, which eventually led them to Paisley Park. Cat said she didn't think Ingrid knew Prince was tripping on E. Prince called Cat later from the limo and told her about Ingrid. She was riding with him at that point, and the three of them went out to Paisley, making for a historical night in Prince's career.

Even more interesting is her source for where she got the Ecstasy in the first place: Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.







As the music played over the sound system, Prince mingled with the crowd and eventually became involved in a detailed conversation with a singer-songwriter-poet in her early twenties named Ingrid Chavez. An attractive brunette with a serious and reflective air, Chavez had moved to Minneapolis several years earlier to work on music with a friend. But that collaboration had soured, and since then she had been working alone on her poetry and spoken-word pieces. Like Prince, Chavez had grown up in a strictly religious home (in her case, Baptist), but as an adult she too sought spiritual answers outside the confines of any specific religion.

Prince and Chavez seemed fascinated by each other despite an apperent lack of sexual chemistry, and, after a while, they drove back to the recently completed Paisley Park studio complex. They continued a lengthy and intense conversation about religious issues, love, and life fulfillment, but Prince eventually excused himself, saying he had a stomachache. Waiting to see where the strange night would go next, Chavez stayed put while Prince disappeared elsewhere in the complex.

At about 1:30am Karen Krattinger received a strange phone call. Speaking with uncharacteristic emotion, Prince apologized for having been so hard on her, said he had trouble expressing his feelings, and that he loved her.

At about the same time that night, Susan Rogers also got a phone call from Prince, asking her to come to Paisley Park. After four years as Prince's engineer, she had resigned that post shortly after the completion of the Black Album i October 1987. But she agreed to go to the studio. Arriving in the rehearsal room, she found it dark, save for a few red candles that cast ominous shadows across the walls. Out of the gloom she heard a woman's voice.

"Are you looking for Prince?"
Rogers, who would later learn this was Chavez, answered, "Yes."
"Well, he's here somewhere," Chavez replied.
Abruptly, Prince emerged out of the darkness, looking unlike she had ever seen him before. "I'm certain he was high," Rogers said. "His pupils were really dilated. He looked like he was tripping."
As he had with Krattinger, Prince struggled to connect emotionally with Rogers. "I just want to know one thing. Do you still love me?" Rogers, startled, said she did, and that she knew he loved her.
"Will you stay?" Prince asked.
"No, I won't," she said, and left the complex.
"It was really scary," she recalled of the evening.
Matt Fink confirmed the sequence of events, saying he was told by bodyguard Gilbert Davison, who was present at Paisley Park that evening, that Prince had taken the drug Ecstasy. "He had a bad trip, and felt that [the Black Album] was the devil working through him," Fink said. Chavez has also said that in the course of the evening Prince decided that The Black Album represented an evil force.

...

But something had changed. Prince believed that he had experienced a spiritual and moral epiphany, and that Chavez, serving as a guide, had shown him the way to greater connection with God and other people. The Black Album, he decided, represented the anger and licentiousness that he must leave behind. After casting about for months for a way to truly put the Revolution era behind him, he had found one.

Days after the ecstasy trip, Prince contacted Warner Bros. chairman Mo Ostin and insisted that the Black Album, with its release just days away, be canceled. "Prince was very adamant and pleaded with Mo," recalled Marylou Badeaux. Although Ostin ultimately agreed, halting the release was a logistical nightmare for Warners. Five hundred thousand LPs - which now needed to be destroyed - had been pressed, and were on loading docks ready for shipment to stores. A small number of vinyl records and cds escaped destruction, and The Black Album quickly became available on the bootleg market, with fans selling and trading cassette duplicates of widely varying fidelity.

Prince has never given a clear public explanation of the decision to shelve the album, but the program from his next tour included a cryptic discussion of the Black Album's "evil" nature, and refers to December 1, 1987 (the night he spent with Chavez at Paisley Park), as "Blue Tuesday."

Having shelved the Black Album, Prince immediately threw himself into the recording of his next LP, Lovesexy, which he conceived as a document of his epiphany.

...

Moreover, very few of Prince's associates related to the lyrical messages, and also wondered why Ingred Chavez, who seemed to some a bit odd, was playing such a huge role. When band members seemed confused by the lyrics of the title track, he rerecorded it to make the meaning ring out more clearly. It still didn't work. "I did not understand what the term 'lovesexy' was supposed to mean," Eric Leeds said. "People weren't getting it."
[Edited 3/20/09 19:45pm]

That is the way I have heard about that infamous night..the best part is that I own the holy grail .. yep the original black album LP.. purchased it 7 years ago .. ( I know what your saying it's fake .. no it has been verified and I will post pics later .. plus I have a invitation from the shiela e bday party he first played it

interesting read...

maybe the reaction at the club wasn't all that positive and he used the 'epiphany' card as an excuse to shelve it. he was also at a point in his life (28?) where you start to feel like you need to grow up to some degree...

wild story. P could have used some therapy at certain points.

emesem said:

Maybe he did.

mzsadii said:

He mentions receiving therapy in the Oprah interview.

Sounds like Prince had one of them nights we all have had. The scenario goes a little something like this:

You wake up after a heavy night. You lean over and pick up your phone and look at your contact list. You see the names of all the people you rang in your intoxicated state. You start to remember what you said to these people. You fall back into your bed with embarassment and pull the duvet back over your head.

Let me get this straight... Cat was a drug mule?

Would be quite interesting to hear the lyrics of the unreleased song that Cat wrote about that night

"I've written a song about that for the album. A slow one called 'December 1st 1987'. I was there for all that stuff, when it (TBA) was made, when it didn't come out. I won't ever forget that time" - CAT said in 1989

OldFriends4Sale said:

is there a transcript of this somewhere online?

Excerpt from Lovesexy tour program:

"... Camille rocked hard in a funky place. Stuck his long funk in competition's face. Tuesday came. Blue Tuesday. His canvas full and lying on the table. Camille mustered all the hate that he was able. Hate 4 the ones who ever doubted his game. Hate 4 the ones who ever doubted his name.
"Tis nobody funkier let the Black Album fly". Spooky Electric was talking, Camille started to cry. Tricked. A fool he had been. In the lowest utmostest. He had allowed the dark side of him to create something evil. 2 Nigs United 4 West Compton. Camille and his ego. Bob George. Why?
Spooky Electric must die. Die in the hearts of all who want love..."

Virgo said:

thank you

good stuff