According to Dave Hill's interview with Sonny Thompson in his book Pop Life, he was approached by Prince to replace Andre Cymone. He put him self on a strict diet and geared himself up for the new position and only found out about the change of plan when Mark Brown's band at the time asked him to replace him.

This Interview was published in 1988 and it was only in 91 that he became a member of the NPG nearly 8 years after first been asked.

The question is ,was it a hard decision for Sonny to make after waiting so long on the sidelines and seeing the rise of Mark with the Revolution followed by Levi before he was let into the camp?

No one just waits around for eight years.

Dig further and find out what Sonny T was doing in part of those years. You might surprise yourself.

I know the story but to be treated like a yo-yo ie. being tossed and told when to come back could hurt any mans pride.
All I'm asking is was it difficult to but that pride you have in yourself in order to tour the world as a session player after been promised the position 8 years earlier when the band became one of the biggest in the world.

jfrost said:

But you have to give Sonny, and others, the benefit of the doubt in that they know the ups and downs of being in the business. There are endless stories about members of a band being in a group for a minute, then leaving, and missing the big times w/ that band. Sometimes they show up later, sometimes they don't.

Do we know if Sonny was on the payroll, if he had his stuff in the bus then was asked to remove it, or if he just had a talk w/ Prince and Prince said "Yeah, you can play with us if you want." How do we know that the rug was just pulled out from under him? Maybe it was just "I think we're going to go with someone else for right now."

What about the musicians we saw on the BET Image awards or whatever it was before 3121 came out, when he did the medley w/ Sheila E, and The Time? Who were those people? The woman on keyboards? The white dude on keyboards? The singer on piano? The black girl soloist? Who are those people? Was their pride hurt because it seems to have been a one-off gig? No, probably not because they realize how it all works.

I don't believe Prince waved some promise of fortune and fame in front of Sonny then pulled it from him and said "NA NA NA NAH BOO BOO". Sonny ended up w/ Jesse Johnson and did quite well doing other gigs too.

It certainly would have been an interesting chemistry makeup if Sonny was in the band through 1986 like Mark was.

Pop Life - Dave Hill

Before midnight the tiny dance floor has filled up with a younger crowd - late twenties and thirties, casual but smart - running through their steps to a blend of happening dance-floor records and established favourites from the local studios: Alexander O'Neal's "Fake"; "The Finest", another production by Jam and Lewis, this time for the SOS Band; "Erotic City", by you know who. But the early part of the evening features live sounds, two forty-minute sets from a Riverview house band, the Billy Holloman Trio.

Holloman, bass-man Sonny thompson and singer- percussionist William Doughty - "Hollywood" as he prefers to be known - are three talented player who earntheir bread and butterturning out cover versions for Mr. Fuller a couple of times a week. Holloman, a tall superficially impassive man, man handles keyboards and most of the vocals. But it is Thompson who comes into his own when the trio deliver their versions of three songs by local enigma made good. They do "Pop Life", "1999" and most impressively, "Do Me Baby", which shows Thompson to be the perhaps unlikely possessor of an excellent falsetto voice. It is first rateimitation, but his links to the orginator of those numbers run deeper then that. As another member of Prince's north-side generation, Thompson knows that not every young aspirant from those decptively silent streets went on to be a star.

"It's one sided, its closed up. The mafia runs it!" he guffaws, whenasked about the local situation. And though he doesn't mean it quiet as literally as that, Thompson seems to have suffered his share of bad luck over the years. In spite of enjoying widespread respect for his skills, the promise of a fruitful partnership with his more celebrated contemporaries has yet to be completely fulfilled. A year-long tenure in Jesse Johnson's band concluded unhappily in a financial dispute which becomes embarrassingly public when Thompson and his fellow members got in front of a TV crew shooting a Johnson feature to chorus pointedly the refrain from Berry Gordy's "Money": "That's what I want".

Then There was the time Prince himself approached Thompson, just after his best friend Andre Anderson had made an unhappy departure from the Dirty Mind incarnation of his touring band. "He just called me up and said "I'm Going to hire you"," recalls Thompson wearily. "He had me go to the Y [YMCA], lose forty pounds, you know? Trim Up, slim up. I was just working my heart out, practising fifteen, sixteen hours a day. Didn't even tell me when he decided to hire somebody else! The Band that Mark Brown played for called me up,'cause they needed a bass player. I said, "No, I'm getting ready to try to go with Prince", They said, "Haven't you heard? They took Mark.""

If Prince happenz to read this thread...I just hope that if Prince is aware of the "Zebra Christmas," story that I wrote, that it is coincidental that my main character's name is Sonny. I didn't even know who Sonny Thompson was at the time.

Been SO long since I've read Pop Life. I should revisit it just for the sake of it.

But i'm trying to see what makes a man like Sonny T be pushed around and come to order with a click of P fingers.
The man has talent of his own and was making a living all the same before P, so why did he come around ?