My only question is what was Warner's problem with The Undertaker? Why did they force P to destroy the CDs?

djfine said:

I suppose because it was seen by Warner Bros. as a breach of their contract - he wasn't allowed to release music independently of them and they didn't want any new music from him at the time.

I suppose they thought that even a limited print run of 1000 copies still counted as a release. Damn bastards.

Question: Does anyone have a pic of the actual sleeve for The Undertaker CD? All I've ever seen has been the picture disc CD itself. Or perhaps maybe no sleeves survived?

Personal anecdote: I remember being in the Uptown Minneapolis NPG Store and seeing the upstairs roped off with a sign saying "NPG Power Trio Performance Screening In Progress". So the name "NPG Power Trio" was at least kicked around at the time.

I was too late to get into the screening according to the staff.

What about the 1-800 New Funk compliation? Would that feature in one of your Ultimate stories?

squirrelgrease said:

Would that have been 8 October 1993 where 50 fans got to see The Undertaker film at the NPG store?

PRINCE VS. WB: THE FANS LOST
Part 2: No records allowed, only videos

By Scififilmnerd

The making of The Undertaker
Having just wrapped up work on the Come album in late May 1993, conceived the idea of doing a different kind of album, using just drummer Michael Bland and bassist Sonny Thompson as he had done for the original Come session, 2 January 1993. It would be the first music to actually be recorded by , just a week after the name-change from Prince.
Nicknamed The Paisley Park Power Trio, the three of them set up together on the soundstage at Paisley Park 14 June 1993, their amps cranked up full, and did some bluesy jamming. The result was an album called The Undertaker.
“Picture this,” Michael Bland told Guitar World in 1994: “A DAT machine, a 32-channel board, two techs and three players. It was about three o’clock in the morning. We got our sounds together and just let the DAT roll. We took about an hour to make that record, from start to finish, playing straight through with no overdubs. The sequence of songs on the record is exactly the way we played it. The guitar segues from one song to the next, like when we do live stuff.
“He tends to really start opening up and playing a lot of different things when me and Michael do a trio thing with him,” added Sonny Thompson. “There’s no keyboards there – no nothing. So he can venture out and play what he wants to play.”

The songs and the video
The Undertaker was a mixture of two new songs, The Ride and Poorgoo; a cover of The Rolling Stones’ Honky Tonk-Woman from their 1969 hits collection Through The Past, Darkly; a preview of the new song Zannalee; and new versions of old songs: Bambi from the 1979 Prince album, the Mavis Staples-song The Undertaker, and Dolphin from the Come-album.
Mavis Staples’ album featuring The Undertaker had yet to see release. The song had been recorded in August 1992 and was written by Prince, Tommy Barbarella, Michael Bland, Levi Seacer Jr. and Sonny Thompson. It was inspired by Mavis Staples telling Prince about her eight-year marriage to a mortician. Prince doesn’t play on her version of the song.
A camera team filmed the live in the studio-recording of The Undertaker and produced a 42-minute film directed by Parris Patton focusing on the Power Trio’s performance and featuring limited acting by Vanessa Marcil from the day-time soap General Hospital. She plays a drug addict in the video. "I don't do any dancing. I wear no makeup and my hair's kinda messy throughout the whole thing,” she told Soap Opera Weekly about her part. “I look pretty scummy. Those are the kinds of roles I really like to play. I'd much rather play someone basic and real than someone who's all done up wearing pretty tight outfits.”

The destruction of a masterpiece
privately manufactured a CD in around 1000 copies containing the Power Trio performance. Unfortunately, when the sleeve cover was at the printer’s office, Warner Bros. heard of the record and ordered to destroy the whole edition. Luckily, some copies of the 36 minutes album escaped and appeared on the collector’s market in 1995, although at very high prices. Fortunately, it got widely bootlegged, ensuring that fans got to hear it.

: The Undertaker (14 June 1993)
1. The Ride (10:54)
2. Poorgoo (4:24)
3. Honky Tonk-Woman (3:01) (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)
4. Bambi (4:03)
5. Zannalee (Prelude) (0:44)
6. The Undertaker (9:45)
7. Dolphin (3:40)

The album seemed like a natural continuation of the guitar rock style on the 29 May 1993 Come album configuration, which it complimented perfectly. “It starts off in a blues vein,” told Guitar World in 1994, “but then quickly goes to funk. But because of the first song, (The Ride,) people tend to want to put it in that glass of water. It’s real garage, you know, but Warners won’t release it.”

The Undertaker live
A few lucky fans got to hear some of The Undertaker performed live at some of the aftershows on the Act II tour of Europe, which started 26 July and ended 7 September 1993. A section of the shows would feature just the Power Trio, usually performing The Ride, Honky Tonk-Woman and a cover of Elvis Presley’s 1957 hit Jailhouse Rock written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Bambi and Poorgoo were occasionally included in the set.
The song The Undertaker was also performed at the aftershows, but in a version more resembling the Mavis Staples-recording, as it featured the entire band, including the NPG Hornz. Mavis Staples’ album The Voice featuring The Undertaker was released during the tour, 24 August 1993, and would then also introduce the song as being from that album, rather than from The Undertaker. Mavis Staples herself joined and the NPG for a performance of it at the tour’s final aftershow in London, 8 September 1993.
The final aftershow was filmed and parts of it were released as a home video, The Sacrifice Of Victor, in March 1995. It included The Ride, Jailhouse Rock and Mavis Staples’ rendition of The Undertaker. The video is currently on show at Lotusflow3r.com.
On 6 March 1994, Holland’s largest radio network, Radio Veronica, began broadcasting songs recorded during a concert at Paisley Park 13 February 1994. They had purchased audio and video tapes of the performance, which included a short version of The Ride. also played The Ride at concerts in Monaco and Paris, 3 – 6 May 1994.

The mysterious new blues-album
From 28 May to 26 July 1994, embarked upon a summer tour of clubs in Minneapolis, Miami, Los Angeles and New York. The tour, dubbed The Love Experience, included occasional performances of The Ride, usually as the show opener.
At this time, gave an interview to Guitar World, which was published in November 1994. revealed that, although there’d been talk for a while of a straight-up blues album, The Undertaker was not that album. It is possible that he was hinting at Chaos And Disorder, which was sequenced in late 1994, shortly after the publication of the Guitar World interview. Certainly, the Zannalee prelude on The Undertaker ended up being of the full version on Chaos And Disorder.
As for when The Undertaker would come out, Levi Seacer Jr., head of NPG Records, didn’t know. “The thing here is that he’s always working on something. But I think this needs to be heard.”
would have liked to give The Undertaker away with the issue of Guitar World containing the interview. “I’d like to put out 700.000 copies of some blues guitar music with a guitar magazine but Warners won’t let me,” he told New Musical Express in March 1995.
In an interview with Q, also from March 1995, he added: “I have a song called Undertaker, which I wanted to give to Guitar Player, so they could give it away free with the magazine – to remind people that, hey, I’m actually a guitar player, too. (Laughs.) That’s what it is – really long guitar solos. But Warners wouldn’t let me.”

Fan-reaction to The Undertaker video
’s European Gold Experience tour, 3 - 31 March 1995, included occasional performances of Dolphin and The Ride. Now keyboards were added to The Ride. The Ride and the Mavis Staples-version of The Undertaker were also performed at aftershows.
To coincide with the tour, the 1993 The Undertaker movie was finally released as a home video. Vanessa Marcil’s character pops some pills and runs rampant at Paisley Park, stumbling upon the Power Trio performance. Strangely, doesn’t have her thrown out - not even when she pukes all over his guitar solo during The Ride.
The amusing puking sound was actually used to cover up the video version of The Ride being an edit of the album version. The video version of Poorgoo supposedly also has subtle differences from the album version. Dolphin is an edit of the Come album version with the ending of The Undertaker album version added.
Although one critic complained that only played obscure tracks and no hits, fans were delighted with the music in the psychedelic video. It featured ’s most inspired, awesome and impressive guitar playing to date. It was considered to be a riveting, masterful performance.
To celebrate the release of the video, performed the entire The Undertaker album at an aftershow in London, 23 March 1995, except for Dolphin, but with a full version of Zannalee. Keyboards were added to all of the songs, except Bambi.

Release of The Ride (Live)
During the rest of 1995, gave concerts at Glam Slam Miami and at Paisley Park, before embarking on a Gold Experience tour of Japan 8 – 20 January 1996 and of Hawaii 17 – 19 February 1996. The Ride and Zannalee were occasionally played.
In 1998, a fairly short live version of The Ride from Paisley Park, 28 October 1995, was released on the Crystal Ball collection. Prior to that, the Crystal Ball version of The Ride had been featured in the TV movie Love 4 One Another that premiered on VH-1 27 January 1996. Fans generally liked the original Power Trio recording of the song better.
In the spring of 2009, The Undertaker movie was posted for viewing on Lotusflow3r.com. The fan-favorite album remains unreleased.

Thanks to:
Virgo and Squirrelgrease

Sources:
David Cavanagh: Sign here…, Q, 1995
Janet Di Lauro: Interview with Vanessa Marcil, Soap Opera Weekly, 21 September 1993
Alan di Perna: The Guitarist Formerly Known As Prince, Guitar World, November 1994
Andy Richardson: My Name Isn’t Prince And I Am Funky, NME, 11 March 1995
Uptown presents Days of Wild – A Documentary of Prince/

Part 1:
The Come(back) album that never happened: http://prince.org/msg/7/317254

Coming soon:
Part 3: Ultimate Gold
Part 4: Ultimate Chaos And Disorder
[Edited 8/28/09 7:28am]

Got any others you've already done. Any chance for a Batman one?

It is a great shame this was never released at the time - i guess it still cud be offered as a download on lotusflowe3r for those who have never heard this?? Especailly as the video is up for viewing - ????

I beleive Boris suggested that there were sereval other songs recorded in the session? Peach? Full version of Zannalee? Do we know anything further on this??
This would be before Peach was released so would make sense and although the sequence is referred to as being 'exactly as played' there are definately possible breaks inbetween tracks which suggests this is possible.

Also, I can't believe that the 1994 Bluesey album talked of is not the The Undertaker. Surely we would have some idea of the tracks for this project if not. Otherwise it must be made up of a compliation of tracks recorded at the time, most likely Calhoun Sq., Da Bang, Chaos and Disorder and so on, though these are more rock than blues IMO.

Unless C&D the album c1994, of which the track list is unknown, is that album. But certainly not the 1996 C&D version as this, although is a fantastic rock based album, is not bluesy.

KAB said:

Prince seems to have an antipathy towards anything (besides the new albums) being downloadable at Lotusflow3r. If it was me who ran a website like that, I would make sure that the site was continually updated with new downloads to get people to come back.



Anythings possible, I suppose, but on Housequake it was suggested that Peach being played was misinformation from an old issue of Uptown.

KAB said:

Maybe that blues-album was never made? Maybe it was just an idea? Maybe all is saying is that The Undertaker is not a blues album (besides the first song)?
[Edited 8/31/09 12:34pm]

So, perhaps, the blues album via the magazine is merely one possible route of getting music out - in this case a blues album to showcase his guitar playing to a wider audience, and not an actual completed album????

KAB said:

No, it was The Undertaker he wanted to release with Guitar World, but didn't consider The Undertaker to be a blues album.

That's funny,I did exactly that, and nixed the Pheromone cuts..but of course,i have no idea where i found it...