...and was this the origin story behind the pseudonym "Joey Coco" that he briefly used? It's been said that Lenny Kravitz, Tony LeMans and Micki Free were all supposed to be in this group at one stage, and Prince wanted to do a movie where this band squared off against Mazarati..... similar to "The Revolution VS The Time" in Purple Rain.

Tony was the only one that actually ended signed to Paisley Park.... even though he and Lenny were also in a group together "Romeo Blue"... which I think Lenny was going to use as his own name at one point too.

Anyone know more?

Good question. Briefly flicking through the Vault there's no mention of who was in the bands, not even sure the other band is mentioned besides the Coco Boys, and no reference to which band Prince was in. Hmmm.

Lenny started out as Romeo Blue.

I believe the movie slated to be called "The Dawn" If I remember correctly it was conceived in 1986 following UTCM as a musical that Prince would direct but not appear in, just as you said with the Coco Boyz battling Mazarati.

In 1986 LeMans was signed to Paisley Park, "Joey Coco" had written tracks, Mazerati had an album in the can and Free & Kravitz were both unsigned. My guess is that as "the Dawn" began to morph into "Grafitti Bridge" and reforming the Time became a possibility, Prince vs. The Time seemed more commercially viable then The Coco Boyz vs Mazerati.

I also found this on Joey Coco:

"One of Prince's many pseudonyms, "Joey Coco" (sometimes written Joey CoCo) has been primarily listed as the composer of a number of songs that Prince recorded -- but never released -- during the mid 80's to early 90's. The majority of the songs credited to Coco can only be found on bootlegs of Prince's unreleased studio work. Prince did, however, adopt the alias on some commercially available releases, composing songs for and producing work by other artists, such as "101" and "Cool Love" on Sheena Easton's album "The Lover In Me" and the title track to country artist Deborah Allen's album "Telepathy."

I remember staying through the ending credits when I say Purple Rain for the first time.

At the end it said.

"May You Live 2 C The Dawn" and I thought 'Is that going to be the sequel'?

LOL, I was just searching for Coco Boyz on google and it's apparently a gay porn site.

alphachannel said:

My guess is that as "the Dawn" began to morph into "Grafitti Bridge" and reforming the Time became a possibility, Prince vs. The Time seemed more commercially viable then The Coco Boyz vs Mazerati.

The battle of the bands idea from the Dawn was absorbed into Graffiti Bridge once the Time were on board yeppers.

alphachannel said:

I also found this on Joey Coco:

"One of Prince's many pseudonyms, "Joey Coco" (sometimes written Joey CoCo) has been primarily listed as the composer of a number of songs that Prince recorded -- but never released -- during the mid 80's to early 90's. The majority of the songs credited to Coco can only be found on bootlegs of Prince's unreleased studio work. Prince did, however, adopt the alias on some commercially available releases, composing songs for and producing work by other artists, such as "101" and "Cool Love" on Sheena Easton's album "The Lover In Me" and the title track to country artist Deborah Allen's album "Telepathy."

Hmmm... do we have a list of all the tracks that were credited to "Joey Coco", both released and unreleased? Perhaps there may be some continuity that we can pick up on.

I know it's been said that Prince would direct "The Dawn" but not appear in it, but this seems doubtful to me - in the mid 80's at the peak of his fame I'm not so sure that he would envisage a large scale movie project that he didn't appear in himself, and the Joey Coco name would support that. Perhaps all the character in the "Coco Boyz" would have been called "(X) Coco", like bands like The Ramones all gave themselves new names ending in Ramone.

I doubt it besides it wouldn't have worked anyway. I'd like to see Prince, Mickie and Lenny do a track together one day though.

3 man protege group?

He should have called it Vanity Dicks!

(Or Coco 6, based on the number of balls?)

This may be a start:

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Joey+Coco

Militant said:

alphachannel said:

I also found this on Joey Coco:

"One of Prince's many pseudonyms, "Joey Coco" (sometimes written Joey CoCo) has been primarily listed as the composer of a number of songs that Prince recorded -- but never released -- during the mid 80's to early 90's. The majority of the songs credited to Coco can only be found on bootlegs of Prince's unreleased studio work. Prince did, however, adopt the alias on some commercially available releases, composing songs for and producing work by other artists, such as "101" and "Cool Love" on Sheena Easton's album "The Lover In Me" and the title track to country artist Deborah Allen's album "Telepathy."

Hmmm... do we have a list of all the tracks that were credited to "Joey Coco", both released and unreleased? Perhaps there may be some continuity that we can pick up on.

I think this part is untrue. Unreleased songs don't have a listed composer, so to credit any specific unreleased songs with a particular Prince pseudonym would be pure speculation. It's only when a song is registered with a publishing company or the Library of Congress that the composer would be credited. And that usually only happens when a song is released (or gets very close to being released).

The only songs credited to "Joey Coco" were...

Telepathy - Deborah Allen

Neon Telephone - Three O'Clock

You're My Love - Kenny Rogers

Baby Go-Go - Nona Hendryx

101 - Sheena Easton

Cool Love - Sheena Easton

plus the following Jill Jones tracks...

Baby, You're A Trip

My Man

Violet Blue

...which were originally registered with the Library of Congress with the pseudonym Joey Coco listed as the composer. Though when the songs were actually released this was changed to falsely credit Jill Jones as the composer of these songs.