What do you think about the guitar solos on Get It Up,My Drawers,777-9311 and others? I think that some of the guitar solos on the Time records were Prince's first chance to play a bit more then he did on his records.And at the same time Prince sounds very inspired and different then his usual playing style.notable is the presence of whammy bar on the songs like My Drawers and 777-9311 and Prince gave a blue print for Jesse .Jesse took the solos and made them his when playing live but it was Prince who created studio magic.My favorite would be Get It Up ,very Ernie Isley like in sound and lyrical

Just my view, I may have missed the point, but just lately I have noticed the amount of Prince sound left on the Time Albums, mostly his vocals, but lately like you have, his guitar playing.

I think they are great. The solo on Get It Up really stands out, he probably got more chance to play on these 9 minute plus jams than he did on his own early albums (Until 1999, the longest song was Do Me Baby at 7 minutes and it was mostly organs and sexy vocals). But with the Time he could cut loose.

The Time were a funk group and much as Prince is a rock guitarist, he's a funk guitarist too and he could play these superior long ass technically adept solos on the jams as he knew he had Jesse Johnson in the line up who was also an awesome guitarist.

I agree too the amount of whammy bar, riffing, heavy feedback and distortion, raw soloing is more noticed here. I mean there's a lot of guitar on Dirty Mind, but there's a lot of organ too and he's having to fill in the chord parts for Dez and Andre who are great, but are really there to play the rhythm section, rather than show off and solo on their own.

Prince liked to be the soloing star in those early pre Purple Rain shows. Seriously watch a Dirty Mind era or even a Triple Threat show, whose doing all the solos - Prince thats who. Andre, Dez and Mark are lucky to get six whole notes in the spotlight, they are just rhythm guitarists (And bassists). That changed a bit with Wendy who had more musical chops and a more easy going relationship with Prince. And of course band member solos shoot way up in the post 1984 period., but those early shows its all about Prince. Its in the books that Prince was happy when Andre left and Mark came in as he could lay back and just play the rhythm rather than want to be the big star like Andre.

Maybe he had seen the Andre star ego in Sonny T in 1981 and thats why he wasn't bought in until 1990 when Prince knew Sonny could attain his own notoriety and following, Sonny shone in the NPG, but can any of you have ever seen him being in the Revolution.

I love the Revolution, but they were meant to be backing players, whereas the Time and the NPG were meant to be the expert soloists and they were hand picked to be stars. Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis great players and producers, Monte on the keyboards, Jellybean on drums, Morris as the master vocalist and poseur and Jesse killing it on the guitar, then look at the NPG, Sonny T, Tommy Barbarella, Michael Bland all legends, but Fink, Bobby, Mark - band members not leaders or stars. Good at what they do, but not really for the limelight.

Its also the reason why his more talented and charismatic players like Wendy, Miko, Boni, Rosie, etc never lasted more than a few years, too much ego and too much a clash with Princes own oversized ego.

That's different as Jesse was bought in to solo, and there's no way Prince would have put a lesser lead guitarist to lead the group with Morris's vocals. So he knew he could put these long drawn out solos on the album and he knew that Jesse could at least learn to play them just as well and even improvise or add to more to the solo if necessary.

Really though as the Peach and Black guys said, Prince's guitar is all over those first two albums and besides the vocals, he's got the back up vocals and chants (Get it up, get it up, I'll fuck you all night)

So yeah I agree, some of Prince's best guitar tracks are on the first two Time albums. Sometimes with the heavy guitar soloing you almost forget its the Time, but on stage they cut those songs down ( I don't think Cool or Get It up went past 4 minutes on stage and the Prince riffing solos would be limited to a couple of solos played by Jesse on stage).

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