Brenda Bennett shares a rare moment of downtime with Paul Chavarria while working in Prince's wardrobe department, 1981

Roy was working for the Rhode Island-based stage production outfit Polico Lighting when they scored the contract to provide the stage lights for Boston’s first national tour. He had risen quickly through the ranks and in 1980, he took on his first gig as Lighting Designer when he accepted an offer from Prince to join his upcoming “Dirty Mind” tour. By this time, Brenda and Roy had become romantically involved and while Roy headed out on the tour, Brenda began planning their wedding. As the tour approached New York City for a show at The Ritz, Roy asked Brenda to meet him there. Besides just wanting to see her, he wanted Brenda to see Prince in action to have her meet him. He told her, “I’ve got a feeling he’s going to be really big.” On the morning of December 9, 1980, Brenda and Roy were in the hotel elevator headed out for the set-up and soundcheck at The Ritz when they heard that John Lennon had been murdered the night before outside his New York apartment building, The Dakota. Lennon was Brenda’s idol – the reason she’d begun to write music in the first place. “I was devastated. And here I was on my way to meet, as it turned out, someone who was to become one of the biggest artists in the world, not having a clue as to how I would help his career and he would help mine.”

Brenda and Roy were married in 1981. Roy was scheduled to head back out with Prince for the “Controversy” tour and asked Brenda to join him on the road. She agreed.

“I was very excited at the prospect of being on the road during this exciting time, but I felt I needed to have something to do…something that justified me having a bunk on the tour bus with Roy and the lighting crew. From past experience, I knew I needed to do something to ‘earn my keep,’ you might say. I spoke to Roy about it and before I knew it, I had four jobs on that tour! I had two jobs with the crew and two jobs specifically for Prince – I was his wardrobe mistress and his videographer. He had me film his show each night as a learning tool so that he could critique his show to see what and where any changes might need to be made.”

OldFriends4Sale said:

That's a big bible. He could knock the hell out of somebody with it.

iZsaZsa said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

Possessed:the Rise & Fall of Prince

November 1981 - March 1982: Controversy tour of the United States

pg 47 One morning before a show in Tampa, Florida, Dickerson was getting a cup of coffee in the hotel restaurant when he experienced a moment of terror: A huge man who looked like the quintessential redneck biker - long hair, muscles, tattoos - was striding toward him. "I thought I was about to die," the guitarist remembered. Fortunately, the hulking figure passed right by, and may have even grunted a hello.

About an hour later, Dickerson received a phone call summoning him to Prince's room for a band meeting. When he walked in, he was shocked to see the same man he had encountered in the restaurant. Dickerson was introduced to Chick Huntsberry, Prince's new bodyguard.

On the bus the next day, Huntsberry's presence proved intimidating to everyone, and he spent most of the ride to Jacksonville surrounded by empty seats. Finally, Dickerson decided to approach him and found the bodyguard to be a warm, friendly person who had lived a fascinating, if rough, life that had included working security at biker bars.

At six feet inches and over 300 pounds, the bearded, tattooed Huntsberry really did look like a refugee from a motorcycle gang, and th contrast between him and Prince was stark to the point of absurdity. At first, Prince thought so too; although he agreed with his managers that more security was needed, he couldn't imagine having Huntsberry shadow him. A couple of days later, Prince mentioned to Dickerson that he was going to send the bodyguard home.

"Why?" Dickerson asked.

"He's just too big, he scares me," Prince responded.

Dickerson related the conversatin he had had with Huntsberry on the bus and urged Prince to keep him. "I think he's a good guy - you should give him a chance."

Prince thought about it and decided to follow Dickerson's advice. And as the bodyguard began accompanying him almost everywhere. Prince came to feel comforted by having a human barricade against the world. Huntsberry was dedicated enough to do just about anything for his new charge, and Prince began relying on him not only for protection but for a wide variety of personal errands. They soon became almost inseparable.

That's a big bible. He could knock the hell out of somebody with it.

here is the Controversy tour bus

Prince didn't choose that one; the bus he would have picked would have had angels or unicorns or hearts or some long haired starry-eyed chick.

does anyone have an unalter version of this photo? Wasn't this a poster from the Controversy album?

photo by Lisa Coleman

Sex and Society


CONTROVERSY
PRINCE
Warner Bros.


BY STEPHEN HOLDEN

It should come as little surprise that on his fourth album, Prince has made his inflammatory and explicit sexuality the basis of an amusingly jive but attractive social agenda. Once you've exalted brother-sister incest (Dirty Mind's "Sister"), not to mention nearly every other sexual possibility, how else can you get people's attention?

Prince's first three records were so erotically self-absorbed that they suggested the reveries of a licentious young libertine. On Controversy, that libertine proclaims unfettered sexuality as the fundamental condition of a new, more loving society than the bellicose, overtechnologized America of Ronald Reagan. In taking on social issues, the artist assumes his place in the pantheon of Sly Stone-inspired Utopian funksters like Rick James and George Clinton. I think that Prince stands as Stone's most formidable heir, despite his frequent fuzzy-mindedness and eccentricity. A consummate master of pop-funk song forms and a virtuosic multiinstrumentalist, Prince is also an extraordinary singer whose falsetto, at its most tender, recalls Smokey Robinson's sweetness. At its most brittle, Prince's voice sounds like Sylvester at his ironic and challenging best.

Controversy's version of One Nation under the Sheets is hip, funny and, yes, subversive. In the LP's title track -- a bubbling, seven-minute tour de force of synthesized pop-funk hooks -- Prince teasingly pants, "Am I black or white/Am I straight or gay?" This opening salvo in a series of "issue"-oriented questions tacitly implies that since we're all flesh and blood, sexual preference and skin color are only superficial differences, no matter what society says. But Prince eventually brushes such things aside with hippie platitudes. Along the way, "Controversy" flirts with blasphemy by incorporating the Lord's Prayer. The number ends with the star's punk-libertine chant: "People call me rude/I wish we all were nude/I wish there was no black and white/I wish there were no rules." Though hardly inspiring, it's fitting that the Constitution of Prince's polymorphously perverse Utopia should be written in childish cant.

The strutting, popping anthem "Sexuality" elaborates many of the points that "Controversy" raises, as Prince shrewdly lists gadgets (cameras, TV, the Acu-Jac) that cut us off from each other. "Don't let your children watch television until they know how to read," he advises. Who would disagree? "Ronnie, Talk to Russia," a hastily blurted plea to Reagan to seek disarmament, is the album's weakest cut. "Let's Work," a bright and squeaky dance song, and "Private Joy," a bouncy pop-funk bubble-gum tune with baby talk in the verses, show off Prince's ingratiating lighter side. "Jack U Off," the cleverest of the shorter compositions, is a synthesized rockabilly number whose whole point is that sex is better with another human being than with a masturbatory device.

Prince's vision isn't as compelling as it might be, however, because of his childlike treatment of evil. "Annie Christian," the one track that tackles the subject, turns evil into a bogeywoman from whom the artist is forever trying to escape in a taxicab. Though the song lists historical events (the killing of black children in Atlanta, Abscam and John Lennon's murder), it has none of the resonance of, say, "Sympathy for the Devil," since Prince, unlike the Rolling Stones, still only dimly perceives the demons within himself.

After "Controversy," the LP's high point is an extended bump-and-grind ballad, "Do Me, Baby," in which the singer simulates an intense sexual encounter, taking it from heavy foreplay to wild, shrieking orgasm. In the postcoital coda, Prince's mood turns uncharacteristically dark. He shivers and pleads, "I'm so cold, just hold me." It's the one moment amid all of Controversy's exhortatory slavering in which Prince glimpses a despair that no orgasm can alleviate.

Despite all the contradictions and hyperbole in Prince's playboy philosophy, I still find his message refreshingly relevant. As Gore Vidal wrote in The Nation recently: "Most men, given the opportunity to have sex with 500 different people, would do so gladly. But most men are not going to be given the opportunity by a society that wants them safely married, so that they will be docile workers and loyal consumers."

Prince, I'm sure, would agree.

ROLLING STONE, JANUARY 21, 1982

iZsaZsa said:

Prince didn't choose that one; the bus he would have picked would have had angels or unicorns or hearts or some long haired starry-eyed chick.

Yep and it would have been purple. But by the 1999 tour it was purple

OldFriends4Sale said:

10.9.1982 @ the Memorial Coliseum in LA

3rd act OPENING FOR THE ROLLING STONES

1.) Bambi

2.) When U Were Mine

3.) Uptown

4.) Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?

10.11.1982 @ the Memorial Coliseum in LA
3rd act OPENING for the Rolling Stones

1.) Bambi

2.) When U Were Mine

3.) Jack U Off

4.) Uptown

5.) Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?

Opening act for The Rolling Stones' two Los Angeles Coliseum shows in 1981,...."was infamously pelted with garbage while wearing bikini briefs, leg warmers, high-heeled boots, a necklace of raw bacon"? ... there was no bacon there. We just looked like raw meat to the crowd.

2.4.1982

Wendler Arena

CONTROVERSY TOUR

1. Uptown

2. Why U Wanna Treat Me So Bad?

3. I Wanna Be Your Lover

4. Head

5. Dirty Mind

6. Do Me Baby
7. Controversy

8. Let's Work

9. Jack U Off

10. Party Up

OldFriends4Sale said:

Just put an afro on him!

iZsaZsa said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

Just put an afro on him!

Tick, Tick, Bang
Recorded in the summer of 1981 at Prince's home studio, this original is faster in arrangement and instrumentation than the Graffiti Bridge version. This Controversy outtake contains Prince's falsetto vocals, which were similar in other songs from the sessions.

Tick Tick Bang

U're such a big tease
U get me all excited, all excited
And then U go home
I like 2 say "Please"
See my candle, wanna light it, wanna light it?
U like 2 say "No"

U're just a bombshell
If I ever get it, ever get it
There's no telling, no telling how long I'll last
Before I tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, bang all over U
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, bang, bang all over U
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, bang, bang, bang, tick, bang, bang!

Oh!
Oh yeah!

I can't concentrate
When I see your bang bang tick bang bang
I just wanna bang
I wanna masturbate
Baby girl, it ain't the same, it ain't the same
As the real thing

CHORUS:
U're such a bombshell
If I ever get it, ever get it
There's no telling, no telling how long I'll last
Before I tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, bang all over U
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, bang, bang all over U
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, bang, bang, bang, tick, bang, bang!

Ooh yeah!

Bang! Bang! Bang! Ow!

U're like a wet dream
No matter how I try 2 fight it, try 2 fight it
I just tick, bang
I scream
See my candle, wanna light it, wanna light it?
I just wanna bang

OldFriends4Sale said:

80s porn mustache!

OldFriends4Sale said:

Okay, okay. Take it back off!

Home studio, early 1981

Commercial is an unreleased track recorded in early 1981, at Prince's Lake Minnetonka Home Studio, Minnetonka, MN, USA, following the Dirty Mind Tour arena dates (during the same set of sessions as Broken). The track was remixed in 1988 at Paisley Park Studios, Chanhassen, MN, USA, indicating that it is not simply a commercial but may in fact be a full song or instrumental. Nothing else is known about the track, which remains unreleased.

Hump You is an unreleased song recorded at some point in 1981 at Prince's Kiowa Trail Home Studio, Chanhassen, MN, USA or Lake Minnetonka Home Studio, Minnetonka, MN, USA (around the same time as Susan). Little is known about the track, which remains unreleased.

Susan is an unreleased song recorded at some point in 1981 at Prince's Kiowa Trail Home Studio, Chanhassen, MN, USA or Lake Minnetonka Home Studio, Minnetonka, MN, USA (around the same time as Hump You). It is likely the title was inspired by Susan Moonsie, who was Prince's girlfriend at the time (and who later became part of Vanity 6). Little else is known about the track, however, which remains unreleased.

-PrinceVault

12.20.1981 @ the Summit Houston

1. Uptown

2. Why U Wanna Treat Me So Bad?

3. I Wanna Be Your Lover

4. Head

5. Dirty Mind

6. Do Me Baby
7. Controversy

8. Let's Work

9. Private Joy

10. Jack U Off

The Rain And You is an unreleased track recorded at some point in 1981 at Prince's Kiowa Trail Home Studio, Chanhassen, MN, USA. The track is a ballad, but nothing else is known about it. The track remains unreleased.

-PrinceVault

WOW

the Controversy era (outside of the recording process) started in September 1981 and was done May 1982

9 months and onto 1999

1.25.1982 @ the American Music Awards

the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles

iZsaZsa said:

I think Prince had a few too many at the after party

OldFriends4Sale said:

That last photo he looks like he has just got a new song in mind.

OldFriends4Sale said:

Is this where Vanity happened?

iZsaZsa said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

1.25.1982 @ the American Music Awards

the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles

Is this where Vanity happened?

Enter: Vanity ie Denise Matthews

Possessed: the Rise & Fall of Prince

Chapter 4:PAWNS

Even as he struggled with the Time, Prince began planning another side project - an all female group that would, again, perform his music and adopt a persona he created. Prior to the Controversy tour, three women were selected, rather arbitrarily: girlfriend Susan Moonsie, wardrobe assistant Brenda Bennett (the wife of set designer Roy), and Jamie Shoop, an employee of Cavallo, Ruffalo & Fargnoli. Only Bennett had any singing experience. Prince planned to have the group, called the Hookers, wear lingerie onstage and sing sexually charged lyrics.

During the Controversy tour, plans shifted when Prince once evening at a club noticed an especially sexy young woman; she was copper-skinned, sultry, and had an overall appearance very much like Prince's own. "It's been said that when they met, they both stopped in their tracks; looking at each other, it was like seeing themselves, but of the opposite sex," said Alan Leeds. A scout was sent over to ask if she wanted to meet Prince, and she agreed.

The young woman, Denise Matthews, had show business aspirations and was thrilled when Prince said he wanted to contruct a band around her. Over the coming weeks, he explained to her the concept for the Hookers. She was taken aback, however, by the stage name he suggested for her: Vagina, albeit with the I pronounced as a long E. She refused, but agreed to the name Vanity.

Work on the project began immediately after the Controversy tour.

These series of bathroom photos were taken by Lisa Coleman