Thank you Latin! I read that ENTIRE article! I was always fascinated with that time period of his life.

Interesting article. Thanks Latin!

Indeed, thanks.

He should have kept a low profile about it.
I never understood the bragging, "my ten next albums are going to sell 5 millions each".
SKipper had a BatCalculator that said "YES" to every one of Prince's business equations.
It's a Jobs Field of Distortion spreadsheet with all the cells tainted in shades of purple.

"Arrogance" indeed. I'm not crazy about these times. Talent never left, but the subjects in the songs are often self-centered.
It really is his "Me, Me" period, and honestly, you may like fashion, but it's not an industry that requires more ass-kissing, especially from a genius from this caliber, I found it obscene at the time, Rude Boy totally sold to the system, Anna Stesia a thousand light years from his thoughts. Prince and its relationship with money, you can't play your "I was smelling McDonald's from across the street" more than once in my book. Jamie Starr's a thief.

I'm glad for the rebel path that quickly followed and the NPG era, but with WB, like with all of his close relationships,
Prince never knew quite how to end them. It could be bad.

Prince probably thought he could put out three triple albums in a row,
and get his numbers according to the RIAA methods at the time.

But business-wise, the name change is still a fantastic move,
but the thing is, we aren't that many music lovers on the planet. We're a somewhat small market share.
With or without Warner, he was becoming self-referencing, expanding a universe
which is difficult to grasp if you haven't followed Prince's evolution.
Cleverness and originality are rarely popular. If they are, most of the time it's just the stars aligning.

And yet, all this mess gave us The Dawn and Exodus,
and one of the coolest logos ever,
so who's complaning.

[Edited 6/14/18 1:22am]

[Edited 6/14/18 1:26am]

[Edited 6/14/18 1:29am]

I enjoyed his "symbol" days, and I love how it stuck with him after he changed back to PRINCE.

It got me to thinking of others who changed their name to some kind of symbol. The only one that comes to mind is:

? and the Mysterians

Can you think of any others? Before PRINCE, or after he changed his name to

heymistermusic said:

I enjoyed his "symbol" days, and I love how it stuck with him after he changed back to PRINCE.

It got me to thinking of others who changed their name to some kind of symbol. The only one that comes to mind is:

? and the Mysterians

Can you think of any others? Before PRINCE, or after he changed his name to

Heavy Metal bands were very graphic too.
Iron Maiden introduced the concept of a band's mascot/alter ego.

For over 35 years the band have been supported by their famous mascot, "Eddie", who has appeared on almost all of their album and single covers, as well as in their live shows.




So it's not like the public wasn't prepared for a graphic-only representation of a band or artist : see the logos of ACDC, Kiss, ...

But Prince had the media platform of the nineties to make it public and widespread.

Heck, even Led Zeppelin did it before Prince.

The original four symbols were created by Led Zeppelin in 1971, probably from the following sources:

• 1. Jimmy Page's Zoso symbol from a sigil for Saturn from page 51 of an 1850 reprint of a 1521 French book Dragon Rouge and Poulet Noire (The Red Dragon and The Black Hen); also seen on page 31 of Frinellan's 1844 book Le Triple Vocabulaire Infernal Manuel du Demonomane. A variation of the symbol also appears in Jerome Cardan's 1557 book De rerum varietate (page 789 of this 1580 reprint).
• 2. John Paul Jones' symbol (non-interlaced triquetra overlaying a circle) is from page 33 of Rudolf Koch's 1930 book The Book of Signs (Koch died in 1934) where it is annotated as a sign "to exorcise evil spirits".
• 3. John Bonham's symbol (three intersecting circles) is from page 32 of the same book by Rudolf Koch, given as an "early sign for the Trinity".
• 4. Plant's feather symbol is likely a simple merging of two symbols from the "Feather Symbol of Truth" illustration on page 105 of James Churchward's 1933 book The Sacred Symbols of Mu (Churchward died in 1936)

[Edited 6/16/18 23:45pm]

heymistermusic said:

Latin said:

Check out the article published by A Pop Life entitled "Prince And The Name Change": http://en.apoplife.nl/pri...me-change/

was from 1993-1999 pretty much. I prefer the name more than Prince ( no joke)

pcowley said:

EmmaMcG said:

pcowley said:

was from 1993-1999 pretty much. I prefer the name more than Prince ( no joke)

That's because you're deranged

I love Prince's music as much as the next fan but pretty much everything he did was for publicity including changing his name.


He can go on TV and pretend it was for any other reason but the truth is that he was becoming irrelevant at that time and needed to do something that would keep his name (or symbol) in the papers and it worked.

"My claim to fame is scandal" is a quote from this period.

It extended beyond that. Sure, it was a genius move, but you lack history my friend.
This is first and foremost a business move, not just a P.R. one.
Did you read the article?

And to deny the spiritual that all started it, is to deny Prince from songs like "Gold".
The more I think about it, the more I understand it this way: WB could still claim large royalties
in the eighties, when they were advancing studio locks in large amounts, it was of course
more expensive to produce Prince's music than selling it.

If you record ten albums in a year, but I only have a year and a half (plus tour) to promote just one,
it's already a too fast-paced marketing cycle for a standard major record company.

Prince was rightly starting to be pissed off, since now he was producing his music
with no external studios, no extra commodities, he was designing and planning the tours,
no studio sessions sharks to pay, almost nothing to planify, a whole crew on his payroll
and Prince also has its looks and visuals already made,
and the major still gets the same piece of cake it always did?
I don't think so.

Prince knew that eventually his back-catalog would be worth 200 million records sold,
so he was right and before his passing; WB just lacked faith in the long term,
which already was turning into a last century thing.

Prince was a very hard act to promote,
you have to approach him from many angles, and WB got lazy.
And chicken.

Prince was moving too fast, and it's his artistry that was in the balance,
not the morning papers.
By changing his name,
he knew he had to go back to the drawing table.
He had to deal with a possible ridicule, but it never happened, except for not
not-so-funny SNL skits. Why? Because he was still kicking ass,
even when indulging in rockabilly (very minnesotan, in a way),
it was so insanely fucking great, sexy, very clever in the fifties reference,
and flowing naturally more than ever.
It's the talent at hand that's incredible,
and no paper could properly describe that.
Your cortex either feels it or doesn't. Fuck them P.R.'s, they always eat what they're fed.
Unreliable persons, trust me.

The symbol you don't pronounce is a reinvention for his daily life as well.
The crews around him don't know how to call him and he's having a blast at it, the serial prankster.

As for ethics, because your implying of it being a business move means the music doesn't mean much,
it was his rebirth: Power chords, no 7th/9/m3rd bullshit, no more precious delicate funk,
Marshall to eleven and fuck'em, I got my own studio and enough juice
to open my own shop. I'll show them.

It took titanium purple balls (ouch the splits, damn U cannibal audiences!)
to deal with the ridicule, that got away so fast when Guitarist Magazine,
Bass Magazine, everyone who knew their shit knew that Prince was on fucking fire.
What ridicule? With each year passing we were slowly getting Prince's move,
the more he was speaking about business practices the more deafening was the silence
from the majors, all of them.


We never got pissed Prince, before, I'll have you. It's important. It's Act II of his career.
And at his most pissed, he still did it with the uttermost elegance.

It was a Jamie Starr kind of rage, the lack of implication of Warner.
Of course to some deaf inheritance bozo at the board
he's gonna just look like some extravagant expense
the major could instead transform into stocks.

He was fucking great, a Dirty Mind again, drenched in Liberace decadence,
the Lone Axe Pompadour with the amp that goes to 11, Mayte... and you can't mention Mayte without thinking
about what could have been without the pain that got a bulldozer running over both their hearts.



It took also Prince and no one else, not to be pissed at God after that,
and become bitter and shit, not to mention a bullet in the head.
Titanium Purple Balls†™©®, my friend.


All I'm saying is, don't take the Symbol too lightly, my friend.
It's Prince's life we're talking about here.
Try to put yourself in his shoes.
But they're probably so high, etc.

[Edited 6/23/18 5:05am]

[Edited 6/23/18 5:06am]

[Edited 6/23/18 5:07am]

[Edited 6/23/18 5:12am]

bonatoc said:

Oh, I get it. Don't get blisters on your fingers.
You're the cartesian type. You're not the first to judge Prince by what-if-I-was-his-manager.
You're the Human Resources type. You know business more than us who worked for labels.
Enlighten us.

Prince loved 4 things above all else. Publicity, money, music and women.
The name change gave him instant access to the first two and gave him an excuse to branch out with the third.

Holy fuck, I feel renewed.
A revelation indeed.

I think I'm gonna have myself a name change.
On second thought, nevermind. You've probably mistaken the org for your psychoanalyst's couch.
That's your order of priorities.
You have no voice in claming it was Prince's,
other than babbling from thou Publicity high heels.

[Edited 6/23/18 7:13am]

Holy schmoly, "an excuse to branch out with the third", someone stop me,
I feel a harsher bash coming up.

[Edited 6/23/18 7:15am]

bonatoc said:

Well have it your way then.
Still, I can think of a bunch of other professions that bring publicity and money.
I don't think you got the third quite right, but hey, diff'rent folks.

bonatoc said:

bonatoc said:

EmmaMcG said:

That's a lot of words to say very little The fact is, his record sales were dwindling, he was falling from the public eye and outside of his die hard fans, nobody cared. His live shows were still the best around but this was before the Musicology era, when he still cared about what people thought of his new music. He wanted people to hear it and to buy it. The name change thing was all about the money he would get from the publicity it generated. There is no such thing as bad publicity. He knew that if the papers were writing articles about how ridiculous he was for changing his name to a symbol that people would read it and get curious about how this new version of Prince sounded on record. Prince loved 4 things above all else. Publicity, money, music and women. The name change gave him instant access to the first two and gave him an excuse to branch out with the third. Prince was not some mystical being. He was human. He was a brilliant musician who sometimes crossed the line to genius musician, but at the end of the day he was still only human. The name change was never really about any spiritual change or anything like that. It was about money and publicity. Two things every single person in the entertainment industry prize above all else.

Yeah I dunno, he was a pretty spiritual dude and he made many bad money decisions because he was more interested in his art than in making a buck.

jaawwnn said:

EmmaMcG said:

jaawwnn said:

Yeah I dunno, he was a pretty spiritual dude and he made many bad money decisions because he was more interested in his art than in making a buck.

The other way of looking at that is that he was just a bad business man. Look, I've no doubt that Prince was slightly less business minded than the average attention seeking popstar. The fact that he released records like Around The World In A Day is proof of that. But "90s Prince" is not the "typical Prince". In the 80s it seemed like he was all about setting trends and doing his own thing because he was at the top and had no need for additional gimmicks. The 90s was different though. He wasn't the force he once was, creatively or commercially. Changing his name helped to keep his name (or symbol) in the headlines. For bad or good, it was publicity at a time he needed it most. Perhaps it wasn't 100% motivated by money but I'd wager that was a big factor in it.

Maybe, maybe, I can't see it myself but it's certainly worth considering.

Certainly he loved the image of being brilliant at everything, be it music or business ("I can't be played"), but when push came to shove I always see him choosing music first. I think it was the Peach and Black guys who he told the story of meeting P Diddy/Puffy/whatever for dinner and Puffy was telling him all his business deals and how much money he made that week and Prince's response was just "well... I wrote a new song yesterday."

Symbol era Prince is a weird time though agreed, he seemed at his most paranoid and least fun to be around and certainly angry that he wasn't as successful as he used to be. In his head I get the impression that he always thought he should be on Purple Rain money, remember him bitching about how all his albums don't sell as well as the Beatles and they only released about 10 albums while he has loads, completely ignoring the fact that it's not like any solo beatles albums sell beatles numbers either.

I guess what i'm saying is I don't think he was in love with money, it's just what he considered fair and non-greedy compensation wasn't always at the same level as everyone else.

[Edited 6/25/18 6:37am]

I still do not understand the whole name change. I thought it was stupid of what Prince had done. Then write on his face slave. Prince was nobody's fool. Neither was he a slave of Warner Bros. Priince was his own person; who made his own choices. Warner Bros. was looking out for the best interest of Prince. Why he was going in the direction he did. Because some of the music that Prince had brought out out in the '90's! It made no sense to noone. But himself!

jaawwnn said:

EmmaMcG said:

That's a lot of words to say very little The fact is, his record sales were dwindling, he was falling from the public eye and outside of his die hard fans, nobody cared. His live shows were still the best around but this was before the Musicology era, when he still cared about what people thought of his new music. He wanted people to hear it and to buy it. The name change thing was all about the money he would get from the publicity it generated. There is no such thing as bad publicity. He knew that if the papers were writing articles about how ridiculous he was for changing his name to a symbol that people would read it and get curious about how this new version of Prince sounded on record. Prince loved 4 things above all else. Publicity, money, music and women. The name change gave him instant access to the first two and gave him an excuse to branch out with the third. Prince was not some mystical being. He was human. He was a brilliant musician who sometimes crossed the line to genius musician, but at the end of the day he was still only human. The name change was never really about any spiritual change or anything like that. It was about money and publicity. Two things every single person in the entertainment industry prize above all else.

Yeah I dunno, he was a pretty spiritual dude and he made many bad money decisions because he was more interested in his art than in making a buck.

Thank you.

Publicity and money my ass.

but why change BACK?? was WB withholding from "prince"?

rogifan said:

Wasn’t the early 90s when rap and hip hop were becoming huge? I always thought Prince felt lost in that world. It wasn’t his style of music and his attempts at either genre were cringe worthy. To me the 90s were a bit of a lost period for him even though some great music came from it.

Not all of them.

And you have to admit, he went full on, and didn't care to appear ludicrous.
I think it was genuine on his part to go after what was contemporary at the time.
He could have made Parade vol II, III, IV, etc. (getting out the 1985 production only could have lasted him a decade).
Still, I know nothing that bops like "The Pope". Prince perverts every genre he touches (captures).
It gets branded, like cattle.

What is incredible to me is this man, who sits on such great unreleased music at the end of the eighties,
decides in the end to keep on evolving instead, even if formally it's way more simpler (no more delicate jazz arrangements),
heavier (Prince shows he's more George than James), and still aims at good ol' rock'n'roll (all of his country/rockabilly
undderrated masterpieces of the nineties), but after a decade that packed four-five careers into one, Prince has developed such a strong musical personality and a trademarked sonic vocabulary that whatever genre he approaches, it's blatant it's him from the first measures, sometimes the first sounds, even for casual listeners.
It's played extremely well, but always bursting with soul, even if you consider a song failed,
there will always be the utter faith of Prince in his self-expression that makes you wonder
if there is something you don't get about the song. Prince's force is that he makes you try to think like he does.
That's precisely what is fun, because his universe is very vast.
Of course Camille is a much more sympathetic character than the Me-Me-Me Chains O' Gold decade.
Hey, it take balls to get behind a mike. You get to sing love songs and not, pretty personal stuff.
No wonder the engineer has to step out. Prince used the studio for psychoanalysis, like many more before him.

Sure, you can say he was just pissed he was not a big star,
but then you have to reconcile the contradiction of chosing "My Name Is Prince" as the Album opener.
The "mountain top" being just a dream is very serious stuff. Prince is announcing beforehand his Warner days are collapsing, fame is a trap, but that he will be victorious in the end.
Winning the war after losing every battle, as another Minnesotan would put it.
No one gets the manure reference, but Prince is proud to be a fucking peasant, he belongs to the country, never left it.
Sure, the guy wants to do stuff on the Riviera in a FFFM foursome, but the "Opera" closes with a gospel (a genre never taken lightely by SKipper) that sends him (and us) right back to maverick teens sporting afros
and a public school bus full of unsuspecting, you know the drill.
Prince opens and closes a voyage in Prince's ego with two strong statements of Prince's soul.
He loved this shit, the duality, that's his mantra. That's why it will always be difficult
to get what really was going on in his mind. But you don't yell out of your lungs "I don't want 2 be King"
if you primarily care about publicity and fame. That's a self-headshot right there.
The way I see it, Prince is just sincere. There are contradictions in his attitude,
but then again, consider the exceptional human being living an exceptional life.

Truth is, Prince sacrificed (hence the title, doh!) a lazy fat ass cat's career à la Madonna, Springteen, U2 and Michael Jackson (releasing an album every three years and milking the dumb crowds that come in stadiums by the thousands to hear, again, the same shit hit every three years, ad nauseam) ; but he traded it for the fun of making music and bands mostly out of his town folks and childhood hero/friends and still be El Fockin' Numero Uno,
no matter the sales.

Live, the great thunder of stomping feet, has always be the judge:
you can play bozo on the video and with autotune all you want, when push comes to shove,
Prince was still the genuine guy, even at his most craziest, when no one left seemed to care,
Prince would put a good song out and suddenly all music professionals, not to mention fans,
were amazed by the focused, unstoppable energy that was flowing from the man,
even though the guy had turned so pale around the Versace Incident you would think
he made some Transylvania connection, and swiss blood transplants (à la Keith).
Even as a loser, Prince received the deference reserved for winners.
Let's say it was mainly nostalgia: it means Prince tramautized a generation with Purple Rain only.
Who wants to be that guy? The guy who, twenty years after, still has to play the same fucking album
just because the public fears the future and prefers the comfy dreams
of past adolescent days (en passant, a cowardice their own inner teen spirit would spit at).

I think that's why some trials are perceived like errors. Prince showed with the Musicology era, TRC, One Nite Alone, that he could still interplay and share with other musicians, instead of having them all strictly follow whatever narcissus musical fantasy was going on in SKipper's mind on any given day. He was smart to step back a little and become "Prince and The Band" again, it makes him more human, he's the first to admit these were The Days Of Wild.

But there is true genius in that period, it gets overlooked because of the non-stop flow. A lot of shit was released. Do not forget that the nineties were almost "The Vault open doors". In fact they truly were, when you think about Celebration, etc. PP was kinda open to every (rich) fan — still, when all other bozos were on a Bahamas vacation, Prince was working his ass off.

Had all of his nineties production be properly curated and selected,
had he followed WB's advice to release a record every two years tops,
everyone would be in awe at one of the best self-reinventions in pop music.
The Dawn, had it been released in its original triple album form, and with a wait of two years to make it grow, it would be considered a work worth of the eighties. But it's not fair, and shit, I'm talking like a WB executive, beyond the name change what Prince was truly doing was "taking the chance of playing the part of someone truly free".
By now we all know how acute he was about rights ownership. They fucked everyone in the ass for decades,
a guy like Sly living in a roulotte, you can bet that if SKipper hadn't already a trauma with smelling ol' McDonald's,
he started to become obsessed with dinero. But that's collateral.

Like Jobs, he single-handedly shifted the industry, Radiohead didn't do shit aside making fucking good records.
Prince was also fascinating because his websites clearly showed the boat had sailed,
he was totally gone. And it was great, homemade, frail, egocentric, human,
you could sense the inner turmoils, the twins conflict.

Not everything was pretty (his behaviour), not everything was worth recording — but the funnily desperate "what am I gonna do?" that opens "Poom Poom" is more Prince banging his head on the console from blank page frustration,
than a mere reboot of "Wondeful Ass". He was trying hard, he always did,
and some bizarreries came out that are only his, and universal to people with a soul to match.

It's the world fault not enough people chant "Days Of Wild": the world doesn't give them enough time to immerse.
Sometimes I wonder at how much time Prince requires, and I can understand.
It's not a world of diggers, whatcha gonna do. Their loss.

Come on, what's not to like with the period? He's back to the underground and the fanzines (and his dumbass ways with them, with fans), he curses all the time, and he became totally, utterly original on the guitar.
Just a bar and you know it's him. It was a period of excess and decadence. I'm glad it didn't last too long,
but Christopher's smarter than that. He got bored and kept on evolving.
Whether it's your cup of tea or not is almost irrelevant: no pop artist in his position, or rather, the position the crowds fantasize him in, had the courage to risk it all.

Prince kept on selling enough to live, and never left the critics hearts. We were almost all disappointed
when comparing the nineties stuff to the eighties when Prince was acting overtly black.
Everyone bashed the albums. And yet, we have listened to this shit many times,
that must mean something. It took me a while, and I certainly don't go to this period
to find Clare or the Girls' arrangements. This is a "back to my roots" period. He doesn't lose time with sophisticated bridges or complex outros. It's Dirty Mind, except no more 8-tracks, SKipper has a SSL G+ 64 channels Console, and he wants to impress us.
At some point all of this becomes totally pointless, because suddenly, Prince's genius takes over and finds a diamond hidden amidst dull coal. There is no Prince's album that hasn't been redeemed with minutes that make all musicians and critics go: he still is the one.

We all become frustrated at some point with Prince. So much talent, we'd like to conform to our vision, and it's an altruist one, it's for the sake of art: twenty years of TRC levels! Ten of Musicology! But in the end, it was Prince's life, and Prince's way to fight the blank page. One thing for sure, it's been a hell of a fight.

[Edited 6/25/18 16:26pm]

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[Edited 6/25/18 16:37pm]

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[Edited 6/27/18 8:30am]

Thank you BONATOC.

-

I who never liked covers done of Prince songs anyway...

...never heard SUCH a GREAT (jazz-funk) version of Prince's 'Calhoun Square'.

-

WTF !!! What a way to pay tribute !

Pure funk !

People, listen, and espeicaly SEE this :

-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8F-tS8iF6c

damn great..is that the only song they do of his???

here's more on that very topic: http://prince.org/msg/7/455405