herb4 said:

herb4 said:

Same thing as every other artist really. Money, plain and simple.

It's always a fine line between artistic integrity and economic reality. Most artists who've never "sold out" have never truly been asked to in my experience.

Batman was the first time I got a real whiff of it from Prince and then, D&P, while maybe not a "sell out" was obviously aimed at commercial success.

All artists are forced to compromise their vision at some point.

This is true.Most artists wants to be successful and make alot of money,whether they admit it or not.

I got the impression the money was primarily to fund his creative projects unabated...videos,

endless recording/24-hr engineers, films and whatever else.

SantanaMaitreya said:

Margot said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Margot said:

I got the impression the money was primarily to fund his creative projects unabated...videos,

endless recording/24-hr engineers, films and whatever else.

True But he still liked/needed a big pay packet for all that He wasnt going to downsize

Yes

Was 3EG a sell-out?

[Edited 10/18/20 15:26pm]

I don't think he compromised his art AT ALL. He released a big amount of records in very short time. So D&P probably wasn't trying to be another SOTT, Dirty Mind or Purple Rain, it was just a fun record and he was showing 'You want hits, you want sales, I CAN DO IT TOO.´ And he did, he got a couple Top 5 hits on Billboard with Batman and D&P.

But don't think he was trying to do s*** music, he was doing POP. FUN, ENTERTAINING music with the Prince touch, and it worked, and it was good for business, and then later he went back to the musician side of his career, all these things can Co-exist you know?

There's no REAL Prince or Fake Prince... These are different sides from the same coin.

Since people are talking D and P, how about Thunder? I love it, though I get the sense that there's plenty of fans that find it cheesy and don't like it at all.

Whether people are into the song or not, does that song contribute to the idea that D and P was about going more mainstream for commercial success? Maybe it should be obvious, but I live under enough of a rock to often have no clue of where mainstream is, or isn't.

rednblue said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

The other thing about him is that he lived to work. New album meant a new tour. He needed to keep that going over and over. How that transpired became less important after the 90s, or def after TRC, when it became less about the music,more about playing live, he jist needed to be out there performing.

.

Where do you lot get this nonsense about Prince loving to perform live? There are entire years where he barely got on a stage.

.

In an era where artists tour an album for two years and actually play all over the world, Prince's tours often were short and limited. How many of his European tours consist of him visiting barely a handful of countries? How many American tours consist of him visiting barely a dozen cities? How often has Prince performed in South America? In Asia? In Eastern Europe? His "21 nights" residency in LA only reaches that number if you include a TV performance.

.

For comparison: The Ramones played 2263 concerts in their career, on average more than 100/year. Grateful Dead performed 2318 concerts. Roger Waters did 219 concerts in 2010-13 performing The Wall. Metallica played 170+ concerts on their Wherever We May Roam Tour in 1991-92 and they have several other equally lengthy tours: https://en.wikipedia.org/...cert_tours . Ed Sheeran did almost 260 concerts in 2017-2019 on a single tour.

.

http://www.princevault.co...l_Concerts Look at 2005, 2008 or 2009 for examples of particularly meager years. Or even 1987, where the SOTT Tour lasted barely two months.

um lets see, i wasnt talking about the scale of tours, but the fact, for him, a new album meant a new tour design/presentation etc to think about and mount.

he toured almost every year in the 80s.

in the 90s, as you can see on princevault, there is barely a year when he wasnt touring or performing live.

in the 00s, he did one of his biggest US tours in years

in 2006/07 he was back touring there again

as he got older its inevitable he would scale back tours, partly as he wasnt releasing big records to generate the publicity he needed to sell out big venues. but he never stopped touring or performing live.

so the question is where do you get the nonsense idea he didnt like performing live?

[Edited 10/19/20 3:10am]

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

um lets see, i wasnt talking about the scale of tours, but the fact, for him, a new album meant a new tour design/presentation etc to think about and mount.

he toured almost every year in the 80s.

in the 90s, as you can see on princevault, there is barely a year when he wasnt touring or performing live.

in the 00s, he did one of his biggest US tours in years

in 2006/07 he was back touring there again

as he got older its inevitable he would scale back tours, partly as he wasnt releasing big records to generate the publicity he needed to sell out big venues. but he never stopped touring or performing live.

so the question is where do you get the nonsense idea he didnt like performing live?

[Edited 10/19/20 3:10am]

He did like performing live but he didnt have a big worldwide tour since Purple Rain tour. all his latter tours were short

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

um lets see, i wasnt talking about the scale of tours, but the fact, for him, a new album meant a new tour design/presentation etc to think about and mount.

.

That stopped a loooong time ago. In later years they were mostly flimsy excuses, and often "tours" weren't connected to an album and seemed more a case of "ooh I gotta pay some bills lemme do a bunch of GH shows".

.

he toured almost every year in the 80s.

.

In 1989 the only tour dates were the Japan Lovesexy gigs, which he was basically forced to do by his accountants to fill the financial hole he had dug. Other than that: a couple of guest appearances.

.

in the 90s, as you can see on princevault, there is barely a year when he wasnt touring or performing live.

.

Some of those years are pretty smil, e.g. only a handful of one-off gigs in 1991.

.

as he got older its inevitable he would scale back tours, partly as he wasnt releasing big records to generate the publicity he needed to sell out big venues. but he never stopped touring or performing live.

so the question is where do you get the nonsense idea he didnt like performing live?

.

His 2003 "world tour" lasted two weeks. In 2012 he again only did a two week tour, and other than that a handful of shows. Etc etc etc.

BartVanHemelen said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

The other thing about him is that he lived to work. New album meant a new tour. He needed to keep that going over and over. How that transpired became less important after the 90s, or def after TRC, when it became less about the music,more about playing live, he jist needed to be out there performing.

.

Where do you lot get this nonsense about Prince loving to perform live? There are entire years where he barely got on a stage.

.

In an era where artists tour an album for two years and actually play all over the world, Prince's tours often were short and limited. How many of his European tours consist of him visiting barely a handful of countries? How many American tours consist of him visiting barely a dozen cities? How often has Prince performed in South America? In Asia? In Eastern Europe? His "21 nights" residency in LA only reaches that number if you include a TV performance.

.

For comparison: The Ramones played 2263 concerts in their career, on average more than 100/year. Grateful Dead performed 2318 concerts. Roger Waters did 219 concerts in 2010-13 performing The Wall. Metallica played 170+ concerts on their Wherever We May Roam Tour in 1991-92 and they have several other equally lengthy tours: https://en.wikipedia.org/...cert_tours . Ed Sheeran did almost 260 concerts in 2017-2019 on a single tour.

.

http://www.princevault.co...l_Concerts Look at 2005, 2008 or 2009 for examples of particularly meager years. Or even 1987, where the SOTT Tour lasted barely two months.

-

From the very beginning it was clear that Prince wasn't the kind to do 2318 concerts with the release of any album he did.

It became clear that he was far to creative for that - which got in his way if you will.

He just consumed time to the utmost possible, super demanding, didn't want anyone in the way, and kept that pace even beyond his most prolific peak.

Not to forget he became kind of a spoiled brat if you will after PR.

I truly believe he somehow got alienated from the world and the music scene later in his career, but that's another story.

-

Don't forget that he rehearsed exhaustively for each tour. Even so annoying that most of his band members hated it, that's what I read somewhere.

That's on of the reasons why he prefered super skilled musicians instead of creative ones, or those who were able to bring in something he did nog know.

He wasn't the kind to keep a long interest span on whatever too - it's clearly being documented by others.

He wanted it all and fast, and being super competitive on top of all that.

He just couldn't think things over and obviously resulted in the choices he made through his lifetime.

You can agree with that or you can be against it. (I also did not always agreed upon his made decisions.)

-

BartVanHemelen said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

um lets see, i wasnt talking about the scale of tours, but the fact, for him, a new album meant a new tour design/presentation etc to think about and mount.

.

That stopped a loooong time ago. In later years they were mostly flimsy excuses, and often "tours" weren't connected to an album and seemed more a case of "ooh I gotta pay some bills lemme do a bunch of GH shows".

.

.

Some of those years are pretty smil, e.g. only a handful of one-off gigs in 1991.

.

as he got older its inevitable he would scale back tours, partly as he wasnt releasing big records to generate the publicity he needed to sell out big venues. but he never stopped touring or performing live.

so the question is where do you get the nonsense idea he didnt like performing live?

.

His 2003 "world tour" lasted two weeks. In 2012 he again only did a two week tour, and other than that a handful of shows. Etc etc etc.

-

Bart is absolutely right.

More than often he needed the money from his too short tours.

Prince had more than once financial problems in his life. It is known.

And most of the time he got back up.

And when he got some extras, of he went again doing his same old self.

I sometimes even wonder if his last assembled 'bands' came from that choice.

At some on and off performances he had a bigger band.

Same thought about his last P&M tour - imho of course.

If you see the pictures from the investigation, and how Paisley Park looked like in the end...

to me it all looked very badly maintained. He lived there in the end...

Although I'm not an expert, I could be completely wrong on his financial part.

-

[Edited 10/19/20 6:00am]

Diamonds & Pearls was a lot different than what came before. Even the Batman soundtrack although associated with the biggest film of the year, was still Prince being Prince with a couple of diversions (Arms of Orion & Batdance).

D&P was a whole shift. Even the non rap stuff like Cream, Thunder & Money Don't Matter 2 Nite felt Prince-Lite. No strange instrumentation or oblique lyrics. Nothing wrong with this of course, but as a fan I didn't really like it. Even though Purple Rain was massive, it didn't sound like a commercial album, or Prince striving for a hit. It was more guitar orientated than 1999, but that was it. it just happened to have some killer songs that crossed over.

thebanishedone said:

To sellout implies making music you don't believe in for the sake of cash and I don't think he ever did that. He did occasionally give people what he thought they wanted, with a Princely twist on top, and he seemed to always expect to sell Purple Rain numbers on those occasions, but Diamonds & Pearls seems to have been the only time it inarguably worked.

[Edited 10/19/20 6:05am]

TKO said:

I don't think he compromised his art AT ALL. He released a big amount of records in very short time. So D&P probably wasn't trying to be another SOTT, Dirty Mind or Purple Rain, it was just a fun record and he was showing 'You want hits, you want sales, I CAN DO IT TOO.´ And he did, he got a couple Top 5 hits on Billboard with Batman and D&P.

But don't think he was trying to do s*** music, he was doing POP. FUN, ENTERTAINING music with the Prince touch, and it worked, and it was good for business, and then later he went back to the musician side of his career, all these things can Co-exist you know?

There's no REAL Prince or Fake Prince... These are different sides from the same coin.

I don't think anyone is calling his more commercials endeavors "shit", just maybe not as challenging or daring as some of his other efforts. I don't see anyone making the argument that his pop music was bad aside from a lot of the substandard rap elements. I liked a lot of Prince's pop songs (and like a lot of pop music in general) and Prince was very good at it.

SquirrelMeat76 said:

LoveGalore said:

SquirrelMeat76 said:

Diamonds & Pearls was a lot different than what came before. Even the Batman soundtrack although associated with the biggest film of the year, was still Prince being Prince with a couple of diversions (Arms of Orion & Batdance).

D&P was a whole shift. Even the non rap stuff like Cream, Thunder & Money Don't Matter 2 Nite felt Prince-Lite. No strange instrumentation or oblique lyrics. Nothing wrong with this of course, but as a fan I didn't really like it. Even though Purple Rain was massive, it didn't sound like a commercial album, or Prince striving for a hit. It was more guitar orientated than 1999, but that was it. it just happened to have some killer songs that crossed over.

Cream is a genius track that has so many brilliant production choices that I'm surprised anyone would think it is P by the numbers. What other songs set the groundwork for Cream?

Bang A Gong by T Rex?

thebanishedone said:

LoveGalore said:

SquirrelMeat76 said: Cream is a genius track that has so many brilliant production choices that I'm surprised anyone would think it is P by the numbers. What other songs set the groundwork for Cream?

Bang A Gong by T Rex?

People always say that, and while it may be an influence I think it's oversold, Get it On is a standard boogie rocker that was already a throwback in that it quotes Chuck Berry itself, I'm inclined to think Prince was going for that Addicted to Love money with the big production on a simple rocknroll song, expensive video with sexy women dancing in it, and THIS IS A HIT SINGLE YOU IDIOTS stamped all over it.

[Edited 10/19/20 6:34am]

jaawwnn said:

jaawwnn said:

thebanishedone said:

Bang A Gong by T Rex?

People always say that, and while it may be an influence I think it's oversold, Get it On is a standard boogie rocker that was already a throwback in that it quotes Chuck Berry itself, I'm inclined to think Prince was going for that Addicted to Love money with the big production on a simple rocknroll song, expensive video with sexy women dancing in it, and THIS IS A HIT SINGLE YOU IDIOTS stamped all over it.

Ha, made me chuckle! lol

It's funny cuz it's true.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Insecurity Second guessing himself Competitiveness and needing to get a hit both for his ego and to pay the paisley park Bill's Not selling as much as in 84. He kept trying to get back to that. But also, prince has always been a pop artist. Hes always thinking commercially. Left field indie artistry was never going to be fir him. He wanted to be popular, not underground or obscure. He needed that. All that happened was that in the 90s he stopped caring about art and just wanted to be an entertainer. Still in his own way but he didnt want to expand his music or risk very much anymore. He didnt have that confidence with his sales down.

I disagree with this statement, and if it's true he didn't try that hard.

It seems he did everything the dismantle and distance himself from the success of 1984.

Maybe he tried to recapture it in the 90's, but with the material he was releasing, as opposed to what he knew people wanted from him?