I would think that Prince runs a very tight ship over at Paisley Park.

Everyone knows he's completely paranoid!!

How did SO much bootleg stuff find it's way to the streets over the years??

I believe it was purposeful.

It helped build his mystique.

One half of Prince likes bootlegs. The other half doesn't.

Also, who's the most bootleged artist in history. I hear Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan are but I bet Prince could make a great case.

Soladeo

I truly think he turned a blind eye during the WB days because he wanted to release more music, and if WB wouldn't do it, he'd see to it that it was done by whatever means necessary. Now that he's "free", I'm sure he has a different take on things...

As for the most bootlegged artist, I would guess that the Grateful Dead have the most stuff floating around out there. It was a huge part of Deadhead culture, and it was permitted by the band to a great extent. I'm guessing Prince is way up there on the list, though.

According to dawnation.com the top 10 goes something like this (1999):

Led Zeppelin
Beatles
Rolling Stones
Dylan
PRINCE
Springsteen
U2
Clapton
Pink Floyd
Hendrix

The supply of bootlegs went down considerably after Prince left WB. I think either people from WB were involved, or maybe it was people within Prince's organization that he purged after he changed to the symbol.

At any rate, it's nothing like it was in the '80's and '90's with respect to unreleased material.

soladeo1 said:

This isn't really relevant to Prince. The issue with Prince is bootlegs of studio material, wheras most bootlegs by artists are live recordings.

sabaisabai said:

Well put.

.

quoted:

"2) And I STILL don't understand how tunes recorded in Prince's own house
>(Uptown) can end up as bootlegs. Is he behind his own bootlegs or are the
>people he invited to his house to engineer the sessions dishonest
people?

Invited into his house??? DISHONEST??? Listen man.. NO ONE
INVITES>. Ppl get PAID to do what they are good at and THAT's why
they get "invited".. When you mix.. SOME Engineers like to test what
their mixes sound like on car systems.. That means dub a cassette
down / DAT / CDR and jump in the car and listen...

BUT the MAIN way this stuff gets out is this...

Prince records a demo.. Engineer dubs a copy... Mixdown engineer
dubs a copy of his mixes... In the meantime a Band member asks for a
copy to be slipped in his bag when Prince is not looking... Send to
Publishing Co... That's ANOTHER copy sent from DESK TO DESK getting
logged and cataloged... Somewhere down the line the tape gets
taken...

A new album project gets sent to the mastering co. Engineer make a
master disc and a few test discs.. One goes home with him.. etc...
New LP demo's gets sent to a lable... An executive gives the tape to
a nephew who loves Prince / Accuaintance who gets him drunk enough to
give him the tape
OR MY FAVORITE!!!
Prince likes a girl.. Gives said girl a tape of stuff... New girl
tommorrow night will get another tape... ETC. ETC. ETC!!!

So how do these ppl become DISHONEST??? Looks to me like Prince
gives the stuff out most of the time! How do I know??? I have A FEW
of those actual tapes he GAVE to girls!!!

>I'm interested to see what you all think. Thanks.

This is FACT!!!"

unquote
[This message was edited Thu Jan 1 15:01:12 PST 2004 by rdhull]

Who doesn't steal from their workplace? (stationary etc)

If you worked at Paisley, it must be tempting to smuggle the odd thing out of there.

rdhull said:

Thanks for digging this out, RD (originally posted over 5 years ago!!).

.

langebleu said:

lol

I doubt Prince leaked unreleased stuff himself. If so, it'd would have superb sound quality. I think a lot of it was because he changed his mind so many times about what albums were going to be released. The Camille album, the Black Album, Parade, Come, etc all were put together and ready for release and then he changed them a little or completely. So it was easier for songs to leak out once they reached that stage of production.

rdhull said:

This is of course, the most logical answer to the question.

Prince would most likely never release the generationaly deficient, half finished songs that we all know and love... on purpose.

When we do get the songs in an officially released form, the songs are almost always much heavier on the knob-twistin'.

That quote (from T) keeps popping up from time to time, and it's pretty much what everyone has said over the years.

And the low-quality (messed up pitch, edited etc) of the songs, they don't come out like that - that's the people who get them afterwards - Most of them come out of Paisley sounded as they did in the studio, right?

rdhull hit the nail square on the head. That was exactly how
all that stuff got 'out there'. Since Prince left WB however
he has clamped down completely on unreleased music getting
out. In fact, since about 1996, you could probably count the
number of truly unreleased songs that slipped out of Paisley
Park unauthorised on one hand.

BorisFishpaw said:

He's clamped down on music period!

seanski said:

i think thats the point though, you dont know that. e hasnt released as much but he doesnt have a label backing him, according reports from band members/engineers at PP he was still very prolific up to the millenium, and i dont think weknow from then

BorisFishpaw said:

just a s a qualifier

I put "quote" "unquote" because those were not my wpords or explanation...I dsidn tput the original authors name in it becasue of privacy that may have been wanted even though it was posted publicly...that was not my explanation but as someone just said, Romance, it seems the most plausible for at least a certain time period etc. Someone tell th e Wendy n Lisa one about leaving the tape in her car.

I've always wondered how all of this music gets out.It's absolutely amazing how much stuff has made it to the black market.Sometimes I wonder how Prince feels about this? Does he really mind that we have so much of his unreleased stuff? He knows that,in his lifetime,he would never be able to release it all anyway.

i'm sure he was behind some of it. in the mid 90s when he was pissed at WBs, there was alot of live stuff coming out. lord knows i have loads of it.

Milty said:

I agree.I think he wanted much of this stuff to get out.

DavidEye said:

---
I think he wanted live stuff to get out or just did not care when he was figthing with WB but RD explanation makes sense too.

I think he goes out in the middle of the night and leaves it on peoples' doorsteps.

Because there were Thieves In The Temple (his archive).

Hmmm. I've often bought bootlegs by other artists I like and the live ones are nearly always someone in the audience with a hidden microphone. Yet there are many Prince bootlegs which are of rehearsals and soundboards.

I think he probably gets them recorded so he can listen back to them afterwards and check that he sounded OK and that there were no bum notes from the band.

As for the recorded material, I think the person RDHull quoted said it all. How did u dig that out after 5 years RD? R u the org archivist?