Fans hope induction means new lease for brilliant, quirky musician

http://www.mercurynews.co...171159.htm

BY RICK SHEFCHIK

St. Paul Pioneer Press


ST. PAUL, Minn. - Most artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame feel happy to be remembered so many years after their last burst of musical vitality. But Prince's induction may be just the opposite.

Those who've followed the career of Minnesota's most flamboyant rock star see Monday night's induction ceremony not as a culmination, but as a new beginning.

"I feel like the stars might align right now for a Second Coming of Prince," says Kevin Cole, who was a disc jockey at the Minneapolis rock club First Avenue at the time of the First Coming of Prince.

Cole, who is now senior music editor at Amazon.com, and has a weekly radio show on KEXP-FM in Seattle, recalls how introverted Prince was before the enormous success of "Purple Rain" in 1984. Prince would ask Cole and disc jockey Roy Freedom to play his new records without identifying the artist, hoping to gauge the song's quality by the reaction of the dancing crowd.

"My experiences with him at First Avenue prior to him busting out big-time is he was shy and quiet, but he wasn't aloof," Cole recalls. "He just expressed himself through his music."

But now Cole sees a new, more relaxed and confident Prince. He cites Prince's electrifying opening to the recent Grammy Awards. Wearing a purple suit and playing one of his stylish white guitars, Prince performed a couple of his old hits - "Purple Rain" and "Baby I'm a Star" - with current pop diva Beyonce at the February awards show. A more recent performance and interview on "Ellen," the syndicated talk show hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, was even more impressive, Cole says.

"The Grammys was stunning, but `Ellen' is a stripped-down show, not a huge production like the Grammys," Cole says. "He came out and just blew everybody away. I don't know if I've seen or heard anything that sounded as good as that on TV in ages.

"He seemed so gracious, generous and warm. They had a really funny interchange. It was cool to see Prince. He's so reclusive, you don't get to see inside him that often. I think he's setting the table for us."

Roy Fried, known professionally as Roy Freedom, was also a disc jockey at First Avenue during those heady "Purple Rain" days, and though he hasn't followed Prince's recent career as closely as Cole has ("I'm a middle age white guy ... the only time I listen to pop radio is when my kids listen to it."), Fried was similarly impressed by the Grammy performance.

"It looked like he was trying to resurge himself a bit," Fried says. "I don't know what his next record is going to be like, but I'm hoping it will be a mainstream, old-type Prince record. I think he can still grab appeal. I can say he would even sound fresh compared to the sounds that are out there now."

While Prince's admirers are unanimous in their belief that he still has tremendous wellsprings of talent, opinions are divided over whether - or how - Prince can reach the commercial heights he once scaled.

Alan Leeds, who managed Prince for 10 years during the peak of his fame, found the Grammy performance to be "effective" but unsatisfying.

Prince, Leeds says, has a choice to make: He can tour arenas playing his old hits and new dance material, or settle for a smaller core audience but continue to create new music with no regard for commercial trends.

"Musically, because he's so easily bored with the old songs, he tends to labor finding new ways to do them," Leeds says. "That's admirable, but what I've found is in recent years some of the performances have become forced and contrived. That's maybe what affected me about the Grammy performance. He did two classic songs, but they weren't really moving. The band he has is high caliber, great - but at the end of the day, was it moving? I don't think so. It was almost a Vegas-y level."

But Prince partisans remain confident that Prince has not lost the ability to challenge them with his music. With each new record, that's exactly what they expect.

David Rivkin, who engineered "Purple Rain" and now works in Nashville developing new artists, says he thinks Prince has a great chance to reconnect with a large audience - particularly if he emphasizes the rock elements in his music.

"The reason he crossed over in the first place is because of rock artists like Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone," Rivkin says. "He was a black guy brought up on white music. `Purple Rain' is a white rock record. In fact, black people were offended by him in the beginning. He's a rock `n' roll artist. When he returns to that form, that's his best form. That's what I've always thought. When he tries to stray into what's timely and current, that's not him. He's a rock star."

The public desperately wants rock stars, says Rivkin, who calls Prince's Grammy appearance "spectacular."

"We had a big party here that night," Rivkin says. "People were saying to me, `It's good to see somebody look like a rock star again.' Everybody (in contemporary pop music) looks like they're robbing you or going through your garbage. He looked like an icon - that's a star. I love that. Plus, he's one of the best musicians in the world, and a lot of guys don't even know how to play. This guy can play - he's the real talent."

Some see "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below Album" as a sign of Prince's current potential. The recent breakout hit album by Atlanta hip-hop group OutKast proves that the public retains a powerful craving for Prince's brand of rock crossed with funk and soul, they say.

"When you listen to OutKast, it's like a tribute to Prince," Cole says. "Not to take away from the album itself - it's so creative, fun and genre-bending - but that's exactly what Prince is about. It's hard to listen to it and not think about Prince."

The music world probably identifies Prince more with the pop-funk style of OutKast than the many ballads he's written, but Leeds believes Prince's greatest area of opportunity is with ballads.

"Is he capable on any given day of writing a hit song?" Leeds asks rhetorically. "Absolutely - especially boutique songs or ballads. I think they're a lot more timeless than the funk jams. ... If he were to concentrate on that, he could write a hit today. That's how gifted he is."

He's not the only Prince observer who's been there since the beginning and contends that the Purple One doesn't need a new direction to be big again.

"To me, he's much bigger than a lot of those you consider `big'," says Steve McClellan, owner of First Avenue. "Those artists are not my definition of big. They're watered-down as much as possible. I don't consider them big. I have `big' equated to performance and talent throughout a music career."

To McClellan, that means Prince - who put First Avenue on the national map by featuring the club in his film "Purple Rain" in 1984. McClellan says Prince is just as musically viable today.

"He's a guy that creates good music whether the market accepts it or not," McClellan says. "To develop, you can't play the market game. They want you to clone what you did before. If you get stuck in a commercial rut, you don't develop. Some of the least talented people made lots of money.

"Will Prince ever come back? In a lot of people's minds he's as big as he ever was."