Just thought I'd give a heads up to an article in the Cleveland Free Times about Prince. Pretty interesting stuff. Surprised to see Wendy speaking.

http://www.freetimes.com

BOT

here's the full article, from here:



The Artist Formerly Known as a has-been is having a huge year. Prince stormed back, opening the Grammy Awards with a “Purple Rain'' medley, accompanied by soon-to-be-Grammy queen Beyonce. In the ensuing weeks, he performed for and chatted up Jay Leno, Tavis Smiley and Ellen DeGeneres. The clincher was Prince's performance at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. Not only did his opening three-song medley with his band make him seem younger, more alive and more exciting than all the other inductees, but his guitar solo during an all-star rendition of inductee George Harrison's “While My Guitar Gently Weeps'' stole the show.

“Baby, I'm a Star Again,'' screamed the headline in the Wall Street Journal on March 31, two days after Prince, 45, opened his Musicology Tour in front of a record-breaking crowd at Los Angeles' Staples Center. The first night of the tour was broadcast live to 43 movie theaters to spread the excitement around the country.

By the time Prince's new Musicology CD is released on April 20 through Columbia Records, more than 250,000 copies of the disc will already have been given away to concertgoers, including those at Gund Arena on April 17. It's a brilliant maverick marketing strategy by an artist who has been feuding with the major-label system for more than a decade. By giving away free copies to all showgoers, Prince is guaranteed sales of about 75,000 discs a week — and he doesn't have to split the revenues with a record label, retailer or arena. And he gets plenty of word-of-mouth advertising from fans who go home with a lovely parting gift.

His Musicology Tour is selling like a Rolling Stones tour with a Bruce Springsteen price tag ($75 tops). Three more concerts have been added for L.A. He's up to six shows in New York-New Jersey, and he's booked three concerts in St. Paul, the most by an act there since Prince did five hometown arena shows on his Purple Rain Tour in 1984. (Speaking of Purple Rain , look for a DVD of the classic rock film later this year, complete with extra interview footage with, at least, members of the Revolution.)

After a decade out of the spotlight, Prince could be artist of the year for 2004.

Part of the allure is that this '80s giant has resorted to that old David Bowie ploy of claiming that this is the last time he's going to play his old favorites because, as he told Leno, he's got so much new music.

Believe that like you believed Kiss (or Cher) did its farewell tour. What might be even harder to believe was the charming Prince who sat between Leno and Mel Gibson. The Purple One seemed relaxed, friendly and funny, almost amiable enough to be called “buddy,'' as Jay did.


That warmth and humor is a side of Prince's personality that few people see. Of course, there's also the side of the cold-hearted guy who gave wordless answers to Dick Clark on his first-ever TV appearance in 1980 on American Bandstand .

LIKE SYBIL, Prince has many personalities/characters inside him. He can be charming and normal one day; the next day he can walk by you and act as if he doesn't know you.

Wendy Melvoin, guitarist in Prince & the Revolution from 1983-86, used to refer to the normal Prince as “Steve.'' The girlfriend of Revolution keyboardist Lisa Coleman, she said she had an instant connection with the royal rocker from Minneapolis.

“We found each other intellectually and spiritually stimulating,'' she said recently. “It's really kind of basic. It's an attraction. I'm so kind of androgynous in every way, shape or form that I don't really threaten anybody when I'm starting a relationship with them. Both Lisa and I were so supportive of him intellectually and creatively that I think he responded to it. We were attracted to each other's brains.''

Unlike others in Prince's court, Melvoin was not intimidated by him.

“I'm born and raised in Hollywood, and my life was similar to that film Almost Famous . There were huge stars in and out of my house like Bette Midler, Streisand, Peggy Lee; my father [keyboardist Mike Melvoin] was doing stuff with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.

“At times I was scared of Prince because he had anger stuff. When he was pissed, you wanted to avoid his eyes. His eyes could burn you. There were moments where you were scared of him as a human being; he looked like he was going to fucking kill somebody. And a lot of times that would be me.''

Melvoin's most recent — and perhaps strangest — encounter with Prince came in February of this year. She and her twin sister Susannah (Prince's ex-girlfriend and co-lead singer of his 1986 side project, the Family) wanted to see his post-Grammys concert at the House of Blues nightclub in West Hollywood.


“I had to call his guitar tech to let Prince know that the Revolution wants to be there,'' she said. “We got this phone call to [drummer] Bobby Z, saying ‘Everybody can go, Bobby can go for free, but everybody else has to pay.' What the hell is this? So we get there; none of us have to pay, but it was incredibly difficult to get in there. There's Steven Tyler and Beck walking by us and all those other people. It was an odd place to be in. We finally got shuffled off to this room where there wasn't a seat for us and we all just had to stand there.

“He played the show. He called a whole bunch of people onstage, but he didn't call any of us. I thought, ‘Well, that's it.' His wife came up to me and introduced herself, and I told her to thank him for the tickets and goodbye.

“Then the next day, I get this call from [the guitar tech] saying, ‘Prince would like you to come down to the recording studio and rehearse with him on acoustic guitar for a benefit he's doing for the Tavis Smiley Show . I'm like, ‘What the hell?' I haven't talked to him since the [Revolution] reunion tour we tried to put together in 2000, and he declined doing it because of me and my homosexuality and I'm half Jewish. It came back: ‘Go have a press conference denouncing your homosexuality and that you're converting to Jehovah.' I was like: ‘I guess we'll never hear from him again.' And I had to kind of mourn him. And I've got to be honest with you: It was devastating to think we've kind of lost him.

“Then he called out of the blue, and the curiosity got the best of me. I'm irreverent and resilient emotionally. I went down, and he was remarkably kind and open and gave me huge hug. He had me sit in with his band while they were rehearsing. I just hung with him for two hours, learned the song he wanted to do, got the information about the show. I got there the next day and met him on the set. It was just him and me, and he was gorgeous. He was the guy I knew when I first met him. He was the guy who spent the night at my and Lisa's house on our pullout bed. It was beautiful to see him. I held on to him and kept kissing him and hugging him and telling him I loved him. I don't know what to think of it. He knows we all love him; we're all his loyal friends.''

PRINCE IS ONE strange dude. I knew him for five years before he looked me in the eye. And by the time he'd made his third dramatic movie, he was having me kicked out of his club because he didn't like my reviews.

Of course, relationships between artists and hometown critics are often uneasy ones.

My first Princely encounter was in 1977 when he was recording his debut album at the Record Plant in Sausalito, Calif. I'd gone to L.A. to interview Earth, Wind & Fire and headed to the Bay area to do a story on the Twin Cities teen phenom for the Minneapolis Star . When I arrived at the studio, he wouldn't do any work with an outsider around. He sat at a drum kit and simply took a stick and played one note at a time on a cymbal. We never even shook hands.

In December 1978, Prince was about to do a hastily put-together concert in Minneapolis for Warner Bros. Records executives. One of his sidemen whom I knew asked me to do an interview to promote the show. It was the first interview Prince ever gave without a handler in the room. It was just me and him, his eyes nearly hidden by a poor-boy cap. For the first 45 minutes, I did most of the talking; he opened up during the final 45 minutes. Even though he had only one album out at the time, he said at some point he would stop doing interviews. At the end of the session, he said, “I've never talked this much in my life.'' He laughed. “I swear.''

In 1980, we had a short phone interview — a very normal conversation — to promote a hometown concert. Then in 1982, his aide-de-camp called me on Saturday to say Prince wanted to do an interview before Sunday's concert at a suburban Minneapolis hockey arena. I was ushered into a dressing room where Prince sat on a couch with guitarist Dez Dickerson, as a film crew captured the interview. After a couple of questions (which Dickerson answered while Prince sat silent), drummer Bobby Z entered, announced he was going to make a sandwich and then went berserk when he couldn't find any mayo. He kicked over the table and the couch, but Dickerson, lying on his back on the couch, continued to answer questions as if nothing had happened.

“Cut!” someone yelled. End of scene. End of interview. More footage was shot by music-video pioneer Chuck Statler (who went to Kent State with the guys from Devo) — including steamy scenes at Prince's house — but the movie, like countless Prince recordings, never came out.

In 1983, we had a civil public encounter. At the annual Minnesota Music Awards, I presented Prince with the Musician of the Year prize. We shook hands, and, for the first time, he looked me in the eye.

The relationship took a turn the following year.

Having just written a book, Prince: Inside the Purple Reign , I dropped off a copy for him at rehearsals for his Purple Rain Tour. An assistant phoned later and recited Prince's objections to the book, a conversation that lasted nearly an hour. Two months later, I attended the tour opener in Detroit and stayed in the same hotel as the band. Prince had his bodyguards keep an eye on me wherever I went.

Is he paranoid? Perhaps. He does have a prankster's sense of humor. In late 1984, I was sitting in the sixth row at the finale of his five-night stand on the Purple Rain Tour in St. Paul. Remember that squirt-gun guitar from the movie? Prince nailed me with it during the encore. My shirt was soaked. Backstage, he gleefully boasted to his bandmates: “I got Bream! I got Bream!”

Prince has always been press-shy. In 1990, I was at his Paisley Park complex interviewing the cast of his soon-to-be-released movie musical, Graffiti Bridge . I noticed him coming down the hallway, but when he spotted me, he did an about-face and walked away.

Even though he was the hometown hero who put Minneapolis on the musical map, my reviews of him have always been honest — sometimes brutally so. I teamed with the paper's film critic to do a Siskel & Ebert review of Graffiti Bridge , and I went thumbs down, saying, “After watching Prince in three dramatic movies and his concert film, I'm convinced he is not an actor.''

Needless to say, Prince was pissed. He chose to express his displeasure by having me escorted out of his Minneapolis club, Glam Slam, in January 1991 even though I had bought a ticket to see his revamped band. (And I wasn't offered a refund.)

Prince never did develop a thick skin when it came to reviews — mine or other critics. In 1993, he performed on TV's Arsenio Hall Show . At one point, he squirted lighter fluid on a four-month-old newspaper review of his latest album and ignited it. Sitting in the last row of the studio audience, I joked to critic Edna Gunderson of USA Today , “It looks like my review.'' I learned the next morning that it actually was.

Arguably Prince's most bizarre move was changing his name in 1994 to an unpronounceable glyph. That prompted the gossip columnist at the Minneapolis Star Tribune to dub him “Symbolina.” Even though he reverted back to “Prince” in 2000, she still calls him Symbolina. He responded by writing a song about her in 1995 — “Billy Jack Bitch.”

She hasn't relented.

Her choicest item described Prince proselytizing for the Jehovah's Witnesses on a Sunday afternoon last fall during a Vikings game, a hallowed occasion in Minnesota. Accompanied by his bass-playing pal Larry Graham, he visited the home of a man and woman in suburban Minneapolis — he introduced himself as “Prince Nelson,” his given name — and made his pitch for 25 minutes.

“You've walked into a Jewish household,” said the woman, noting it was the night of Yom Kippur, “and this is not something I'm interested in.”

AS STRANGE as he may seem, it is ultimately about the music.

His current Musicology Tour looks back at his music — a career retrospective from synth pop and rock, to funk and blues and lots of ballads. Although the in-the-round stage is shaped like a cross, there is nothing overtly religious in the repertoire this time, save for a plug during “Purple Rain” to read the Bible. He tears through many songs from “Purple Rain” as well as “Kiss,” “Controversy,'' “Nothing Compares 2 U,” “Little Red Corvette” (done as a solo acoustic guitar number) and other old favorites. At a recent performance in Ames, Iowa, he seemed exuberant but not always joyous during several of the oldies. However, once he let his band find a funk groove and stick with it — starting on “D.M.S.R.'' — the concert was fantastic, showing off Prince's showmanship, guitar prowess (his seldom-heard blues forays were a real treat), impassioned singing (especially that freaky falsetto) and his well-drilled band. The show built to a big phat funk party with two dozen fans onstage and 13,000 people on their feet partying like it was 1984 and Prince was king once again.

In the end, the tour reinforces why Prince was elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility — he is the most complete rock star ever. He can sing, write, arrange and produce music in a variety of styles; play a wide range of instruments with remarkable skill; dazzle onstage (and in videos and on the silver screen); and create an alluring mystique while being a visionary musically, visually and business-wise.

Even when everyone thought he was a has-been.

have to like that quote from the article.

I'm glad that Prince seems to have woken up to himself following that bullshit with Wendy in 2000. Fancy demanding that stuff. I think he took his new faith a little too literally at that stage perhaps?

Look, I don't know about u guys, but i'm tired of this "he was a has been" type talk.

a has been puts out about 3 albums and has like 5 hits and then disappears into the civilian life.

a has been is people like m.c. hammer who blew his money off and let people use him.

I mean c'mon, i know i sound kind of bias cuz i luv p and all, but i definitely know that he isn't and hasn't been a HAS BEEN.

Anyone else notice this:

I've read this article before, at least two or three weeks ago.

again with the reborn crap, he's not reborn he's been living, and killing all musicians in his path

Damn, I live in Cleveland! I gotta pick this magazine up.

missfee said:

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The funny thing is no one calls M.C. Hammer a has been. (LOL) It is not a fair description because Prince never stopped touring or recording music. I think a lot of people in his shoes would have but I really think he loves what he does and it too bad no appreciates it.


Even if no one heard anything he has done in the last five years why can't Prince have just taken a break. What is it with the has been thing?

Jade said:

What i can't understand.... Why would you write a article on Prince, starting off with a ok feel to it, then proceed to drudge up the ups and down's of ones career? Who cares? I don't really have the need or the time to waste on something so trival as to Prince's personal life choices. As long as he continues to put out some of the most prolific and genius material that he has in the past, present, and future, who cares what he has done or will do in his personal life choices. He is a true musical force to be reckoned with for generations to come!!! But that's just my opinion.

Cold hearted? Give me a break, Prince was nervous as hell on the Dick Clark show. Obviously whoever wrote this article has not seen the clip.....

bkw said:

Yeah, I thought that denounce you homosexuality thing was kinda harsh...

400,000 + $25 = $10 Million

Damn Prince knows how to hussle is great way! Allot musicans dont have the focus to run their own career.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Damn there is 6 shows in NY/NJ too & 6 Shows in California ( or is there 9 now in California?)

WOW I haven't heard anyone really bring up the 6 sellouts in NY/NJ

Ii think its kinda funny how they all were gonna bust up in the concert without paying just because they played with him 20 years ago. They ended up getting in for free, and still were complaining. My gosh, you would have thought they were rock royalty or something. Yeah the revolution was good and I do like them, but NPG blows them out the ass.

plus i didn't know wendy and lisa were an actual item, guess i'm late...

What is with the comeback artist, where did he go that he had to come back... why cant people realize that