C AVALLO We were a few weeks behind, and we had four weeks set to shoot the music. So I said to Prince, “You know, Albert is gonna want to do 20 takes, he’s gonna want different angles.” And Prince, he almost changed color. “I’ll give him one take for each song.” I said, “No, that’s extreme. What if we just did a couple of takes with a bunch of cameras?” We got a bunch of cameramen, and Prince, who’s unbelievable, always hit his mark. If he did three takes, there was no change. Within a week, we had done the four weeks’ work.
STEVE McCLELLAN (former owner, First Avenue) The fact that the movie didn’t show what was going on musically beyond the funk circle and was so narrow-focused—it had no sense of reality to me. Then, after the film came out, people came to the club just to see if Prince was there. I thought, “These people are kind of shallow, aren’t they?”
What is perhaps the most frequently quoted scene in Purple Rain takes place not in First Avenue, but on the banks of a chilly lake outside of Minneapolis, where the Kid cruelly tests Apollonia’s loyalty by asking her to “purify [herself] in the waters of Lake Minnetonka,” prompting her to strip down and jump into the drink.
KOTERO Some crew guy comes over with a flask of Courvoisier and goes, “It’s like magic Jesus juice! This is gonna help ya!” I was like, “You know what, I’m okay.” I jumped in and, basically, there was a little sheet of ice, and that was the very first take. When I came out, I was supposed to have dialogue and I lost it—I was completely in a state of shock because it was colder than I ever imagined. Hypothermia was setting in.
Though the Time scored two hits as a result of Purple Rain—“The Bird” and “Jungle Love,” both widely believed to have been cowritten by Prince— the band was in shambles: Founding members Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had been fired by Prince during the 1999 tour after missing a gig,
COLEMAN All the different bands he has created have been sides of his personality: Vanity 6 would be the sexy girl, Morris Day would be the comedy guy, and then Prince was the rock star. MELVOIN Morris was the guy who could make him laugh more than anyone on the planet. I never saw it as being a subordinate relationship, but I knew Morris was helping Prince out. Morris would wash his car sometimes for a couple bucks or something. I didn’t see it as being as strained as it was portrayed in the film. DICKERSON The Time was a collaborative effort, an arrangement between Prince and Morris, who had been friends for many years. But the Frankenstein aspect of it was that the Time became such a force as a live band that there was this onstage competition—they pushed us to the limit. Which was a good thing. We were out to blow one another off the stage every night. JOHNSON You imagine something you created is beating your ass in all these towns down South? Prince was the one who had the money and was putting us all out there, but you’re talking about hungry kids from the ghetto trying to get their groove. The only power we had was those 45 minutes onstage, because it’s a dictatorship. He ran everything. He still does that to this day.
CAVALLO We got 900 theaters, which was enough for us to be a huge success. MAGNOLI Rick Springfield had a movie [Hard to Hold] coming out at the same time. Warner Bros. says, “We’re nervous.” So I got to a screening, and this was my report: “Guys, we have nothing to worry about. It’s got nothing to do with reality, nothing to do with the world of musicians. They tried to make him into a movie star. Not gonna work.”
KOTERO I discussed all of this when I was doing the tour to promote the film—the movie had to do with alcoholism and a dysfunctional family. There was an abusive relationship, and it paralleled the relationship he had with his parents.
MAGNOLI That’s news to me. JOHNSON I was there; I broke them up. Why did they fight? I have my theories, but I can’t tell you. Morris is my brother and I have to work with him, and Prince, I still have to deal with his punk ass. What Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has time to be looking at what is said about him and watching every word and all that bullshit? He, unfortunately, is one of them.
On June 9, a month and a half before Purple Rain’s opening, Prince released “When Doves Cry,” a stark downer that addressed the film’s themes of personal and familial tumult. It became Prince’s first No. 1 single.
CAVALLO We wanted to precede the picture with a song that would appear in the movie like a video.
?UESTLOVE (drummer, the Roots) Before Purple Rain, brothers had a hard time embracing a bikini-clad, high-heel-boot-sporting, five-foot, Midwest, light-skinned guy with a falsetto. But the second after my block saw the “When Doves Cry” video, and he was getting on Apollonia, that changed a lot of opinions. COLEMAN Prince had a lot of meetings with wardrobe people, and all the clothes were made for us. There was a little bit of consulting, but it was more like, “This is your look, and this is your look, and this is what we’re going to do.” BOBBY Z. He was really good at style, and he knew that when you feel good in something, your character comes out. He could take people
GE T SMARTER. GO TO SPIN.COM JULY 2009 59
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