![]() Lyrically, he was still in the same frustration mode he had been in since the back nine of 1999, but there’s a new level of maturity and introspection here. There’s someone in this room who has been barking in agony for the past minute, and it ain’t me.) ![]() You don’t want me to cry? Don’t worry about me, sweetie. (Moments after his shrieks subside, Prince beings singing “don’t cry, darling, don’t cry” as the song draws to a close. The guitar abruptly stops during the middle of the shrieks in my mind, the guitar just gave up trying to compete and sulked out of the studio at that point. It’s particularly hard to focus on the guitar track’s crescendo, as Prince is literally shrieking by that point. As with much of Prince’s greatest guitar work, the guitar isn’t right up front in the mix, and it has to contend with vocals. Although “solo” might not be the right word. More than anything, I’d like to see Prince recording the guitar solo that begins just as the radio edit is fading out. Is there a Prince song that’s more recognizable blasting in a truck three blocks away than “When Doves Cry?”) How much trial and error was involved with programming the drum machines? What did the infamous missing bass line sound like, and did Prince seem disinterested in it from the beginning? (As much has been written about Prince dropping the bass line, it’s not as if that decision left the track undistinguished on the low end. What makes an artist think “this sounds great, but it needs some groaning-in-key at 1:52 and 1:56”? How did he layer in the vocals? Were ad-libs dropped in individually, or did he run the entire track waiting for inspiration to strike? Of course, there are also questions that these videos couldn’t answer even if they existed, questions at the heart of the creative process. Fink claims that Prince set the recorder to half speed so he could lay down the final dazzling keyboard solo at a more reasonable tempo. (I discussed Side One last month.) When I daydream about what might be released from The Vault someday, my “white whale” almost certainly doesn’t exist: footage of Prince laying down all of the tracks to “When Doves Cry” on Maat Sunset Sound in Hollywood.ĭr. Having to repeatedly add tracks like this seems like drudgery on one hand, but on the other hand, just think of the countless moments of studio brilliance over the years that approach or surpass that “Partyman” bass fill.Īnd that brings me to Side Two of Purple Rain. But as talented as Prince was, he couldn’t lay down a dozen different percussion, keyboard, guitar and vocal tracks at once. The end result often sounds like a full band jamming, complete with a choir of background vocals. It highlights his underrated abilities on the bass, of course, but more than anything, it makes me think about the hundreds of songs (released and unreleased) that Prince recorded solo over the years.
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