PRINCE NO ESTA MUERTO, The ESQUIRE Magazine Expose

PRINCE NO ESTA MUERTO

Or so the headlines read.

June 7, 1993.

The headlines are wrong. Sort of. 'Prince' remains dead. In his place emerges a musician who insists upon being referred to (in print, anyway) as an unpronounceable symbol.

Upon the seventh day of the sixth month,
Nineteen hundred and ninety three,
Marking the beginning and ending of cycles of creation,
Prince, reaching the balance of thirty-five years,
Put into practice the precepts of perfection:
Voicing bliss through the freedom of being one's self
Incarnating the New Power Generation into
The close of the six periods of involution giving
Birth upon himself to regenerate his name as O(+>
4 in the dawn, all will require no speakable name
2 differentiate the ineffible one that shall remain.

"So, how do you pronounce it?" I ask, as O(+>'s inaugural interview kicks into gear.

"You don't."

"And is that ever a problem when people around you want to address you?"

"No." A very final, definite no.

Almost no one complies.

O(+>'s technicians have distributed a computer font that can be used to refer to his trademark symbol. The concept has been nearly universally mocked by the press, and Warner Brothers Records has even gone so far as to purchase full-page advertisements in Billboard magazine, gently poking fun at their flagship artist's choice of new moniker.

Some in the industry have speculated that changing his name might be an attempt to finesse his way out of his Warner's contract. After more than five years away from the music business, and with 500-plus finished songs in the vault, is 0(+> planning to use the name-change as a renegotiation strategy or some kind of scheme to get out of the Warner deal?

Rewind: April 10, 1993. I had a chance to speak with Prince prior to his revelation to the outside world that he had not died on that motorcycle in Amsterdam, way back in 1989.

Prince desperately wants to play a club show after tonight's interview, but his throat is too sore. Instead, there's a party at San Francisco's own DV8 club. He arrives with a phalanx of bodyguards, clears out half the room, and sits alone on a sofa. One of the security guys grabs me and sits me on the couch.

Prince hands me a banana-flavored lollipop. "I would have brought you a cigar, but I didn't think you smoked," he says. He pours us each a glass of port ("I learned about this from Arsenio"). Occasionally, acquaintances manage to make their way through the wall of security, but he is wary of touching them. "I don't like shaking hands," he says. "Brothers always feel like they got to give you that real firm handshake. Then you can't play the piano the next day."

We chat about the new contract he signed with Warner Bros., which was reported to be worth as much as $100 million. He says the deal is nothing like it is being reported, and though he wants most of the conversation to remain "just between us--I just wanted to talk about some of these things," he makes a few mysterious comments that will prove crucial to the next stage of his continual metamorphosis.

"We have a new album finished," he says conspiratorially, "but Warner Bros. doesn't know it. From now on, Warner's only gets old songs out of the vault. New songs we'll play at shows. Music should be free, anyway."

Before he heads off into the night, Prince lifts his glass of port and offers a toast.

Leaning closer, he whispers, "To Oz."

July 12, 1993.

Past the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre, past the American Legion post where a Little League game is in progress, after miles of fields and open spaces lies the gleaming, towering Paisley Park, the studio and office complex that houses Paisley Park Enterprises. There are dozens of people on the Paisley staff -- an entire industry built around one man in heels -- working to keep the studio and the songs and, mostly, the person at the center of it all humming and creating at their maximum potential. There's a lot that seems like star-tripping inside 0(+>'s world, lots that can make you impatient -- and multiple costume changes, even on off days, don't help matters -- but over time it becomes clear that the whole structure exists so that absolutely nothing gets in the way of the music, nothing touches 0(+> that he doesn't choose to address.

"Prince did retire," says 0(+> emphatically in the Cote Jardin restaurant, waving away the pastry delivered with his tea. "He stopped making records because he didn't need to anymore." Later, at the Sporting Club, he'll add that "it's fun to draw a line in the sand and say, 'Things change here.' I don't mind if people are cynical or make jokes -- that's part of it, but this is what I choose to be called. You find out quickly who respects and who disrespects you. It took Muhammad Ali years before people stopped calling him Cassius Clay."

Fall/Winter, 1993.

On September 14 Warner Bros. releases Prince: The Hits/The B-Sides, which sells steadily, if unspectacularly for such a long-awaited retrospective. Two new singles, "Pink Cashmere" and "Peach" -- the last he will issue under the name Prince -- are released; "Cashmere" grazes the pop charts, "Peach" doesn't even do that well. It is subsequently announced that his label, Paisley Park Records, is being dissolved, leaving Mavis Staples and George Clinton temporarily without a home and putting an album by former backup singer Rosie Gaines on permanent hold.

In the winter, ads turn up in several national magazines stating, "Eligible bachelor seeks the most beautiful girl in the world to spend the holidays with," and asking that photos be sent to Prince's old Paisley Park address.

I come face to face with one of these ads as I'm standing in the supermarket checkout lane, flipping through an issue of The National Enquirer.

Classy.

February 14, 1994.

On Valentine's Day, 0(+> drops his first single under the new name. It is a pleasant enough trifle, a Philly-soul-style ballad titled "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," and it is debuted at the Miss U.S.A. pageant. The video features some of the women who responded to the ads. "Beautiful Girl" is released not on Warner Bros. but on NPG/Bellmark Records. (Bellmark, whose president, Al Bell, was the pilot of the legendary Stax Records in the '60s, stormed the charts last year with "Whoomp! (There It Is)" and "Dazzey Duks.")

"TMBGITW" climbs to No. 3 on the U.S. pop charts, the biggest hit for 0(+> under any name in several years (although 1994 also marks the 12th year in a row that Warner Bros.'s constant mining of his back catalog has landed a single in the Top 10). It is also, believe it or not, his first No. 1 ever in the U.K. And suddenly, the artist formerly known as Prince is a hot commodity again.

To O(+>'s great frustration, even with a bonafide hit record under his belt, the press still refuses to refer to him by his chosen name.

What becomes clear to me is that there are reasons for the name-change, and after sitting with 0(+> for several hours, it even starts to make some kind of sense. "I followed the advice of my spirit," is the short answer. But it is, first of all, about age-old questions of naming and identity.

The man born Prince Rogers Nelson goes on to explain, "I'm not the son of Nell. I don't know who that is, 'Nell's son,' and that's my last name. I asked Gilbert Davison [0(+>'s manager and closest friend, and president of NPG Records] if he knew who David was, and he didn't even know what I was talking about. I started thinking about that, and I would wake up nights thinking, Who am I? What am I?"

Earlier, I asked if the idea of never playing all those Prince songs again made him sad at all.

"I would be sad," he replied, "if I didn't know that I had such great shit to come with."

And that's what it always comes back to. There is only the music. Look at him, putting more into a sound check than most performers put into their biggest shows. Laugh at his ideas, his clothes, his name. But look at what he is doing: He's 15 years into this career, a time when most stars are kicking back, going through the motions. But he is still rethinking the rules of performance, the idea of how music is released, the basic concepts about how we consume and listen to music, still challenging himself and his audience like an avant-garde artist, not a platinum-selling pop star. And we still haven't talked about his plans for simulcasts and listening booths in his Glam Slam clubs in Minneapolis, L.A., and Miami, or about the 1-800-NEW-FUNK collection of other artists he's working with for NPG Records, or his thoughts on music and on-line and CD-ROM systems, or the two new magazines he's started....

Of course, from where it stands, Warner Bros.' objections to his ambitious (some would say foolish) plans make conventional business sense: Would the increase in new music, coming from so many media, create a glut and cut into the sales of all the releases? Is it financially feasible? But these kinds of questions seem to be the furthest thing from 0(+>'s mind. And okay, maybe the unpronounceable name is a little silly, and let's not forget -- he retired from performances once before, back in 1989, and how long did that last? Four years? But there's no arguing with the effort, the seriousness, the intensity with which he is approaching this new era in his life.

"There's no reason for me to be playing around now," says 0(+>, laughing. "Now we're just doing things for the funk of it."

July 24, 1994.

The large, heavily fringed 0(+> eyes are sneaking a peek at me, checking me out although I have been preapproved or I would not be in this room. One does not approach. One waits as the big white hat swivels slowly, the outlined eyes blink and consider. A little pencil line of hair surrounds his mouth. When he is ready, he comes over sucking a cherry Tootsie Pop, smiling redly. Juli Knapp, his director of operations, privately refers to and introduces him as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince." No one acknowledges that I've been hanging out with the fellow on a regular basis for over a year.

0(+> and I go up into the balcony to talk. His bodyguard sits down in the row behind us, but 0(+> sends him away. "I'm a terrible interview," he says, as if I don't already know.

For some time, O(+> says, he has been working on The Dawn, which will be his first album when he is free -- maybe fifty new songs. His face has changed now, as though the plastic boss face was to keep everyone else calm. He tells me that his heart and perhaps his best work are in The Dawn. This album is a big surprise to people to people at Warner. No one seems to know anything about it.

0(+> is a businessman. He has a $10 million studio, Paisley Park, where he produces other recording artists; he has these clubs throbbing until dawn; 0(+> stores in London and Minneapolis, where the symbol and the face take on iconic dimensions; his own love scent; and so forth. In 1993, Forbes ranked him the fifth most highly paid entertainer in the world. But a part of the Warner deal was a restructuring. Right now he is a businessman who made a bad deal. He doesn't want it to happen to others. He says he wants to take care of other artists. His ambition is nothing less than to form an alternative recording industry where artists own their own work and have creative freedom. The NPG, the New Power Generation, the people of the sun, are part of this new quasi-hippie world. When he performs with them he is "Tora Tora," his head and face wrapped in a chiffon scarf, yet another self. He is hidden, as in his recent music vidoes where he wears a curtain of chains over his face.

0(+> is in an artistic conundrum -- art versus what is "commercial." When he hears that word, he almost leaps from his seat in the balcony. When they let him handle the single "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World," he says he had the most commercial hit of his career. ("It would have been spooky if it was the whole album," he says later.) It is every artist's devil -- his vision and the world's may not always mesh. His best stuff may be beyond them, but he knows how good or bad it is. Though sometimes he can fool himself, inside the artist always knows. The record company sometimes knows. The dilemma was there as early as his movie Purple Rain. People kept warning The Kid [0(+>'s role]: "Nobody digs your music but yourself." Of course, central to artistic freedom is the freedom to fail on your own terms.

He talks about people who don't own their parent's work -- Nona Gaye doesn't own Marvin. Does Lisa Marie Presley own Elvis's masters?

He talks of the creative accounting of the record business, how black stores don't always have the digital scanners and miscount, so say, for instance, a big rap artist, who is said to have sold four million copies, might really have sold twenty million. He totally sympathized with George Michael, whom he considers a great talent, in his fight with Sony, which he says is an "even worse" company than Warner. Warner goes ahead and promotes what they want from the NPG album, which isn't always the right song, though the one he likes is nine-and-a-half minutes long. "Everyone gets to play on it. I have the best drummer in the world," he says.

According to his people, his deal is this: He gets an advance that might cover his living expenses while making an album. Once the work is delivered, Warner can decide how or if to promote and market it. The final decisions are not his. Thus, he is a "slave" to the system. Warner, I'm sure, has a different interpretation. I do not say to him that perhaps it trivializes the African-American experience for a millionaire rock star -- who travels with aides, bodyguards, a chef, a hairdresser, valet, backup security, wardrobe, band, technical people, a personal dancing muse, and a man who sits behind him on the Concorde handing him freshly sharpened pencils -- to write "Slave" on his face. This -- glittery chains on the face versus chains on the ankles -- is his version of slavery. He talks about the lack of images for black children in movies and television.

"And who is at the head of those companies?" he says.

It's 2 A.M. or so in the Glam Slam when O(+> finally excuses himself and takes to the stage. He is going to play the music he wants to play. The place, which has been in a bit of a slump, is now filled with bobbing, heaving fans, their arms waving in the dark like undersea fronds blown back and forth by the currents. Mayte is strutting in her black boots, punching the air with a tambourine, keening, sweating alongside him, her ambition intertwined with his. The monitors are going, as are the video cams, in this big throb of video love. 0(+> pounds out the show -- all rocking, all beat, jamming and funk. He is the complete mid-career 0(+>. This is his night in his club with his symbol over the bar, on the waitresses' chests, on his boots, on his 0(+>-shaped guitar. "Prince is dead," he keeps saying, enjoying it, shucking the old self, as Mayte flips her hair down and back. He asks to hear the crowd; he wants to hear feedback from the void.

He says the obligatory "motherf---er" to prove he has not crossed the line to Lite Rock. Reminiscent of his old dirty days, he gets into a whole "pussy control" rant: "How many ladies got pussy control?" "I got a headache tonight," says Mayte. "I got something for your headache," he says -- kind of like a dirty Captain and Tenille. He is no longer feeling "The Kid" when he says to them, "I am your mom's favorite freak."

The next night he plays even longer -- three hours instead of two -- and is even hotter, released from his interview chores, having imparted his bit to me. He has a chiffon scarf over his face, a white suit with fringe, another Elvisoid chest-baring pink suit with gold trim. Up in the balcony, at 4:30 A.M., his three aides in black dresses are dancing away -- his accountant, one of his lawyers, his director of operations, all reminded of why they work for this man.

"This is your captain," he says onstage in the colored cone of streaming light, his rhinestone necklace shining on his slender throat. He is at his best in the hour of the owl with the creatures of the moon. Now, over these bodies, he has the power. When he is free, emancipated from his demon Warner, if it all works out, he will be laughing in the purple rain. And maybe it will be the last laugh.

December 22, 1994.

Paisley Park issues a press release that reads as follows:

O(+> has officially given notice to Warner Brothers Records (WBR) of his desire to terminate his recording agreement with the company. Over the course of their nearly two decade long relationship, The Artist and WBR have developed irreconcilable differences. Most recently, the unstable and ever changing management structure within WBR has made it impossible for the company to effectively market and promote its flagship artists, including O(+>.

The Artist is prepared to deliver the three (3) remaining albums under his former name Prince which will fulfill his contractual to WBR. Currently, the albums are titled: Prince - The Vault - Volumes I, II and III.

O(+> will release a recording entitled The Dawn once he is free from all ties with Time Warner."

The Dawn 1995 (free insert with Esquire magazine) disc 3 .zip file bonus online supplement .zip file

disc three 01. Slave 02. New World 03. The Human Body 04. The Truth 05. Don't Play Me 06. Had U 07. Face Down 08. What's My Name? 09. The Love We Make 10. Return Of The Bump Squad 11. Ripopgodazippa 12. The Same December 13. Dolphin 14. Count The Days 15. The Exodus Has Begun 16. Outro

"Really? A slave?"