an image, when javascript is unavailable

  • facebook-rs

Prince’s Epic ‘Purple Rain’ Tour: An Oral History

By David Browne

David Browne

On July 27th, 1984, Prince and the Revolution were confronted with their first hint of how their lives were about to change when they attended the Hollywood premiere of Prince ‘s first movie, Purple Rain . “That night at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre was insane,” recalls keyboardist Lisa Coleman. “We thought were just making what would be kind of a cult film. I’d stood in line at that theater to see Alien the first day it came out. And now there I was, arriving in a limo. Limousine, red carpet – none of us had ever done anything like that before. We felt more like rebels, and suddenly we’re all fancy, like movie stars.”

That night would only be the start of one of the most momentous years in Prince’s life. The film was an immediate cultural touchstone, grossing $7.7 million in its opening weekend (a commanding figure at the time) and eventually grossing 10 times that amount. Four months later, at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Prince and the Revolution launched the Purple Rain tour. The 98-show trek, which continued through April 1985, was groundbreaking in many ways: It introduced Prince’s most elaborate sets and a new guitarist (Wendy Melvoin), and the crowd hysteria and occasional cameos from the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Madonna confirmed Prince’s place as pop’s most commanding star of the moment.

In the confines of those tightly structured shows, Prince reveled in special effects and over-the-top staging – doing splits or somersaults, playing his famous ejaculating guitar (using Ivory Liquid, of course) or pretending to talk to the Lord during the “Purple Rain” B side “God.” Yet the tour impacted on him in ways he and the Revolution never expected. In time for the upcoming deluxe reissue of the Purple Rain album – with accompanying bonus audio and video material – and the tour’s inclusion on  Rolling Stone ‘s 50 Greatest Concerts of the Last 50 Years list, RS spoke with the Revolution and the band’s unofficial member, lighting director LeRoy Bennett, about those momentous five months and their aftermath.

Editor’s picks

The 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history, every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term.

I. Preparations

Wendy Melvoin (guitarist): I remember being conscious that the Purple Rain tour was the biggest thing he had ever done [during planning stages]. I kept seeing sketches of plans and Prince would buzz in and out of the rooms. We were all being fitted for clothes that were being made. I was standing on one of those pill boxes, and there are about five people doing the measurements on me. It was like Queen Victoria being dressed for a gathering. At one point, one of them tried to do an inseam on my pant leg, and I felt really oddly like, “Fuck this – I’m not entitled to this. Why is this happening?”

Prince walked in and asked me to come outside so he could talk to me. Apparently he had been watching what was going on and he took me outside and goes, “You have to allow this to happen. You have to allow them to do what it is that they do. That’s why they’re here. And don’t feel bad about it.” At that very moment, I realized, “OK. There’s something else happening here, and I just have to let this happen.” I didn’t want to get in the way of how he was trying to represent himself. And that was a big, big a-ha! moment for me. I sat back and saw this thing unfold.

Prince performs live at the Fabulous Forum on February 19, 1985 in Inglewood, California.

LeRoy Bennett (lighting director): The theatrics started to become more and more evident. Controversy had a little bit and the 1999 tour had a bit more theatrics in it. But the Purple Rain tour was a major step in technology for us. Once you’ve seen a laser beam for five minutes, you’re done with it. So what we were doing was pushing the lasers and different things through fiber optics. We had dry-ice fog, but we used liquid nitrogen a lot. For “When Doves Cry,” we’d have jets that shot horizontally across the stage. It almost looked like ghosts that flew across, met in the middle of the stage and dissipated. Other [lights] came up from the back like these huge fountains. We wanted the show to be more of an immersive experience. We wanted to portray the emotions of the songs and create interesting environments.

Melvoin : As far as signing a non-disclosure, like “You’re not allowed to do drugs,” I had heard his crew had to do something like that, but we as a band didn’t have to. But he didn’t like it when you drank in public and someone took a picture of it. He would get really buzzed if you had a picture taken with a beer because it’s like, “I don’t want children to think they can be badass only with a beer in their hand!” I understood it. I got it. There was a little bit of a weirdness, but I understood it was a business he was trying to run, and I respected it.

Prince's Revolution Reunites for Tribute on 'Purple Rain' Stage

Prince jukebox movie musical in the works from 'black panther' director.

Matt Fink (keyboardist): Very few bands – pop bands, which I suppose you could say we were at that time – were doing coordinated dance moves while they were on their instruments. Keyboard players like myself, you didn’t really see them doing choreographed moves with the bands. But Prince wanted the whole band moving.

Mark Brown (a.k.a. BrownMark, bassist): I grew up in a time period where I would go see Cameo and the whole band was always moving. I was always asked to help with the choreography [for Prince], and so, when we would build the shows, I was kind of responsible for all of the movement. I had to figure out a way, with this different type of music, to create movement that was simple and where you could still play your instrument effectively. It was a challenge because not everybody was used to dancing and playing.

Lisa Coleman (keyboardist): We would just have to bend our bodies or shake our heads. Sometimes it got kind of rough too because I was wearing high heels and playing keyboards. It ruined my back for the rest of my life.

Fink : We were at Rudolphs Bar-B-Que [in Minneapolis] one late night and I remember Prince saying to me, “Do you think it would be cool if Bobby was standing up playing drums?” And I said, “How does a drummer stand up?” He wanted so badly for Bobby to stand up and play drums. But it worked because we had the drum machine running and Bobby was playing percussion and cymbals against the drum machine.

Bobby Z. (a.k.a. Robert Rivkin, drummer): No drummers had been required to do choreography. That was just the Prince world. We’d practice in front of a mirror. Looking at yourself was hard. He made us all look graceful, like in a ballet, because you don’t want to be a dork.

Melvoin : We had two weeks of productions rehearsals, I think in St. Paul, right before the tour started. I remember the first day we went in for full-on production, and that was astonishing to see it. That’s when I realized it, “Holy shit, this is massive. We’re in a stadium right now in production rehearsals.” I know it doesn’t sound like much right now, but back then it was like, “Oh, my God.”

Bennett : We spent more time in rehearsal than we had ever done before. It was almost like we did a tour of Minneapolis because we kept changing venues once a week, or once a week and half.

Bobby Z. : It was all about how he entered the stage. At various shows it was, “OK, now you have the gymnasium and the catwalk.” The biggest thing they had were the elevators under the stage for “Let’s Go Crazy.” There was a mannequin for when he would appear and disappear. There were all these cool magic tricks to get Prince on and off stage.

Brown : For the “When Doves Cry” scene, you had this stage prop of the claw-foot tub up on a hydraulic lift behind Bobby that was way up high. The first time they tried using the tub, which was very lightweight and made out of fiberglass, Prince got into it and they had not nailed it down into the platform. That thing went right over backwards once he got in it. He took quite a tumble. He just lay there while they checked him out, and fortunately he just had some good bruising. Things got called that day while they figured out what needed to be changed on that one. That was a scary moment.

Bennett : My heart stopped. He didn’t really fall that far, like four feet. But it shook him up a little bit. He walked off the stage, got in his car – which he always parked next to the stage in the arena – and took off. That was the end of rehearsals for the day. The carpenters changed the lyrics to “this is the sound when tubs fly.”

Melvoin : If Prince was doing any kind of bad behavior – if he was mean or just straight-up wrong about something he said he was straight-up right about – he always said something bad would happen to him. The way I remember that moment is that he had gotten into a fight with his manager. Prince was in a super-cranky mood and he was practicing his move with the bathtub and the bathtub fell. He was so freaked by it that he was super nice and kind [ laughs ]. Very humble.

purple rain tour lp

Fink : The loudest white noise possible.

Bennett : There were times where I couldn’t hear myself talking to the spotlight operators and they were having a hard time hearing me. It was crazy.

Bobby Z : Then Prince would rile them back up. He’d shake his ass or do a costume change or something, and people would go nuts again.

Coleman : The fun part was watching him, because a lot of things didn’t happen unless he gave us visual cues. It was like a game watching him run around the stage, and he would do a slight move of his hand, which would cue a riff or something. You’d have to watch pretty darn closely. Every once in a while, to cue the end of a song, he’d throw a hankie into the air, and when the hankie hit the ground, that’s when we would stop. So you had to be able to see the ground, and if you’re backed up on a riser behind keyboards and cymbals, sometimes it was hard to see, like, “Oh no! The hankie disappeared!”

Bennett : He would do hand signals for certain musical turnarounds, so you would have to watch for all that. He liked to mess around. Every once in a while, he would just do the signal in front of his chest, so the band could see it and I couldn’t. He would just do it to be funny.

Coleman : He’d say “Body Heat.” Bobby would hit the snare drum once and then we’d have to go to “Body Heat.” Then he’d stop that by saying, “‘Rumble’ in E.” So we had all these different things, little modular funky things that we could put together that he could call out like we were his jukebox or drum machine that he could play. It was like a live computer.

“It was literally the Olympics. We were like synchronized swimmers.” –Wendy Melvoin

Bobby Z : The crowd could feel it was tight and spontaneous, but it also had some train wrecks. Ninety-nine percent of the time it was a miracle.

Melvoin : I had boots on, tons of jewelry, and my instrument and I had to sing and do choreography. It was literally the Olympics. We were like synchronized swimmers. If someone screwed up that thing, there’s not even a bronze medal. You’re just off the team. This was high stakes.

Bobby Z.: At our Syracuse show, he called out “sway from side to side,” and the entire Revolution moved like a piston in an engine back and forth.

Coleman : We were wearing all these big … what do you call it? These regal New Romantics clothes? It was hot. I’d go up onstage wearing a cape on top of a dress, and I would just take off stuff during the show. Shed as much as I could. It was hot onstage with all those ruffles.

Melvoin : One of the things that Prince would tell us before going on tour, especially at the beginning of Purple Rain , was, “If you feel yourself rushing and playing too fast, cut your body’s heart rhythm in half and move your body in half-time, and you will play behind the beat.” We were religious about it.

Coleman : Prince wanted always be as good as the film. He didn’t want anyone ever to go, “Oh, that’s the band from the movie? Eww , they’re not as good.” That was one of his worst fears.

Brown : We used to get fined if we made mistakes, and I got to a point where I would stop playing bass notes in certain types of segues and start this rumbling on the bass. Prince loved that crap. And it saved me from a lot of fines.

Coleman : If you missed a cue or played an extra horn punch or something, that was $500. He would withhold your money. It never happened to me. I’m lucky. Actually, I’m good at faking it. He never knew when I made a mistake.

Melvoin : He threatened to take your paycheck away, and a couple times he tried, but we all laughed at him and said, “No, that’s not going to happen.” It was this warning, this threat, and he was really happy to go ahead and make the threat because it would make you get your shit together if you had made a mistake.

“If you missed a cue or played an extra horn punch or something, that was $500. He would withhold your money.” –Lisa Coleman

III. The Intensity

Coleman : When we were at the Superdome in New Orleans, it was, what, 90,000 people? We knew it was big because it sounded big, and then Prince said, “LeRoy, turn on the house lights!” And we turn on the house lights and it was scary. Prince was like, “ Noooo! Turn them off, turn them off!” It was too much. It was an ocean of people.

Melvoin : I loved when we turned the lights on during “Take Me with You” and we could actually see the audience. We would turn on the stadium lights full blast – fluorescent, horrible lighting – and we could see everybody in the audience and we all became one and sang “Take Me With You.” You see every seat filled. You look to your left and you see everybody. You look to your right. It was incredible, and they all sang it. It was really beautiful.

Bennett : It must have been scary to them because they had no idea there were that many people. I’m sure the first time they saw that, they shit themselves [ laughs ].

Brown : We were literally the hardest-working band in show business. I would feel sorry when he would invite people to play with us onstage, because they didn’t understand that type of dedication. When people would sit in with us, they didn’t even know what to do. I don’t care how seasoned a musician they were.

Bobby Z: Everybody came in the band’s room, like Springsteen and Madonna [during a multi-show run at the Forum in Los Angeles in February 1985]. We had an open-door policy and got to meet a lot of fun people. Onstage, they always thought it was exciting. But onstage with Prince it was always a game.

Coleman : It became a take-no-prisoners situation, like, “Yeah, let’s just go out there and conquer the world.” And all the people that were supposed to be the competition were just like saying, “Wow!” to Prince. And again, he wanted to soak that up. He wanted to experience it firsthand, so that was a good way to do it.

rince performs live at the Fabulous Forum on February 19, 1985 in Inglewood, California.

Melvoin : Unfortunately he would kind of screw with people, especially big famous artists who would come up. If he sensed they were a little bit lost, he’d try and expose that: grab a guitar and do a blistering solo in their face. There was a certain amount of, like, straight-up competitive humiliation. But he thrived on that, like, “I know I’m great.”

Coleman : With Bruce, I remember Prince being a bit of an imp and trying to throw him off. He was giving us his secret hand signals while Bruce was trying to play a guitar solo. There was a little cat and mouse going on. I never knew if Bruce knew Prince was doing that because there was a bit of giggling, but we knew and were like, “No, don’t do that, it’s so mean!”

Fink : Prince was reveling in it. It was his goal to tower over everybody in a lot of ways. He loved it. With Madonna, they were flirting and playing.

Coleman : I have to admit I’m such a dork. I didn’t know who Madonna was. This girl came onto the stage and I was like, “Who’s that?” I thought he just pulled some girl up on the stage. I didn’t know what was going on until I was in the bathroom after the show.

Melvoin : Madonna came backstage and was in our dressing room, mine and Lisa’s, and wanted to use the bathroom. It was this true girl moment. We were each in our stalls peeing at the same time and she goes, “You guys are such badasses!” That was my first introduction to Madonna.

Coleman : We always had jams [during the encores]. “Baby I’m a Star” was notorious. “Purple Rain” could be 30 minutes long. We could stretch things out.

Bennett : We used to do a running bet with the crew on how long “Purple Rain” was going to be. Every night. I’m not a betting man, so I never got involved, but in the production office, there was a board where people would place their bets on the time. It was usually extended between 20 to 25 minutes. You could win a couple hundred bucks.

Coleman : During that time, Prince was very positive and didn’t want to miss what it meant to the world. He would read every magazine, whatever press. He wanted to see it all, good or bad. And then he wanted to affect it in a positive way, and he started doing more philanthropic things. We started playing at schools or doing food drives.

“We used to do a running bet with the crew on how long ‘Purple Rain’ was going to be.” –LeRoy Bennett

Melvoin : On that tour we’d be onstage for hours and then of course we’d end up doing another show afterwards or we’d do a show during the day somewhere else. It was full on every night until the last show. I remember we went to Gallaudet, the school for the deaf [in Washington, D.C.] and did the entire show in their auditorium, and it was incredible. There were huge monitors on the floor in the audience so the kids could feel the bottom end. I remember at least 25 signers in the audience who were watching us and signing all the words to every song. The kids loved it. And then they broke it down and we went to the stadium and played another show that night.

Fink : By the end of it, we were changing some arrangements. Prince still put us through mental gymnastics every day. He’d make a new transition between certain songs and you had to remember it. It was like a game to him. But Prince cut the tour short. Around the World in a Day was on his mind and backstage we were already looking at album covers for that.

Brown : During soundchecks, we recorded “4 the Tears in Your Eyes.” “The Ladder.” All kinds of stuff.

IV. The Aftermath

Coleman : By the end of the tour, he was done with [ Purple Rain ]. He just burned fast and hard. If you look at the concert footage, he was killing his body. It was really, really hard work and to do it for six months was plenty for him. He was starting to get excited about other things. He was ready to move on.

Bennett : Prior to that tour, we were all very close, but then it started to separate out so that he was very isolated from us towards the end of the tour. I think he anticipated the fame to a certain level, but not what that was. It sounds good in theory until it actually happens. I can’t say it frightened him, but it definitely threw him off. He was just withdrawing. I used to spend a ton of time with him back in Minneapolis over at his house and doing things with him like going to movies. That all started to go away and disappear at a certain degree during that tour. It eventually got to the point where it was us and him. And it started to suck.

Coleman : At first it was just one bus for the whole band. Then the boys had a bus, and Wendy and I had a bus. And Prince had his own bus.

Melvoin : From Purple Rain through Sign ‘O’ the Times were his strongest mental and physical times. He wasn’t beaten down by any of it. It gave him incredible strength. There was a certain sort of naïveté about him during that time where he wasn’t second-guessing himself. He handled it really beautifully and wasn’t a frivolous little boy at all. He knew what his responsibility was, and he felt great about it. I don’t know how strong that feeling was for him in his later years. He handled it great at the time, but I’m sure that ultimately what it did to him is whittle away at a certain kind of deep self-esteem about himself. How could anybody reconcile that kind of power and success without it screwing with you deeply?

Coleman  [on Prince not participating in “We Are the World” near the end of the tour]: It was the night of the Grammys – we’d done so well and everything was so positive. He just messed up big. I didn’t get why he wouldn’t be involved in that. I can’t really speak to that, honestly, because I didn’t really understand his thinking on it then. I think he just saw a whole bunch of pop stars getting together to “do good,” and I think he thought that was kind of bullshit, in a way.

But if you weren’t going to go there, then just don’t be seen. He was out [that night] and his bodyguard punched somebody or something. When the bad press came out it was like, “Don’t talk about it. … Nobody mention that.” So ridiculous! I thought it was most unfortunate. It was totally the opposite of what he preached.

Bennett : That whole period was so magical. You could just feel the energy of his stardom just skyrocketing. He could’ve continued to write major hits like all the songs on Purple Rain . I think it just became too easy. It wasn’t pushing him and challenging himself, because he constantly challenged himself. He did that with all of us, too. He pushed me to be more than I thought I could be. He would see who you are, what he saw you could do, and most of the time beyond what you believed you could do. And he would just push you there.

Brown : The confidence level that Prince created in all of us – you did anything. You did whatever to win the game.

Melvoin : It was thrilling. It was this roller-coaster feeling: “ Woo , God, it’s scary, but I love it!” It felt like the world had opened up and we were going ahead and being allowed to make our dreams come true on that tour.

Singer-songwriter and ‘Voice’ coach Alicia Keys talks about the lessons Prince taught her. Watch here.

Olivia Rodrigo Recreates Nicole Kidman's AMC Theaters Ad at Montreal Show

  • By Emily Zemler

Bruce Springsteen Joins Zach Bryan Onstage at Triumphant Brooklyn Show

  • Surprise, Surprise
  • By Brian Hiatt

Sony Gets $800,000 in Damages Over TikTok Rapper's Infringement

  • Courts and Crime
  • By Ethan Millman

Latin Grammys Finally Add Contemporary Mexican Music Album Category

  • Making Changes
  • By Kory Grow

Mick Jagger Dances Like There's Nobody Watching to 'Moves Like Jagger' at a Bar

  • He's Got the Moves

Most Popular

Anne hathaway lost roles after oscar win because of 'how toxic my identity had become online,' says christopher nolan backed her: 'i had an angel' in him, where to stream 'quiet on set: breaking the silence' episode 5 online, body language experts believe this is the reason kate middleton was alone in her cancer announcement video, uncle luke adds his take on diddy's infamous parties, explains why he'd always "leave early", you might also like, former disney ceo bob iger joins josh kushner’s thrive capital as venture partner, mariah carey turns 55, a look back at her iconic fashion moments: iconic ungaro butterfly top, vera wang wedding dress and gowns that glitter, the best exercise mats for working out, according to fitness experts, kim cattrall’s infamous scat singing has been restored to 4k, fanatics’ travis scott collab adds to its tangled celebrity web.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

Purple Rain

purple rain tour lp

Let's Go Crazy

Take Me with U

The Beautiful Ones

Computer Blue

Darling Nikki

When Doves Cry

I Would Die 4 U

Baby I'm a Star

Purple Rain is Prince’s most iconic album. It was the most commercially and culturally impactful release of his career, and coupled with the film of the same name, it influenced the fashion and sound of the rest of the 1980s. Prior to Purple Rain, Prince was an industry underdog, tirelessly working to carve out a niche for his funk-rock sound. But by the time the first singles from Purple Rain hit the radio airwaves and the videos for “When Doves Cry” and “I Would Die 4 U” went into heavy rotation on MTV, he was well on his way to becoming a global superstar and a pop culture phenomenon.

Purple Rain is that rare critical and commercial success that justifies every scrap of hyperbolic praise.”

Kenneth Partridge, Billboard, 2014

Remarkably, several songs on the album were captured live in Prince’s hometown of Minneapolis at First Avenue at a packed benefit concert for a local dance company. It was the very first time Prince and his band had performed “Purple Rain,” “Baby, I’m a Star,” and “I Would Die 4 U,” and the concert solidified the iconic lineup of the Revolution that would help him take over the world, with new guitarist Wendy Melvoin joining bandmates Lisa Coleman, Bobby Z., Dr. Fink, and BrownMark. Prince knew he was onto something with that band and those songs — and soon the pop culture zeitgeist would know it, too.

Prince and the Revolution completed a massive Purple Rain Tour that spanned five months and included 98 different shows, with Apollonia, Sheila E., and saxophonists Eric Leeds and Eddie Minniefield joining the band for high-voltage performances and epic extended jams. By the end of 1985, Purple Rain had received two Grammys, three American Music Awards, two Brit Awards, and an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score, and the album remained at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for 24 weeks (August 4, 1984 to January 18, 1985), and in the top 10 for 32 weeks, selling over 25 million copies worldwide.

And then came Purple Rain , and the world changed. Before that, I kept my Prince obsession close to the vest. But the day after the video for 'When Doves Cry' premiered, I was shocked to see that my secret was out. Everyone suddenly knew what I knew, which is that Prince was like nothing else, and that he was everything.”

Questlove, 2016

Purple Rain Album Credits

Prince lead vocals, background vocals, lead guitar, piano and various instruments Wendy Melvoin guitar and vocals Lisa Coleman keyboards and vocals Matt Fink keyboards BrownMark bass Bobby Z. drums and percussion Novi Novog violin and viola David Coleman cello Suzie Katayama cello Apollonia co-lead vocals Jill Jones background vocals

Prince knew this was going to be it. He was ecstatic when he finished it.”

Susan Rogers, engineer (to Rolling Stone)

Join community to get news and updates

Something went wrong

By providing us with your email address and clicking “Submit” you are agreeing to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy .

Unfortunately, your internet browser is incompatible with this experience. Kindly install either Google Chrome, Firefox, or Safari to participate.

purple rain tour lp

The epic story of Purple Rain, the album that turned Prince into a global superstar

How Prince learned to play nice with others, how he learned to rock to rock, and how he made Purple Rain, his world-beating sixth album

Prince onstage

It’s August 3, 1983 and history is about to be made, in the shape of Prince 's career-defining sixth album, Purple Rain . Inside the First Avenue club in Minneapolis, a sweaty congregation of 1,500-plus believers is staring across the low stage at an 18-year old guitarist named Wendy Melvoin, who’s making her debut with hometown heroes Prince & The Revolution. 

Dressed in a sleeveless V-neck top, her curly hair tumbling over one eye, she strums a circular progression of gospel-like chords on her purple Rickenbacker guitar. It’s the final number in a 10-song set of new and wildly eclectic material. The other musicians fall in lightly behind her. The hypnotic groove swells for nearly five minutes, while the leader of the band, lurking in the shadows, wrenches some sustained fuzzed-out cries from his Telecaster. 

Finally, he flips the guitar behind his back, gunslinger-style, and steps to the microphone. Purple lamé jacket, ruffled collar, Little Richard hairdo, this magnetic five-foot-two soul preacher closes his eyes and sings, ‘ I never meant to cause you any sorrow... ’

There are no cheers of recognition. This is the debut performance of Purple Rain , the title song of the album – and movie – that will propel Prince Rogers Nelson into the pop culture stratosphere.

Within 18 months, the 25-year-old dynamo, who’s already charted with songs like Little Red Corvette and 1999 , will be selling out arenas. He will also rival Bruce Springsteen , Madonna and, most significantly, Michael Jackson as the artist who defines the decade of the 1980s. And maybe more than any of these iconic contemporaries, Prince, with his inimitable songwriting, production-style and sexed-up ethos will imprint generations of artists to come, from George Michael to Justin Timberlake to Lady Gaga to Beyoncé.

Purple Rain , an album that spent a staggering 24 weeks at No.1 and has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, remains not only Prince’s zeitgeist moment, but the most thrilling and cohesive artistic statement he ever made.

This is the story of how it happened.

Classic Rock Newsletter

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!

Prince performs at the Hollywood Palace to promote the opening of his film 'Purple Rain' on July 26, 1985 in Los Angeles, California

Prince was not a team player. Like auteurs Stevie Wonder, Todd Rundgren and Paul McCartney before him, the Minneapolis multi-track whiz kid wrote, arranged, produced and played almost every instrument on his first five albums, from 1978-1982. The minimalist, pogo-funk sound of those early records, typified by songs like When You Were Mine , I Wanna Be Your Lover and I Feel For You , was charmingly offbeat and original. But it was also insular. Prince must have sensed that if he was going to punch that higher floor on the elevator to global supremacy, he needed to rock. And to rock, he needed a band.

“The reason I don’t use musicians a lot of the time had to do with the hours that I worked,” Prince told Rolling Stone in 1985. “I swear to God it’s not out of boldness when I say this, but there’s not a person around who can stay awake as long as I can. Music is what keeps me awake. There will be times when I’ve been working in the studio for twenty hours and I’ll be falling asleep in the chair, but I’ll still be able to tell the engineer what cut I want to make. I use engineers in shifts a lot of the time because when I start something, I like to go all the way through. There are very few musicians who will stay awake that long.”

While he had toured with various players early on, it wasn’t until the breakthrough success of 1982’s album 1999 that Prince surrounded himself with the formalised line-up of musicians that he considered his equals. In 1983, he added an ampersand and called them The Revolution.

To be a member of Prince’s band meant not only staying awake but living up to the boss’s sky-high standards. Hit-making R&B producer Jimmy Jam, who played in the first of Prince’s many side project bands, The Time, told me, “With Prince, it was about work ethic. And I mean work. We’d rehearse seven hours a day. He’d come to our rehearsals, then go to his own rehearsals, then he’d cut all night in the studio, and the next day, he’d show up at our rehearsal with some new song that he wrote. And it would be Little Red Corvette or something, and we’d be like, ‘Wow, that’s dope.’ 

"The other thing he’d do, he never wanted you to have a free hand. When I would be playing the keyboards, if my left wasn’t doing something, he’d say, ‘Find a part. Fatten it up. Your hand shouldn’t be idle.’ Then he would want you to sing a harmony note. Then it would turn into, ‘They’re hitting choreography out there, you guys need to hit it too.’ He was like a drill sergeant, but it taught you that you could be so much better than you think you can be, if you just apply yourself.”

At the time of the First Avenue gig, the drill sergeant’s platoon consisted of Matt ‘Doctor’ Fink on synth, Brown Mark on bass, Bobby ‘Z’ Rifkin on drums, Eric Leeds on sax, guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman. The band’s headquarters was a huge warehouse on Highway 7 in St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis. There Prince built the soundstage and recording studio that became the launching pad for all things Purple Rain (the room’s cavernous sound was put to especially effective use on Let’s Go Crazy ). 

As he started to assemble the songs for the album, he opened himself up to a free-flowing trade of ideas from his band members. This change in Prince’s approach to record-making would be mirrored in the plotline of the movie, as his character, The Kid, slowly lets his guard down to allow his bandmates to co-write and contribute.

“It was a very creative time,” Matt Fink told Pop Matters in 2009. “There was a lot of influence and input from band members towards what he was doing. He was always open to anybody trying to contribute creatively to the process of writing.”

While Fink acknowledges Prince’s “oodles of talent,” he says that part of the Purple One’s genius was recognising what gifts The Revolution brought to the table. “Take Computer Blue , for example,” Fink said. “We’d always warm up before rehearsals doing free-form improv rock-jazz jams, and someone would start a chord progression. On that day, I started playing that main bass groove which later became Computer Blue . 

"So the band started grooving on it, and Prince started coming up with some stuff, then we recorded a rough version and he took it into the studio and just incorporated it all and made it fly that way. Wendy and Lisa did some of the stuff on it. Prince borrowed the bridge/portal section from his father [a jazz pianist], who had given him some music over the years to play around with. So the song was a real mixture of different people and influences.

“But Prince was the main lyricist and melody maker for all the songs,” Fink stressed. “And never took any lyrical content from people.”

Prince and Wendy Melvoin performing live onstage

If Prince was the enlightened despot in this new democracy, his most trusted advisors were Wendy and Lisa, two West Coasters who hailed from music royalty parentage. Both of their dads were top LA session cats in the 60s and members of the famed Wrecking Crew who played with everyone from Sinatra to The Beach Boys . From them, the girls inherited their chameleon-like ability to provide the perfect parts for any song, regardless of groove or style.

Prince said of them in 1985: “Wendy makes me seem all right in the eyes of people watching. She keeps a smile on her face. When I sneer, she smiles. It’s not premeditated, she just does it. It’s a good contrast. Lisa is like my sister. She’ll play what the average person won’t. She’ll press two notes with one finger so the chord is a lot larger, things like that. She’s more abstract. She’s into Joni Mitchell, too.”

“We were absolute musical equals in the sense that Prince respected us, and allowed us to contribute to the music without any interference,” Wendy told Mojo in 1997. “I think the secret to our working relationship was that we were very non-possessive about our ideas, as opposed to some other people that have worked with him. We didn’t hoard stuff, and were more than willing to give him what he needed. Men are very competitive, so if somebody came up with a melody line, they would want credit for it.”

The duo broadened Prince’s horizons by introducing him to modern classical composers like Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, Scarlatti and Ravel (“Prince played Bolero all the time,” said Melvoin). And those nouveau sounds found their way into several songs. The jabbing string section that threads itself through Take Me With You ’s driving riff was arranged by Lisa and her brother David, who plays the cello on the track. And When Doves Cry ’s startling baroque keyboard climax was Coleman’s influence. “I think I influenced When Doves Cry to the extent that Prince was engaged in a healthy competition with us,” Lisa later said. “He was always thinking, ‘How can I kick their ass?’”

Prince definitely preferred female company in the studio. In addition to Wendy and Lisa, engineers Susan Rogers and Peggy McCreary handled the recording chores for Purple Rain , in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, respectively.

“Women have a very nurturing nature, and Prince thrives in that atmosphere,” Susan Rogers told Marc Weingarten. “He likes a studio atmosphere where people are flexible.”

Rogers’s flexibility was tested when she was hired by Prince to create a studio in the warehouse on Route 7. Usually, a boomy, echo-laden space is a nightmare for audio engineers, but this time, the live vibe was just what was needed to match the nightclub footage for the movie. Still, Rogers did her best to convert the big cement room into a functioning studio.

“I had been working for Crosby, Stills & Nash as a maintenance tech when I heard that Prince was looking for someone,” she said. “I jumped at the chance. He wanted me to remove his home console and put it in this warehouse, which seemed a little crazy, but we managed to make it work. I mean, nobody had really done that before. The first time I met Prince, after everything was set up, he asked me to set up a vocal mic so he could record. I had never professionally engineered in my life, but I really had no other choice. That’s how I began my engineering career.”

Other important women in the mix for Purple Rain were Wendy Melvoin’s twin sister Susannah, who became a muse to the smitten Prince (they dated briefly), drummer Sheila E (who became a star on her own, with Prince’s guidance) and of course the film’s leading lady, Patty ‘Apollonia’ Kotero. Apollonia had stepped in when the previous co-star Denise ‘Vanity’ Matthews quit the film. She’s a prime example of Prince’s Pygmalion -like ability to shape even the most lacklustre talent into gold.

If all of this musical creativity had been merely for another album release, it would’ve still been remarkable. But during the 1999 tour, Prince had carried around a big purple notebook with sketches, notes and ideas for a movie script. He made it clear to his label Warner Brothers that the new songs were to be for a soundtrack to a film in which he would star. 

He gave them an ultimatum: If they couldn’t land him a major movie deal, he’d find another label that could. It wasn’t an easy sell. Yes, 1999 had moved three million copies and was still on the charts after ninety weeks. Sure, videos for Little Red Corvette and 1999 played regularly on MTV. But to most people in 1983, Prince was what you’d call Lady Di’s husband. Hollywood didn’t take him seriously as a bankable leading man. In the end, Warner Brothers A&R man Mo Ostin agreed to pony up the money for the untitled film project.

Purple Rain movie poster

The first draft of the screenplay was written by William Blinn, best-known for his Emmy-winning TV movie Brian’s Song , and episodes of Starsky & Hutch . Blinn, who called Prince “a rock’n’roll crazy,” was frustrated with the lack of communication from the artist, but managed to hash out a semi-autobiographical script called Dreams , about a musician from a broken home who rises to stardom through the ranks of the Minneapolis club scene. “This picture was either going to be really big or fall right on its ass,” Blinn said.

Soon the screenplay fell to Albert Magnoli, a 30-year-old director who had only one acclaimed student short film to his credit. Magnoli reportedly wowed Prince with an off-the-cuff reshaping of Blinn’s script. He described the love triangle between a brooding lead, The Kid (Prince), and a comic one (Morris Day), with a beautiful ingenue (Apollonia) at the centre. 

He outlined the tensions between the Kid and his band, and how he has to learn to be a team player. He then suggested having the Kid’s mum and dad, an interracial couple, fighting whenever the Kid came home. Prince told Magnoli, “I don’t get it. This is the first time I met you, and but you’ve told me more about what I’ve experienced than anybody in my life.”

Meanwhile, back in the warehouse, Prince raced around, lording over every aspect of the proceedings. Fink recalled, “We were basically in boot camp – a disciplined regimen of dance class, acting class, and band rehearsing throughout that whole summer for about three months straight leading up to the start of the filming process. Prince had an acting coach brought in, a dance instructor brought in. It was just day after day filled with all those elements. Prince just worked nonstop. He never slept.”

And in front of the camera, Prince was a natural. Always rehearsed and ready with his lines, he set a polished example for everyone on set. Whether he was riding his motorbike through the country, flirting with Apollonia or stuffing his rival Morris Day into a trash can, he had a presence that was both relaxed and full of mystique.

The six-week shoot wrapped just after Christmas. Though there was more than enough material recorded for the soundtrack, Prince felt like it was still missing the one song that would crystallise the movie’s theme of parental difficulties and tangled love affairs. The song that would bring the world under his groove.

On February 28, 1984 he attended the 26th Grammy Awards, only to watch his rival Michael Jackson walk away with most of the trophies. Prince was nominated for Best Pop Vocal and Best R&B Vocal, but lost both to Jacko.

Two days later, Prince entered Sunset Sound studio with a song buzzing in his head. He programmed a funky, popping beat on his Linn drum machine. Quickly moving to vocals, then bass, keyboards and some fiery Hendrix-like guitar, Prince threw down the tracks to When Doves Cry in a few hours. As he and Peggy McCreary listened to the playback, he muted the bass track from the mix, and realised it was exactly what the song needed.

It remains one of those landmark singles that sounds like nothing else before it. The stark arrangement. The Oedipal drama in the lyrics. The raw erotic charge in the vocal. When it was released on May 16, 1984, When Doves Cry turned radio on its ear, flying up the charts to become a number one on the pop, R&B and dance charts. Mission accomplished.

The Purple Rain soundtrack was conceived as a double album, with tracks from The Time and Apollonia 6. But during post-production, Prince decided to bump them off and make a single album instead. His manager said that it was a purely economic decision, in that they’d reach more people if the price was lower. But Prince probably realised that this career-making record would carry more weight if he was the sole artist.

A month before the movie opened, the soundtrack had already sold 2.5 million copies. Let’s Go Crazy was on its way to be the album’s second number one. After a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre that was attended by everyone from Stevie Nicks to Eddie Murphy, the film had a huge opening weekend, grossing $7.7 million and replacing Ghostbusters as the top film in the US. Costing only $7 million to make, it eventually pulled in $68 million.

An exhausting tour would follow, with Prince & The Revolution recreating the funky magic of the film in more than 100 cities around the world. “I nearly had a nervous breakdown on the Purple Rain tour,” Prince said in 2012, “because it was the same every night. It’s work to play the same songs the same way for seventy shows. To me, it’s not work to learn lots of different songs so that the experience is fresh to us each night.”

And it’s that hunger to always move forward that led to an eventual falling-out with Revolution band members (the title song forecasted, ‘ It’s such a shame our friendship had to end ’), feuds with record labels, lawsuits, name changes, successive marriages and comebacks over the years. Through it all, there’s been a prolific rush of creativity and musical experimentation, right up to his latest incarnation, with all-female backing band 3rdEyeGirl.

In the end, perhaps the greatest gift of Purple Rain for Prince, beyond the stardom and the most enduring songs of his career, was simply that he found a way to belong to the music world at large. In the years after, he wrote and produced songs for The Bangles, Sheena Easton, Madonna, Chaka Khan and Stevie Nicks. Today that creative collaboration has continued with new artists such as Janelle Monae, Trombone Shorty and Zooey Deschanel. 

In 1985, still in the heat of Purple Rain ’s glow, Prince reflected on balancing roles as a band leader and bandmate. “I strive for perfection, and I’m a little bull-headed in my ways,” he said. “Then sometimes everybody in the band comes over, and we have very long talks. They’re few and far between, and I do a lot of the talking. Whenever we’re done, one of them will come up to me and say, ‘Take care of yourself. You know I really love you.’ I think they love me so much, and I love them so much, that if they came over all the time I wouldn’t be able to be to them what I am, and they wouldn’t be able to do for me as what they do. I think we all need our individual spaces, and when we come together with what we’ve concocted in our heads, it’s cool.”

A decade later, keyboardist Matt Fink said: “Fortunately for us, we were at first brought in as strictly sidemen, then allowed to be in on the creative process as well, which was really nice of him. He didn’t have to do that. He could’ve had his pick of just about any great sidemen that were around out in LA or New York. The reality is that this was his career, and we were just allowed to fortunately be along for the ride as his sidemen.”

Bill DeMain

Bill DeMain is a correspondent for BBC Glasgow, a regular contributor to  MOJO, Classic Rock  and  Mental Floss , and the author of six books, including the best-selling  Sgt. Pepper At 50 . He is also an acclaimed musician and songwriter who's written for artists including Marshall Crenshaw, Teddy Thompson and Kim Richey. His songs have appeared in TV shows such as  Private Practice  and  Sons of Anarchy . In 2013, he started Walkin' Nashville, a music history tour that's been the #1 rated activity on Trip Advisor. An avid bird-watcher, he also makes bird cards and prints.

"I've been touring for the money": Pete Townshend opens up as he considers one final tour world from The Who before they "crawl off to die"

“That whole Christian thing, it’s so wrong. We were never Christian metal”: how doom pioneers Trouble overcame chaos, darkness and misunderstanding to make their 80s masterpiece The Skull

"I don’t want to be sending a bandmate home in a body bag": why unhinged Texan noise-rock legends Butthole Surfers won't be reuniting, despite "six-figure offers" for live shows

Most Popular

By Matt Mills 24 March 2024

By Julian Marszalek 24 March 2024

By Jerry Ewing 24 March 2024

By Dave Everley 24 March 2024

By Metal Hammer 23 March 2024

By Chris Chantler 23 March 2024

By Paul Elliott 23 March 2024

By Mick Wall 23 March 2024

By Niall Doherty 23 March 2024

By Malcolm Dome 23 March 2024

By Mike Barnes 23 March 2024

purple rain tour lp

November 1984: Prince Launches PURPLE RAIN Tour in Detroit

Prince performs onstage during the 1984 Purple Rain Tour on November 4, 1984, at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Ross Marino/Getty Images)

It was November 4, 1984, when Prince kicked off his massive Purple Rain tour. With both the album and the movie topping the charts for weeks on end, anticipation to see the songs brought to life was through the roof, and well into the stratosphere.

With Detroit, Michigan, being his strongest market outside of Minnesota by far, Prince chose the Motor City to launch the run of shows. Given his next-level popularity at the time, the artist and his band, the Revolution, ended up selling out seven shows at the Joe Louis Arena. With a concert capacity of just over 20,000, the outfit would perform to more than 150,000 screaming fans before heading off to the second city on the tour, Greensboro, NC.

Prince's arrival in Detroit was big news. So much so that local news outlets went down to Joe Louis Arena to capture some of that purple excitement. Tune in and feel the palpable energy below.

From this article

PRINCE

More on Prince and The Revolution

  • Skip to main content
  • Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Music Interviews

All possibilities: the 'purple rain' story.

purple rain tour lp

Prince celebrates his birthday and the release of Purple Rain at 1st Avenue in Minneapolis. Paul Natkin/Getty Images hide caption

Prince celebrates his birthday and the release of Purple Rain at 1st Avenue in Minneapolis.

Here's a recipe for disaster: a low-budget movie with a cast that's never acted before, a first-time director, and a star who refuses to do publicity.

That's the story of Prince 's iconic 1984 film Purple Rain. Music critic and journalist Alan Light provides the details in his new book, Let's Go Crazy .

The music world of the early '80s was heavily segregated, Light says. Black music existed in a "post-disco isolated space" and rock 'n' roll in another. Prince faced daunting challenges in making the film — and in making a rock 'n' roll album, rather than another R&B record.

"Really, it was Michael Jackson 's triumph with Thriller that obviously transformed the scale of pop music in general," Light says. "[It] made visible the impact of MTV, transformed all kinds of possibilities, including the possibilities for much greater integration at the pop-radio level."

It was in this newly opened space that Purple Rain existed. As Light tells it, it's the moment when Prince became the Prince we know today: a bizarre experimenter and a pop genius in a single package. The popular success of Purple Rain, Light says, confirmed him as a talented, disciplined visionary.

Let's Go Crazy

Let's Go Crazy

Buy featured book.

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?

  • Independent Bookstores

Light recently spoke with NPR's Arun Rath about the difficulty in making the film, the tension between Prince and his band The Revolution, and how Prince took inspiration from Bob Seger in the writing of "Purple Rain." Hear the edited interview at the audio link and read the full conversation below.

Now, Prince, around that time before Purple Rain , he had achieved some crossover with white audiences with 1999 . It's kind of wild that the first single off of Purple Rain is, I think, maybe the most bizarre hit single ever.

It's probably true. Yeah. There was a little bit — there was starting to be some crossover interest in Prince, especially with "Little Red Corvette," you know, with a big guitar solo in it, big MTV exposure. The members of Prince's band during the 1999 tour, not only could they see that they were moving from bigger to bigger venues as the tour went along, moved from theaters up to arenas, but also could see the crowd, you know, could see more and more white faces in the crowd, you know, week to week as the album was going, and especially as "Little Red Corvette" was taking off.

But still, it's astonishing when you think back. I think that we look at Purple Rain now a little bit and think there was a sort of inevitability about Purple Rain . You know, Prince was the great genius of his day, and there was gonna be some vehicle that was gonna come along and translate that to the world. But if you look at the moment that it happened, when Prince went to his managers and said, "You have to get me a feature-film deal or you're fired." And what came out was a movie with a first-time director, first-time producer, you know, Prince as the star who'd never acted, his band as most of the cast — and they said, "We're gonna shoot in Minneapolis in the winter." Now, which piece of that sounds like it was going to be a big success?

Sounds like a total recipe for disaster.

Yeah, it made no sense at all. And I think what I really came to appreciate more than anything doing this book was getting this sense of the vision and the way that Prince just willed this thing into happening. And could see a potential and possibility that really didn't even make sense to the people who were closest to him at the time.

"When Doves Cry" is the first single off of the album, before the movie even comes out, and it still sounds bizarre 30 years later.

Yeah, there's really never been — certainly there was nothing before that sounded like it. And despite limited attempts at imitating that, nothing that could capture it afterwards. And I remember so vividly — I was already a huge Prince fan, and counting down and waiting for the new music and staying up 'til midnight with a cassette recorder by the radio station, by the radio, because the station was going to premiere the new Prince single at midnight. And that was what came out of the box. That sound that you just played. And, you know, this weird, grinding, almost industrial feel to it. And this processed vocal. And keep in mind all of those weird lyrics about, you know, "Maybe I'm like my father, you're like my mother," this was months before the movie came out. And so the song was kind of written as this summary statement about Purple Rain the movie, but none of us had seen the movie, so we didn't know what any of this was talking about. It was so arresting and, you know, it's the risk that you take when you put something really brilliant and really visionary out there. And, happily, the world responded immediately, and I think it spent five weeks at No. 1 and was essentially the biggest single of 1984.

'Purple Rain' Taught Me How To Be In A Band

'Purple Rain' Taught Me How To Be In A Band

Now, when it comes to the film, how much of Purple Rain is really Prince's story? How much is he a kid?

Well, I think there's always tension around that. It was obviously so much of the fascination at the time when the movie came out. We didn't really know much about Prince. Here was this guy — he didn't do any press. It's amazing to look back and think Prince did not do one interview during the entire Purple Rain cycle. From the time that 1999 came out until after Around The World In A Day , the next album, came out, he did not do one — any kind of interview, any kind of press, anywhere.

He was on the cover of Rolling Stone a bunch of times --

Several times without talking to them. So there was this incredible mystique and mystery and aura around him. And though a lot of the details in the movie are not accurate to his life — most prominently, he certainly at the time was playing with this idea that, you know, he had one white parent, one black parent. He sort of was never really clear that he had two black parents. He is a black man. That's who he is. But this idea that he could keep any doors open for his identity was something that, obviously, was really interesting to him.

I think Purple Rain a little bit the way that I think Bob Dylan 's autobiography, his Chronicles book. If you go back to Chronicles and you go through it, there's all of this stuff that's clearly not true. People have gone through and — he remembers which model car he drove when he came to New York and they didn't make that car until three years later and, you know, all this stuff. But I think there's a difference between what's accurate and what's true. And I think there's something about Purple Rain that felt real and felt honest to his experience, to his experience of being an outsider, of not feeling like his music fit in, of not feeling that he fit, that he was trying to build this community around him but he didn't really know how to build community and work with other people. There was something about that that rang true and that, whatever the limitations of the acting in the film, was something that resonated with an audience.

And so Prince, as you mentioned, is notoriously interview-shy. He seems to hate talking with journalists. But he's talked with you, right? What have your interactions been like with him?

I've done several lengthy interviews with him, spent a lot of time with him over the years. I didn't even approach him to talk for this book because his thing is really that he will not talk about his past. Any time he surfaces, it's to talk about what he's doing now, what he's doing moving forward. But I was with him the 20th-anniversary year of Purple Rain , and he said, "I know what that was. I know what it took for us to do that. We don't need to revisit that stuff. We just keep moving forward." So there really wasn't any point in trying to pursue him for this. But my own interactions with him — they've been really complicated. It takes a lot of jumping through hoops to actually get there in the room with him. But when you're with him, I've always really enjoyed my time with him. He's not like some crazy space alien who can't interact with humans. You know, he likes basketball. He likes movies. And he loves talking about, obviously, old music and the stuff that inspired him and the new artists that he loves. He comes across very passionate about that stuff.

It's amazing to be around someone who's constructed a world that enables them to create at any moment, wherever they are. If it's 4 o'clock in the morning and he's in Dayton and wants to go in and record, everybody knows they have to get everything set up for him to do that. And that means that there's nothing that touches him that he doesn't go out and bring in. There's no casual contact. There's no accidents in that world. It means entering this very strange bubble when you're with him and when you're around him. But, you know, he's very funny and he's very personable, and I hope I can — if I couldn't get him to talk specifically about Purple Rain, I hope at least in the book I can give some sense of what it's like to be around him.

One of the interesting things that you talk about in the book is that some of the most real stuff in the film is the tension in the band, between Prince and The Revolution, and between Prince and Morris Day.

It's still something that's obviously very tangible to the band members. And while, in general, speaking to the members of the band, their memories of the time are all very positive and very good, certainly there was this sense of, "Were they really a band, or were they just there to execute Prince's vision?" [It] became a very complicated relationship. I think that he made a really deliberate decision that if he was gonna cross over to a bigger audience, especially to a big rock 'n' roll audience, he was gonna position himself as a guitar player who's the frontman of a rock band. ... Purple Rain was not an album by Prince. It was an album by Prince and The Revolution. And he made a very clear distinction that he was gonna bring the band forward, put himself at the center of that. But the fact is, this is a guy who writes and sings and produces and, you know, is capable of doing everything himself. So how much actually input he's willing to take, how much that was just about how he could use the band for positioning, and how much they were actually a creative force was something that became a source of real tension as the project went on and as they went out touring and playing stadiums. Were these guys just hired hands, or were they actually a real band? And that's still something that they struggle with.

Talking about the rock 'n' roll context, it's interesting. You write [about] one of the few critical things the people involved in it said. Alan Leeds, who was Prince's road manager, he was a little bit unhappy that the music in Purple Rain was... he thought it was too white.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny. Alan is sort of a mythic figure in some of the music business. He was James Brown 's, essentially, road manager for many, many years. You know, he's the guy who can work with these mad geniuses and corral them to get out into the world. And he said, coming from that James Brown background, you know, the feeling was you never desert your base. You never leave behind the core of your audience. And he felt like what Prince was doing by making a rock record risked alienating his black audience and the R&B following he built with the four albums he made previously. It's one of these things that's a roll of the dice. If it comes off false, if it comes off artificial, then you don't gain a new audience and you lose the folks you had before. And we've certainly seen many artists fall victim to that. But I think Prince's vision was so clear, and his sense of how he could bring those musics together and how he was capable of making all of that feel very organic and very honest together. Well, if you hit that right, that's when you shoot the moon and not only keep your audience happy, but extend everyone around you.

It's wild, reading about how the story in the movie changed over time. Apparently, in Prince's original concept of it, it was a lot darker, a lot more death.

Yeah. It's a — the thing that really stayed in play until just about the last minute was, if you remember the movie, there's the scene where his father shoots himself and in the movie he pulls through. And in the last scene is the scene of Prince at his side in the hospital bed, and this is after he played " Purple Rain," and you see there's a happy ending here. For a long time, Prince was fighting for the father to actually kill himself in that scene and be done with it. And what Prince wanted in this film was a much darker conclusion and a much darker feel throughout.

And again, these were all rookies. Albert Magnoli, who directed the film and handled much of the rewrite of the film, he was kind of just out of film school, had not directed a feature. The producers who were Prince's managers hadn't made a movie before. Everybody was kind of fumbling around, figuring out how to do this so ... it was keeping Prince happy, keeping him engaged, how much you could compromise to please Warner Bros. studios and make this something they could get behind. They had no idea who Prince was. There was no awareness in Hollywood of who this guy was, and no confidence that he could go open a feature film. So this was something that really played out through the whole making of the film: just how those parts were gonna break.

You write, and this is actually something that a number of people have said, this is an album that every song on this is terrific. Every song is pretty much a classic. W e talked about "When Doves Cry," this is another thing. That opening chord, that's nothing like anybody had heard either in a pop song.

And what's really amazing is that recording of " Purple Rain" that we know so well, that we know every second of, that is 98 percent the first time that they played that song on stage, the first show that Wendy Melvoin is in the band. That is the first time that they played "Purple Rain" to the world. Now, if there is anything that shows what kind of discipline and what kind of rehearsal Prince puts his band [through], the fact that they went out and the first time they played that song is the version that 30 years later we still know every second of. That's amazing. There's a little bit of editing. There's a verse that they dropped. There's some editing in the guitar solo. They added a little bit of echo. But essentially, it is that exact performance. And that is mind-blowing. Like, to understand that they could just go out there in such perfect fighting shape that they could nail it like that. So it's an amazing thing.

There's a funny moment that several people talked about. Prince had this big bodyguard, this guy Big Chick who you might remember had a big Santa Claus beard and was with him everywhere. And the first time he heard them play that in rehearsal, he ran in I think to Alan Leeds' office and said, "You gotta hear the song the boss wrote last night. Isn't this song so good? Willie Nelson's gonna cover it." So the fact that it came from that very American place, almost a sort of a country and western song... And Prince, what inspired him to write "Purple Rain" was that when they were touring on the 1999 tour, he was following Bob Seger into a lot of arenas, and was really interested in why was Bob Seger such a big star, especially in the Midwest. And Matt Fink, the keyboard player, remembers that he was talking to Prince and said, "Well, it's these big ballads that Bob Seger writes. It's these songs like 'We've Got Tonight' and 'Turn The Page.' And that's what people love." And Prince went out to try to write that kind of arena-rock power ballad that resulted in "Purple Rain."

Now, after Purple Rain , it's actually while Purple Rain was still in the air, Prince decides to move on fast. It's kind of put to him, the way you have it in the book, you know, "Prince, you need to pick. You can't be both Elvis Presley and Miles Davis ."

It's such a great line. That's Bob Cavallo, who was one of his managers at the time, said that to him. He was like, "I get it. But you can't be," you know, "a pure artist. You can't be Miles Davis and follow your own whims and directions, and also be Elvis Presley and be the biggest pop star in the world." And I think Purple Rain created a struggle for Prince that he's fought with for the 30 years ever since then. Is this guy the biggest cult artist in the world, who has a million people who will follow him wherever he goes and however experimental he gets? Or is he a guy who fills stadiums and plays the Super Bowl halftime show and is one of the, you know, biggest pop-music artists in history? He's capable of both of those things, but what does he want?

And I think you do see that happen within the course of Purple Rain . What's remarkable going back is, he cut off the Purple Rain tour after six months, very abruptly — never went overseas, never took it to Europe, really didn't ride this wave as far as he could take it. And said, "That's it and I'm done." And I think at that moment ... there's kind of two things going on. On the one hand, he gets to the mountaintop and sees, "To be a pop star means I've gotta go play that same show for the next two years. I've gotta keep playing the hits. I've gotta give the audience what they want when they want it, and I'm not capable of doing that."

And on the other side, you see this guy who had a vision for this movie when everybody told him he was nuts. He went out and did it. It was a huge success, and at that point it became very difficult for anybody to say no to him. It became very difficult for him not just to assume, "Well, then every decision I make is gonna work. I know better than anybody else. I just showed you that." So I think right at that moment, he slams the brakes on Purple Rain . He puts out Around The World In A Day , a very different record, a kind of psychedelic feeling, inspired by The Beatles , inspired by the '60s kind of a record, and goes in a very different direction. Now, in some ways, that salvages — you know, if he'd gone off and made Purple Rain 2 , then you're just on a — you started a long descent that's hard to get out of. Once you've shown, "I can go and do other things," then you leave all the doors and the possibilities open.

Classic Pop Magazine

Prince – The making of Purple Rain

By Mark Lindores | February 6, 2024

The story behind Prince’s masterpiece Purple Rain

After years as the critic’s choice, prince’s evolution to rock’s leading man saw him score a hit album, blockbuster movie and record-breaking tour. backed by his greatest ever band, purple rain heralded his reign as rock royalty..

It was the night of 26 July 1984, and it seemed as if the entire world had descended on Hollywood Boulevard as scores of screaming fans, lines of Limos and satellite trucks aplenty thronged Mann’s Chinese Theatre for the world premiere of Prince’s movie debut, Purple Rain . In scenes more akin to the Oscars, stars including Eddie Murphy, Stevie Nicks, ‘Weird’ Al Yankovic and Lionel Richie walked the red carpet to witness the crowning of Tinseltown’s (and music’s) new leading man.

Naturally, the star of the show was last to arrive. Bedecked in his trademark purple and an air of his own self-importance, Prince, flanked by man-mountain bodyguard Charles Huntsberry, strode purposefully into the theatre denying the assembled hordes eye contact or even acknowledgement. What the diminutive star lacked in stature, he made up for in sheer star quality. Baby, I’m A Star , he sang in the film and boy, did he believe it.

purple rain tour lp

Baby I’m A Star

Although there is no doubt that Purple Rain elevated Prince to the pantheon of pop icons, he was already well on his way to becoming a superstar. He’d been a darling of the critics ever since his debut album For You in 1978 and the release of 1999 gave him the mainstream breakthrough he’d slavishly strived for.

As well as producing an album a year, the prolific star had been writing and producing for a string of protégés and touring consistently, playing for audiences ranging from nine people in a dive bar to 90,000 irate Rolling Stones fans who’d booed him off the stage less than three years earlier.

The success of 1999 had put Prince in a powerful position when his contract with Warner Bros was due for renewal upon delivery of his fifth album – and he knew it. “He said he’d only sign with us if he got a major motion picture,” Prince’s former manager Bob Cavallo told Spin . “It had to be with a studio and his name had to be above the title. Then he’d re-sign with us. He wasn’t even a giant star yet! I mean, that demand was a little over the top. Everybody turned us down.”

Meeting resistance at every turn, Cavallo agreed to co-produce the film himself with Warner Bros funding and distributing it.

Arrogance Or Ambition

The fact that no studios were willing to finance what looked on paper to be an artist’s vanity project is hardly surprising. Despite having scored two big hits with 1999 and Little Red Corvette , Prince was still very much regarded as a niche artist and people were still unsure what to make of this elusive, awkward androgyne whose work was steeped in sex and religion.

Whether it was arrogance or ambition, Prince’s faith in the film becoming a success was unwavering. He’d told friends as far back as 1981 of his desire to make a semi-autobiographical movie. It was an opportunity for the enigmatic star to establish a relationship with his audience and control the narrative of what he wanted the world to know about him.

During 1983’s Triple Threat Tour, he was constantly in possession of a large purple notebook in which he was forever writing. What everyone presumed were song lyrics, also included script excerpts and scenarios for the film.

Children Of The Revolution

Director Albert Magnoli signed on to helm the film and rewrite the script (original writer William Blinn’s script entitled Dreams was deemed too dark), immersing himself in the Minneapolis music scene to gain true insight into its machinations and its characters.

Feeling it would be inauthentic to try and replicate it for filming purposes, First Avenue, the mecca of the city’s live scene, was closed for six weeks for filming with many of its patrons serving as extras (post- Purple Rain , the club would become to Minneapolis what the Cavern Club is to Liverpool).

Now officially known as The Revolution, the band were sent to acting and dance classes, much to their bemusement, to learn the basics of acting. Prince protégés The Time were cast as his rivals and girlfriend Vanity would be playing his on-screen love interest (Vanity left the project prior to shooting and was replaced by Apollonia Kotero). When Magnoli questioned Prince about music, he was told that over 100 songs were written and was invited to listen to them so they could decide which would work in the context of the film.

Musical Equals

Although Prince had always been notoriously prolific, the formation of his new musical family had given him new fervour. The Revolution was his evolution. If he were to achieve his goal being a stadium-sized rock star, his music needed to be fleshed out with more bombast. His previous work, while brilliant, had been very insular given his propensity to write, produce, arrange and perform everything alone.

Recognising the talent and potential of the tight collective he’d amassed – Matt ‘Doctor’ Fink on synths, Brown Mark on bass, Bobby ‘Z’ Rivkin on drums, Eric Leeds on sax, guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman, he opened himself up to accepting input from them, particularly Wendy and Lisa (art would imitate life when this new-found democracy was written into a plotline in the film).

“We were absolute musical equals in the sense that Prince respected us and allowed us to contribute to the music without any interference,” Wendy told Mojo in 1997. “I think the secret to our working relationship was that we were very non-possessive about our ideas, as opposed to some other people that have worked with him. We didn’t hoard stuff and we were more than willing to give him what he needed. Men are very competitive, so if somebody came up with a melody line, they would want credit for it.”

The Colour Purple

Not only did Wendy and Lisa have input into the music, they also turned Prince on to styles and genres he’d never paid close attention to before. Modern classical composers such as Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, Ravel and Scarlatti were a revelation to him and flourishes and fills began creeping into his work henceforth. Its influence can be heard in the strings of Take Me With U and the baroque-inspired keyboard bars of When Doves Cry (not to mention the sonic detours of subsequent albums Around The World In A Day and Parade ).

Because work on the album and the film was taking place concurrently and Prince was overseeing everything, a warehouse in St Louis Park on the outskirts of Minneapolis served as Purple Rain HQ. Fitted with soundstages, studios and offices, it meant everyone could convene in one space and Prince could easily jump from a script meeting to band practice to the studio with ease (it also gave him the idea to build his own Paisley Park complex later). The space also meant that creativity could flow freely without interruption.

At the end of one particularly long day of rehearsal, Prince asked the band to quickly run through something he’d been working on as the project’s potential title track. He’d had the country-inspired song for a while and had sent it to Stevie Nicks to write lyrics to. She had politely declined, explaining that she found the 10-minute-plus instrumental beautiful but too intimidating. As Prince played the song, roughly outlining the verses, the band began adding chords, switching the arrangement round, harmonising… Six hours later, Purple Rain was almost complete.

Powerful Punch

That spontaneity was an example of how Prince and The Revolution typically worked. Although very much collaborative – both onstage and in the studio, Prince was always the bandleader. They developed a shorthand whilst playing, with a simple look or gesture from him determining a switch in pace or direction – the band was that tight.

Rehearsals would often stretch into the early hours. These prolonged jam sessions were how much of the album came to be. The expansive warehouse space played a huge role in delivering the powerful punch of Let’s Go Crazy .

Likewise, Computer Blue . When Prince made the decision to make the soundtrack solely a succinct Prince and The Revolution album, not only were the tracks from The Time and Apollonia 6 omitted, so were some of his own, including God and Father’s Song . The former was released as the title track’s B-side and the latter was reworked into a guitar solo for Computer Blue (both were later included on the Deluxe Edition of the album in 2017).

Outside of the Revolution material, Prince was working on music for The Time and Apollonia 6 and wrote and recorded a pair of solo tracks. The Beautiful Ones , one of his greatest ever ballads, and Darling Nikki , a sexually explicit track which evoked his earlier work.

Once the music was written, the group rehearsed it over and over on the warehouse stage, refining it until it was ready to be performed in public. It was common practice for Prince to gauge an audience’s reaction to a song to determine its fate.

On 3 August 1983, the band held a benefit concert for the Minnesota Dance Theater at First Avenue. With the exception of some minor overdubs, the live performances of I Would Die 4 U , Baby, I’m A Star and Purple Rain feature on the album in their raw state.

Shot in just six weeks in November 1983, in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, Purple Rain incorporated elements from Prince’s own life, dealing with issues such as insecurity, jealousy, band rivalries, a strained father/son relationship and striving for success.

MTV Generation

The first movie of the MTV generation, the narrative is spliced with scintillating live performances. Albert Magnoli wanted the live footage to be as dynamic as possible so that the performances could stand alone as videos on MTV if needed and had set aside four weeks to film them.

Prince assured the director that amount of time wouldn’t be needed and, true to his word, the performance scenes were completed in less than a week, including re-takes for different camera angles. “We had been rehearsing those songs live for six months, we knew what we were doing,” Wendy Melvoin laughed.

Just as the film was nearing completion, Magnoli asked Prince for one more song to use over a montage showing the complexities of the different relationships The Kid (Prince’s character) has with his band, his parents, his lover, his rivals and himself. Prince delivered the sparse masterpiece When Doves Cry the following day.

A last-minute inclusion on the soundtrack, it was released as the first single in May 1984 and became Prince’s first US No.1 single, topping the Billboard chart for five weeks. The Purple Rain album was released to critical acclaim a month later and had sold 2.5 million copies by the time the film premiered on 27 July. The following week, it hit the top spot, where it stayed for 24 consecutive weeks and produced further hits in Let’s Go Crazy , Purple Rain , I Would Die 4 U and Take Me With U .

Box Office Smash

While the film received lukewarm reviews from the critics, audiences couldn’t get enough, and Purple Rain knocked Ghostbusters off the top spot at the box office. In September 1984, with Let’s Go Crazy at No.1, Prince became the third act in history to top the singles, album and film chart simultaneously, following Elvis and The Beatles.

Shot with a budget of just $7 million, the film’s box office takings exceeded $70 million and it was the ninth biggest film in the US in 1984. Meanwhile, the album went on to become one of the biggest soundtracks of all time, with over 25 million copies sold to date and earned Prince an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for Purple Rain .

The newly crowned megastar capped his most successful year by kicking off the Purple Rain Tour in November. Every date sold out in minutes, leading to additional shows constantly added to meet demand. However, although he lined up studio time for whichever city he was in, Prince felt creatively stifled at having to play the same set every night. He was already hard at work on two albums and another movie.

Plans to take the tour overseas were shelved and the tour ended in April 1985, having played 98 shows to over one million people. For those unable to score tickets and international fans, the show in Syracuse was filmed (now regarded as one of his greatest performances) for broadcast on TV internationally and released on home video. The Revolution it seemed, would be televised after all.

Purple Rain Track By Track

Let’s go crazy.

The sermon-like, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life” gives way to a frenetic dance beat, reminiscent of Delirious from 1999 , before a screaming guitar instructs the listener to “go crazy”. The song’s meaning has been heavily debated over the years, and Prince has said that due to radio restrictions on mentioning religion, he had to find other ways of relaying his message and this was one of those instances. The song gave him his second US No.1 hit and was his staple concert opener since its release.

TAKE ME WITH U

Prince wrote this to the specification of Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli, who wanted a breezy, upbeat track to counteract the film’s darker moments. It was recorded as a duet with Apollonia Kotero, Prince’s on-screen love interest. While Kotero was great in the film, she wasn’t an experienced singer, so Lisa Coleman was brought in to contribute to the track to even out the vocals.

Let's Go Crazy UK single

THE BEAUTIFUL ONES

The Beautiful Ones was a late addition to Purple Rain , replacing a song called Electric Intercourse . Written and performed entirely by Prince, it was inspired by his feelings for Susannah Melvoin (his bandmate Wendy’s twin sister). A haunting tale of unrequited love, the track is built on a simple drum machine and keyboard track. Prince’s vocal delivery is what cements the emotional intensity. Almost whispering at the beginning, he’s screaming by the time the song reaches its crescendo. It soundtracks a pivotal moment in the film, as Prince attempts to steal Apollonia from his rival, Morris Day.

COMPUTER BLUE

One of the most-asked questions about Purple Rain is: what is the meaning behind Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin’s “Is the water warm enough?” intro? “We had no idea,” says Wendy. “Prince gave us a piece of paper and asked us to say it. We had no idea it had weird psychosexual connotations.” Originally over 14 minutes long, the track was edited down to enable Take Me With U to fit on the album. Prince’s father, John L Nelson, is credited as co-writer on Computer Blue , as it incorporates Father’s Song , a track he gave Prince to use in the film.

When Doves Cry Single

DARLING NIKKI

The most controversial track on the album, due to its opening line, “I knew a girl called Nikki/ I guess you could say she was a sex fiend/ I met her in a hotel lobby, masturbating with a magazine”, Darling Nikki was singled out by Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center, and prompted the introduction of Parental Advisory/Explicit Content stickers for albums containing sexual or violent content. Another solo Prince composition, Darling Nikki has been covered by artists including Rihanna and Foo Fighters.

WHEN DOVES CRY

When Prince was recording When Doves Cry, the final track for the album, legend has it that he said to the sound engineer, “Nobody would have the balls to do this. People are going to freak.” He was referring to the fact that the song had no bassline. The minimalist track is a complex story of the relationships Prince’s character in Purple Rain , The Kid, has with his girlfriend and parents. One of those songs that shouldn’t work, it still stands as one of Prince’s greatest-ever releases.

I WOULD DIE 4 U UK single

I WOULD DIE 4 U

On first listen, I Would Die 4 U is a straight-up love song, with Prince declaring his feelings over shimmering synths and a dance beat. The opening line of, “I’m not a woman, I’m not a man, I’m something that you’ll never understand” harks back to his Controversy era. But when investigated further, it’s apparent that Prince is singing from the viewpoint of Jesus, and this was confirmed on the Purple Rain Tour, when he changed the lyric from, “I’m your messiah and you’re the reason why” to “He’s your messiah”, while pointing skywards.

BABY I’M A STAR

Originally written in 1982 during the prolific 1999 sessions, Baby I’m A Star perfectly encapsulates the Prince live experience (it was recorded during his band’s infamous First Avenue gig in August 1983). The prophetic lyrics, “Baby I’m a star/ Might not know it now, baby, but I are/ I’m a star/ I don’t wanna stop ‘til I reach the top,” suggest that Prince was confident he was going to achieve huge success, and he kept the song back until he felt the time was right to release it.

Purple Rain single

PURPLE RAIN

The definition of the word ‘epic’, the album’s title track was a soaring, anthemic rock ballad written by Prince with Wendy Melvoin, originally for Stevie Nicks. “Prince had the idea and the melody, then I added chords and a guitar part, and the rest was everyone else chipping in,” says Melvoin. The nine-minute-long track provokes discussion to this day, with fans debating hidden meanings in the lyrics, revelling in the mysticism that Prince often threaded through the tapestry of his work.

Buy our Classic Pop Presents special edition devoted to Prince here

Read Classic Pop ’s top 10 Prince songs

purple rain tour lp

Mark Lindores

Shaznay lewis announces new solo album and single, listen to sia and kylie’s new collaboration, you may also like.

purple rain tour lp

Album By Album – Duran Duran

purple rain tour lp

NOW That’s What I Call Music: 40th Anniversary – 40 Facts & Figures*

purple rain tour lp

INXS: Inside Kick

purple rain tour lp

14 pop documentaries you need to see

Tim Pope

Tim Pope Interview: ‘I used to nick the camera in the evening and go and film bands’

Search classic pop.

Input your search keywords and press Enter.

Privacy Overview

Goldies Parade

Home / Prince Tour Timeline / Purple Rain Tour

Purple Rain Tour (1984/5)

1999 Triple Threat Tour (1982/3)

Purple Rain Tour

Parade Tour (1986)

More costume changes than Liza Minelli.

Coinciding with the 14 December 1984 home video release of the Purple Rain movie , the supporting tour for the movie’s the already 8x Multi-Platinum selling soundtrack opened on 4 November and ran through to 7 April 1985.

The shows received considerable media attention as result of Prince’s triple number ones and award show appearances that year – holding a trio of chart number ones at the movie box office as well as top selling album and single. Shows sold out immediately and many extra dates were hastily scheduled. Purple Rain Tour was Prince’s first of two tours backed with The Revolution . Over 300 reporters attended the opening concert, the first of a run of seven shows staged at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. Stage features included a hydraulic trapdoor through which Prince would enter the stage and open with Let’s Go Crazy , backlit by a bass drum rigged with a white light. A purple bath tub rose through the stage floor. Purple Rain Tour also occasioned the introduction of Prince’s two custom built ‘ Ejacucaster ‘ telecaster guitars which sprayed fluid over the audience front rows. Fink and Coleman on keyboards flanked Bobby Z on drums occupied a single raised platform behind Prince, Wendy and Brown Mark floor level up front.

To rehearse, Prince bought his first warehouse, located on Flying Cloud Drive in the suburbs of Minneapolis, where he drilled the band relentlessly throughout the summer of 1984 in preparation for the mammoth Purple Rain Tour . Stage rehearsals began on 1 October 1984. A 28-page tour book was also produced – Prince’s first tour to publish one. Featuring publicity photos for both the album and the movie, the tour book was tantalisingly titled 1984-85 World Tour . Performances averaged 125 minutes and the songs were elaborately indulgent, the closer Purple Rain extended to near 20 minutes.

Opening Purple Rain Tour was Sheila E promoting her debut LP The Glamorous Life , her guitarist Miko Weaver would be incorporated into The Revolution following the tour. On occasion Apollonia 6 would appear as guests in the climax of the show, joining Sheila on stage along with dancers Greg Brooks, Wally Safford and Jerome Benton, for the rousing encore Baby I’m A Star reworked into a party salsa jam: Brooks and Safford being additionally Prince’s actual security detail on the tour. Watching Bruce Springsteen in concert backed with his E Street Band, Prince enlisted Eric Leeds as an unofficial member of The Revolution to add a saxophone to the line-up. Due to their simmering rivalry on previous tours that inspired even the storyline of the movie, The Time did not appear on the bill for Purple Rain Tour and the group soon disbanded.

The encore of the performance at Inglewood Forum on 23 February 1985 became the stuff of legend when Prince was joined onstage by Madonna and Springsteen for Baby I’m A Star . Purple Rain Tour had been scheduled at Inglewood Forum to coincide with the Grammy Awards ceremony, where Prince collected multiple gongs on 26 February 1985. During an off-day on tour he and the band flew to LA to perform at the American Music Awards (28 January), collecting another trio of awards . With his slew of awards and growing celebrity following the run cemented Prince’s dominance over other acts of the day.

Purple Rain Tour was played in arenas averaging attendance of 20,000 and performed 98 dates, drawing a total audience of 1.7 million. Leg one focussed on the eastern USA, and leg two the west and then New York area and south to Florida. In December 1984, Prince played two concerts in Toronto, his first ever shows on Canadian soil. Purple Rain Tour was intended to afterwards continue to Europe by mid 1985 but after playing show number 75, Prince found himself burnt out. So he had the tour’s 30 March 1985 concert at Carrier Dome, Syracuse televised to a worldwide audience of 15 million to allow those unable to attend to see the live show and savour the spectacle. The footage was released on home video once the tour was finished, its sales would likewise attain Platinum certification. Prince had grown so tired of performing every song from the album over the near 100 shows of the tour, five days before its final concert his manager Steve Fargnoli announced Prince’s indefinite retirement from performing. Thankfully his retirement was short-lived as Prince was back on the road just months later in 1986. Purple Rain Tour played its final show on 7 April 1985 with a concert at the Miami Orange Bowl stadium, renamed Purple Bowl for the occasion, with 53,000 in attendance.

The tour yielded $30million in revenue and was among the highest grossing shows of the year, just $4million short of Springsteen’s Born In The USA Tour performed over 122 dates in the US. Madonna’s debut tour The Virgin Tour grossed $5million from 40 shows. Purple Rain Tour established Prince as a live performer extraordinaire and he never looked back.

Prince and the Revolution | Purple Rain Tour

Total performances

  • 98 shows from 4 November 1984 to 7 April 1985

Sample setlist

  • Shortberry Strawcake
  • Bodyheat [James Brown]
  • The Belle Of St. Mark
  • Oliver’s House
  • Next Time Wipe The Lipstick Off Your Collar
  • Erotic City [feat. Prince (off stage)]

The Glamorous Life

Prince and the revolution.

  • Let’s Go Crazy
  • Little Red Corvette
  • [Keyboard interlude “Yankee Doodle Dandy”]
  • Take Me With U
  • How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore
  • Do Me, Baby
  • Let’s Pretend We’re Married
  • International Lover
  • Father’s Song
  • Computer Blue
  • Darling Nikki
  • The Beautiful Ones
  • When Doves Cry
  • I Would Die 4 U
  • Baby I’m A Star

Purple Rain

Supporting albums.

Purple Rain

Warner Bros. Records

The Glamorous Life

Apollonia 6

Prince tour trivia.

  • Prince News
  • Prince Discography
  • Prince Tour Timeline
  • New Releases
  • Prince Biography
  • Paisley Park
  • Prince’s Awards
  • Prince Links
  • Prince Album Reviews
  • Who is Goldies Parade?

© Goldies Parade, 1998 – 2024 | Privacy

New Release

The Vault... Old Friends 4 Sale

ON SALE NOW The Vault... Old Friends 4 Sale Vinyl

Purple Rain 40 – Celebration 2024

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Purple Rain

Image may contain Vehicle Transportation Motorcycle Prince Human Person Advertisement Poster Wheel and Machine

By Carvell Wallace

Pop/R&B / Rock

Warner Bros.

April 29, 2016

Prior to Purple Rain , the backstory Prince had created for himself was that of a sex-obsessed R&B groove superstar, a multi-instrumentalist and prodigious musical upstart who used his considerable powers for the sole purposes of getting the club lit the fuck up. He presented himself as a kind of raunch alien bringing the divine soundtrack to your coke-fueled, crushed velour orgy, the musical equivalent of a fog machine and a black strobe light. He refused interviews and shied away from press profiles. He famously stonewalled music press royalty—even kingmaker Dick Clark on  his own show . You were not to know who he was or where he was from. You were not to fully comprehend his race nor his gender. You were not to find pictures of him in Teen Beat buying apples and milk at the grocery store in sweatpants and a baseball cap. He was most decidedly not just like us. He was from some alternate dimension where it was always 2 a.m. on a misty full moon. You were to believe that he was as mysterious as god, something conjured, perhaps from your fantasies, a magical apparition descending from funk heaven, arriving on a cloud of purple smoke and adorned in little more than a guitar, a falsetto made of glitter, and a deeply intractable groove.

But as the wildly creative are wont to do, by 1983 Prince was looking to switch that whole thing up. Despite his acute talent, he was still viewed by the industry at large as little more than an extra-funky urban novelty act, someone in league with the likes of Rick James and Lipps Inc . His most successful song to date, “Little Red Corvette,” had peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, which simply was not good enough for the man who once described the musical training he received at the hands of his father as “almost like the Army.”

In 1982, Bruce Springsteen was devastating the country with the spare and stark depictions of a bankrupt American Dream on his darkened opus Nebraska . Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet band were doubling down on white-man soul with the basic but wildly popular “Old Time Rock & Roll,” and Michael Jackson was re-wiring the industry with an album composed almost entirely of number 1 pop hits that spent 37 weeks lording over the Billboard charts. Prince’s keyboardist, Dr. Fink,  recalls that during the 1999 tour, his band leader asked him what makes Seger’s music so popular. “Well, he's playing mainstream pop-rock,” Fink told him. “If you were to write something along these lines, it would cross things over for you even further.” Prince had already been carrying a purple notebook with him on the tour bus in which he had been scribbling the ideas, notes and images that would become his next movement. (Prince didn’t make albums, he made environments) and he was looking for something new.

That “something new” was Purple Rain , a sonic and visual experience that cracks open the shell of his reclusive sex alien persona to tell something of an origin story, one slightly more than loosely based on Prince’s real life. The film, directed by an unknown, produced by first timers and starring a bunch of people who had never acted in a movie before, has become an astronomical and enduring success against overwhelming odds. But it does so because it’s a film about America, about revolution and youth and anger and fucking. About not being like your dad. That is to say, it’s about rock’n’roll. It’s the tale of a kid from an abusive home in a cold, working-class city who has a shitload of talent and a dream. And he has to figure out, through tortuous trial and error, exactly what he needs to destroy in order to achieve it. Purple Rain is rough and vulnerable, common and funny, and at times even cute. It is the exact opposite of everything Prince had been before it. But let’s not kid ourselves. The movie is merely decently shot, competently directed, and not even passably acted. The real reason it works is because of the itinerant magnetism of its lead and of the music he can make.

Prince’s sixth studio offering, 1984’s Music From the Motion Picture Purple Rain , is Springsteen’s Nebraska laced with the violence of James Brown ’s deepest grooves and liberally dusted with white dove feathers, dried rose petals, and scented candle wax. The album manages to deftly thread the needle between a dazzling array of genres: disaffected synth pop, tongue-wagging hair metal, dark R&B, and pleading soul. The result is something that isn’t a successful combination of genres as much as an effortless, almost incidental transcendence of the very idea of genre itself. It doesn’t matter what it’s called. It doesn’t matter what you like. You like this. It is wrong to say that Purple Rain blazes a new trail. Rather it beams a blinding light signal from a part of the forest that no one will be able to ever find again. You cannot make another album like it. The only way to get to where Purple Rain takes you is to play Purple Rain .

Given that the album is somewhat of an early-career look back for Prince, it gives us new access into his musical and cultural background. His hometown of Minneapolis boasted a black population of 4.3% in the 1970 census and, other than the low range KMOJ, didn’t have an urban formatted station until 2000. If you grew up listening to the radio in the Minneapolis of Prince’s youth, then you grew up listening to rock. Thusly the album’s opening salvo, “Let’s Go Crazy,” thematically picks up where the titular track from 1999 leaves off, namely: “We’re all going to die one way or another, so let’s rock while we’re here,” but musically is a dramatic departure from the slick, smokey grooves of its predecessor. It is set against a hyperactive American backbeat reminiscent of latter-day rockabilly, and features Prince ripping out the kind of ostentatiously speedy Van Halen-esque guitar work that would become the audio version of the generation’s early MTV aesthetic.

From there, the album drops into the closest thing it has to a dud in the Apollonia duet “Take Me With U.” But like another genius pop composer,  Stevie Wonder , (to whom Prince is not compared nearly enough), his work brims with so many compelling musical ideas that they can be found hidden in even the weakest of tracks. “Take Me With U” is distinguished by a stellar intro and bridge played only on tom-tom and strings. On “The Beautiful Ones,” Prince the serpentine is at his most coiled, his falsetto vocals syrupy and tightly wound until they explode into a wounded animal scream. “ Do you want him/Or do you want me/Cuz I want you! ” he howls, bursting out of the song all together. In the movie’s plot, this is about a love triangle, but it feels more like Prince is at the throat of his listeners. “Do you want that bullshit on the radio? Or do you want this brilliance? Make up your goddamn mind!”

“Computer Blue” begins with a cryptic spoken exchange between guitarist Wendy Melvoin and Keyboardist Lisa Coleman that may either be about an impending sex act or an impending cup of tea, (vaguely pornographic ambiguity is an aesthetic calling card of the Revolution , Prince’s adroit, androgynous, and multi-racial backing band). The ensuing song is a club jam about the common ’80s theme of existential technological alienation. It flows smoothly into a melodic instrumental, the unlisted “Father’s Song” that showcases Prince’s talent for crafting a surprisingly emotional narrative out of a chord progression and a guitar solo (foreshadowing, perhaps?) before devolving into feedback, wordless screaming, and the intro to the crowning achievement of the first half.

That achievement is “Darling Nikki,” a track that is both thick and skimpy, dark and taut: a thumping, loping, grinding fuck song about getting dirty with and getting played by the timeless femme fatale. The denouement, a quivering undulating coda, impossibly finds the musical link between burlesque backing bands and thrash metal double bass pedal rumbles, and is topped off by a terse and violent guitar solo. The whole song seems to operate at three different tempos simultaneously, leaving no part of your body or spirit quite able to escape its savage grasp.

The second half of the album begins with the confessional “When Doves Cry,” the album’s first single (and Prince’s first ever Billboard #1) wherein he delivers his most pointedly personal lyrics yet, “ Maybe I’m just like my father/Too bold/Maybe you’re just like my mother/She’s never satisfied. ” In the hands of a lesser talent this could come off as maudlin public journal reading, but fortunately for all of us, “When Doves Cry” is one of Prince’s most affecting compositions to date, launching with a bristling guitar burst before dropping into a karst LM-1 drum pattern featuring the signature knocks he used to great effect on 1999 . The ensuing groove provides a solid bed for a bouquet of rococo keyboard arpeggios and steadily unfolding melodic progressions that expertly capture the helpless confessional pleading of a man trying to figure out who he is and why it hurts so damn much. It is the the mid-show stopper, Prince as Rimbaud in pressed petals and lace, carefully gluing together a ransom note from a prison of his own beauty and emotion.

Having covered the tough stuff, we are free to party, and “I Would Die 4 U” is a celebratory, if lyrically morose, jam distinguished by a vast swaths of new wave synth, deep bounce and an insistent high hat. Following that is the impish and yet entirely earnest “Baby I’m a Star.” This is not Prince the character saying it, it is Prince the 26 year old serving notice that he’s greater than we could have ever imagined (turned out he was right) and that we need either get on board or get left.

Which brings us to the album’s title track, the epic and uncharacteristic arena jam “Purple Rain.” Prince here is part preacher, part guitar god. So deeply embedded in arena rock is this song that Prince reportedly called Jonathan Cain and Neal Schon of Journey to ask their blessing (and to ensure they wouldn’t sue over the song’s proximity to “ Faithfully ”). “Purple Rain” is a baptism, a washing clean of sins and a chance at redemption, even if the words don’t make any sense, (and to most people they don’t) the vastness of the arrangement, the grandiosity of the soloing, the pleading of the vocals reaches you, makes you cry, makes you feel free.

With Purple Rain , Prince bursts forth from the ghetto created by mainstream radio and launches himself directly onto the Mt. Rushmore of American music. He plays rock better than rock musicians, composes better than jazz guys, and performs better than everyone, all without ever abandoning his roots as a funk man, a party leader, a true MC.  The album and film brought him a fame greater and more frightening than even he imagined and he would eventually retreat into the reclusive and obtuse inscrutability for which he ultimately became known. But for the 24 weeks Purple Rain spent atop the charts in 1984, the black kid from the midwest had managed to become the most accurate expression we had of young America’s overabundance of angst, love, horniness, recklessness, idealism, and hope. For those 24 weeks at least, Prince was one of us.

Diamonds and Pearls (Super Deluxe Edition)

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions ), our Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement and to receive marketing and account-related emails from Pitchfork. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

WE DON’T TRUST YOU

Prince took Cleveland and the Midwest by storm on his 1984 Purple Rain Tour

  • Updated: Jun. 17, 2021, 9:06 a.m. |
  • Published: Jun. 17, 2021, 6:00 a.m.

Prince

Prince performs at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif. in 1985. (AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing, File) AP

  • Troy L. Smith, Cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate a man named Prince, whose electric “Purple Rain Tour” took the Midwest by storm 37 years ago.

The tour, which followed the release of “Purple Rain,” the blockbuster album and film, would cement Prince as one of the greatest rock stars of all time. It included a secret show in Cincinnati, a seven-night opening stint at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena and an unforgettable two-night stand at the holy grail of Ohio music venues: Richfield Coliseum.

They’re events that those who were there won’t soon forget.

“He was just dynamic,” remembers Detroit music journalist Gary Graff. “Even though he had a big band a big stage show, you didn’t look at anyone else but Prince the entire time he was on stage. You never ever took your eyes off him.”

[The story of Prince’s “Purple Rain Tour” is part of the CLE Rocks podcast. Listen on Apple , Spotify , Acast and all major podcast platforms.]

Purple Rain, Purple Rain

Prince Rogers Nelson earned his commercial breakthrough with 1982′s “1999,” an album that reached the Top 10 on the charts and spawned three hit singles with “Little Red Corvette,” “Delirious” and the celebratory title track that has since become one of Prince’s most recognizable songs.

“1999” established the Minneapolis sound, a mix of funk and New Wave that would prove highly influential in the decades that followed. But it was the follow-up, “Purple Rain,” arriving in the summer of 1984, that would take Prince, one of the most unique figures in music, to the next level.

“He was huge,” recalls Graff. “He was as big if not bigger than a Taylor Swift could be seen now. How music was consumed at that time, it was easier for an artist to have a monolithic presence, whether it was Michael Jackson, Springsteen, Prince or Madonna. Even if it wasn’t your kind of music, you knew this was a friggin’ huge kind of star. And Prince was at the top of that game.”

Prince would release “When Doves Cry,” the lead single from “Purple Rain,” on May 16, 1984. Within two months, the song would work its way to No. 1 on the billboard Hot 100, remaining there for five weeks.

During that time, Prince’s musical odyssey of a film, “Purple Rain,” would hit theaters. The film starred Prince as a young musician in Minneapolis who struggles with romance, musical rivalries, an abusive situation at home as he tries to become a star. The movie wasn’t going to win any Oscars for its acting. But “Purple Rain” served as the ultimate showcase for Prince as a performer with its closing musical sequence becoming instantly iconic.

Thanks to Prince’s rising star power, “Purple Rain” would go on to earn $70 million at the box office, blowing away its modest expectations. Two more hit singles from the soundtrack/album – “Let’s Go Crazy” and the epic title track – would build substantial buzz for the “Purple Rain Tour.”

Prince Rogers Nelson

Prince performing on stage at the Joe Louis Arena, Chicago 11th November 1984. (Photo by Mike Maloney/Mirrorpix/Getty Images) Getty Images

Secret in Cincinnati

The tour would sell a whopping 1.7 million tickets, selling out most of the venues months ahead of Prince’s performances. However, his busy schedule allowed for a limited number of rehearsals for his band The Revolution, as well as openers Apollonia 6 and Sheila E.

A massive lighting display, elaborate choreography and custom-made outfits all had to be fine-tuned. With the tour just six weeks out, Prince began to look for a venue to hold a dress rehearsal. He would wind up choosing Bogart’s, a club located in the Corryville neighborhood of Cincinnati that Prince was no stranger to. He performed there in 1980 and visited in 1982 for a concert featuring his idols James Brown and Wilson Pickett.

“I actually didn’t know Prince was even at that show in ’82 until my production manager said, ‘Hey did you know Prince is in the house?’” remembers former Bogart’s owner Al Porkolab. “I believe he came in through the backstage entrance. Someone on James Brown’s staff brought him in. Certainly had he come in the front of the house, everyone would have been saying, ‘Prince is here!’”

The concert, held on Sept. 23, 1984, at Bogart’s was a secret. The venue’s staff could not advance it as a Prince concert to avoid a frenzy. Radio station WBLZ promoted the concert as the “Red, White, and Blue Tour” without Prince’s name attached. Porkolab says the venue disabled all payphones and office phones so concert attendees couldn’t spread the word that Prince was in town.

Still, the news got out. The 1,500-person capacity venue quickly sold out. However, not everyone was in the know.

“I’ll never forget, standing there when Prince came out backlit, facing away from the audience,” recalls Porkolab. “This one girl says to her friend, “Look at that guy trying to be Prince.’ The girl looks back at her and says, ‘You idiot, that is Prince.’ There was this crescendo and intensity of people cheering. It was one of the greatest shows in the history of the club.”

Feb. 27, 1985: Fans wait outside on the first day of Prince's stay at the Cow Palace. The concerts, which happened during the peak of Prince's early fame with ""Purple Rain,"" sold out quickly.

Fans wait outside on the first day of Prince's stay at the Cow Palace for the venu's Purple Rain Tour stop. (Photo by Jerry Telfer/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images) Hearst Newspapers via Getty Imag

Home away from home

With the Bogart’s dress rehearsal behind them, Prince and The Revolution turned their attention to the “Purple Rain Tour,” which was set to begin with seven sold-out nights at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena in November. The city’s radio stations and concert industry showed early support for Prince after the release of his first two albums in the late 1970s.

“Prince had a very strong love affair with Detroit,” remembers Jim McFarlin, a Detroit News staff writer at the time. “Next to Minneapolis, it was his favorite city. A late-night disc jockey, Charles Johnson, aka ‘The Electrifying Mojo,’ turned Detroit on to Prince before anyone else. There was also a guy named Billy Sparks, a Black concert promoter, who promoted Prince’s early shows.”

Sparks and Prince would become friends with the former going on to star as “Billy,” the Minneapolis club owner of concert club ‘The Ave.’ in “Purple Rain.” Prince’s storied relationship with Detroit was on display during the opening night of the tour, as Prince took time out from his “Father’s Song” piano interlude to thank those in attendance. Such an interaction was unheard of for the enigmatic performer.

“I was shocked,” says McFarlin of Prince speaking directly to the crowd. “He typically communicated through his music, his dance moves and his persona. Talking to the audience was so out of character for him. But I think it indicates the kind of feeling he had for Detroit fans.”

Prince Rogers Nelson

Prince performing on stage at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit on November 11, 1984 during the Purple Rain Tour . (Photo by Mike Maloney/Mirrorpix/Getty Images) Getty Images

The concerts in Detroit were so huge, Cleveland’s Plain Dealer sent legendary rock critic Jane Scott to cover them.

“Suddenly a shower of flowers drifted over the audience. Rose petals and carnations fell from the ceiling,” Scott wrote in her review. “The opening song for the opening night of Prince’s ‘Purple Rain World Tour’ was ‘Let’s Go Crazy,’ and that about describes the fan reaction at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit...”

On to Richfield

Scott’s review would set the stage for two sold-out concerts at Richfield Coliseum on Dec. 5 and 6. Richfield had hosted everyone from Billy Joel and KISS to Van Halen and Rush in 1984. But nothing was as big as Prince’s “Purple Rain Tour,” save for Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” trek.

“It was insane,” remembers Heidi Dolin, then a 16-year-old teenager in Shaker Heights who attend night one. “Half my school was going to be there. These were the days where you had to stand in line at a Drug Mart and hope by the time you got to the front they still had tickets. It was the hottest thing in town and people were dying to go to this concert.”

The first sold-out night at Richfield would prove a flawless showcase. The only obstacle was a snowstorm on the evening of Dec. 5. But fans like Dolin braved the conditions and made it to their seats in time to see Prince open his set with the organ-driven eulogy of “Let’s Go Crazy.”

“The arena was dark and the band went on stage without lighting anything,” Dolin remembers. “It started in with the ‘Dearly beloved...’ and everyone went absolutely nuts, losing their minds. It was so remarkable to have this big star coming to this concrete palace in the country, doing his thing and it was super cool.”

Prince’s set would span 20 songs, including the major tracks from “Purple Rain” as well as previous hits like “Little Red Corvette,” “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” and “Do Me, Baby.” He would repeat the same set for night two, concluding both nights with a grand rendition of “Purple Rain’s” title track that would stretch near the 20-minute mark.

As a whole, the “Purple Rain Tour” would run for 98 shows, concluding on April 7, 1985, at Miami’s Orange Bowl, which was renamed the “Purple Bowl” for the night. Madonna and Bruce Springsteen would famously join Prince on stage during a Feb. 23, 1985, concert in Inglewood, Calif., while the March 30 show in Syracuse, N.Y. would be recorded and released on VHS later that year.

“Prince took it the next level,” says McFarlin. “Nobody in today’s world could do what Prince did at that time. There’s a lot of great guitarists, a lot of great dancers and a lot of singers. But there aren’t a lot of artists who can do it all at the same time. Prince was a singular talent.”

Prince Playing Purple Rain

Prince during the Purple Rain tour in New York in March 1985. (Photo by David Tan/Shinko Music/Getty Images) Getty Images

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

Dig logo

Enter your email below to be the first to hear about new releases, upcoming events, and more from Dig!

Yes, I want to receive marketing messages with the latest news, events and releases from Dig!. I understand that these emails are based on my information, interests, website activities and device data that is handled in accordance with the Privacy Policy . I understand that I can opt-out at any time by emailing [email protected] .

By submitting my information, I agree to receive personalized updates and marketing messages about WMX based on my information, interests, activities, website visits and device data and in accordance with the Privacy Policy . I understand that I can opt-out at any time by emailing [email protected] .

Purple Rain: The Story Behind Prince’s Career-Defining Song

Purple Rain: The Story Behind Prince’s Career-Defining Song

The song most associated with Prince, Purple Rain is an epic power ballad that embodied its creator’s search for transcendence through music.

If Prince has one single signature song, then it is Purple Rain. An integral part of the film it lent its name to, Purple Rain not only defined everything about Prince – from his musicianship to his life-long quest to reach a higher plane through music – it ensured his place among the best 80s musicians while standing as a timeless song that speaks to all generations and all types of music fan. As Prince’s former guitarist Dez Dickerson put it, “It’s one of those songs that you remember where you were the first time you heard it… And it was a real step forward for him in terms of his evolution as a commercial artist, but yet a distinct artist. You know it’s him, but at the same time it’s a classic song. You’ll hear it twenty years from now and it will still be classic.”

And yet, things could have turned out very differently. Far from the all-conquering power ballad it became, Purple Rain was initially demoed as a country tune, and Prince almost passed on it entirely when he attempted to give it away to someone else…

Listen to the best of Prince here .

“i wouldn’t know where to start. it’s a movie, it’s epic”.

Speaking to Mojo in 2013, Fleetwood Mac icon Stevie Nicks revealed that she still owned the nearly instrumental ten-minute demo of Purple Rain that Prince sent her, and admitted that she’d found the whole thing too much to contemplate working on. Declining his invitation to add lyrics to the song, she told him, “Prince, I’ve listened to this a hundred times but I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s a movie, it’s epic.”

Nicks’ words would prove prophetic, but when Prince first introduced the song to his band, it was, he said, simply something “mellow” to work on at the end of a long rehearsal session. Still carrying vestiges of the heartland-rock tune he originally imagined it would be, this formative version of Purple Rain belied its history as an unlikely challenger to the blue-collar anthems that made Bob Seger a mainstream draw across the US.

“We were on tour and Bob Seger was shadowing us wherever we went,” Revolution keyboardist Matt “Dr” Fink recalled in Duane Tudahl’s exhaustive sessionography Prince And The Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions 1983 And 1984 . When Prince told his bandmate he didn’t understand Seger’s appeal, Fink replied that “it was like country-rock. It was white music… You should write a ballad like Bob Seger writes, you’ll cross right over. And he did!”

“It was super intense… there was something special in the air”

After playing the song for six hours straight in rehearsal, The Revolution helped Prince realise what Purple Rain could be – with no small input from his newcomer guitarist, Wendy Melvoin. Soon to become one of Prince’s most trusted creative foils, along with Revolution keyboardist Lisa Coleman, Melvoin had only recently replaced Dez Dickerson following the 1999 album tour. As Coleman told this author for the book Lives Of The Musicians: Prince , “All of a sudden, this little girl comes in and she’s funky as hell, plus she can play like Joni Mitchell .”

Melvoin’s ability to conjure expansive, Mitchell-like chords had a profound influence on Purple Rain’s development. Speaking to The Guardian in 2017, Coleman explained how the song was reimagined during that session: “Wendy started hitting these big chords that rejigged his idea of the song. He was excited to hear it voiced differently. It took it out of that country feeling. Then we all started playing it a bit harder and taking it more seriously… and by the end of the day we had it mostly written and arranged.”

Fully confident in his new band and his new material, Prince gave Purple Rain its first public airing towards the end of a benefit concert held at Minneapolis’ First Avenue nightclub on 3 August 1983. Marking Wendy Melvoin’s live debut with the group, the show also gave Prince a chance to test much of the Purple Rain album on an audience for the first time. “It was super intense and dark and sweaty,” Coleman recalled of the gig in Lives Of The Musicians: Prince . “There was something special in the air.”

“He finished playing and I said, ‘That’s the song’”

In the audience that night was director Albert Magnoli, who was scouting locations for the Purple Rain shoot. Then still under its working title of Dreams, the movie’s semi-autobiographical story was calculated to create the Prince myth, dramatising his rise to fame while simultaneously making that fame a reality. Seeking a title song for the project, Magnoli knew it when he heard it: “I stopped and went, ‘Whoa,’” the director told Duane Tudahl of hearing Purple Rain at First Avenue. “He finished playing and I said, ‘That’s the song.’”

When Prince listened to the recordings of the show, captured on a mobile truck parked outside the venue, he knew it, too. Taking the tapes to Sunset Sound Recorders, in Los Angeles, later that month, he used the live performances of I Would Die 4 U, Baby I’m A Star and Purple Rain as the basic tracks for the final Purple Rain versions, with a few decisive edits turning the album’s title track into a masterpiece.

“Purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love”

Removing a verse about money and excising a second guitar solo, Prince trimmed Purple Rain by a couple of minutes, enhancing the song’s enigmatic allure in the process; with Lisa Coleman’s guiding hand, he also added a small string section, courtesy of Los Angeles session musicians Novi Novog and Suzie Katayama, plus Coleman’s late brother, David. Reflecting on the song’s “lost” third verse, Coleman told Billboard , “When you listen to it you don’t understand what the song is about, but you understand that that verse doesn’t fit.”

In mid-September, Prince emerged with a nine-minute epic that would cement his legend and provide a dramatic denouement to the Purple Rain movie. But though the film’s plot would pivot around the song – nodding to Wendy Melvoin’s crucial input, Purple Rain was reframed as an idea of Wendy’s and Lisa’s which Prince, as The Kid, initially refused to take seriously – it defied any literal interpretation. Certainly, Prince himself was reluctant to overtly explain its lyrics.

“When there’s blood in the sky… red and blue = purple,” he once allowed, adding, “Purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/God guide you through the purple rain.” If “the sky was all purple” in his apocalyptic breakthrough hit, 1999, by the time he wrote Purple Rain, that vision of Armageddon had evolved into a search for salvation.

“It takes you to a place where you feel different about your life”

Released as a single on 10 September 1984 in the UK (and 26 September in the US), Purple Rain’s religious overtones were underscored by its B-side, God, a hymnal-like song which Prince would perform live during the Purple Rain tour. Throughout the demanding run of 98 shows, Prince sought transcendence on stage as he closed each night with his soaring new ballad, stretching Purple Rain out until it pushed the 30-minute mark in a storm of squalling guitar and lighters-in-the-air audience singalongs.

In the decades since, Purple Rain has only grown in stature among the best Prince songs . Looking back on how its iconic coda bought his final ever gig to a close, on 14 April 2016, it now seems as though the song that helped him rise to become one of the most influential musicians of all time was now preparing him for an altogether different ascension. Though it sits among both the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock And Roll (along another Purple Rain standout, When Doves Cry and Rolling Stone ’s 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time (at No.18), Purple Rain has no Earthly peer.

“It just really has something about it, the way it crescendos, the way it crashes, and the way the guitar solo takes you to a place where you just feel different about your life,” Revolution drummer Bobby “Z” Rivkin later said. Reflecting on the song’s 30th anniversary to Andrea Swensson, for Minnesota Public Radio station The Current, Rivkin added, “No matter what, when you hear those opening chords of Purple Rain, you just stop time somehow, and just listen.”

Visit the Dig! store to buy Prince vinyl , box sets and more.

  • Song Stories

More Like This

‘Future Nostalgia’: Why Even COVID Couldn’t Stop Dua Lipa’s Breakthrough

‘Future Nostalgia’: Why Even COVID Couldn’t Stop Dua Lipa’s Breakthrough

Released as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world, Dua Lipa’s second album, ‘Future Nostalgia’, set the scene for better times ahead.

Chain Reaction: How Diana Ross Sparked A Renaissance In The 80s

Chain Reaction: How Diana Ross Sparked A Renaissance In The 80s

Written by Bee Gees and performed to perfection by Diana Ross, Chain Reaction updated the 60s girl-group sound for a new pop era.

Be the first to know

Stay up-to-date with the latest music news, new releases, special offers and other discounts!

Yes, I want to receive marketing messages with the latest news, events and releases from Dig!. I understand that these messages are based on my information, interests, website activities and device data that is handled in accordance with the Privacy Policy . I understand that I can opt-out at any time by emailing [email protected] .

Sign up to our newsletter

Be the first to hear about new releases, upcoming events, and more from Dig!

PopMatters

Essaying the pop culture that matters since 1999

prince-classic-finally-expanded-the-deluxe-purple-rain-reissue

Prince’s Classic Finally Expanded: The Deluxe ‘Purple Rain’ Reissue

purple rain tour lp

Dig if you will the picture.

With a wicked snarl of guitar, two garish wooden doors swing open and startled doves flutter in confusion as we enter a long, purple-hued rectangular room. Flowers, mostly purple, are strewn about the floor as we glide closer to an old-school bathtub hazy with steam, the guitar giving way to a sparse electronic rhythm and a simple but hypnotic descending keyboard riff. A slight, striking, well-muscled man with a shock of dark curls calmly raises his head and turns a sensual stare directly toward us as we approach, his large, expressive eyes thick with lust. He languidly emerges from the tub like a God of Sin rising from his pool of desire, never breaking his penetrating stare directly into our souls by so much as a blink. He stands naked, a golden cross necklace gleaming on his chest, steam billowing around his head. Slowly his right arm rises to point directly at us, his hand opening for us to grasp, inviting and enticing us to come into his world.

We do. How can we not? The spell has already been cast. Prince captured millions in that moment, many of whom have never been able to escape his dominion, nor would they care to try.

“When Doves Cry” was the gateway to the Purple Rain universe: an album, a major motion picture, and a tour that dominated the pop culture landscape of 1984. The daring and dramatic single, a slow-building brew of simmering tension and searing cathartic release, debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on 2 June 1984 at #57 and then jolted up the chart like a missile: #36, #17, #8, #3 and then, on 7 July 1984, it became Prince’s first number one hit. It reigned for five weeks at the top during which span its parent album was released to massive acclaim and sales, and the accompanying feature length film, such a risky endeavor for a company to take on an artist yet to consolidate his long-term mainstream appeal, became an instant smash.

Prince had envisioned Purple Rain as the project that would elevate him to the next tier of stardom, and that’s exactly what it did. The album spent an extraordinary 24 weeks at number one and has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. Hailed by critics and fans, who rarely seem to agree on anything, the album is an electrifying rock/fuck hybrid that is passionate, bold, brazenly sexual and adventurous but still brimming with enough pop hooks to ensnare a large mainstream audience. Purple Rain is one of the cornerstone albums not just of the ‘80s, but in all of pop/rock history. Prince is gone now, but his music is forever, and at the core of his legacy Purple Rain will always stand as his signature triumph, a monument to his boundless talent and ambition.

Prince was a compulsive workaholic in the recording studio, often spending day after day with little sleep, writing and recording new music. Some of it he released in his lifetime, some of it he handed off to the numerous side projects he cultivated over the years, and a vast library of his recorded output — the famous Vault — remains unreleased. Prince’s catalog of officially released work is massive, but only represents a fraction of his lifetime of work. Fans have been aware of the Vault since the ‘80s, as slowly but surely unreleased studio material started to leak and trickle out onto bootlegs, often in poor sound quality. Prince has bragged about the Vault and its contents, and associates and collaborators with whom he worked over the years have confirmed that a massive hoard of songs on which they contributed remains unreleased.

Over the decades, dozens and dozens of songs have emerged to circulate among fans in varying degrees of quality (both in terms of sound and content), while others have remained sealed up and unheard by most. Fans have been pining for the floodgates to open and for Prince to unleash the Vault material in a series of box sets or multi-disc expanded reissues of his studio albums for many years, but with a few exceptions Prince was not interested in satisfying those cravings. He always looked forward, focused on whatever his project of the moment might be.

Complicating matters has been his distrust of record labels and the music industry mechanics in general, which rendered it extremely difficult for his back catalog to be properly upgraded as technology has changed over time. Prince’s relationship with Warner Bros. Records, the label on which he released most of his classic albums, turned bitterly contentious in the late ‘80s and into the early ‘90s and remained frosty to the very end.

Fans have long been resigned to the realization that the visions of expanded reissues teeming with gems from the Vault in pristine sound quality that have been swimming around their heads like sugar plums were mere daydreams unlikely to ever come to fruition. Most major artists with a long history of landmark albums have by now been subject to lavish reissues, often including treasures of previously unheard material. Carefully curated archival projects and reissue series have been released for artists like Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, the Beatles and many others. Even artists with far lesser pedigrees than Prince (and, let’s face it, that includes most everybody) have mined their catalog for often beautifully produced reissues. That has not been the case for Prince, much to his fans’ eternal frustration. His catalog has for years been the most neglected of any major artist in pop/rock history.

As the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain rapidly approached, speculation (and more than a little wishful thinking) intensified that perhaps there was a chance that Prince would relent and work with Warner Bros. to celebrate his beloved masterpiece. Finally, in April 2014, Warner Bros. announced the news that Prince fans had been anticipating for many years: a deluxe reissue of Purple Rain would be released that summer in conjunction with its 30th anniversary, followed by a new studio album by Prince that the company would distribute and promote. Details were sparse, but Warner Bros. promised “long-awaited, previously unheard studio material” as part of the reissue and that future projects would follow. In return, Prince would retain the rights to his master recordings, a goal he had been working toward for many years in his often bitterly antagonistic feud with the media giant.

Prince fans, though, have learned through experience not to allow their excitement to fully blossom until the product is actually in their hands, and for good reason. A long trail of promised projects that have never seen the light of day extends far back throughout Prince’s career. As the 30th anniversary came and went with no announcement of a reissue, it seemed obvious that things had gone awry once again. Warner Bros. followed through with their promise to release and distribute new Prince music — two new albums in fact, both released on 24 September 2014: Art Official Age , an excellent collection of slick electronic funk/pop and one of Prince’s finest albums of the latter stages of his career, and the less impressive PlecetrumElectrum , an edgier rock-oriented collaboration with his backing band 3RDEYEGIRL. Both albums reached the Top 10 as die-hard fans eagerly snatched them up, but with haphazard promotion and no support from mainstream radio, they shared the fate of other recent Prince albums and faded quickly into obscurity.

The promised Purple Rain reissue, however, never materialized, and fans were left once again to wait and wonder. Prince at one point tweeted cryptically that the reissue had been turned into Warner Bros. and that the ball was in their court. That turned out to be true, but not the whole story. Prince finally delivered the remaster, but only of the main album. He refused Warner Bros. the top-tier Vault material they requested, and the company balked at releasing a single-CD reissue with none of the unreleased tracks they had promised in their press release.

Then two years later, in April 2016, the unthinkable happened. Prince’s sudden death from an opioid overdose rocked the music industry and sent millions of fans reeling. After the initial shock subsided, Prince’s heirs and his associated record labels began complex negotiations regarding the disposition of his massive back catalog and priceless Vault of unreleased material. While still mourning his death, fans began to speculate that perhaps now there was a chance that Prince’s full music legacy might finally be revealed.

Six months after his death, in October 2016, Warner Bros. and representatives of Prince’s estate announced that a 2-CD hits collection titled 4Ever would be released in November of that year, and in early 2017 the long-delayed Purple Rain reissue would follow. It seemed with Prince’s death his famous Vault was finally being pried open, yet fans greeted the news with anticipation mixed with trepidation. We’d been down this path before. 4Ever appeared as promised, but as 2017 stretched on with no word about the Purple Rain reissue, fans began to wonder if yet another disappointment loomed. Finally, in late April 2017, their worries were put to rest: the Purple Rain deluxe reissue, with a full disc of unreleased studio material and a remastered version of the original album supervised by Prince before he died, would be released this summer.

The set finally hit retailers on June 23 in multiple formats. The deluxe edition contains three CDs and a DVD — the original album remastered, a disc of previously unreleased material from the Purple Rain era, a disc containing all of the album’s single edits, B-sides and 12-inch extended remixes, and the first ever DVD release of a performance from 30 March 1985 in Syracuse previously available back in the ‘80s on VHS as Prince And The Revolution: Live . A 2-CD edition with just the remastered original album and unreleased material is also available, along with a newly remastered vinyl edition with a silvery reflective cover.

So of course the big question remains: is it everything fans had hoped? Well… no. Of course, it was never going to be possible to please everybody, but this project has every sign of being a hastily thrown-together stop-gap release. The album itself remains a masterpiece, and while the reissue has some jaw-dropping moments of greatness on the disc of previously unavailable tracks, the package as a whole falls well short of the definitive expanded edition of Purple Rain than an album of it’s indisputably exalted stature deserves. That said, perhaps with detachment we can acknowledge that this may be the best we could have expected under the circumstances, and that perhaps in the future a more satisfying exploration of this incredibly important era of Prince’s music will be unveiled.

As for the current release — how can something be so amazing and so frustrating at the same time? Prince fans know the feeling well — it’s the territory they’ve tread for 40 years. The music itself, of course, remains nothing short of staggeringly brilliant, and a full disc of previously unreleased material is a treasure that fans have been lusting after for decades. It seems churlish to object in any way… and yet, the remaster is botched, and the disc of unreleased material is an awkward and haphazard sampler that seems to represent what Warner Bros. had readily available to them than a carefully curated archival of Prince’s Purple Rain -era recordings.

Warner Bros. has hyped this collection as “Prince’s final word on his definitive masterpiece” — an easy claim to make considering Prince is no longer with us. The new reissue is dubbed the “2015 Paisley Park Remaster supervised by Prince”, which is a sly attempt to imply Prince was manning the controls himself when in reality he simply foisted the project onto Josh Welton, husband of Hannah Welton, drummer of Prince’s backing band at the time, 3RDEYEGIRL. Welton collaborated with Prince on the outstanding Art Official Age , but when handed a more prominent role on 2015’s HITNRUN: Phase One the result was the single worst album of Prince’s career.

Please don’t ad block PopMatters .

We are wholly independent, with no corporate backers.

Simply whitelisting PopMatters is a show of support.

Giving the keys of his ultimate classic to such a studio novice was such a Princely move — surely a finger in the eye of Warner Bros. and a not-so-subtle shrug that the project meant little to him and was only being done to allow wider distribution of his new music. Perhaps it’s not so surprising given Prince’s apparent indifference to the appalling state of his back catalog, and ultimately it’s his creation and was certainly his decision to make. That said, to those who hold music as personally vital, it’s shocking that Prince chose to entrust a masterpiece so important to so many people, a cultural touchstone of monumental importance, to an amateur rather than allowing a top-tier pro to treat it with the reverence and careful attention it deserves.

Again, though, it’s not surprising — surrendering control of his work to someone from outside his purple bubble and not firmly flattened under his finely-formed thumb is something that was simply not in Prince’s DNA. Prince was undoubtedly great at many things, but perhaps his greatest flaw in regard to his music is that he did not appreciate his own limitations. The Purple Rain remaster is a shining example of that short-sightedness. Welton no doubt tried his best but the end result is nothing short of unlistenable.

Welton’s remaster is a brickwalled disaster, harsh and brutal on the ears. It is undeniably far louder than the original CD pressing, which may make it seem to pop out with more clarity (especially on subpar audio equipment), but Welton destroyed the music’s dynamic range in the process. It’s a huge wasted opportunity. All one needs to do is compare the sound on Disc One, Welton’s work, with the unreleased material on Disc Two or the single versions on Disc Three — both remastered by Bernie Grundman, one of the best in the business — to understand why a true professional was needed for this project. Load Disc One and Disc Three into your CD player, cue up “Let’s Go Crazy” or “Take Me With U” on both, and compare Welton’s travesty with Grundman’s work and the difference is painfully obvious.

The vinyl pressing is marginally better than the CD, but is still lackluster. If you have the 2009 reissue of Purple Rain on vinyl in your collection or, better yet, a clean copy of the original 1984 pressing, there is absolutely zero reason to buy the new vinyl edition unless you’re enamoured by the cool silvery cover. The new remaster doesn’t even register on the scale when compared to some of the highest quality reissues in recent years like the stunning series from Peter Gabriel, for instance, or the phenomenal new pressing of Radiohead’s OK Computer . The lavish attention to detail and lovingly produced reissues in recent years by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Bob Dylan, David Bowie and others all blow Purple Rain out of the water, and it’s not even close. It’s an embarrassment.

A Fiery Meteor

Of course, the music itself is timeless and remains as powerful and compelling as when it hit like a fiery meteor 33 years ago. “Let’s Go Crazy” opens the album (and the film) with a dramatic whirl of Matt Fink’s keyboard and Prince intoning his famous opening speech: “Dearly beloved / we are gathered here to get through this thing called life!” It’s a bold and dynamic opener, an electrifying pop/rock/funk hybrid sparking with energy. “Let’s Go Crazy” revisits a theme that Prince would explore over and over again during his career, and in fact one particular line might be the ultimate summation of his music in its entirety: “You better live now before the Grim Reaper come knocking on your door!” Indeed. Of course, “Let’s Go Crazy” is particularly notable for its breathtaking finale, a blistering guitar freakout capped by Prince’s hot-blooded shout of “take me away!” Even all these years later it’s a sonic wallop that’s like a jolt of pure electric adrenaline right into the heart. As the album’s second single, “Let’s Go Crazy” followed “When Doves Cry” straight to number one for two weeks in September 1984, and it remains one of his most widely-loved tracks.

The last song to make the cut on Purple Rain is “Take Me With U” , a sparkling pop confection that Prince recorded in late January 1984 but not included on the album until a few months later. The song was intended for Apollonia 6 , the Purple Rain companion album written and performed by Prince with vocals by the all-female trio, including leading lady Apollonia Kotero, featured in the movie. Prince realized that he needed a strong pop tune for Purple Rain , so only a few months prior to the album’s released he cut sections of “Computer Blue” and “Let’s Go Crazy” to make room. The track is ostensibly a duet with Kotero, although her voice is actually a blend with Lisa Coleman, who sang the guide vocal on Prince’s original recording, along with Jill Jones. “Take Me With U” appears in the film during one of its happier sequences, as Prince drives his new lady friend (fresh from her Lake Minnetonka purification) around the Minnesota countryside on his purple motorcycle. Released as the album’s fifth and final single in late January 1985, the track reached #25 in the US.

A complete solo recording, “The Beautiful Ones” is a breathtaking rock ballad with one of Prince’s greatest vocal performances, a delicate falsetto that erupts into wildly impassioned screams during the fiery climax. It’s followed by the much-abbreviated “Computer Blue” , a wicked dose of funk that grew out of a jam session with the Revolution and includes a stunningly beautiful guitar solo based on the recurring “Father’s Song” motif. It blends right into the propulsively sexual “Darling Nikki” , a solo recording by Prince about a one-night tryst that caused a frenzy of pearl-clutching from the likes of Tipper Gore for its supposedly pornogrpahic lyrics (which by today’s standards, or even by the standards of some of Prince’s earlier material, are actually fairly tame).

Prince’s scorchingly bitter masterpiece “When Doves Cry” was the final track recorded for Purple Rain , a wholly solo performance laid down at Sunset Studios on 1 March 1984, only 11 weeks prior to it being released as the project’s first single. “When Doves Cry” is an exercise in minimalism with no bass line at all, and from the 0:36 point to 1:07 — when a slithery keyboard riff appears — the only instrument backing Prince’s taut vocal is the Linn drum machine. The tension builds in a slow boil of barely controlled desperation and anguish until finally erupting into a catharsis of blazing guitar and brain-searing screams. Prince twists the atmosphere of sexual tension tighter and tighter as the song grooves towards its sonically innovative finale of slippery keyboards and shimmering vocal harmonies.

“When Doves Cry” is 5:54 of gripping melodrama, a stunning display of emotional and musical dexterity that remains arguably Prince’s crowning artistic achievement. Helped by its visually striking video that introduced the Revolution to a wider audience and acted as an incredibly effective trailer for the upcoming film, it became the biggest hit of Prince’s career, logging five weeks at number one. “When Doves Cry” was the fuel that launched Purple Rain to the meteoric success that forever changed Prince’s life and career, and its impact rippled through the music industry in massive waves still being felt today.

“I Would Die 4 U” , a tightly-wound barrage of synths over a kinetic rhythm, segues right into “Baby I’m a Star on the album as well as in the film. They were also performed back-to-back on the Purple Rain tour, and over time the two songs have become intrinsically linked. They are the two oldest compositions on the album, dating from at least as far back as 1981, and both were recorded live with the Revolution in August 1983 during the same performance at First Avenue in Minneapolis that yielded the album’s title track. Released as the album’s fourth single, “I Would Die 4 U” reached #8 in early February 1985. “Baby I’m a Star” is a hard-charging funk raver, a bold declaration of Prince’s self-confidence that became a showstopper in the film and when performed live. Even when it was written, Prince obviously had no doubt that he would capture the massive success that he sought, and of course he was right.

“Purple Rain” itself is, of course, an epic that demonstrates the true power of rock ‘n’ roll at its emotional best like few other recordings in history. “Purple Rain” is a magnificent anthem, an electric hymn that remains as wrenching and potent as ever. This is the stuff of rock ‘n’ roll dreams, with a stunning vocal drenched in genuine longing and spiritual intensity, a chorus that will get an entire arena singing along and waving their arms in endless moments of the kind of unforgettable human connection that only music can provide, and that soaring, ferocious guitar solo that pierces straight to the heart no matter how many times it’s played. “Purple Rain” is Prince defined, an unparallelled talent blazing across the sky in a spectacular flash of purple fire that eventually flickered, burned out and was quenched by the very humanity and vulnerability that made a song like this possible in the first place.

Pure, raw, authentic, unmatched… “Purple Rain” is a song for the ages. In the liner notes, Lisa Coleman says of the recording of “Purple Rain”: “Each person had a specific role in the production of his or her part. It was like dancing together… We were at our best, and like a test of a good dance, we could slow dance really well.” Indeed they could.

While long-time fans know every moment of the Purple Rain album by heart thanks to endless listens over three decades, the big draw of the deluxe reissue for most is the second disc, the collection of previously unreleased studio material drawn from around the same time period as the album itself. Given the excitement generated by the release on last year’s hits compilation 4Ever of “Moonbeam Levels”, a much beloved 1999 -era outtake that has been circulating on bootlegs since the ‘80s, it’s hardly a surprise that the anticipation among fans for an entire disc from the Vault has been feverish.

It’s immediately clear upon listening to Disc Two that this is not in any way representative of a careful mining of Prince’s Vault or a comprehensive archival project covering the Purple Rain era with any great substance or depth. That said, anything different would have been shocking. The legal turmoil surrounding the disposition of Prince’s music is still ongoing and it will be years before these complicated contractual issues are completely resolved, and a competent team of experts can be assembled and charged with the vast task of managing Prince’s recorded archives, cataloging, restoring, and compiling them into the type of top-tier release that his music demands and fans should expect.

These songs, while clearly released in collaboration with Prince’s estate since the reissue is labeled NPG Records along with Warner Bros. and the family members are thanked in the credits, do not in any way represent the cream of the Vault. There is little doubt that these are recordings that Warner Bros. had in their possession, for which there could be numerous reasons. It seems highly likely, given the song selection, some of the versions used and some of the key tracks circulating among collectors that were omitted, that the sources for these songs are not original masters.

Despite this, Bernie Grundman has them sounding absolutely fantastic. Prince had nothing to do with their selection or compilation, and it seems highly unlikely that he ever would have approved their release. That said, given its status as the best that could be done under the current set of realities, Warner Bros. and the team behind this set did a superb job presenting a very good single disc of outtakes with what they had to work with. And let’s face it — the official release of ANY unreleased Prince track from the Vault is cause for celebration. A couple tracks are clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel, although nothing on the disc is without value. It’s an odd assortment of songs, but still deeply fascinating from start to finish, and there are moments of absolute purple ecstasy.

The disc opens with “The Dance Electric” , an 11-plus minute funk workout that Prince eventually donated to his longtime associate André Cymone, who released his version — essentially Prince’s solo recording with Cymone replacing his vocal — as the first single from his 1985 album A.C. . It reached the Top 10 on the R&B chart but was ignored by Top 40 radio. Unfortunately the version here is missing the razor-sharp guitar solos slicing through the hot funk and Wendy & Lisa’s backing vocals which are present on the version that has been circulating on bootlegs for years — presumable because either Warner Bros. didn’t have access to that mix (most likely), or because those parts were added later, which would take it too far out of the Purple Rain time period. The version included here feels naked in comparison, yet it’s still a smokin’ track, a heavily rhythmic showcase for Prince’s enormous gifts working the Linn LM-1 Drum Computer.

On 27 February 1984, three days before recording “When Doves Cry”, Prince laid down another solo recording, “Love and Sex” , in a single day. Prince delivers a manic, throat-shredding vocal over hyper-jittery funk layered with synths and multi-tracked vocals. “Love is Sex” is more a groove than a fully-realized song, but is carried by Prince’s irrepressible energy. Unlike most multi-instrumentalists who play most (or all) of their own stuff, Prince manages to inject the excitement and chemistry of a tight-ass band performance into a solo recording.

To make room for a late addition to Purple Rain , “Take Me With U”, Prince took the axe once again to a song that had already been edited multiple times, “Computer Blue” . Perhaps the single most exciting track included on Disc Two, the 12-minute “hallway speech” version of “Computer Blue” is something fans have been yearning to hear in pristine sound quality for many years. They finally can. This full version of the song renders the album version to the equivalent status of a horribly butchered single edit. The official track is a malnourished snippet compared to the full cosmic funk glory exhibited here. As with the full version of “Let’s Go Crazy” on Disc Three, this is the version of “Computer Blue” that should have been on the album (and of course that would have required a 2-LP set).

This is Prince at his electrifying best, with some key assists from Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin. “Computer Blue” rocks and funks and seethes and erupts, all the while containing a stunningly gorgeous middle section based around the guitar solo using the “Father’s Song” melody featured so prominently in the film. Fans who have not heard the bootleg of this mix that has been bouncing around the interwebs for many years are going to be blown away when they hear this. It’s interesting that Warner Bros. used the fan vernacular “hallway speech” label as part of the official title. It’s one of several examples of the keen awareness exhibited by the set’s creative team (led by Michael Howe) of just exactly what tracks have been bootlegged and how fans feel about them and discuss them.

The same awareness is shown with the ballad “Electric Intercourse” , on which the producers specify as the “Studio Version”, knowing that a live recording of the song has been bootlegged endlessly for many years. This studio recording, though, is one of the set’s great revelations. It’s a stunning vocal, with Prince ending each ascending falsetto line of verse with a quavering layered effect that’s strange and enchanting. Unlike most of the selections on Disc Two, “Electric Intercourse” was a serious contender for inclusion on Purple Rain , and the basic track was recorded during the same performance on 3 August 1983 at First Avenue in Minneapolis (the famed club depicted in the film) as “I Would Die 4 U”, “Baby I’m a Star” and “Purple Rain”.

The song was ultimately dropped in favor of an even stronger balled, “The Beautiful Ones”. Prince undoubtedly made the right choice as “The Beautiful Ones” is clearly the superior song (and it works better in the film), but “Electric Intercourse” has a unique vibe of surreal sexuality. Had Purple Rain been a double album (not likely given the risk Warner Bros. was already taking with the money poured into the film, and also given the fact that Prince’s last release 1999 was a double album), then there might have been a place for it. As it is, the studio version “Electric Intercourse” has languished, gathering dust, for 33 years until being unearthed for his project. It’s emergence is love overdue.

”Our Destiny/Roadhouse Garden” is presented as a two-song suite, although they really don’t fit together particularly well. It seems an odd pairing. “Our Destiny” is a dreamy pop song with vocals by Lisa Coleman (Jill Jones also recorded a gorgeous version). It’s lovely, and yet feels underdeveloped despite a shimmery string arrangement, part of which would later be recycled on the “The Ladder” for Around the World in a Day . Better is part two, “Roadhouse Garden”, a trippy pop song that’s a solo recording by Prince (with some added vocals by Wendy & Lisa). Both tracks were recorded long after Purple Rain was finished, so their inclusion here is somewhat of a mystery as they fit stylistically and chronologically more with Around the World in a Day . Also, the merging of the two songs (already so awkward that it’s hard to imagine Prince would ever have considered them releasing them in such a fashion) is botched — there is an audible click at the 2:53 point as the tracks transition.

Amazement and Frustration

Opening with a banshee wail of sexual frustration, “Possessed” is a James Brown-inspired eight-minute electro-charged funk jam that Prince and the Revolution often performed on the Purple Rain tour. Although a snippet of the song was used in the film, there was clearly no room for “Possessed” on the album, although it would have been a logical addition had Purple Rain been stretched to LPs. As it is, “Possessed” has been bootlegged but otherwise has languished in obscurity for three decades. It’s a treat for Prince fans to finally have this gem in outstanding sound quality, given the generally sound-quality of the versions circulating. An earlier version with the Revolution was recorded during the summer of 1983, but the recording here is a completely different Prince solo take from March 1984 (despite the erroneous claim in the liner notes that this is the 1983 version).

One of the most widely-bootlegged previously unreleased tracks in Prince’s catalog is undoubtedly ”Wonderful Ass” . A slinky pop/funk groove with pulsing riffs of synth and wickedly funky guitar, “Wonderful Ass” is undoubtedly one of the set’s highlights. Several different versions of the song are known to exist, although the song has never definitively been linked to any particular album. Prince’s basic track was recorded in 1983 and Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman later added guitar, keyboard and vocal parts, and the song has sometimes been included on bootlegs proclaiming to cover the 1985/86 period associated with The Dream Factory . Whether or not the song was ever considered for Purple Rain is unknown and its inclusion here is a bit questionable as it was at least partially recorded long after the album’s release, but it fits stylistically and it’s such a sexy funk nugget that it works quite well.

Unfortunately, the next two tracks are less impressive. ”Velvet Kitty Cat” and ”Katrina’s Paper Dolls are both simplistic solo recordings by Prince, recorded in early 1983 and presumably intended for the second Vanity 6 album (which was canceled after Vanity exited the Princely universe). Both are slight ditties of that type that Prince could churn out by the dozen. They sound like half hearted demos, and while they are cute enough, and might be appropriate for inclusion on a much more comprehensive and extensive box set, their presence here is one of the strongest indications that Warner Bros. compiled this disc with material readily available to them and that there was no extensive mining of Prince’s archives for the cream of the Purple Rain -era material for this project. All that said, even these bits of sonic fluff are fascinating in their way, and any unreleased studio material from Prince that sees the light of day can only be a good thing — just not at the expense of other, superior material that remains sealed away on a shelf in Minnesota.

Holidays in Princeworld were much like any other day, as Susan Rogers relates in the essay introducing the deluxe edition. She describes how, as Christmas Eve 1984 turned into Christmas Day, she and Prince stayed in the studio alone working on two tracks for his next album, “The Ladder” and “Tamborine”. It was much the same nearly a year prior, only in a much warmer locale, and Prince was in a sex-obsessed mood as shocking as that may seem. As New Year’s Eve 1983 — a year that saw Prince break through to a large new audience which major mainstream hits “1999”, “Little Red Corvette” and “Delirious” — wound into the first day of 1984, a year in which Prince would triumph on a level nobody could possibly have imagined, the musician was holed up at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles working with Rogers on ”We Can Fuck” (a day prior he had recorded perhaps his most famous b-side, the lustful classic “Erotic City”).

The track was later reworked for possible inclusion on Crystal Ball several years later, but wasn’t officially released until 1990’s Graffiti Bridge , re-purposed as “We Can Funk” and bedecked with an much more elaborate vocal arrangement and guest vocals by George Clinton. The raw scalding funk of this 1983/84 version is much leaner and edgier than the final release. The fiercely intense sequence from the 3:50 point until 6:10, as Prince ratchets up the simmering sexual tension inch by inch with an increasingly fierce vocal that finally builds into orgasmic screams of release, is as viscerally pulse-pounding as anything else Prince ever recorded. Unfortunately “We Can Fuck” is marred by finger-cymbals high in the mix that clink annoyingly for its entire ten-plus minutes, rendering it practically unlistenable in headphones unless you enjoy nails scratching burrows down the length of a chalkboard.

The final song on Disc Two is a melody that recurs throughout Purple Rain , most notably in the scene during which Prince’s character The Kid discovers a stash of sheet music written by his father in the film who, like Prince’s own father, was a musician. “Father’s Song” , also used as the key guitar solo melody in “Computer Blue”, is actually based on a melody written by Prince’s father John L. Nelson, who is granted co-writing credits. The studio recording presented here, over five minutes in length, is a revelation (although it seems doubtful that this oddly-mixed version was a final product). Beautiful and chilling, “Father’s Song” is pure heart and emotion. It’s Prince at his essence, revealing the beauty always lurking inside his music, the pain and passion.

Yes, there are a long list of higher quality and more historically important songs from the period that remain in the Vault and are sadly not on this collection, presumably because Warner Bros. does not yet have access to them. By and large, the disc of unreleased material is a blistering collection jammed full of classic Prince. If we are to go down the road of what-could-have-been, the possibilities are undeniably enticing, but right now that’s a pointless exercise. The lawyers must have their say, and then perhaps some serious work can be done on a truly comprehensive collection. There is certainly no shortage of material with which to work.

Disc Three contains all of the single edits, 12-inch extended remixes and B-sides for all the Purple Rain singles. The single edits are largely useless (particularly the butchery of “Let’s Go Crazy”) and redundant as nearly all of them were included just last fall on the 4Ever hits compilation. Still, it’s nice to have them all compiled in one place, and the disc includes such lesser-known tunes as the full version of the blues-rocker “Another Lonely Christmas”, the b-side to “I Would Die 4 U”, as well as the lovely eight-minute instrumental “God (Love Theme From Purple Rain)”, a song heard in the film and previously only available on the U.K. pressing of the “Purple Rain” 12 inch vinyl single. Also welcome are two of Prince’s most beloved b-sides, “17 Days” and “Erotic City”. Another gem that might be only known to die-hard is the ten-minute extended 12-inch single version of “I Would Die 4 U”, snipped from an even longer 30-minute jam recorded live during a rehearsal session in the fall of 1984.

Watching the DVD, filmed live in Syracuse in March 1985 as the long Purple Rain tour was winding toward its conclusions, transports us fully back into a singular universe, one that only Prince could have created. Rock, funk, sex, big hair and ruffled shirts, imagery of flowers and doves and artsy masks — the imagery associated with the album is as iconic as everything else, and helps fill in the colors on a cultural tsunami that steamrolled 1984. The performance itself is electrifying, the Revolution a tightly-focused unit rehearsed to a fine funk/rock machine by the always-perfectionist Prince. The man himself delivers a blazing performance. Watching him here in his youth, his fire, the pure intensity and audacity of his stage presence, performing one powerhouse song after another, is a sharp reminder of how amazing he truly was at his best. Yeah, the video is a little grainy, but the sound is terrific.

The packing on the set is another area where frustration battles with absolute delight. The deluxe edition comes in a cheap four-panel digipak from which the discs easily fall out. The essay written by the great Susan Rogers to introduce the set, one of the true unsung heroes in Prince’s career, is fantastic. Rogers was the engineer on the majority of Prince’s most important albums, and she worked with him closely on Purple Rain . The commentary by each member of the Revolution for each track of the main album is also excellent reading — informative, funny, candid and poignant.

That said, it would have been nice to have more information on each previously unreleased track in the liner notes — some commentary from Rogers, for instance. The credits for these tracks are also riddled with inaccuracies, including wrong recording dates and credits for who appears on a song. Two examples: “We Can Fuck” is listed as a solo Prince recording with vocal and musical contributions by Wendy & Lisa, but it’s clear that Jonathan Melvoin plays the finger cymbals and oud, and the backing vocals sound more like Jill Jones. The recording date for “Possessed” was March 1984, not May 1983 as the booklet indicates.

The most unforgivable lapse in quality control (apart from Josh Welton’s ghastly sonic butchery on Disc One) are the glitches in the music, of which there are several. There is an inexcusable drop-out at the beginning of the extended remix of “Erotic City” that is a serious blot on Disc Three, as is the botched edit on “Our Destiny”/”Roadhouse Garden” and an error at the 3:33 point on the extended “Computer Blue” that is so obvious it’s hard to imagine how it was not corrected before release. These type of lapses are inexcusable given the stature of the album and the artist, and the fact that this is the first major archival project since Prince’s death. The lack of attention to detail on these factual and sonic errors is stunning.

The bottom line on the deluxe reissue of Purple Rain — while we couldn’t have expected a truly comprehensive collection (yet), this is simply just not good enough. It’s a thin layer of asphalt on a massive pothole of neglect. There seems to be a prevailing attitude among some that we’re lucky to get anything and we should be satisfied just to have something . And yet — why should Prince’s catalog remain the single most shamefully neglected by any major artist in pop rock history?

Millions of fans the world over have devoted enormous time, money, energy and emotion into Prince and his music, and in particular Purple Rain . Too many millions of records and singles and CDs bought and played, too many concert memories to cherish, too many late night viewings of Purple Rain and getting choked up at the end during that always-emotional performance of the title song. Too many posters on walls, magazines, t-shirts, staying up for hours watching MTV waiting for “When Doves Cry” or “Little Red Corvette” in an era that didn’t have the instant gratification of YouTube or being two smart-phone clicks away from any video you want to watch, instantly. Too much bonding with other fans, many of whom, like Prince himself, are now gone, and many more will be gone before experiencing their musical equivalent of nirvana, a full exploration of the Vault. Too many hours tracking down any recorded tidbit no matter how poor the quality and dreaming of hearing it in good sound, too many years spent wishing that somehow, someway the doors would be opened. Does any of that mean anything? The music, Prince’s legacy, the fans, and history all deserve much, much better.

Hopefully once the estate gets settled and all the lawyers and family members have hammered out the best way to make their money, and the label issues are resolved — and it will happen eventually, there is simply too much money on the line — we will get a truly definitive version but it may be years down the line. Miles Davis’ exhaustive sets via Columbia, or the phenomenal Bob Dylan Bootleg Series archival releases, are the standard to which Prince’s archival released should be held. These collections are exquisitely compiled in stunning audio clarity with careful research undertaken and presented in superb packaging… while Prince fans get Josh Welton’s take on Purple Rain and a disc full of the leavings that Warner Bros’ was able to cobble together. The fact that these previously unreleased tracks are still largely brilliant is a testament to Prince’s extraordinary talent and the quality of what he recorded during this era, yet as of now it’s still an era that remains largely unexcavated and preserved. That must change, and hopefully it will.

Amazement and frustration — two feelings Prince fans know well. Prince is gone, and despite his own ambivalence about his recorded past, care must be taken to preserve and present his back catalog with the highest standards in the industry. This deluxe reissue is worth picking up for the unreleased tracks, but in the end it’s just a sad, small gesture that does little to reflect the greatness and importance of Purple Rain and what that album represents. Is this truly the “Ultimate Collector’s Edition of Purple Rain ” as the hype sticker on the package indicates? Let’s hope not. Maybe someday… words that are somewhat of a mantra for Prince fans.

Publish with PopMatters

PopMatters Seeks Book Critics and Essayists

PopMatters Seeks Book Critics and Essayists

Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered – FILM Winter 2023-24

Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered – FILM Winter 2023-24

Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered – MUSIC Winter 2023-24

Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered – MUSIC Winter 2023-24

Submit an Essay, Review, Interview, or List to PopMatters

Submit an Essay, Review, Interview, or List to PopMatters

PopMatters Seeks Music Writers

PopMatters Seeks Music Writers

Purple Rain

  • Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls
  • Recorded 1983
  • Songs (Prince)
  • Songs (Prince and the Revolution)
  • Released Songs (Prince)

Navigation menu

  • View source

Personal tools

  • Biographies
  • History Calendar
  • Discography
  • A-Z Song list
  • Live Performances
  • Films & Videos
  • Publications
  • Chart History
  • What links here
  • Related changes
  • Special pages
  • Printable version
  • Permanent link
  • Page information

admin tools

  • Recent changes

Powered by MediaWiki

  • This page was last modified on 28 January 2024, at 17:07.
  • Content is available under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported unless otherwise noted.
  • Privacy policy
  • About Prince Vault
  • Disclaimers

an image, when javascript is unavailable

Prince’s Biggest Night: The Revolution Remember the 1985 Syracuse Concert and the ‘Purple Rain’ Tour

By Jem Aswad

Executive Editor, Music

  • SZA to Release Leaked Songs as Deluxe Edition of ‘SOS,’ Will Remake Delayed ‘Lana’ LP ‘From Scratch’ 22 hours ago
  • Diddy’s Lawyer Speaks Out After Mogul’s Homes Raided in Sex Trafficking Investigation: ‘Witch Hunt Based on Meritless Accusations’ 2 days ago
  • U.S Recorded Music Revenue Grew by 8% in 2023, Per RIAA Annual Report, but Layoffs and Slowing Growth Are Cause for Concern   2 days ago

Price and the Revolution

Prince ’s musical career had many peaks, but he was most on top of the world — literally — on March 30, 1985, when he and the Revolution played a concert at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, New York that was broadcast all over the planet in the first global telecast of its kind.

Even with the “Purple Rain” album, film and tour at the peak of their Oscar, Grammy and chart popularity, and the 100-date tour in support of both nearing its end, Prince was never one to stay in the same place for long. By that date, he and the Revolution had completed their next album, “Around the World in a Day,” and were already working on the next one (“Parade”), and would embark for the South of France to shoot their next feature film, “Under the Cherry Moon,” within a few weeks. Thus, he’d decided to end a tour that easily could have gone on for another few months at least, and instead of touring Europe and Japan, they decided to make that concert a global telecast.

The concert, which has been given the deluxe boxed-set treatment, captures the band in peak form and is a vivid documentary not just of the stunning “Purple Rain” tour, but also of Prince’s once-in-a-generation artistry. Just 26 at the time, he was already at the peak of his powers as a singer, musician and performer: He’d sing, played a virtuoso-level solo on guitar or piano, then jump up, do a split, break into some dancing that would rival Michael Jackson and then lead the band through a complicated musical passage — all in four-inch heels.

After the broadcast, the concert — simply titled “Prince and the Revolution: Live” — was available on VHS during the 1980s but dropped from view after Prince, in his tireless effort to own his creative work, pulled it off of the market. It was reissued in 2017 as part of the “Purple Rain” anniversary boxed set, but finally, some 37 years later, it’s truly getting its moment in the sun again. Sony Legacy has remastered, rescanned, restored, color-corrected, repackaged and re-whatever’ed it as a stand-alone album, boxed LP/CD/Blu-ray set with selectable stereo, 5.1 surround, Dolby Atmos sound, spatial audio and whatnot that will show generations past, present and future what all the fuss was about.

As part of Variety ‘s series of articles published on Prince’s birthday , we spoke with the Revolution’s Bobby Z (who’d played with Prince since 1976), Lisa Coleman (since 1980), Wendy Melvoin (since 1983) about the tour and the show. They’ve all been active in the years since they left Prince’s band in 1986: Bobby with production and a number of musical projects, Wendy and Lisa as Emmy-winning film and television composers (currently at work on the second seasons of both “Cruel Summer” and “Firefly Lane”), and all three — with bassist Brown Mark and keyboardist Matt Fink — as the Revolution, which toured from 2017 until the pandemic began, and may again, although as you’ll see below, they have mixed feelings about it.

But for this conversation, they went back to that stage at Syracuse’s Carrier Dome, just days from the end of the “Purple Rain” tour.

Do you consider this concert the peak of the Revolution’s career?

Bobby : It was definitely a pinnacle. If you look at the whole “Purple Rain” experience — rehearsing and recording the album, rehearsing and shooting the movie, then the tour itself — it’s probably one of the longest periods of time that Prince spent on one project. Pressure and time, with the right situation and ingredients, created the diamond: the right music and, after Wendy’s arrival, the right band. You know, bands are living, breathing things, and she was the final puzzle piece that gave it the right chemistry and momentum, which we still have to this day.

And here, we were close to the end of the whole “Purple Rain” experience, which gives it an extra bounce. The [satellite broadcast] was pretty new stuff back then, and it created even more excitement, because it was this live TV event. It happened to be one of the better shows on the tour, and the [recording] really, really captures it. I mean, it was it was really something special — by Syracuse, he was determined to end this thing on a high note.

Wendy : It was intense . There was a lot of pressure not to make any mistakes, and Prince really played by more rules than he normally would have that night: There wasn’t any experimenting or long grooves or new arrangements, like we usually would do, and there weren’t any expletives. The shows had had a life of their own up until that point, but we knew that we had a certain amount of time to get the show in and out: You could tell Prince was really locked into keeping it within the confines of … how long was it? Just under two hours? It’s an unusually tight and disciplined set; we cut off all extra fat in order to keep it to that time. We were really fortunate that we had been on the road for as long as we had. We had to really play by the “Purple Rain” playbook that night and give it 200%.

Lisa : Because it was on camera and highly pressurized, it had a different feeling than the rest of this tour. Other shows were probably more authentic in a way, and looser, even though even though we were always really tight. It’s concise — which is a kind of funny word to use, because you never knew what was going to happen in our shows. He could say “Give me one, gimme two, gimme 25!” or things like that, when he would show off the band and, you know, how he could spin us around on his finger and do all his magic tricks.

And once this show was over, there were really only a few left before the [final concert of the tour at Miami’s] Orange Bowl. Those last few shows were more relaxed and there was a lot more improvising, and a lot more songs from “Around the World in a Day” dropped into the set.

Wendy : We were already onto a whole new thing. And one of the reasons why that show was televised is because Prince was tired of the material and basically playing the movie every night. He wasn’t one to linger, you know what I mean? And I know that fans in Europe were really bummed that we weren’t gonna go over and tour, and that’s why we did this pay per view live performance worldwide. But he was really anxious to get on to the next project.

There was actually quite a bit of time between the album being released late in June, and the film a month later, and the tour beginning in November. What were those early shows like?

Bobby : I don’t know that there’s any other rock and roll movie like “Purple Rain” — for a brief time, we were kind of movie stars ( laughs ), and that kind of gave the tour a different thing. Having all that under our belts and then going on tour definitely made it surreal — actually bringing this music to people was just incredible. And he was just sensational: He was moving, dancing, playing like nobody had ever done before. That’s why we’re still talking about Prince to this day, and that’s why Sony is so excited about this show, because you’ve got to see it to believe it.

Wendy : It was a trip . At the first gig in Detroit, the audience was insane — onstage, [your ears] were almost distorting from how crazy the audience was, in anticipation for the show to start. And we suddenly we had bodyguards and limousines — it was totally different than driving yourself to rehearsal and eating White Castle. But that’s something I think Prince loved about living in Minnesota, it kind of kept him grounded. He didn’t have to compete with being the biggest and baddest in town — he was the biggest and baddest in town, there was no one who could come close. He owned that city.

Lisa : That’s true. In L.A. and New York, he was constantly showing up at hotspots and there were other hot celebrities and artists there as well, and I think that competition could get tiring for him sometimes — although he loved the adrenaline of trying to kick somebody’s ass, whether it’s “I can dress better than you” or “I can play better than you” or “I can smell better than you.” (Laughter)

Didn’t you have Springsteen and Madonna onstage at the same time at one of the L.A. shows?

Wendy : Yeah, a lot of people came up: Sting, Bruce, Madonna, guys from the Stones. But he could be terrible: Sometimes his competition was so maniacal. Like when Sting came onstage, Prince put the bass in his hands and then he started leading us through all this fancy stuff that we knew, and Sting was like [throws hands up in confusion] . Prince kind of relished the idea that Sting couldn’t do that. And it was just like, why are you doing that to poor Sting?

Did he do things like that often?

Wendy : Let’s just say you’re driving in a car and everybody’s singing at the top of their lungs. He’d be the guy that would turn the radio off just to hear you go “WAAAH!”

Lisa : Yeah. Yes, he did seem to enjoy making people feel uncomfortable, or stupid.

Wendy : I don’t know if he was trying to make them feel dumb. I think he just wanted to rattle people.

Lisa : Well, it worked.

Wendy : He rattled us all!

It’s hard to think of another tour like “Purple Rain,” with the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy of the film coming alive onstage. Did things change? Did he change?

Lisa : Yeah. It felt really different for us. I mean, speaking for the band — I had been there since “Dirty Mind” and we did everything together: We were in the same cars, the same buses, the same hotels. And then with “Purple Rain”…

Wendy : He distanced himself.

Lisa : I mean, I don’t know if it was him intentionally. I think that just the situation with management, everybody felt like he needed to be… He was the racehorse and needed more security and to travel separately and all that stuff. So it affected our relationship — it was weird to see him only at soundcheck, and not all of us having just gotten off the same plane and, you know, feeling all funky at the same time. Just normal things like that. It had to have affected him.

Bobby : As it got bigger and bigger and bigger, people had an agenda and they would take him away: “I need you for this, I need you for that,” some of the biggest names in the world wanted to talk to him, and that definitely pulled him away. But something magical happened when we could get Prince alone, we could go back to how it was in the early days — even after I was in the band. He needed people that he could just see a movie with or laugh with or goof around with, and he definitely came down to earth. But during this time, I mean, this guy was on top of the world — in a way that maybe no one will ever be again.

Was it still fun?

Bobby : You know, nothing felt better than a good show — and nothing worse than a bad show. You’re just trying to make this guy happy every night, and the “Purple Rain” tour had a really good success rate: There were very few mistakes, even though technology was being pushed to the limit — and let’s just pause for a second and talk about Roy Bennett’s set design and lighting and the innovation that he brought to the stage, with elevators and tunnels underneath the stage and all that technology. But Prince was so disciplined as a bandleader and as a musician, because no matter how loud it was, he heard everybody onstage — every note, everything, so it was very festive at the end of a good show.

We had reached the mountaintop, but a tour like that is exhausting: The travel, and it’s a tremendous amount of pressure to perform on that level. It can be wearing on you, mentally and physically. It’s not a lighthearted affair, at all. And remember, for me, it started in 1976 — so after 10 years, the intensity of reaching that pinnacle was beyond belief. But yes, I was happy when it was over.

Wendy : It was always fun and it was always definitely exciting. But you needed to keep your shit together — there was no fucking around on tour. You had to show up for work. You couldn’t be fucked up, you couldn’t be entitled or overly privileged. You’re doing your job. It was hard core. And we loved every second of it.

The shows you played as the Revolution , after Prince passed, were amazing and so emotional. What’s the status of the band?

Wendy : Well, we were on and off the road for a couple of years after he passed away — we had our last show literally the day before the world shut down. We’ve talked about maybe picking it back up, but we’re sort of having second thoughts on what the right way to do it would be, and how to do it, and when. It’s all kind of up in the air right now.

We’re missing our main guy — we’re missing our leader, so it’s hard. It ends up being a sort of… I guess I would say an insatiable mourning period. The beast doesn’t get satisfied. So it can be very difficult emotionally to do that every night, because everybody wants to relive it. The sadness always inevitably plays a big part in it, and that can be really difficult on us, because each one of us are grieving in different ways, and when we collectively do that, we can become like this grieving monster. I mean, there’s joy in celebrating it, and we love it and the audience eats it up. But you’ve got to question whether it’s sustainable, and some days I wonder if it is? We’ve talked ad nauseam about whether or not it’s healthy. We love playing and the connection with the audience is amazing. But it’s bittersweet, and sometimes the bitter just outweighs the sweet.

Anything more you’d like to say?

Lisa : This recording is a chance for fans that knew it or who even were there to look back and say, “I’m not crazy — it really was that amazing,” because your memory might have embellished or forgotten things. When I was watching, I was really like, “Wow, it’s amazing.”

Wendy : Prince fans already have had this material for a long time, so what I hope happens is that Sony can reach a new audience and turn a new generation on to what it’s like to be that kind of performer, with his kind of discipline and his kind of dedication — and how tough and badass Prince actually was, and what it took for him to get from the North side of Minneapolis to performing that show in Syracuse. It took an incredible amount of focus and dedication, and he did exactly what he’d said he was going to do.

Bobby : Everybody has dreams. But to have someone say them right in front of you, and then deliver on them and take you with him, is pretty, pretty amazing. I really am grateful that he saved me from a normal life.

More From Our Brands

Sean combs’ accused ‘mule’ arrested at miami airport on cocaine and marijuana charges, this new yacht will be the only 92-footer that can accommodate large choppers, fanatics’ travis scott collab adds to its tangled celebrity web, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, constellation: noomi rapace weighs in on finale’s startling closing image — plus, could there be a season 2, verify it's you, please log in.

Quantcast

The Music Universe

PBS airing Prince and the Revolution Purple Rain Tour

Buddy Iahn

  • May 27, 2022
  • Pop , Radio/TV/Film/Broadway

Iconic performance premieres June 4th

James Brown had the Apollo. Jimi Hendrix had Monterey Pop. And Prince had Syracuse, New York’s Carrier Dome — the site of his March 30, 1985 Purple Rain Tour performance that was beamed to millions live via satellite and captured for posterity as a Grammy Award-nominated concert film. It has since gone down in history as one of the most iconic live recordings in pop and rock history. Now, for the first time, this powerful performance by Prince and The Revolution has been entirely remixed from the original 2-inch multi-track master reels by engineer Chris James and re-mastered by Bernie Grundman, and the picture improved significantly. Prince and the Revolution: The Purple Rain Tour is part of special programming premiering on PBS stations beginning Saturday, June 4th.

The program features smash hits from the seminal Prince albums Purple Rain and 1999 , including “Let’s Go Crazy,” “1999,” “Little Red Corvette,” “When Doves Cry,” and a mind-bending 18+ minute version of “Purple Rain.”

PBS special programming invites viewers to experience the worlds of science, history, nature and public affairs; hear diverse viewpoints; and take front-row seats to world-class drama and performances.

Additionally, The Prince Estate, in partnership with Legacy Recordings will release Prince and The Revolution: Live on June 3rd. The completely remastered and digitally enhanced album will be available for the first time as a 2 CD/Blu-ray set, 3 LP set and limited edition Collector’s Edition box  available exclusively from the Official Prince Store.

In conjunction with the physical formats, Prince and The Revolution: Live is also the first Prince release to be made available to supporting digital streaming platforms in spatial audio, as it will be delivered in Dolby Atmos.

With this new audio-visually enhanced release of Prince and The Revolution: Live , both longtime Prince fans and new generations of music lovers are invited to experience the groundbreaking, mesmerizing, creative tour-de-force that Prince brought to the stage with The Revolution during the Purple Rain Tour in an entirely new and immersive way.

Share this:

Buddy Iahn

Buddy Iahn founded The Music Universe when he decided to juxtapose his love of web design and music. As a lifelong drummer, he decided to take a hiatus from playing music to report it. The website began as a fun project in 2013 to one of the top independent news sites. Email: [email protected]

Related Posts

Ateez

Grammy Museum announces K-pop pop-up

  • March 27, 2024

Aespa: World Tour

Aaespa’s first world tour hits cinemas

Camila Cabello

Camila Cabello shares ‘I Luv It’ with Playboi Carti

Holding the Music in Your Hands ®

Thanks for being a part of the SDE community.

Remember Me

Forgot password?

Don't have an account? Sign up!

purple rain tour lp

Prince and the Revolution Live / new official box set

Classic syracuse, ny gig remixed & restored.

By Paul Sinclair

purple rain tour lp

Prince and The Revolution’s 30 March 1985 live concert from the Carrier Dome, Syracuse – which was part of his 1985 Purple Rain tour – will be issued as a standalone release in June.

The spectacular two-hour set was beamed into millions of homes via satellite at the time and features a ridiculously great setlist, including classic hits such as ‘Let’s Go Crazy’, ‘1999’, ‘Little Red Corvette’, ‘When Doves Cry’, ‘Purple Rain’, ‘I Would Die 4 U’; superb B-sides like ‘Irresistible Bitch’ and ‘How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore’; and choice album cuts. In fact, Prince plays the whole of Purple Rain , with the concert ending with side two of that 1984 in sequence.

This performance was issued, in full, on DVD as part of Warner Music’s four-disc deluxe edition of Purple Rain in 2017. That previous edition only offered stereo sound and reasonable, but not outstanding, visuals. Sony (who now have the rights) have gone to town on the new editions.

purple rain tour lp

The two formats are 2CD+blu-ray and a 3LP vinyl edition . The audio for both has been entirely remixed from the original two-inch multi-tracks . Obviously, the triple vinyl offers the newly remixed sound just in stereo but the blu-ray additionally delivers both Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround sound .

For the blu-ray, the picture is said to have been “newly restored” although since this wasn’t shot on film it remains to be seen how good this will actually look.

After the initially extortionate price-tag (in the UK, at least) on the Welcome 2 America box, it’s good to see some sensible pricing with this new release. The 2CD+blu-ray a tad over £20 in the UK and even the 3LP vinyl set a not unreasonable £42 . Not including a blu-ray with the vinyl set is a bit strange though, it has to be said.

Prince and The Revolution: Live  will be available on 3 June 2022, via Sony Music Catalog.

Compare prices and pre-order

purple rain tour lp

Prince and The Revolution

Live 2cd+blu-ray deluxe set.

purple rain tour lp

Live 3LP vinyl box

purple rain tour lp

Tracklisting

purple rain tour lp

Live Prince and the Revolution / 2CD+blu-ray

  • Let’s Go Crazy
  • Little Red Corvette
  • Take Me With U
  • Yankee Doodle
  • Do Me, Baby
  • Irresistible Bitch
  • How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore
  • Let’s Pretend We’re Married
  • International Lover
  • Computer Blue
  • Darling Nikki
  • The Beautiful Ones
  • When Doves Cry
  • I Would Die 4 U
  • Baby, I’m a Star
  • Purple Rain
  • Let’s Go Crazy
  • How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore
  • Let’s Pretend We’re Married
  • Baby I’m A Star

purple rain tour lp

Live Prince and the Revolution / 3LP

Sign up for the sde newsletter.

SuperDeluxeEdition.com  helps fans around the world discover physical music and discuss releases. To keep the site free, SDE participates in various affiliate programs, including Amazon and earns from qualifying purchases.

Related Content

purple rain tour lp

23 Jan 2024

Prince & The New Power Generation / Diamonds and Pearls Dolby Atmos Mix – reviewed

Spatial audio version assessed

purple rain tour lp

07 Nov 2023

Duane Tudahl on Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls

Prince archivist speaks to SDE

purple rain tour lp

27 Oct 2023

Prince / Diamonds and Pearls super deluxe edition reviewed

By Alexis Petridis

purple rain tour lp

12 Oct 2023

Prince / Diamonds and Pearls 7CD+blu-ray set – unboxed

Watch the unboxing video

85 Comments

Sign up for the sde newsletter.

IMAGES

  1. 'Purple Rain' outtakes: A track-by-track guide to the deluxe edition

    purple rain tour lp

  2. Purple Rain Exclusive Purple LP

    purple rain tour lp

  3. Remembering the Iconic 1984 Prince ''Purple Rain' Tour

    purple rain tour lp

  4. Remembering the Iconic 1984 Prince ''Purple Rain' Tour

    purple rain tour lp

  5. Remembering the Iconic 1984 Prince ''Purple Rain' Tour

    purple rain tour lp

  6. Prince & The Revolution

    purple rain tour lp

COMMENTS

  1. Purple Rain Tour

    Purple Rain Tour. (1984-85) Parade Tour. (1986) The Purple Rain Tour was a concert tour by American recording artist Prince and The Revolution following up on the success of his sixth studio album Purple Rain and his 1984 film Purple Rain. According to Spin, the tour sold over 1.7 million tickets.

  2. Prince's Epic 'Purple Rain' Tour: An Oral History

    In time for the upcoming deluxe reissue of the Purple Rain album - with accompanying bonus audio and video material - and the tour's inclusion on Rolling Stone's 50 Greatest Concerts of ...

  3. Prince Studio Albums

    Purple Rain is Prince's most iconic album. It was the most commercially and culturally impactful release of his career, and coupled with the film of the same name, it influenced the fashion and sound of the rest of the 1980s. ... Prince and the Revolution completed a massive Purple Rain Tour that spanned five months and included 98 different ...

  4. Prince And The Revolution

    The iconic Purple Rain tour. The legendary concert recorded live March 30, 1985 at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, NY. Exclusive 2 CD / 3 LP / Blu-Ray set remixed and remastered from the original multi-track masters. LPs pressed on red, purple and gold vinyl, Blu-Ray with digitally enhanced picture mixed in stereo, 5.1 Surround and Dolby Atmos.

  5. Purple Rain by Prince: The epic story of how it was made

    The raw erotic charge in the vocal. When it was released on May 16, 1984, When Doves Cry turned radio on its ear, flying up the charts to become a number one on the pop, R&B and dance charts. Mission accomplished. The Purple Rain soundtrack was conceived as a double album, with tracks from The Time and Apollonia 6.

  6. Revisiting Prince and The Revolution's 'Purple Rain' (1984)

    Happy 35th Anniversary to Prince's sixth studio album (and soundtrack to the film) Purple Rain, originally released June 25, 1984. "Dearly Beloved…." With these two words, a new era of pop funk was ushered in. Prince might as well be saying, "We are gathered here today to shift the cultural landscape," for with Purple Rain—the film and its counterpart album—Prince well and ...

  7. November 1984: Prince Launches PURPLE RAIN Tour in Detroit

    Thursday, November 4, 2021. 80s R&B Rock Soul Rock. Prince and The Revolution. It was November 4, 1984, when Prince kicked off his massive Purple Rain tour. With both the album and the movie topping the charts for weeks on end, anticipation to see the songs brought to life was through the roof, and well into the stratosphere.

  8. Purple Rain: How Prince Stormed His Way To Superstardom With One Album

    Purple Rain: How Prince Stormed His Way To Superstardom With One Album - Dig! Jason Draper. 25 June 2021. When Prince took his 1999 album on the road, he dubbed it the "Triple Threat Tour". Named in reference to the line-up, which saw Prince side projects Vanity 6 and The Time perform support slots before his own headline appearances, its ...

  9. Purple Rain (album)

    Purple Rain is the sixth studio album by the American singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Prince.It was released on June 25, 1984, by Warner Bros. Records as the soundtrack album to the 1984 film of the same name. Purple Rain was musically denser than Prince's previous albums, emphasizing full band performances, and multiple layers of guitars, keyboards, electronic ...

  10. Inside the Purple Rain Tour

    Purple Rain (the album) needs no introduction: a self-contained greatest hits and Prince's magnum opus - though 1999 and Sign O' The Times put up a good fight. On 1999, Prince honed his aesthetic - the music, the look, the stage presence all coalescing to make him an MTV staple. Prince's Purple Rain Tour ran from 4 November 1984 to 7 ...

  11. All Possibilities: The 'Purple Rain' Story : NPR

    All Possibilities: The 'Purple Rain' Story Though revered now, Prince's iconic 1984 film and album succeeded against daunting odds. Music critic and journalist Alan Light provides the details in ...

  12. Prince

    The story behind Prince's masterpiece Purple Rain. After years as the critic's choice, Prince's evolution to rock's leading man saw him score a hit album, blockbuster movie and record-breaking tour. Backed by his greatest ever band, Purple Rain heralded his reign as rock royalty. It was the night of 26 July 1984, and it seemed as if the ...

  13. Purple Rain Tour

    A 28-page tour book was also produced - Prince's first tour to publish one. Featuring publicity photos for both the album and the movie, the tour book was tantalisingly titled 1984-85 World Tour. Performances averaged 125 minutes and the songs were elaborately indulgent, the closer Purple Rain extended to near 20 minutes.

  14. Prince / The Revolution: Purple Rain Album Review

    With Purple Rain , Prince bursts forth from the ghetto created by mainstream radio and launches himself directly onto the Mt. Rushmore of American music. He plays rock better than rock musicians ...

  15. Purple Rain Exclusive Purple LP

    This Special Edition features the 2015 Paisley Park remastered audio pressed on 180g purple vinyl, available November 12 only through the official Prince Store and Minnesota-based retailer Target. Released in the summer of 1984, Purple Rain is Prince's most iconic album. It was the most commercially and culturally impactful release of his career, and coupled with the film of the same name ...

  16. Prince took Cleveland and the Midwest by storm on his 1984 Purple Rain Tour

    The tour, which followed the release of "Purple Rain," the blockbuster album and film, would cement Prince as one of the greatest rock stars of all time. ... As a whole, the "Purple Rain ...

  17. Purple Rain: The Story Behind Prince's Career-Defining Song

    Released as a single on 10 September 1984 in the UK (and 26 September in the US), Purple Rain's religious overtones were underscored by its B-side, God, a hymnal-like song which Prince would perform live during the Purple Rain tour. Throughout the demanding run of 98 shows, Prince sought transcendence on stage as he closed each night with his ...

  18. Prince's Classic Finally Expanded: The Deluxe 'Purple Rain' Reissue

    They were also performed back-to-back on the Purple Rain tour, and over time the two songs have become intrinsically linked. They are the two oldest compositions on the album, dating from at least ...

  19. Purple Rain

    Tour (Europe and Japan legs only) Purple Rain is the ninth and final track on Prince 's sixth album Purple Rain, the first album to be credited to Prince and the Revolution. Three months after the album's release, Purple Rain was released as the album's third single, available worldwide. The track is also featured in the movie Purple Rain.

  20. Prince and the Revolution: Live

    Prince and the Revolution: Live is a live concert video by Prince and the Revolution.Released after the Purple Rain Tour was complete, the video is a recording of the March 30, 1985 concert at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, New York.The concert was also broadcast live throughout Europe as the final act of the 15th "Rock Night", an all-night show of four concerts staged by West German public ...

  21. Prince's Revolution Talks 'Live' 1985 Syracuse Concert, 'Purple Rain'

    Even with the "Purple Rain" album, film and tour at the peak of their Oscar, Grammy and chart popularity, and the 100-date tour in support of both nearing its end, Prince was never one to stay ...

  22. PBS airing Prince and the Revolution Purple Rain Tour

    The program features smash hits from the seminal Prince albums Purple Rain and 1999, including "Let's Go Crazy," "1999," "Little Red Corvette," "When Doves Cry," and a mind-bending 18+ minute version of "Purple Rain.". PBS special programming invites viewers to experience the worlds of science, history, nature and public ...

  23. Prince and the Revolution Live / new official box set

    Prince and The Revolution's 30 March 1985 live concert from the Carrier Dome, Syracuse - which was part of his 1985 Purple Rain tour - will be issued as a standalone release in June.. The spectacular two-hour set was beamed into millions of homes via satellite at the time and features a ridiculously great setlist, including classic hits such as 'Let's Go Crazy', '1999 ...