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, you know, this weird, grinding, almost industrial feel to it. 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 despite limited attempts at imitating that, nothing that could capture it afterwards. Yeah, there's really never been - certainly there was nothing before that sounded like it. "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. 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. 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. 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? 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. I think that we look at Purple Rain now a little bit and think there was a sort of inevitability about Purple Rain. 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.īut still, it's astonishing when you think back. 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. It's kind of wild that the first single off of Purple Rain is, I think, maybe the most bizarre hit single ever. Now, Prince, around that time before Purple Rain, he had achieved some crossover with white audiences with 1999.
#Purple rain lyrics audio full#
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. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. The popular success of Purple Rain, Light says, confirmed him as a talented, disciplined visionary.Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title Let's Go Crazy Subtitle Prince and the Making of Purple Rain Author Alan Light 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. It was in this newly opened space that Purple Rain existed. " made visible the impact of MTV, transformed all kinds of possibilities, including the possibilities for much greater integration at the pop-radio level." "Really, it was Michael Jackson's triumph with Thriller that obviously transformed the scale of pop music in general," Light says. Prince faced daunting challenges in making the film - and in making a rock 'n' roll album, rather than another R&B record. Black music existed in a "post-disco isolated space" and rock 'n' roll in another.
The music world of the early '80s was heavily segregated, Light says. Music critic and journalist Alan Light provides the details in his new book, Let's Go Crazy. That's the story of Prince's iconic 1984 film Purple Rain. 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.
Prince celebrates his birthday and the release of Purple Rain at 1st Avenue in Minneapolis.
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