How we made Prince's Purple Rain
‘We recorded it in a jampacked Minneapolis club. It was sweaty and smoky and vibey as hell’
Lisa Coleman, keyboards
Being in Prince’s band was like getting in a sports car with a racing driver. Even though you felt a bit scared – why is he going so fast? – he could handle it, and it brought so much joy. I first met him in 1979. He was looking for a girl keyboard player and I happened to be one. One of my best friends got a job at Prince’s management agency. She called me about him, and I didn’t know who he was. I made a tape of myself playing a couple of songs and I flew to Minneapolis and he picked me up at the airport. We were both very shy, so it didn’t go well at first – but we ended up hitting it off.
The audition was pretty immediate. It was eight or nine at night when we got to his place. He told me there was a piano down the stairs, and I took that as a hint he wanted to hear me play. He came down a few minutes later and picked up a guitar. I was checking him out just as much as he was checking me out. He had a poster on his wall of Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born. I thought that was kind of young. Me being from LA and my father being a musician meant I was around the music business, but it was a different feeling with Prince. He had the vibe of living music – his house smelled like a recording studio.
It took a handful of years for us to work up to being that completely fabulous Purple Rain band, so tight and good. I think we lived up to the flamboyant image because we worked so hard. When Wendy Melvoin joined to play guitar, it made a big difference. I was happy because she was my girlfriend, and Prince was so excited – she was like a new kitten to him, the way that he was precious about her. You could feel a new beginning. I think he chose each of us for very simple reasons, not because we were virtuosos – although we were very good. There was another quality he needed to have around him: a blend of loyalty, a spirit of young hunger and a musical quality he didn’t have. Every one of us had something he didn’t have, even though he had it all.
Purple Rain was one of the songs we were working on before we decided what the film was going to be. At first he wasn’t sure Purple Rain was actually a Prince song.
It was kind of a country number and he gave it to Stevie Nicks, but she felt intimidated by it. So one day he decided to fool around with it at rehearsal. Wendy started hitting these big chords and 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. We played it for six hours straight and by the end of that day we had it mostly written and arranged.
In 1983, we performed at a benefit show at the First Avenue club in Minneapolis. This is where the song was recorded live, though at the time we didn’t know that was the plan. Prince was really excited and kept pumping us up: “We’re making history tonight.” It all makes sense now: if you’re going to record something, make sure you’re as badass as you can be. Don’t **** around.
It was Wendy’s first show. To have that be her anointing was a lot to live up to. But he was so supportive of her. He took her under his wing. He helped her relax and not be too nervous. We were unsure what was going to happen, but we hit the stage with such conviction that it didn’t really matter. The crowd were with us. It was hot, it was August, it was jampacked in the club. It was sweaty and smoky and vibey as hell.
Afterwards, I went into the studio in Los Angeles with Prince to work on it [the live recording had string overdubs added, and was edited from 13 minutes to 8 minutes 41 seconds]. I did the string arrangement – we didn’t hire session players, it was me calling my brother: “Can you get a couple of friends and come do some strings?” Prince made the decision to lose the third verse, making it more concise. He was completely right. The third verse didn’t really match the other two – it was a different spirit and it didn’t belong in the song.
Bobby Z, drums
In 1978, I was at Moon Sound Studios in Minneapolis, working with a different band. Prince was in Studio A making his first tape. It was dynamite, gunpowder. I heard it walking across the hallway one morning. I went in and I saw the afro.
I was working for his manager as a delivery driver, and my job became driving Prince. We spent seven months basically alone together. We were bonded as friends, which eventually made getting the job of drummer harder. I was very grateful that he hired me and very grateful that he took me for the whole ride.
There were people in the Revolution who weren’t committed to staying forever, and you can’t build a band like that, but by summer 1983 we had a special chemistry. He was always kind of a solo artist, but the fact that the Revolution were able to give him the colours on a palette made me proud.
Purple Rain was brought in at the end of a rehearsal. We had just gone through the set twice and he said: “I want to try something before we go home. It’s mellow.” For me it was natural: I could give it the big rock beat and be John Bonham. But when it starts, it’s really a country song.
The soundtrack recording began in 1983, when he used a mobile recording truck to capture Purple Rain, I Would Die 4 U, Baby I’m a Star and the workings of a couple of others. Documenting what we did was commonplace, and he used it as a tool to improve. We would watch videos as part of our rehearsals, and it caused a dramatic improvement. When you see yourself look stupid, you fix yourself a lot better. All he had to do was show it to you.
That day at First Avenue, it was 90 degrees – a humid wet August, cigarette smoke everywhere. It was a battle to get through, and it was kind of forging metal in hot conditions. But he got the performances out of people who were just for one minute to his level, and it was a beautiful thing.
We ended up losing the third verse. To edit it the way he did was genius. He was an incredible editor, and this was back in the days when we were splicing tape. Another feather in his hat. Because Prince was such a great musician, he was able to find pieces of music in his head, and then with Scotch tape put them together into something completely different – there were some real gutsy moves back then. He had a vision in his head for everything from fashion to the sound of the snare drum to the catering truck. He knew everything.
Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded Edition) is out now on Warner Bros Records.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...rain-interview