Prince remembered from the current. Hey, this is Andrea Swenson. As part of the making of our documentary series, Prince, the story of 1999, I got a chance to speak with Prince's first guitar player, Des Dickerson. I had such a great time speaking with Des, and I really want to share our full conversation with you.
So here it is. Well, thank you so much, Des, for being here with me. Glad to be here. Glad to help.
Yeah, so we are obviously getting very excited for this 1999 reissue, so I definitely want to talk to you about that. But I thought, you know, in the spirit of, you know, you're here now because this exhibit's opening and we're really looking back on those very early days when Alan Bolio was taking all those amazing pictures of Prince in the band, I would love to hear some of your memories kind of setting the stage leading up to 1999. Maybe let's talk a little bit about the dirty mind tour and some of the other first memories that you have of being in Prince's band. Like, what was it like back then?
To me, and you know, there are some fans that kind of concur with this, the folks that have been kind of there from the beginning. The energy at that time was different than it ever was at any time going forward because there's something about, you know, people who are kids, you don't think of yourselves as kids at the time, who are doing what they, and they're sort of, you know, constructive hubris think that they were always meant to do, but you have this like forward momentum and you're just kind of hurtling forward through, you know, the candy store. And there was just something about those days. It was more adventurous.
It was, you know, not real calculated. I mean, we tried to be purposeful, but a lot of it just kind of happened along the way. And it was an amazing time. How old were you when you met Prince?
I think when I joined the band, I was 22. Okay. Something like that. Yeah, 22.
And I was the oldest one. Oh. So once we kind of finalized that original lineup, I was three years older than Prince and I was the oldest kind of band. Okay.
Which is funny now looking back because it was the blind leading the blind. But. Well, something that I am really curious about, you know, thinking about the pre-1999 experience is that, you know, Prince obviously had signed to Warner Brothers. He was starting to develop this national presence.
But the music industry was so segregated at that time. And I really pinpoint, you know, two opportunities that you guys had is maybe eye-opening experiences regarding how the music industry was operating in that era. One was opening for Rick James. Yeah.
And one was opening for the Rolling Stones. Absolutely. So tell us about Rick James for what was that experience. Like, and you were on the road with him for several months.
Yeah. We did like an entire tour. I think it was the was it the fire it up tour where Rick had the famous six foot dancing joint on stage. I think that.
Yeah. First of all, Rick was one of my favorite people of all time. Just just a lovable, lovable guy who the problem was he kept thinking he had to be rich James instead of just being James Johnson. So being on the road with Rick was almost like almost like an SNL skit because he was this caricature of himself.
So there was a point early on where there was just kind of this inscrutable beef between Prince and Rick, even though it wasn't an overt thing. It was just one of those, I'm not going to be the first one to reach out and like just be human to be normal. And they were kind of intimidated by one another, which happens so commonly. It's a business where you have egomaniacs within ferrity complexes and that kind of runs things.
Neither of those guys were. But so there was a point on that tour where I just decided, you know, we need to do some sort of armistice here. So I got Bobby and we kind of went to Rick's room like late one night after a show like two, three in the morning. And we just sat down.
I think we were in Buffalo. I think his mom made like made some food. And so we were eating his mom's homemade food. And it was just one of those, oh, don't really know what the problem is.
You know, kind of things. And after that, it was awesome. We lovingly called them the Brady Bunch because they all had braids. And I don't know what they called us, but it was a fun, fun tour.
Is it true that he and Prince would watch each other's sets? Yeah. Well, at first Rick would, but then Rick's routine was he would go on his bus and sleep until 30 minutes before he went on. And they would literally wake him up 30 minutes before he went on and like hand him a bottle of Corvassier pointed him to the stage.
So Rick didn't see much after the beginning of the tour. But yeah, we watched Rick most of the time. We watched most of the time. And it was interesting because at that time, we were playing what folks then called the Shaitland Circuit.
So we're playing arenas, but we're playing to like Stone Solid African American audiences, which we grew up here. So it was different here. But it was a great experience. We pretty much kicked Rick's butt every night in a good way, you know, because you're competitive and you want to go out there.
So I think that kind of added to some, I don't want to call it tension, but drama. But it was great fun. Recently there was a screenshot of the badge that Prince wore on the tour and it said Musician Slash Star. Right.
Yeah. Do you think he was maybe developing a little bit of a persona kind of in response to being around Rick? It could be. I mean, we at that point in time, again, it was just the confidence factor was off the charts.
But at the same time, the insecurity factor was kind of omnipresent as well. So I think that at times, you know, Prince was determined to assert that he was the new kid on the block. And that ultimately none can stand before me, you know what I mean? Right.
But it was interesting. So then a short while later, while you went on the dirty mind tour and then ended up opening for the Rolling Stones. Indeed we did. So it's interesting to me to look back and think, you know, Prince really only opened for these two acts ever in his career.
Cool in the gang, one show. Oh, really? San Francisco Circle Star Theater playing in the round with the stage rotating. Oh, wow.
I kicked my Marshall over on their keyboards. It was awesome. It's like Pete Townsend meets Smokey Robinson. It was amazing.
Wow. So thinking about going from playing, you know, primarily black audiences in this Rick James tour and then being in from 94,000 mostly white rock fans at this Rolling Stones show, set that scene up for us a little bit. What was the band thinking about going into that? So here's the interesting thing about that.
I mean, as a band, obviously had not been in that setting before, as a front man, Prince had not been in that setting before because he really hadn't done a ton of shows as a front man because in the old old days, you know, with the Indian Andre and Morris and that whole thing, Prince wasn't the front man. Really? So you had those factors going on. Plus you had the fact that the dynamic between us and the audience and actually the number that I was quoted was that there were 120,000 people.
Oh, wow. And 5,000 of them were Hell's Angels. I mean, for a fact, 5,000 of them were Hell's Angels. So, you know, statistically in any public speaking situation, public situation, at least 5% of your audience decides before you do a thing they don't like you.
Well, if it's 120,000 people, 5%, that's the size of a number of folks. So, you know, musically, visually, in every way, we were not what most of that crowd expected. And certainly the band didn't know what to expect. I mean, I grew up playing in biker bars and I kind of tried to tell folks going in, okay, understand, this is not going to be rich names.
This is not going to be a different thing. So it was a bit of a shock to the system, but I think the folklore over the years, as folklore tends to do, kind of over-blue the negativity of it, the Friday, because it was Friday Saturday off Sunday. The Friday show actually wasn't that bad. The first two songs, I can still hear that sound, that sound of that many people.
It was like amazing. The Sunday show was Game of Thrones. I mean, the Sunday show was like, whoo, man, winter was coming. But the Friday show, I thought it was pretty awesome.
And didn't you say that maybe a little bit of a rumor had gotten started between the two shows? The radio stations are kind of playing enough. Oh, people booed this opening act, Prince. And so people were kind of coming to that Sunday show, maybe expecting a fight?
That's exactly what it was. Because it was actually Bill Graham, legendary promoter, another guy, I love that guy, but that's a story for another time. He got up on stage after we shortened our set the first day. And as, you know, only Bill could do, he started calling people out by name.
You're at every show. And he's like, custom-emouted. They booed Bill. But what was it?
Kiss FM, I can't remember which station. They were broadcasting from the Colosseum. And they said, we got booed off stage. It was false.
But it doesn't matter if it's true or not. It doesn't matter if enough people hear it. So yeah, people came prepared. First thing I saw Sunday when we stepped on stage was this dot in the distance and it got closer.
That's a, like, a ziplock bag with some sort of, those are chicken parts. And as they got real close, it was like, they're like gray. Like somebody took the time to put them in the sun and, you know, it was like, okay, it was like, yeah, this is going to be an interesting afternoon. A ziplock bag full of rotting chicken parts.
And then I turned and looked just in time to see Mark Round's bass with a gallon of orange juice, like exploding on it. I mean, yeah, it was war, but you just had to kind of survive. We had shortened our set and, you know, put the loudest songs we had and once that. And, you know, again, I think that was a turning point in that those battle scars you carry into your future persona and victory.
Absolutely. Well, and you had the opportunity to speak to Prince between these two experiences. And I think it's interesting that Mick Jager called Prince and couldn't talk him into coming back, but you called Prince and you did talk him into coming back. So what did you say?
Well, what I did was, and it's something you can do when you were the ones that are in the trenches together, you're the band of brothers or whatever. So I just appealed, literally appealed to a man who I said, we cannot let them do us like this. We can't let people run aside a town because if we do it now, we're going to be running forever. So you got to come back and we got to do this and we just have to make our stand.
And that is what clicked. Frankly, I don't know what Mick said to try to get him back, but you know, bless his heart as we say in the South, it didn't work. Well, it makes sense that you would be able to get through to him coming from the same place and knowing him longer and all that. So I'm really interested you've kind of pinpointed this and I know Bobby Z and others have pinpointed this as well as this huge turning point.
And then we're turning into the controversy tour, but really what, as we know, Prince was always a couple steps ahead. He was starting to formulate this idea for 1999 and for Van 36 and what he was going to do next with the time. So I'm curious to know how much did the band know as you're on the road doing the controversy tour? How much were you aware of that he was working on in the studio?
There was a little bit of a distinction with respect to the flow of information. I think part of why really harking back to Prince being influenced when I called and talked to him in the coming back in the stones thing, you know, I was a little older and I've been doing it for a long time before we kind of joined forces. So for whatever reason, he trusted me and there was a level of respect that he had and he would listen. So oftentimes he would call and run things by me or he would more often you found a ring to be like, that's Prince, get him over.
And I know I would just go to the house. Of course, I was all the way in the opposite side of town. So it was like, you know, get your passport and back a luncheon. But a lot of times I would hear about those things long before they happen.
Like, you know, the vanity, six thing and some of that stuff. Those were things that he talked about for a while and different iterations. You know, the name was originally different than that. Interesting.
So this is the like Riley Allison, Jan Hassen. Yeah. And even before that, I mean, even from the beginning when he was still living on France Avenue, I mean, my involvement in the band started that way. After the Del's tire mark audition, I just started getting these calls from him and he wanted me to come over to the house and be me and him and Andre sitting on the couch and we'd play music for 15 minutes and then laugh for an hour and a half.
That was how it started. I could see that. Oh, yeah. And that's definitely how it was.
So would he ask you for input or advice on things? Oh, yeah. He would actually listen. And especially in the beginning, it wasn't like this obligatory kind of a thing.
He genuinely wanted to know what I thought. In fact, from me, the point where it was changing to the degree that I knew I needed to think about leaving the band was when that wasn't happening as much. He was still listening, but it was like, yeah, I hear you, but I'm still going to, you know what I mean? Then it was like, well, okay.
Thinking back on 1999, you know, as a standalone album as this moment in Princess Career, how do you describe the sound of that album? Man, I think first of all, because he was always the quintessential student of the game, as we say. So on the one hand, he was incredibly inspired and spontaneous, but at the same time, he was also very calculating in a good way. So I think that he had learned along the ways.
First album, he was just trying to go boldly where no man had ever gone before. And then the second album, the label, they put in the pressure of, yeah, you got to have a hit, you know what I mean? And so by the time 1999 came around, I would compare it to an NFL quarterback. By the time you've been playing for five years, the game has slowed down and you see exactly what's happening before it happens.
By 1999, that's kind of where he was. So that record was just this masterful combination. It's got the funk elements, but it's got the pop and it's got the hooks and it's got the stuff that's uniquely him. In fact, he told me this one time.
Make sure that every record has one sound that you use on every song. That was one of his motifs. So that record was kind of the culmination of all that. And what would that sound be?
The Lindrum? Well, the Lindrum turned out to be part of it. On different records, like for example, on 1999, there's that sort of that electronic percussion sound. Listen, go back and listen to the record and that sound is everywhere.
So on that record, one of the things he also told me once I was, you know, this was back before Pro Tools and all that stuff, obviously. And every once in a while, you'd get a take and the energy and the feel of the take was so good that even though there might have been a mistake technically, you wanted to use the take. So he said, you know what, when there's something in the track that you want to keep the track, but there's something in the track that you don't want in there, put an explosion over it. That was it.
So now, you know, studio secrets with Prince put an explosion over the mistakes. There you go. That changes everything. It does.
It does. George Clinton said, it's not funky until you put a nursery rhyme in it. Prince said, put an explosion over it. I like that.
Well, one of the things I was wondering about is if you would align the sound of 1999 with what we call the Minneapolis sound. Right. Well, of course, we didn't call it the Minneapolis sound. Prince didn't call it that other people did.
And clearly what the Minneapolis sound was, was just the sound that was developing as Prince was going along. We were doing what we were doing. He was kind of absorbing from the people around him because that was part of it. I mean, part of the Minneapolis sound was Prince growing in his ability to assimilate everything around him and keep the best stuff and get rid of the stuff that didn't work.
So to me, the Lindrum and kind of the polyrhythm thing, along with the overheim and the ob8, you know, the horns being simulated by a synth, that wasn't an apples sound. But what he did was find a way to do that with more of a pop motif. So you could have a song like 1999, which still kind of has this rhythmic thing and has the horn stabs, but it's purely pop. Almost to the point at times of being almost silly.
It's so poppy. But at the same time, it's apocalyptic. So, you know what I mean? He just found that sweet spot.
What do you remember about recording on that track? What I remember is, again, as always, he called me, Death Prince. He came over. But this time he had the record, like substantially finished, and had some holes.
As he always did by that time that he wanted me to kind of step into and film. So the first thing he did was he put up the 1999 track and he had recorded it in such a way that it could have been alternating verses where one singer sings the first verse, in his entirety one sings the second and so on. It could have been such that he sang an alternating line, or it could have been what it ended up being on the record. So he just had me sing most of the song.
It's not just the lines that ended up on the record, but he had me sing through most of the song. And I don't think we experimented with any additional guitar, but what he did have me do is that 1999, the pitched down, spoken 1999 in the vamp out, well that's me. He had me as almost an afterthought, because he had already done the Don't Worry, I Won't Hurt You. But he evidently got the inspiration.
Let's kind of book into that with this thing going out. So that was my voice. When I was finishing up my vocals, he said I want you to do one more thing. Corvette on the other hand was just background vocal stuff.
Hey, try this, try that. And he would give me a lot of latitude. He kind of threw out an idea, but then he let me try things. And when he heard something he likes.
But with the guitar solo, I just kind of did five passes, just like one after another. And then we sat and comped it. And there were some things that he felt strongly about that I was like, and mainly I was thinking in terms of how I'm going to play that, because that interval is completely unnatural. You're not going to go from playing that phrase to playing that phrase.
People will think it's a genius, but I'm never going to be able to play it again. And then other parts of it I was like, that we got to keep. And that was it. I mean, it was those five passes, comped it into one solo, that the rest is a mystery.
What did that mean to you to have, you know, as we know now, Princess, one of the all-time greats on guitar for him to give you the guitar solo on that song? What did that mean? Well, I mean, we had actually had a conversation. I think two tours before that was it.
Maybe the tour before. And I think it was insane. I like, I can see the room. And he said, you know, I'm going to start playing guitar less and less.
People aren't going to believe this. But he said, you know, you're a better lead player anyway. I'm going to focus on being in front man. And I'm going to have you do most of the lead stuff from now on.
And that's what he did. So, you know, sorry, folks, but that's what he said. And I know Eric Clapton said and whatever. But Prince said, dude, you take it.
So what can I tell you? But then on the resume. Exactly. I wasn't my, I didn't pay him to say it.
That's a big deal. That's a huge deal. Looking back now. It's like, of course, again, at the time being an arrogant kid, I thought, well, it's about time.
I've been smoking behind this hotel. But. We mentioned a little bit of the kind of competition between the Rick James band and Prince and there's definitely competition between the time and Prince. But within the band was there kind of a one-upmanship going on?
You know, I think it was, it definitely wasn't overt. I think it's more that we pushed each other, you know, because we were early on, especially. We would do the thing where we would switch instruments during rehearsals and, you know, play other stuff. And I think that we just really wanted to make sure, probably more so in the show than anything else, that you were taking up your game of notch and then looking to see what somebody else was going to do.
So I would say it was a very, it was a competition, but not overt. We just drove one another in a really healthy way, you know. Yeah. So thinking more about the two singles that you mentioned in 1999 and Little Red Corvette, do you feel like, or was it ever explicitly stated that Prince was trying to create like a radio hit?
Well, he never said it directly, but it was obvious. And it was, I mean, we talked about radio all the time. We talked about the compositional demographic makeup of the audience. I mean, we talked about those things.
We talked about it in the band. It was a discussion between Prince in management. It was a discussion between management and Prince in the whole band. I mean, it was the worst kept secret of all time.
So yeah, when I came into the house and heard the record, it was like, okay, well, there it is. That's what you've been talking about and there it is. Do you think it's fair to say he was trying to reach like a wider audience than he had previously? Open secret.
And it wasn't about, you know, neglecting or devaluing our existing fan base. It was about never wanting to be limited. It was about never wanting to be marginalized. If you look at the population as a whole, well, our fan base should look like the population.
As a whole and not a small portion of it. So I mean, that literally was, it's like they have a pitch count sometimes in baseball. We had the white people count. That was the point.
We were touring the X number of minutes before showtime. Road manager or one of the managers would come in and throw out with us on that show. Hey, audience is about 75% white. And then that number kept going up.
We got the place where it was like, the audience is over 90% white. And again, it was just one of those things where we didn't want to be marginalized. We wanted our audience to look like the Western world. What were some of the things you were observing about the way Prince was handled by his managers as label, the industry as a black artist in that era?
The thing that I noticed is that he refused to be handled. From the very beginning, he had a clear idea of what he wanted, how he wanted us to kind of coalesce as a band, what he wanted to say, and then what he wanted who we were to say what message that would send. From the beginning, it was like this United Nations of Funk thing with every race, every gender from the beginning. That was it.
So any pushback that he got, it wasn't going to matter because he was going to have his way. And he would find a way to even make a dig out of it. The way that the whole bikini underwear thing started was one of those dentist-the-menest pushback things. It was, Prince, you can't go on stage without underwear like that.
You got to wear underwear. Okay. Then I'll come out just wearing underwear. It was kind of always like that.
And they were trying to steer him. I remember he called me up one time after I want to be your lover was recorded, the extended version. He called me up and I can always tell when he would ask this disjointed question out of nowhere that, okay, this is going somewhere. But he said, what do you think about percussion?
What do you mean in general? What it turned out to be was that one of the wonders, this record is not done. He didn't want that. He said, no, it's done.
So they would try to push to a point. And then they got to the point of realizing, no. We're just not even going to try anymore. I want to ask you about Jamie Starr because it's really interesting for me to look back on some of Warr's Days interviews around that time.
And then when I was assisting, Jamie Starr was a real person who lived in Minneapolis who was producing these albums for many six in the time. How in on it were you as this whole persona was being developed? It was really more kind of between Prince and Morris. But I mean, I was really heavily involved in the first time record.
Less so in the second because there was a co-write dynamic that was developing as well. He would call me something. There's a phone note here. He would call me and say, I've got a lyric.
No, I've got a title. I need you to write the lyrics. So a couple of songs cool. And after high school I'd written that whole thing.
There were some co-working on this first couple of records. But definitely as they were doing the vocals, Prince and Morris were kind of fleshing the records out. That whole thing emerged because Prince's whole thing is he wanted to really kind of white label the thing. Didn't want it to be this obvious Prince, you know, kind of this Van Galle deal.
And we all thought it was hilarious that people thought that Jamie Starr was like a person. Because Jamie Starr was more a composite. Prince primarily. But then he had Morris's input and I had a little bit of involvement.
And there were a bunch of people who had a little bit of involvement. So at the end of the day Jamie Starr was a creation of people's imaginations. They believed what they wanted to believe. So what do you think he was trying to express with his work in the time even though he wasn't associating his image with it at that point?
I think honestly he was still trying to keep the sort of the pure like funk sound to have a place for that, to have a repository for that. So that he would not feel that he had to keep that present in his work as Prince. So that he had a place to go with that material. And really it wasn't it was as much a fact that that was what he loved and it was part of them as it was a commercial consideration or financial consideration.
So that's I believe that's really what it was. It was some place to keep the funk at the end of the day. As his own sound was expanding and taking on this new sound. Yeah exactly.
Yeah. That makes sense. How about Vanity Six then, how do you read that? You know it's well known at this point in time that he loved the movie The Idol Maker.
And I think there was the vibe of the time that that film is set in was kind of the girl groups and that whole thing. And I think that was just an idea that hit him and stuck and he wanted to do like the updated version of that. So like I said, the idea of the girl group had been in his mind, you know, and it was called the girl group. I'm not being sexist.
That's what it was called back then. That was just something that was just an idea that he had when he had an idea, he wouldn't let go until he did it until he didn't anymore. Because if he got over it, he was done. Didn't matter how much went into it.
Yeah, I know we did a whole film, but we're not releasing it. So that's that. You know, weird. Yeah.
Well, I wonder if we could maybe pull up a couple of those tracks. I pulled up a couple that are coming out on this reissue that I know that you were part of. So I wanted to see if we can maybe jog some memories. Let's check out if it'll make you happy.
So the thing about this, there was a period of time where if you listen closely, you can tell which bands or which artists it was at the time. There was definitely this heavy like police influence thing because I was a huge like the first, the very first album, what was it, Outland, Os de Moore. When I was first joining the band, that record would like never left my turntable. I was constantly playing like Roxanne Riffs and stuff and rehearsal.
And it was one of those things that Prince grew to love the band as well. So there was, you know, like on When You Were Mine, for example, these songs where these little reggae motifs kind of pop up. So you can kind of hear that in this track. Interesting.
So there's some of that, you know, a little bit of that backbeat kind of reggae feeling it. The police. Yeah. Definitely.
Definitely. Have you heard this since? I have not, I was just sent the entire package and I haven't listened to it because it's like 80, 300 songs. But I haven't heard this one since back then.
I haven't heard this since back in the day. That's wild. What's it like to hear something? How many years later is this 37 years later?
At least 37 years. It's interesting in that it brings me right back to sitting in that room. You know, it's like, wow, yeah. I can see the console and I can see the whole thing.
In his house? Yeah. Yeah. Tell us more about how that space was laid out and how people worked in there.
He had it laid out sort of in this idiosyncratic way. In fact, it got to the point where he left everything set up the way he liked it, which in artist's personal studios that often is the case. He's a good friend of mine who was the BG's like house engineer guy for a lot of years and they did the same thing. They had settings taped off on outboard gear.
So, but it got to the point where he would do vocals sitting at the console. Someone had shown him how you can put the speakers out of phase and not have to use headphones. So, you know, when you came into his room, it was kind of odd compared to other studios. There'd be things where it'd be like, well, can we patch in?
What do you mean? You don't have one? Everybody has one of those. But it was set up for what he did the way he did it.
So. I think it was Peggy McCurry that taught him that. She told me it was because she'd get to the 12th hour of a session and then he'd want to do vocals and she was playing sleep at the console. I mean, she was one of the first ones that hung in there because the joke was they were wheeling engineers in and out because he would get on these two three day runs and just wear out engineers.
And what it came down to was who could keep up with him. He would keep people that could keep up with him. So, who would he allow into this Chan Hessen Palm studio? You know, I never worked in that studio either without it just being he and I, maybe he and I and Don Bats, or he got to the point where he would just give me the keys.
So, a lot of times I worked in there Don kind of got me set up and got going, but I worked in there by myself. And I don't remember ever working in that studio with it being beyond just us. You know, when we did the Vanity Six stuff, we did that at Sunset Sound. But even then it would be just he and I and Denise or he and I and whatever.
I mean, because sometimes it was stuff like, well, I want you to go out and play drums on this. So there's a song on that record. I played drums on it. It's not credit to nobody knows, but we just kind of worked in that small kind of ensemble that way.
Which time? It was three times two equals six. All right. Yeah.
To go back and listen to that. There you go. Yeah. So the kind of wobbly drums.
That's me. Let's check out that other track. Another memory lane. Is that recall?
Wasn't this one of the 94 East tunes originally? Because you can hear some of the older motifs in it, especially in the synth parts, the guitar parts. It sounds like the early, even pre-warner demos. Some of what he's doing.
Some of the chord changes and some of the even sonically. But he's got the little new wave like floor tom thing that we wore out for a minute because when the whole new wave bug bit him, then every song had either some kind of, you know, something that we ripped off from Adam and the ants or stray cats were. When I was talking about that the other day. So there were certain things that, you know, he would kind of mash up with some of the older things.
Which again, was it that was some of the brilliance of how he went about doing what he was doing. And that's how you accrue a fan base over time. Because you're not losing your old fan base, but you're not boring them either, you know. So you're adding as you go.
But that's, yeah, this one strikes me because it's like this is like this blend of both of them, the old and then where he was at the time. That's really interesting. Do you think that it could have been like even recordings that he revived and some of the parts were from a previous session or something? Yes.
You didn't hear me say it, America. But yes. Interesting. Yeah, there's no doubt that that went on from time to time.
Did you contribute to this song? You know, I remember hearing it. I remember going in and him playing it for me. See, there's some things that I'm now remembering.
Oh, yeah, I played on it. Oh, yeah. I did the guide vocal on that. Then he went back and he raced it all the other way around.
He had done a guide vocal on it. I came in on this one. I just think he played it for me. I don't remember playing on it, but I may have.
It was just a lot of music. It blurred together back then. As someone that also came up in Minneapolis, tell us about 94 East. Like what did you know about that group prior to meeting Prince?
Not a thing. It was funny because we rehearsed in Pepe's basement early on. Right. And so I got to know about the whole 94 East thing through getting to know Pepe.
And early on, Pepe actually took me to New York. I don't think I've been in the band full year. The break we took so the Prince could go record the second album. And during that break, Pepe just decided to give me a chance to track some stuff.
So I heard a lot of the 94 East tracks for the first time on that trip because he would play me all the stuff and talk about all the stories and that whole thing. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, I guess I don't know, you know, because I wasn't hanging out in Minneapolis in 1977, but I don't know if they had a live presence or any kind of buzz or anything around town.
I don't remember. The scene that I was in, it was the rock cover bands. And there was like a pretty vibrant scene. There were bands, there were the mystics and Danny's reasons and Kane.
And so I kind of came up through that and kind of was, you know, this upstart kid. A booking agent heard about me like when I was 15. So I started to play the Bel-Ray Ballroom and some of the spices that those bands played. And it's funny because, you know, Andre and I've had that conversation how we were in town in the same city to complete the same time, but playing in completely different worlds.
Right. So a lot of what Owen was doing, I crossed paths with that. But a lot of what Andre and Prince were doing, I was in a different sector. Right.
That's why this album is so interesting to me is that even in Minneapolis, it took until Prince's fifth album, 1999, for those two worlds to both know about him and to acknowledge him and to put him on top 40 radio and you know, those kind of things. Was that your kind of impression as you're observing this all come out? And I drove us crazy. Absolutely.
I was telling my wife about this the other day. Actually, as we were even driving into town and the stations that I listened to as junior high, high school, whatever, the stations that didn't play us forever. We would go out and we're headlining arenas, but we come home and we're playing like a 1500 cap theatre because we can't get arrested on radio on our own town. So that was a huge thing.
When that finally broke and we broke through and we headlined the O-Met Sports Center, it was like finally, you know, because at first it was just a really, it was an odd feeling. You know, K-D-W-B, they don't play us, K-Q-R-S, they don't play us. So when it happened, it was like, well, all right, then we kind of had a little bit of an attitude about it, you know, a little bit. Oh, so now, okay, well, all right.
What was it like to play the Met? For me, it was huge. Literally, I started going to concerts, arena shows in ninth grade. The first arena show I ever went to was at the Met.
It was like an indoor festival. Grand Funk Railroad, Headline, Biggie Pop, New Year's, Ted New Year's, and the original cowboy, Duke's mini-repertaining, rotary connection. It was like this amazing lineup. And that was the night that I knew that's what I'm going to do.
I made the decision in that arena that night. So to be able to come back and headline in that arena was like, man, it was crazy. It was crazy. Well, I do want to end talking a little bit about the live show.
So I picked out a couple of live tracks that are, I think it's from Live in Detroit on the 1999 tour. I thought we should listen to Little Red Corvette. Yeah, absolutely. But I would love to hear as you're listening to this, you know, a little bit about just what it was like to be in the band on this tour and just kind of what memories this recording brings back for you.
You knew how to work it by then. You know how to push every button. The thing that comes to mind most is it was on this tour and with this record that we kind of had, I mean, it wasn't just the breakthrough, but what that experience was like kind of from our side of the table was, you know, full on experiencing what it's like to be a band with across the board radio and at that time MTV success. I mean, that was like a whole other thing.
It went from, you know, being largely, I don't want to say unknown in your own hometown to not being able to walk down the street in your own. I mean, literally, it got to that point. I mean, I had kids camped out in front of my house. I've been chased down the streets of Minneapolis, literally like the monkeys or something, you know, chased and having to like get police assistance.
So it was with this tour and this record and this song in particular, all of that came together and all of a sudden that whole dream of, you know, being rock stars and what it was going to be like was like, okay, this is what it's like. This is actually right here. This is what it's like. And then the other thing was Detroit was probably our best market.
I mean, we could, we probably could have sold out 20 shows every tour. We would do multiple shows and then tour come back, do multiple shows again. We probably could have camped out. We could have bought a place in Detroit.
It was even crazier there. There's a great getting chased by fans and a rental car story that happened leaving Cobo Hall and Detroit. And the other thing I'll say is that Prince had gotten to the point where he was just absolutely positively confident in who he was and what he was doing and the space that he owned on this record and on this tour. And we were in the same space as a band.
We kind of could read each other's minds in a sense to the point where we knew what was going to happen. We knew what he was going to do. He knew what we would follow him in. So everything on this tour, to me, this was the peak, which was another reason why when this tour was over.
I was kind of like, you know what? I don't know. It's kind of like why did Barry Sanders retire when he did? Because he kind of knew.
How did Prince respond to fame? It was a mixed bag for everybody. It's not what you think it's going to be for everybody. So even though there are probably few people who have prepared themselves for it as proactively as he did, it still presented things he did not expect that he didn't see counting.
And so I think that as someone who was on the one hand supremely confident, but on the other hand kind of naturally shy, introspective, certain aspects of fame freaked him out. I mean, just flat out freaked him out because they'd freak anybody out. Well, wait, it didn't freak me out. So now they think about what am I saying about myself?
But at the same time, there were certain aspects of it that again, because in his mind, he was famous from before he got the Warner deal. So, you know, reality was just kind of aligning with his expectation. But there's one conversation I remember having. This kind of encapsulates this for me.
It was after I left the band there on the purple rain tour and I get one of those infamous calls, you know, that's Prince. But what it is, is he's sending us some tickets, putting us up at the Watergate hotel, wants us to come out on the road and see if you might see a few nights at the show. So, you want to know what I thought? So again, he really appreciated my opinion.
The fact that we're telling him the first night, man, the mix was awful. And he just hired a very big name record engineer slash producer. And Prince took the guy's side and said, hey, my guitar player said you're mixed sucks. So you better step it up.
But the bottom line was we were hanging out with him the day after the second show. And by then, you know, it's like they got the grand piano that they put in his suite every city and the chef on the road. I mean, it's like over the top by then. And we're getting ready to leave.
And I said, you know, hey, we're going to Georgetown tomorrow. Just hang out and remember how much fun we stabbed doing that. Maybe she'd come along. And first his eyes got big.
And he was like, but then it was like, he was just crestfalling. He said, I can't do stuff like that anymore. And that was one of the saddest things I've ever seen in my life, because that was the flip side of, you know, be careful what you wish for because you might get it. And that's what it looks like.
Powerful stuff. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for listening. You can find our four part series, Prince, the story of 1999, wherever you get your podcasts.