Prince’s Around The World In A Day: A Reappraisal
Released
only two weeks after the conclusion of the Purple Rain tour at the
Orange Bowl in Miami, Prince’s seventh studio album Around the World in a
Day occupies a curious position in his discography. The Purple Rain
phenomenon – an ambitious multimedia event encompassing a blockbuster
film, a multi-million selling album and an extensive US tour – had
brought the Minneapolis artist his greatest commercial success to date.
He had penetrated the mainstream with an album of electronically
enhanced mutant rock & roll, a motion picture revolving around a
gifted but arrogant upstart with an abusive family background, and a
stage production that for all its glitz and professionalism still erred
towards the perverse, as illustrated by a set-piece involving a large
purple bathtub.
Prince had made it, on more or less his own
terms. But even before the Purple Rain tour made its way from city to
city, state to state, the diminutive figure at its centre had been
working on material that would initiate a new phase of his career, one
which was less about financial reward and adoration, and more about
doing whatever the fuck he had to do in order to scratch his creative
itch – even if that meant the eventual dissolution of his band and the
gradual dwindling of the commercial profile he had gained with Purple
Rain. Because he hated repeating himself. Because he couldn’t abide
boredom. But above all, because he was Prince, and that’s how he rolled.
The encores of The Purple Rain tour began to last for hours. - Alan Leeds
“The
Purple Rain tour was so tied to the film and the music videos which had
become so popular on MTV that he was obligated to replicate those
things onstage,” says Alan Leeds, Prince’s tour manager from 1983 to
1989. “What that meant was the tour was very theatrical, very produced,
and that’s always at the expense of spontaneity. He really, really got
tired of performing that show because it became horribly routine to him.
The encores were the only time when he could really stretch out and
they began to last for hours.”
Much of the music that made it
onto Around the World in a Day had been completed prior to the release
of Purple Rain. The remainder of the album was recorded prior to and in
some cases during the tour at a variety of locations including Sunset
Sound in Los Angeles and a mobile audio truck taken on the road.
Engineer Susan Rogers witnessed the rapid evolution of Prince and The
Revolution’s sound and visual aesthetic while working on new tracks at
Flying Cloud Drive Warehouse, Eden Prairie, in 1984.
“I suppose
we were aware that Prince would not repeat himself artistically,” says
Rogers. “There were new clothes, new colours, new personnel and a new
way of working. While the Paisley Park studio complex was in the
planning I recorded the band from their rehearsal stage in our leased
warehouse. This allowed him to record the whole band easily, so Prince
could stay home for longer stretches of time. His personal and recording
lives were more coincidental than perhaps he chose to make them in the
past.”
When you see someone with total focus and the energy that he exuded, it wakes you up and makes you concentrate. - Novi Novog
Rogers
notes the conspicuous absence of the colour purple in the band’s new
wardrobe around this time, as well as the growing cast of auxiliary
players that included David Coleman and Michael Melvoin (siblings of The
Revolution’s Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin) along with cellist Suzi
Katayama, violinist Novi Novog and saxophonist Eddie Minnifield aka
Eddie M. As Rogers suggests, Prince was indeed seeking to expand his
palette. He had already employed Novog and Katayama on Purple Rain, most
notably on the astonishing - and according to Novog, largely improvised
- ambient coda to the album’s title track.
“He was serious, but
it was fun,” says Novog of the sessions. “Because when you see someone
with total focus and the energy that he exuded, it wakes you up and
makes you concentrate. You all get on the same wavelength. A couple of
times when he wasn’t there and it was just Wendy and Lisa, it was still
focused but it was maybe a little more light and frivolous. There was a
different attitude. Although those guys got a lot of work done.”
The
greater involvement of string players marked a development that would
be further advanced in association with veteran bandleader, composer and
arranger Clare Fischer. This long distance collaboration (the pair
never met) began during recording sessions for the debut album by Prince
proteges The Family in late 1984 and lasted until 2006’s 3121.
Significantly, The Family were co-fronted by Wendy Melvoin’s twin sister
and Prince’s on-off girlfriend, Susannah Melvoin, who contributed
backing vocals to Around the World in a Day and reputedly inspired its
highlight “Condition of the Heart.”
We’d start with the
drum machine and I wouldn’t leave the studio until it was mixed. That
could be 24, 48 hours, and on a couple of occasions we got into about
72, 76 hours. - David Tickle
British engineer David Tickle
was also involved in the recording of the new material. Tickle had
worked front-of-house sound for the Purple Rain tour and mixed some of
the singles taken from the soundtrack. As with Susan Rogers, this was
the first time he had been involved in a Prince album from its
inception.
“There was no clear objective with what the next album
was going to be,” says Tickle. “It wasn’t like it started out and it
was gonna be this specific focus. Prince would literally write a song a
day and every three days or so we would go and do a full production on
something. If you listen to the album, there’s actually quite a
difference in the context of the songs themselves, and even in
production and sonic value. That’s because when you worked with Prince
what happened was he would say, ‘David. I’ve got a song. Get a studio’ -
maybe after a show one night, or we may have a couple of days off. We’d
start with the drum machine and I wouldn’t leave the studio until it
was mixed. Right from the first bass drum being printed. That could be
24, 48 hours, and on a couple of occasions we got into about 72, 76
hours. Without going to sleep. That was his thing. You go in, you start
it, and you don’t leave until it’s done. And that moment in time is
encapsulated.”
“He saw that some of his music had an expiration
date on it,” adds Alan Leeds, “and that whatever moods and thoughts that
went into the new music were timely enough that he wanted people to
hear them as quickly as possible.”
Prince worked fast, which
frequently impacted on the sonic clarity of his work. Dirty Mind
famously consisted of demos, and later, Sign O’ the Times raised
critical eyebrows due to its use of similarly rough recordings. Prince’s
early ‘80s productions – from the work released under his own name to
that of The Time, Sheila E and Apollonia 6 – tended to be far from
immaculate, their raw energy justifying the punk-funk tag some critics
attached to the early Minneapolis sound. Whereas Purple Rain was a notch
above previous releases in terms of sound quality – largely due to the
demands of its accompanying film – Around the World in a Day is
characterised by the variation in audio fidelity from track to track.
“Some
of it is raggedy,” says Tickle. “It doesn’t sound like it was done
super high end in a studio, particularly at that time, when a lot of
stuff was very pristinely recorded. That’s why everything is so unique.
We’d go in, do a song and once it was done, we’d leave it.”
For much of the album we were recording in a warehouse with no isolation between sound sources and an inferior signal path. - Susan Rogers
As
Susan Rogers explains, there were technical issues that contributed to
the album’s spontaneous feel: “Prince owned a fantastic multitrack tape
machine, the Ampex MM1100, that finally reached the end of its life, so
we replaced it with an MCI JH24. It couldn’t compete with the Ampex
sonically but it was more reliable. For much of the album we were
recording in a warehouse with no isolation between sound sources and an
inferior signal path, compared to what we had at Sunset Sound in Los
Angeles.”
In contrast to the logical sequencing and narrative
flow of Purple Rain, the new album was, as its title suggests, all over
the place. The opening title track was originally composed and recorded
by David Coleman and is notable for its non-Western instrumentation.
Oud, darbuka and finger cymbals are layered atop a booming Linn M-1
machine rhythm while Prince promises “a wonderful trip through all
time.” Coleman was well-versed in Middle Eastern musics but most critics
of the time traced these sounds as far back as (cough) The Beatles.
Close behind, the ostensibly positive message of “Paisley Park” is
delivered in a nursery rhyme lilt over mogadon beats and sheets of
feedback. It’s one of Prince’s eeriest tunes and least remembered
singles, “The mission is easy / Just say U believe” sounding more like a
Jim Jones-like invitation to imbibe the Kool Aid than anything remotely
comforting.
The album’s biggest hit, the lascivious but sweetly
nostalgic “Raspberry Beret,” finds Prince at his most winsome and
whimsical. Its scenario recalls “Little Red Corvette” but also finds
time for a subtle acknowledgement of racism in the first verse: “He told
me several times that he didn’t like my kind / ‘Cause I was a bit 2
leisurely,” sings Prince of his old boss, Mr McGee. The line is lent a
piquant irony by the fact that it’s delivered by one of pop’s most
infamous workaholics. The video for the song is a mini-classic in which
Prince avoids eye contact with the camera for the duration and prefaces
his vocal intro with a coughing fit. “I just did it to be sick, to do
something no one else would do,” he told Rolling Stone, gesturing at the
wayward urges that fuelled the entire album project and his subsequent
career.
The album concludes with Prince condemned to Hell, addressing his audience in pitiful tones.
Perhaps
the most impressive of the album’s nine tracks is “Condition of the
Heart.” The ballads on Prince’s first two albums approached love from
the adolescent perspective of one who had yet to experience it; from
Controversy onward, they tended to be erotically charged and laden with
irony or, like “The Beautiful Ones” and “Purple Rain,” set pieces with a
dramatic purpose. Here, Prince sounds genuinely bereft: “There was a
dame in London who insisted that he love her / Then left him 4 a real
prince from Arabia / Now wasn’t that a shame / That sometimes money buys
U everything and nothing / Love, it only seems to buy a terminal
condition of the heart.” Lyric aside, the song’s backing track – a
florid fusion of piano, minimal percussion and synthesizer – sounds like
nothing less than heartache itself.
An experimental album
released in the wake of mainstream success, it’s no surprise that Around
the World in a Day is flawed. The political orientation of a couple of
tracks subvert the popular idea that the album has anything to do with
the LSD-fuelled radicalism of the 1960s: the taut, bouncy “Pop Life” may
be one of his best singles and feature one of his funniest lyrics
(especially in its extended 12-inch form, which incorporates additional
verses) but its central assertion that “Everybody can’t be on top”
conjures up the wholly unappealing concept of Prince as a funky Ayn
Rand; the uptempo jam “America” meanwhile takes great pleasure in its
unironic denunciation of Communism, pushing the patriotism of 1999’s
“Free” into even less palatable territory.
Less contentiously,
“The Ladder” seems designed to be the album’s centrepiece but is in fact
a big red herring, a hollow inflation of “Purple Rain”s epic neo-gospel
balladry which gives the impression of lasting three times its length.
“Temptation” is too self-consciously raunchy, a sax-assisted bump ‘n’
grind accompanied by a lyric unusually devoid of wit or charm; it’s
damning (no pun intended) that the song only becomes interesting with
the entrance of God, who sentences his subject to death for his
inability to distinguish love from lust. The album concludes with Prince
condemned to Hell, addressing his audience in pitiful tones: “I have 2
go now… I don’t know when I’ll return… goodbye.” Though hard to love,
“The Ladder” and “Temptation” are crucial to Prince’s extended mythos,
foreshadowing the conflict and resolution between the carnal and the
spiritual that provided 1988’s Lovesexy with its central theme.
Wendy and Lisa had years of formal musical training so they brought new harmonies and chord progressions to his work. - Susan Rogers
The
tracks which found their way onto b-sides are superior to some included
on the album. The unusually candid “Hello,” addresses Prince’s critics
on subjects including his bodyguards (“I call them my friends”), his
non-participation in USA For Africa’s “We Are The World” charity single
(“I tried 2 tell them that I didn’t want 2 sing / But I’d gladly write a
song instead”) and the paparazzi (“Up yours! That’s right! You’re a
star!”). Later covered by D’Angelo, “She’s Always In My Hair” is
considered not only one of Prince’s greatest b-sides but one of his
finest songs, reputedly written about collaborator, Purple Rain co-star
and former girlfriend Jill Jones; best of all, “Girl” is an erotic synth
fantasia as tender as it is pornographic (“If I was anything else I’d
be the water in your bath, darlin’”).
Thanks to their memorable
roles in Purple Rain, guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboard player Lisa
Coleman had become the most identifiable members of The Revolution aside
from Prince himself. More importantly they were increasingly
responsible for the character of the music. The duo’s advanced
musicality and distinctive harmonic approach meant that they were being
called on to enhance and in some cases complete Prince’s compositions (a
reversal of the process depicted in Purple Rain). Those who wonder
where the sound of The Revolution escaped to following the band’s
dissolution are encouraged to investigate the duo’s own discography.
“Wendy and Lisa had the years of formal musical training that Prince
lacked so they brought new harmonies and chord progressions to his
work,” says Susan Rogers. “Prince wisely gave them opportunities to
write string and backing vocal arrangements, as well as their own guitar
and keyboard parts.”
“They had more input,” agrees David Tickle.
“Prince would put down a drum machine, do some kind of guide vocal,
because he may not have figured out all of his vocal moves yet, then say
to Wendy and Lisa, ‘Hey, you go and put background vocals on this’ and
we’d build the thing up for him.”
Critical reception to the album
was mixed. Much of it hinged on the perception that Prince was
attempting a naked homage to late-period Beatles, while the Jimi Hendrix
comparisons invited by his guitar heroism and flamboyant appearance
circa Purple Rain continued unabated. New York Times rock critic Robert
Palmer wrote at the time that “Prince is risking charges of imitation
and excessive eclecticism by deliberately invoking so many icons of ’60s
rock.” In truth, it’s a struggle to find anything on the album that
sounds much like “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “I Am the Walrus” or “A Day in
the Life,” not least because so much of it is underpinned by the precise
thud and snap of the Linn M-1. Neither does the album resemble the
psychedelic soul and funk of the The Temptations, Funkadelic or The
Undisputed Truth. If this was psychedelia, then it had more in common
with the variety peddled by US bands like The Rain Parade, The Three
O’Clock (who released their fourth album Vermilion on Paisley Park in
1988) and The Bangles (who released their version of Prince’s “Manic
Monday” in 1986), all of whom had been grouped into a movement known as
The Paisley Underground.
“There are these little calliope sounds
and instruments that may remind you of a couple of things that the boys
and George Martin did,” says Alan Leeds. “But I’m 68 years old, my life
experience with popular music goes back to the late ‘50s. I knew what
[The Beatles and Hendrix] meant culturally to my generation and it
wasn’t nearly the same thing as what Prince meant. First of all, we were
all stoned the entire time! Whether you were making the music, playing
on stage or in the audience. Everybody was fucked up! And nobody in the
Prince camp was stoned!”
