Being the engineer, you had a front-row seat to everything that was happening in the studio. Were you privy to any conversations that Prince was having about the direction he wanted to take his sound in for Diamond and Pearls ? Michael Koppelman: The song “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)” by C+C Music Factory came out in 1990. I remember Prince loving that song. I don’t know what else he listened to, because I never saw him listening to music recreationally. But this song and what was happening in rap music hugely influenced him and made him want to make a record that sounded really big, fat, and tough. He pushed a lot of his songs in that direction with [rapper] Tony [M.] and layering out a ton of stuff and rethinking things. He’d have a song that would be done, and then he’d put new drums on it and push it in a whole new direction and try some singing or rapping on it, and then he might push it in a third direction. With some of the mixes at the end of that record, we had forty-eight tracks locked together of analog, just to mix all the various drums and loops he put on. He was influenced by what was going on in music at that time more so than I expected him to be. He was always striving to show his variety, growth, and depth as an artist. When he was working on this album, was he working on his music alone, or was he accompanied by his new band, the New Power Generation? Michael Koppelman: During Graffiti Bridge , I was his main engineer for that record. He was mainly alone. In my opinion, it felt like a low point for him. I don’t know that for a fact, but he would come into the studio with his jammies on, and he always had his heels on. He’d come in not looking like the guy from Purple Rain . For most of his career that I was there for, he was Prince all the time. His makeup, wardrobe, and everything. The only exception was during his Graffiti Bridge era. On Diamond and Pearls , the band was there a lot. [Drummer] Michael Bland would be in the studio playing. A lot of the impetus for the songs came from that collaboration. Many of the songs were recorded live. Some of the songs were created and recorded in Japan. We recorded a bunch of songs at Paisley Park, and in London when he was playing at Wembley Arena. We had this large catalog of live tracks to pull from to create Diamonds and Pearls . A lot of it started with collaboration, yet he would have the band in the studio and just joke around and have fun and make music. Rosie [Gaines] was singing on many of the songs and around a lot. It was a fun time, really.
and sets of lyrics for. “Live 4 Love” was done probably three times. When Prince was going to record in the studio, we would set up everything: drums, bass, guitars, keyboards, and vocal mics. Anything he wanted to do, we were ready to do, basically. We’d put the vocal mics on the control-room side of the studio, and they’d hang right over the console. Then Prince would kick everyone out of the room when he sang. He’d punch himself in and out and we’d cross-patch him into a whole bunch of tracks, and he could hit record whenever he wanted. On “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night,” he pulled the mic up to check the volume on it. He said, “Yep, sounds good.” When he was done recording his vocals, he called me back in. The needle was pegged to the right for the entire thing. It is something an engineer would never do on purpose. I told him it sounded good. I said, “Your vocal is totally fried, but I kind of like it.” He had great ears. So, for this song, we hardly worked on it at all. It was almost what “Diamonds and Pearls” could’ve sounded like, if Prince and Warner Bros. put it out earlier. It’s a great record. It was interesting to see the transition of it. It started off pretty sparse and organic. Earlier, you shared that some of the songs were done in three different places: Japan, London, and Paisley Park. Can you talk about the differences between the three places and the recording process? Michael Koppelman: I wasn’t in Japan, so I don’t know who recorded the songs there. In London, money was no object. Prince was performing at the Wembley Arena for ten days. He had a couple nights off between his shows. He booked studio time the whole time, but he couldn’t get studio time at only one studio, so we spent two days at one studio and then three days at another studio. We recorded at some of the biggest studios in London. Each time, they’d fly me over there. Every day, we’d go into the studio to set up everything. The road crew would bring their recording racks in. The crew would show up, and we’d get everything ready. I’d always assume that Prince would be coming in, but some days, Prince would literally not show up. So we’d have $1500-a-day studio completely decked out and ready to go, and he wouldn’t show up. [ laughs ] During the times he showed up, I remember recording with the band at one session at one of the studios. We recorded ten songs, but five of those are at least on Diamonds and Pearls . We just tracked a whole bunch of stuff, and I didn’t know what it was at the time. A lot of the stuff was done in that one day in London with Sonny T., Michael Bland, Levi Seacer, and Tommy Barbarella. At Paisley Park, we were always ready for the band to come in the studio. The crew was always responsible for Prince’s gear. He didn’t have sequencers or anything like that back then. He just had his amps, guitars, drums, and everything else. For me, it didn’t matter where we were. It was just fun to record in different places to get different drum sounds and stuff like that. The main difference, non-technically, I think, would be that Prince was on the road. For Prince, being in a studio was his home. That’s where he wanted to be, all the time, as far as I could tell. But the second best place was onstage. When we were in London, it was like playtime for Prince. He had the whole band there. They were playing in front of these adoring crowds. They had these suites booked out. When they showed up, it was fun. Prince was having fun. It was kind of a rare thing that Prince was not going to have fun, because he just loved working so much. He just worked all the time. In London, it was just fun. The whole band would come in. He came in a few times on his own and worked on a few things, but it was pretty much more entertainment than anything else. When we were working on the album, it was work, work, work, in a good way, but he would work
Walk me through what you witnessed in the studio with Prince’s creative approach during the making of this album?
Michael Koppelman: I remember around Christmas of 1990 the record was done. He worked on it for another half year after that, so he kept working on it. I think the record company didn’t want to put it out yet. They were trying to slow Prince down, which is a weird thing for a record company to do. He was frustrated because he wanted to work, and he wanted the record to be awesome, obviously. We spent the prior year working on this record, then we had to wait another half year before they would release it. I don’t know all the details on it, but he worked on it for forever. We worked on every song for forever. There were a few exceptions like “Money Don’t Matter 2 Night.” It is one of my favorites. The song was originally recorded in Japan. He put on a few tracks on, and he put the vocal on, which was totally in the red, which made it completely distorted. Songs like “Willing and Able,” “Walk Don’t Walk,” and “Live 4 Love” had multiple versions
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