to turn to dust, because I felt as though he was treating me like a little girl. I said, ‘I’m not sixteen anymore, Rick, you better calm down. He came over to me and said, ‘And look who you’re hanging out with.’ There was no love lost between those guys.” In 1980, when Teena’s second album, Irons in the Fire , was released, she was invited to open for Prince’s tour. Previously, they’d been doing little club gigs as well as a short-run opening for Shaun Cassidy. “That was funny,” says Jones, “because the audience was filled with little girls and we were dressed in these tight, sexy clothes. We played in Utah and Colorado, but that wasn’t our audience. Finally, we went out on the road with Rick, and then we jumped on Prince’s tour.” For Teena, it was a dream gig, but Jill was content playing it cool. “One day, Prince and Teena were in the same hotel, and he came over to me and said, ‘I heard your voice through the soundboard. It’s really good.’ We started talking and he was really funny, but everything he said I had a clap-back for it. Back then, I was the clap-back queen.” Prince played his mack-daddy part with heart, but he also began spreading fake news about Jill to keep his homeboy/bassist André Cymone at bay. According to Jill, “André approached me one night and asked, ‘Are you married?’ When I started laughing, he said, ‘Prince told me you were married.’ After that, he became like my big brother on the tour.” Cymone, on the other hand, remembered the situation somewhat differently. “Jill and I were friendly, but the problem for me was, I knew her mom and Teena to a certain degree,” Dre says. “Both were very sweet women. But I was such a scoundrel back then, and I didn’t want to get in trouble with them.” Prince also told her the funny tale of Cymone bringing his boom box on the road because he thought he’d be able to pick up Minneapolis radio station KMOJ even when he wasn’t in the right city. “Prince wouldn’t let me live that down.” After the tour was over, Jill and Prince stayed in touch, but two years passed before they would collaborate on music when he asked her to contribute vocals to the synth-funk masterwork 1999 . Moving to Minneapolis in 1982, she lived with Prince and hung out with him steady. “He loved driving around town, blaring music in the car,” Jill recalls. “He’d play the Cocteau Twins, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Nino Rota, Roxy Music’s Avalon album. He once made me a mixtape with nothing but Miles Davis songs on it.” Jones also had to get used to Prince’s nocturnal ways. “The night we recorded ‘1999,’ I was in bed, and he woke me up in the middle of the night. We lived in Chanhassen, but Lisa drove in as well and sang with me.” When Prince traveled to Cali to record parts of 1999 at Sunset Sound, Jill would be there too. And when Prince was finished with his stuff, he’d start working on hers. Five years later , when Jill Jones was finally in stores, it was doomed from the beginning. When her feisty yet sexually charged first single “Mia Bocca” was released, there was resistance from MTV to play the video in prime time. “We had that crazy bitch Tipper Gore going after us with her Parents Music Resource Center [PMRC] that was trying to censor music based on sexual content,” Jones says. “MTV would only play it at certain times at night.” Directed by French photographer and music-video director Jean-Baptiste Mondino, who later shot the Lovesexy album cover, the sepia-tinted clip was reminiscent of Fellini films and though sexy, still innocent. “Prince had nothing to do with the video,” Jones says. “I just went to Mexico with the director and the production team. Prince spared no expense and he loved it; he said it captured the essence of me.” Meanwhile, the people at radio kept trying to leverage with Paisley Park, telling them they’d only play his artists if Prince did a concert
played, but other times, I’d just sit with [Berry’s father] Pops Gordy and listen to his stories. With the Gordy empire, there was a real sense of self-love and achievement that couldn’t help but be passed down to me.” Jill also started accompanying her aunt Iris Gordy to the studio with then-rising Motown artist Tata Vega, who in 1975 was working on her debut, Full Speed Ahead . “Motown was hoping that Tata, who had a powerhouse style, would rival Chaka Khan,” Jones says. “She had a great, inspiring voice. I started doing my first background singing on a few of her tracks when I was thirteen.” However, after Jill’s mother began working with Teena Marie— who was originally the lead singer in a group called Kryptonite (later rechristened Apollo) with Berry Gordy’s son Kerry and future mega manager Benny Medina—young Jill started spending more time with her. Teena, eight years older than Jill, became like an older sister and eventually wound up living with the family. “Teena used to drive me to school in the mornings and pick me up in the afternoon,” Jill says. “There was a White girl that tried to jump me, and when I told Teena, she came up to school and went all Venice gang member on her. She was my protector, my best friend, and my mentor. Teena opened up my world. I spent countless hours riding in the car with her, listening to the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, or going surfing. When she took the Kryptonite gig, I’d go to rehearsals with her, but, truthfully, it wasn’t a good fit and Teena was miserable. For me, I loved being with her and having these experiences I never would’ve had if I stayed in Ohio.” With Teena unhappy, Winnie and Iris Gordy connected her with the label’s latest star (and soon-to-be Prince rival) Rick James, whose glittering grit-raw debut, Come Get It (1978), was street-corner hard, dance-floor ready, and included the classic weed track “Mary Jane.” At first, Rick was hesitant, wanting to work only on his own material, but after hearing Teena rehearsing at the Motown office, he relented and the two began working together on her debut, Wild and Peaceful , which featured the James-penned single “I’m a Sucker for Your Love.” Years later, Marie told an interviewer, “I was a gift to him and he was a gift to me.” While fifteen-year-old Jill attended a few of the recording sessions, she also started showing up at the band’s house with her school friends instead of going to class. “Rick had a house in Coldwater Canyon and I would come by at ten in the morning,” Jill says, laughing. “I only let my friends come so I could use their cars. The Stone City Band backing vocalist [and percussionist] Jackie [Ruffin] would let us in. She would be half asleep, but always so nice. Her husband, [keyboardist] Levi [Ruffin Jr.], would be there and they might make breakfast. Rick would come downstairs, rubbing his eyes, and ask, ‘Don’t y’all have school?’ I would tell him that I didn’t have any early morning classes. Finally, Rick called my mom. He ratted me out so bad that my mom went to the principal’s office to find the fake notes I’d written. I got in so much trouble; I was so mad.” That same year, Jill started co-writing with Teena [for “The Ballad of Cradle Rob and Me”] and providing backing vocals during her recording sessions. The following year, when Jill turned sweet sixteen, Rick James gifted her with a beautiful necklace for her birthday. Although Rick was a notorious wild boy, he usually tried to act right around Jill. “But there was that one time I was in the studio and almost knocked over this mound of cocaine that was on the table, and everybody in the room started going nuts,” Jill says. “Seeing everybody’s reaction made me never want to experiment with coke. I had never seen such craziness in my life.” Years later, when Jill started hanging out with Prince publicly, the two ran into Rick James one night at Carlos’n Charlie’s. “The rivalry between them was very real, so when Rick saw me, he asked real loud where my sweet-sixteen necklace was. I was mortified; I just wanted
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( opposite ) Original Jill Jones press photo by Isabel Snyder for Paisley Park.
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