and “The Cross” there. When we worked at Sunset Sound, it was a big enough room that we could have everything set up all at once. The piano could always be miked, the B-3 organ could be miked and ready and go, drum kit could be set up and ready to go, and he would have his keyboard, bass, and guitars with him in the control room. Because I was his employee, I would be out there working with him engineering these sessions along with Peggy McCreary. Peggy had been an assistant engineer at Sunset Sound for quite a few years, and he liked working with Peggy when she was around. I believe Coke Johnson worked with us on a few of those sessions as well. The way we would work is, that stuff would be miked all the time. Prince would often come in with lyrics already written, not always but often, usually for ballads. He’d either program the drum machine right there in the control room, or he’d go out and play live drums. If he was playing live drums or programming the drum machine, he had the song basically in his head. He knew where the breaks were, so he’d play an intro, then he’d do a fill that would go into a verse, or he’d play the verse for eight bars, then he’d do a breakdown or a fill that would get us into a chorus. He knew where to put the cymbals at, because he already had the arrangement in his head. After we finished recording the drums, we’d hand him the bass and he’d put on the bass part and he’d put on the basic keyboard and guitar parts. Usually, midway through a song is when he would stop and do vocals. He liked to do vocals alone in the control room, so we’d set up the vocal mic for him. He’d have a patch cord with a piece of tape on it that represented his signal for that vocal mic, and all he had to do was to move it to different tracks after doing a lead, if he wanted to do background vocals. So he did his vocals by himself, then Peggy and I would come back in the room and finish it up by adding the remaining overdubs and getting the song mixed as we went along to then print it and be done for the night. Some songs took a long time. One in particular was “U Got the Look.” “U Got the Look” went through a lot of different permutations. He tried it at different tempos and tried it with different feels. It was unusual for him, but he really liked the track. I think he was feeling like this song was going to be a single. He brought in Sheena Easton at some point. I don’t believe for a minute that it was planned from the beginning. It was just that she was around at the time. We spent three or four days on “U Got the Look,” which was unusual for him.
up with a perspective and vision for his next album. It was darker in tone than the Parade record and much darker in tone than Around the World in a Day . I’d say even darker in tone than his Purple Rain record, because this time he was talking about world affairs. The song “Sign ‘O’ the Times” was about how things were changing in the United States and in the world with AIDS. In the United States, there was gang warfare and poverty. There were things changing with Prince too. His band was changing and his musical style wasn’t as popular as it had once been. Funk dance music was getting the elbow from hip-hop, because hip-hop was coming up through the pop charts. It became clear that a new sheriff was in town [ laughs ]—this sheriff was hip-hop—and that it was going to rule. It was abundantly clear, and Prince was smart enough to know what was coming. He was also smart enough to recognize that musical styles change. It doesn’t matter how great you are. James Brown’s style went out of favor, the Beatles’ style went out of favor, and the big arena rock of Led Zeppelin went out of favor, so you can kind of predict that it’s going to happen to you too. It will happen pretty fast in the music business. This is what helped give Sign “O” the Times its somber tone.
When did you begin the recording sessions for Sign “O” the Times ?
It didn’t have a definitive start date like most people’s albums do. Most people will plan an album, get together with a producer, do preproduction and work out arrangements, book studio time, and go in and make a record. But Prince wasn’t like that. He didn’t work like that. Prince recorded constantly . So things that were coming into fruition may or may not be part of a record. For example, the song “Sign ‘O’ the Times” was recorded when he was in a burst of recording and writing. “Play in the Sunshine” was one of the songs that came along at the very end. “Play in the Sunshine” was really written just to be a segue song to take us from “Sign ‘O’ the Times” into “Housequake.” It was like a tomato on a sandwich. It complemented the meat and cheese. The main songs of this record were “Sign ‘O’ the Times,” “Housequake,” “U Got the Look,” “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” “Strange Relationship,” “The Cross,” and “Adore.” Some of the other songs were pulled out of the vault. “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” preceded 1983; it was an old song. He had me pull that out of the vault so that we could continue working on it by making some changes and then putting it on the record. “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night” was recorded with the Revolution live, when we were in Paris. “Slow Love” was another really old song. It was an old one from the vault. It wasn’t a serial, chronological process. There was some old material and brand-new material that complemented those core songs.
What was the typical studio routine for you and Prince throughout this recording process?
Like a lot of artists, he’d be up all night. The general modus operandi was we would start, either in the late morning or early afternoon, because in the mornings, is when he would take care of business or any managerial issues he had to deal with. Once he began working in the studio, he didn’t like to stop or be interrupted. So let’s say we started at noon, we’d walk out of there certainly after the sun was up. We’d walk out at nine or ten o’clock in the morning, then we’d sleep for a few hours and resume things again. It was kind of a rotating clock. We rarely started at night, at least not late at night, but it wasn’t unheard of to start at six or seven o’clock in the evening then work all night. His dial was constantly rotating. I could expect an eighteen, twenty, or twenty-four hour workday. It was fairly common to work a forty- eight hour session. It was very common to work a twenty-four hour session. When we were working on “U Got the Look,” it just took days and days to finish it. I remember, at one point, looking at my watch and I thought it said nine o’clock. I wondered if it was nine o’clock in the morning or nine o’clock at night. When I was staring at my watch, I noticed it was upside down, so then I wondered if it was three o’clock in the morning or three o’clock in the afternoon. [ laughs ]
Take me through the different studio setups.
He liked working at home and at Sunset Sound Studios [in Los Angeles, California]. At this point, Paisley Park Studios was in its final stages of being built. This was in late 1986 and early 1987. Prince’s options were to record at his home studio on Galpin Boulevard in Chanhassen, Minnesota. It was just up the street from Paisley Park. It was a really nice home, and there was a basement studio that had a large control room and a medium-sized isolation booth right next to it. The piano was upstairs and it was used for smaller projects. We tried to fit the whole band in there once, but it wasn’t big enough for a band. He recorded songs like “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” at home. We did “Hot Thing,” “Forever in My Life,” and “It” there. The other songs were done at Sunset Sound Studios in Studio 3. It was his favorite studio in the world. We did “Sign ‘O’ the Times,” “Play in the Sunshine,” “Housequake,” “U Got the Look,” “Adore,”
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