When we were working at Sunset Sound, there wasn’t any windows. It was fully contained. There was a lounge and a bathroom, so you could go for days without ever walking outside, if you needed to, and you wouldn’t know if it was day or night because you were that exhausted and the hours flew by. To work with someone who was never on drugs, lazy, or disrespectful, was a great thing. He had a workingman’s attitude toward the work we were doing in the studio. We were constantly being productive. Things were getting done and made. It was an exciting environment where we were watching creative work come together, and I was participating in that process. It was thrilling to be working with him at that time. It was more than enough reason to stay awake. There were no complaints from me. [ laughs ] Eric Leeds and Matt Blistan [aka Atlanta Bliss] would come to the studio to play saxophone and trumpet. Susannah Melvoin would do some backing vocals, and she was in the studio a lot. Sheila E. would play percussion on some of the songs. For the most part, this album was all Prince.
Where were you positioned in the studio in relation to Prince?
Well, if he was doing acoustic drums, acoustic piano, or B-3 organ, he’d be on the other side of the glass. For everything else, he was right next to me. [ laughs ] I was sitting behind the console routing the signal, and he was sitting next to me playing bass or keys. We were right next to each other for most of four years. I was with him on tour, because he liked to record wherever he was.
Did he do any demos for the songs on this album?
No. Not at all. He was unusual compared to other artists. A lot of artists will do demos just to live with it before they commit the arrangement to tape. Prince worked so fast that he wouldn’t waste his time demoing. There were two exceptions for this album though. “Strange Relationship” was a song that the band worked out at rehearsal a lot. He tried a lot of different arrangements at rehearsal. So it really wasn’t demoing in the way we think about demoing. This song was a rare exception. It had been around for a long time. Sometimes, he would pull out old material and redo it. In the case of “Slow Love” and “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man,” those weren’t substantially redone from how they were originally stored back in 1982. He basically updated them, and we mixed them.
What were the names of the instruments and equipment you used to capture the sounds for the songs on this album?
When I was working with him, he loved his Linn LM-1 drum machine. It was the early model that preceded the more popular LinnDrum. At home, he had a Yamaha piano. He liked the Yamaha drums as well. On this record, he used the Fairlight CMI, which was a very sophisticated synthesizer. He used it a lot . The only people who could afford it had a large amount of money. I would say the Fairlight was the sound for the Sign “O” the Times record. He was still using his Yamaha DX7. He liked that synthesizer. He wasn’t using his earlier stuff like the Oberheim synthesizer. The Oberheim synthesizer sound defined his Controversy , 1999 , and Purple Rain albums. Those albums had a bright, robust, harsh tone. They had a really nice rock-and- roll tone, but he was abandoning those at this point, in favor of the softer tones of the Fairlight and DX7. He was probably tired of the Oberheim. He was still using his same guitar, the Hohner Telecaster. The bass guitars were still the same.
Sheila E., Prince, and Cat. Promotional photo for the concert film Sign “O” the Times .
76
Made with FlippingBook - PDF hosting