first albums he’d done primarily at Paisley Park, and I think, being a forty-eight track studio, he seemed determined to use every track at his beck and call!” Prince played the original version of the title track for Chairman Mo and Warner Bros. president Lenny Waronker out in Los Angeles, but they didn’t get it, couldn’t understand the lyrics. “We had put a horn chart on a song called ‘Lovesexy,’ which Prince took to L.A., and then a week or so later, Prince called us back to work on an entirely different song called, umm, ‘Lovesexy,’ ” says Eric, who preferred the second/album version. (Incidentally, Cat believes the title Lovesexy itself is a play on the word ecstasy. As a hidden message, Prince did place the word “Ecstasy” within the “Alphabet St.” video; he also put “Don’t buy the The Black Album ” in another frame, but it’s interesting that he didn’t attach any such instruction to the ecstasy hint.) “Alphabet St.,” recorded on New Year’s Eve eve, 1987, is one of Prince’s greatest-ever productions. It’s him trying to out-funk the recent “Faith” in a “Roll-over George Michael” electronic rhythm and blues. Prince mixed the song while watching Cat dance, and also asked her to contribute vocals: “Cat, we need you to rap.” “He kept stopping me, saying, ‘Nope,’ ” says Cat. “Shaking his head, ‘Nope, nope. I don’t like it. You have to do it again.’ I started getting mad, so he said, ‘Who’s your favorite rapper? Salt-N-Pepa, right?’ ” Cat then adopts Prince’s jokey, pimp-like, Cloreen Bacon Skin voice: “ ‘Salt- N-Pepa ain’t gon’ like dis—you better rap like you mean it!’ ” Ingrid features on “Alphabet St.” too, reciting the alphabet. “Everybody says to me, ‘What happened to G ?!’ ” says Ingrid, laughing about the letter she missed. “He was trying to get me to steam it up, and well, I guess I got distracted.” It was a beautiful winter for Ingrid, creative and spiritually uplifting. “It was like being in a bunker for three months. Sometimes, you’d come out for air and then you’d go back in.” Prince would take her to dinner, go clubbing, they’d go to the movies, play pool, and sometimes Prince’s dad, John L. Nelson, would accompany them. But Ingrid never really mixed with the band, as she sort of felt like Yoko Ono. Says Ingrid: “Nobody wanted me there. There was a bunch of [bitchy] stuff going on, and I just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He never put me in that world, never exposed me to it.” After completing the album, Ingrid didn’t spend as much time with Prince, who turned his attention to the tour— Lovesexy ’88 . Several of Prince’s staff still had misgivings about the new album, doubted its commercial appeal. “I remember Prince making a big deal about the record being played as a whole, in a complete suite, rather than sequenced into individual tracks,” says Alan Leeds. “Something I felt obligated to point out would be a problem at radio, but he didn’t care.”
“Sheila E. and I were in Los Angeles, doing The Tonight Show with my brother Alan that night,” remembers Eric Leeds. “Early the next morning, at the airport, Alan said, all jaunty, ‘Okay, got some news for you!’ ” laughs Eric, “and my first reaction was ‘Oh shit!’ I was very disappointed that it was shelved for a very practical reason—I owned a song on that album!” To lose out was the brilliant “Rock Hard in a Funky Place,” including Eric’s nasty sax line (plucked from an unreleased, jazzy Leeds original called “Pacemaker”). “As time went on, we started to hear all the different stories about what had really transpired that night,” Eric adds. It was rumored that Prince—clean living and teetotal—had experimented with drugs. “Yeah, he did do ecstasy that night,” confirms Cat, matter-of- factly. “I was with him. Ecstasy is a drug that—they give it to couples who are having marital problems—it makes you feel loved, it makes you feel sexy.” Despite the insinuation that Prince had suffered a “bad” trip on December 1, all of the accounts of what he actually said to people appear to suggest the opposite as being true: he was telling acquaintances how much he loved them, and that he felt he had experienced a spiritual awakening. So much so that in the new light of day, on December 2, Prince was still feeling the profound effect of what had happened the night before. “It was romantic,” says Ingrid, who, incredibly, was completely unaware until this interview that there were rumors that Prince was on something. “We fell in love with the poetry of who we were in each other’s presence. We fell in love with words. I was not a great writer, but there was an innocence and rawness in what I wrote about that I think he felt he had lost. So when I think about the night we met, not knowing that he was high—though I can see it now—I think about the fact that the Ecstasy only acted as something that opened a door that he had held closed.” “She was the inspiration to Prince. He told me he had met this woman,” Cat pauses, “and that her name was Gertrude.”
Yes
When Warner Bros. chairman Mo Ostin personally sanctioned the cancellation, and withdrawal, of The Black Album , Prince immediately began work on its replacement, Lovesexy . Not concerned about playing it cool, Prince sent for Ingrid only days after their first meeting. The first track by Ingrid was a poem entitled “Cross the Line,” recorded in the smaller Studio B. Spoken softly and sensuously, she recites: “In the distance, a light shines and someday he will touch it / Because it calls to him, says cross the line.” “I can still clearly remember Prince’s face when he heard ‘Cross the Line,’ ” says Ingrid. “He went quiet, and his eyes were really wide. I think there was something in that original recording that helped him make sense of the path he suddenly found himself on.” Pleased with the initial results, Prince approved a full spoken-word project—with the working title 21 Poems —and would hold back “Cross the Line” for a special assignment the following summer. The first proper session for Lovesexy was recorded on December 11, 1987, in Studio A: a double-header consisting of an original composition, album closer “Positivity” and the Crystal Ball outtake “The Ball,” reworked as the falsetto-led, jubilant album opener “Eye No.” As Alan told Per Nilsen about Prince, “His attitude changed, it was joyous music and he clearly enjoyed making it.” Eric Leeds, who played saxophone on several Lovesexy tracks, recalls: “I did have an optimistic viewpoint in some of the sessions. Occasionally, I was able to hear some of the songs in their earliest versions and I was feeling, ‘Okay, maybe this is going to be a little simpler, a little less produced perhaps?’ But of course, that’s not what happened. It was among the
This Is Not Music—This Is a Trip
Production designer Roy Bennett had been with Prince since Dirty Mind . “He was really the unsung hero of the Prince tours, because Prince trusted him,” says Eric. “Prince would go to Roy with abstract ideas about how he would like the show to look and Roy would flesh them out.” A year or so before preparations started on Lovesexy ’88 , Roy had the opportunity to design Queen’s Magic Tour—which turned out to be Freddie Mercury’s last Queen tour before he died. Contractually, Prince had “first right of refusal,” says Roy, who would have to clear it with management. They said, “Okay, Prince is busy in the studio, so that’s fine.” Recalls Roy: “A week later, I get a call from Prince’s managers, Bob Cavallo and Steve Fargnoli, and they’re like, ‘Can you fly to L.A.? We need to talk to you.’ So I get there and sit in Bob’s office and he goes, ‘Prince has decided that he wants to do something and that you
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Cat Glover dances with Prince during Lovesexy ’88 in Antwerpen, Belgium, July 23, 1988. Photo by Gie Knaeps/Getty Images.
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