Sound Synthesis The punk-funk of Prince and the Rebels text Tony Best and Manny Zambrano photography Leni Sinclair When Prince released For You in 1978, he was heralded as a Black music prodigy, the heir apparent to Stevie Wonder. But as the al- bum’s guitar-crunching “I’m Yours” suggests, Prince was on a mis- sion to mix not just soul and funk, but also new wave and punk into one explosive cocktail. It began in the summer of 1978 when Prince assembled a mot- ley crew of musicians from Minnesota’s Twin Cities area as a tour- ing unit to support his Warner Bros. debut. Aiming for a racially and gender-democratic band, the lineup featured bassist André Cymone, drummer Bobby Rivkin, guitarist Dez Dickerson, with keyboardists Matt Fink and Gayle Chapman (later replaced by Lisa Coleman) holding it down on the ARP Omni and Oberheim OB-X. “Prince’s vision for us always was to be more of a multira- cial Rolling Stones than a stereotypical R&B group,” Dickerson recalled in his 2003 memoir. “It was something that had never been seen in Black music. In the end, it’s the barrier busting we were able to do that I’m most proud of.” These early rehearsal workouts ranged from loose JB and Parliament reworkings to funked-up cov- ers of Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. Following a less-than-stellar Minneapolis stage debut on January 5, 1979—with attending Warner Brothers execs nixing a planned For You tour—members of this no-name band embarked on individual endeavors while Prince withdrew to Los Angeles to produce, arrange, compose, and perform his eponymous sophomore album, Prince . Aware of a simmering discontent among his backup players, Prince returned to Minneapolis to blueprint plans for a side project dubbed the Rebels, which would bring everyone’s musical ideas to the fore. With extensive input from Cymone and Dickerson, the Rebels were conceptualized as a vehicle to synthesize the funk, punk, and new- wave jams played during the band’s marathon rehearsals. The twelve-day recording session commenced on July 10, 1979, in Boulder, Colorado, with Prince’s management team executive- producing the album in hopes of slotting it on the Warner Brothers
fall release schedule. The Rebels would commit ten tracks to tape, including four songs penned by Prince, with three contributions each by Dickerson and Cymone. Refusing to rely on Black music stereotypes, the material ranged from bluesy Stones-esque romps (“Loving You” and “You”) to nasty slices of uncut Minneapolis funk (“Thrill You Kill You”) to Moroder-infused machine rock (“Disco Away”). An early version of “Head” was also demo’d, which later resurfaced on Prince’s third album. Despite the music’s freshness and innovation, the master tapes were never presented to Warner Brothers—Prince and company simply lost interest in releasing the Rebels LP. In the spring of 1980, following the Prince promotional cam- paign, Prince began work on his next record. The quasi concept album Dirty Mind was a reassertion of the abandoned Rebels mate- rial, combining elements of new wave and synth pop with stripped- down funk. Released with some trepidation by the label in October of that year, the album received glowing reviews in the rock press but a lukewarm reception by Black music critics who didn’t get Prince’s freaky-deaky lyrics nor minimalist Devo-meets-Sly-Stone production technique. Prince, however, remained unfazed. “When I brought it to the record company it shocked a lot of people,” he would later muse in the pages of Rolling Stone . “I wasn’t being deliberately provocative. I was being deliberately me.” The Dirty Mind concept was conceived during the band’s first headlining tour launched that December. The Rebels—playing Marshall-amped versions of Prince’s electro-boogie hits—barnstormed across North America and Europe while garnering a legion of turned-on fans (and some pans) in the process. By now, the group had fully realized their glam-rock/new-romantic personas, complete with studded trench coats, makeup, skinny ties, and check- ered handkerchiefs. Full of self-belief and serious attitude, these Rebels returned to find a global audience hungry for more—their brand of punk-funk controversy was about to define a decade. .
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