5 very rare curiosities about “Purple Rain”, Prince’s masterpiece
It was rediscovered by very young people thanks to “Stranger Things”, which (re)brought “When doves cry” and “Purple rain” to the top of the charts with millions of streams worldwide. But “Purple Rain”, Prince’s masterpiece album, was never really just a record of the past: for over forty years it has been one of the most loved and revered records in the repertoire of the elf from Minneapolis, who passed away in 2016. Published in 1984 as the soundtrack to the film of the same name, “Purple Rain” redefined the boundaries between pop, rock, funk and soul, selling over 25 million copies worldwide and establishing Prince as a generational icon. Yet forty-two years after its release the album continues to be surrounded by a series of mysteries: radical choices, second thoughts, deleted versions, meanings never really explained. Here are five very rare curiosities – the kind that almost no one tells – that hide behind the genesis of “Purple Rain” and the myth of Prince.
“When doves cry” is “crippled” by choice (and by rebellion)
“When doves cry“, which in the final episode of “Stranger Things” opens the sequence that leads to the finale of the series, does not have a bass line. Prince opted for a radical choice. The bass was recorded, but the Minneapolis elf he canceled it after listening to the final mix. Reason? «It weighs down the emotion», the artist explained to his collaborators. For Prince the song had to sound empty, nervous, bare. Decades after the release of “Purple Rain,” Prince’s trusted sound engineer, Peggy “Mac” McCreartale: “Prince deproduced the song. He said to me, “No one will believe what I am about to do.” And he did». Removing the bass from a funk song was almost a sacrilege. But Prince didn’t care. In an interview with Bass Player in 2005 he explained: «“When doves cry” was the last song from “Purple rain” to be mixed, but it didn’t sound good: it was too conventional, like all the other songs with drums, bass and keyboards. So I said, “If I had my way, it would sound like this.” Sometimes the brain splits in two: your ego tells you one thing and the rest of you tells you another. You have to go with what you know is right.” The version of “When doves cry” with the bass line was never officially released on single, album, deluxe reissues or posthumous Prince box sets. Unofficial bootlegs and modern reconstructions (made by fans or musicians who “add” a hypothetical bass) are circulating, but they do not come from the original masters and have never been authorized. Not even in the deluxe versions of the reissues of “Purple Rain” did a complete take with bass ever appear, a sign that either Prince never wanted that version to see the light of day or the bass was deleted so early that it was not preserved as a complete alternative master.
“Purple Rain” was born in a stadium, as a nine-minute long demo
The first embryo of “Purple Rain” was recorded live at First Avenue in Minneapolisthe city’s stadium. It happened August 3, 1983during a concert that Prince organized, without promoting it, with a very specific purpose: to test new material live in front of a real audience and record the show to use it as the basis of the film he would soon shoot. They attended the live show 1,500 people. On that occasion Prince and The Revolution performed one for the first time embryonic version of “Purple rain” longer, less defined and with instrumental and vocal parts that would later be eliminated from the one later included in the album. Even the original version of “Purple rain”, just like that of “When doves cry” with the bass line, was never officially released. Good quality unofficial recordings exist, because the concert was recorded multitrack, but their publication has never been authorized.
The album was supposed to be a collective project
According to Prince’s initial plans, “Purple Rain” was not intended as a classic solo album. Prince was in fact considering working on a triple crossover projecta small record blockbuster: one of his albums, one of Apollonia 6, one of The Time. Some songs that ended up on “Purple Rain” were born in those “hybrid” sessions. “Purpler rain” is the result of scaling, not expansion. Prince realized he was concentrating too much emotional material in one place. And he decided to keep it all.
The dirty sound of the guitars was an anti-perfection choice
The guitars of the songs contained in “Purple rain” have a dirty, raw sound. It was a deliberate choice by Prince. While in the ’80s artists focused on very shiny, plastic-like productions, he did the opposite: he deliberately left imperfections, background noises and saturations. In “Purple rain” many guitars are not clean re-recordings but emotional takes held even if technically questionable. A rarely stated philosophy: Prince wanted the record to age like worn vinyl.
Prince didn’t explain the meaning of the lyrics to “Purple Rain” even to the record companies
But why is the rain purple in Prince’s song? Ah, to know. Prince has always refused to give a definitive explanation of the lyrics of his masterpiece. He didn’t even want to give it to the Warner record companies, who released the record. We only know that purple was a central color for Prince: born from the union of blue, associated with sadness and pain, and red, linked to passion and love. In this sense it represents an intense and profound emotion, almost sacred. Rain, on the other hand, has always represented an image of change and purification, the sign of an end that can lead to a transformation. Prince explained that the “purple rain” comes as a metaphor for an extreme moment, even the end of the world, not in a literal but emotional sense, when «what remains really important is love». Within the song, purple rain accompanies the pain of a breaking relationship, regret and the desire to be understood.
