October 27 was D-Day, when the double album from Prince hit the shelves, and though many may have balked at the price, once the hits started coming the album flew out of the record stores.
1999 would be part of a two-way assault that would finally land Prince at the very top of the charts, not just in America but everywhere, not just the black charts but the mainstream ones, and establish him at last as a bona fide star. His troubled relationship with the media remained however, as he refused to talk to reporters or journalists, afraid he might say the wrong thing or be misquoted. Perhaps sensing his big break was coming, he was much more careful about the set design for his upcoming tour, ensuring there was nothing in it that would cause offence, probably well aware he would be playing to audiences who would not be used to his bawdy moves and risque lyrics. Kind of ironic that once he became a star, and untouchable, such things would become his trademark, and they would be almost expected from him.
But for now he was anxious to win over audiences and not make any missteps, so he isolated himself from reporters and tried to avoid the controversy (sorry) that was swirling around the identity of the mysterious Jamie Starr. Finally, one of his old girlfriends confirmed it was him, and the secret was out. Ah, so apparently everyone did
not know. Well, now they did. Soon afterwards it became common knowledge that both The Time and Vanity 6 were Prince projects, and him in all but name. Fans, understandably, felt cheated, but still went to the shows. Near the end of the year Prince encountered Wendy playing guitar, and was very impressed. As January turned to February, radio stations began to play his new single, “Little Red Corvette”, and for the first time Prince made a real impression on radio, not as a black artist but as an artist, and his single climbed up and up into the charts, reaching the rarefied heights of number six - and not on the black charts, either.
His success on the radio gave way to his video being played on MTV, and as his tour wound on and gained momentum he was able to book, and fill, stadiums and arenas, most of which were thronged with pale faces instead of dark ones. Now fans were screaming for him as he approached the stage, and he was playing to ten, twenty thousand a show.
Album title 1999
Released as: Prince and The Revolution
Label: Warner Bros
Recorded: January - August 1982
Release Date: October 27 1982
Producer: Prince
Studio(s): Prince’s home studio, California; Sunset Sound, California
Chart Position* 9/30
Singles Released: ”1999”, “Little Red Corvette”, “Delirious”, “Automatic”, “Let’s Pretend We’re Married”
Singles Chart Performance: Note: This is complicated. Although a hit when released, “1999” wasn’t a smash, but was then re-released several times as Prince’s fame and popularity grew, improving its chart performance. So here I have denoted this by a code: FR for first release (1982), USRR for US re-release (1983), UKRR for UK re-release (1985) and WWRR for Worldwide re-release (1999). You're welcome.
1999 (FR): 44@BH100, 4 @BHR&BHHSC, 1 @ BDCS, (USRR) 12 :BH100, 25 @UKC (UKRR) 2@UKC (WWRR) 10@UKC, 40 @BH100; LRC: 4@BH100, 15@BHR&BS, 17@BMRT (Mainstream Rock Tracks), 2@UKC; DEL 8@BH100, 18@BHBS (Hot Black Singles - sounds like a trendy pickup joint for African Americans!); LPWM 52@BH100
Sales: 5,500,000 worldwide
If you hadn’t been following Prince’s career (and I had most definitely not been) then this album, his fifth, and certainly the top ten singles that announced it seemed to have come out of nowhere. I remember seeing “1999” on the chart show
Top of the Pops and thinking, who the hell is Prince? Surely I was not alone: to us non-hip non-American whites, this guy seemed to come like a bolt out of the blue (purple?) and take the world by storm. But of course as we’ve read here, his path towards fame, while shorter than most, still took several years, and this was the culmination of all the hard work, the dogged perseverance in the face of poor album sales, and the man’s unwavering faith in his own ability and destiny. Finally, it all made sense. Finally, he would show people what he could do, and finally, the world would recognise his talent.
It simply had no choice in the matter after this.
There’s no messing around and we’re right into it with the title track, a dark, slowed-down voice sounding like something out of
Doctor Who promising “I won’t hurt you, I only want you to have some fun”, then those dramatic, buzzing synths dropping to that infectious, got-to-dance beat and then for the first time ever on a Prince album we hear a voice other than his, as he shares vocal duties with Dez Dickerson, Jill Jones and Lisa, but only on this one track. For all others they are relegated to backing vocals, though even at that, given that Prince usually did his own backing vox, it’s still a pretty major step for the man. And it works. Who doesn’t know this song? Bouncing along with all the energy of a party that’s never going to end (or rather, is) it established Prince, finally, as a true and proper writer of catchy, chart-topping pop songs. Finally, the white folks were taking notice.
I like Prince’s honesty here. While he has flirted with political and/or controversial topics on his last album, he doesn’t offer any solutions or preach or even decry the situation. Prince knows a million songs against war are not going to make one general or dictator or president have second thoughts about engaging in one; music may be powerful but it can, generally, only watch from the sidelines while history unfolds about it. Prince has no intention of trying to stop war (though I’m sure if he could, he, like us all, would) but he wants nothing to do with it. Here, he’s taking what I believe is the same view Tom Waits takes to life: it’s gonna happen, can’t do nothin’ to stop it so you might as well get drunk, or in Prince’s case, dance. Literally dancing in the face of Armageddon, Prince grins “Everybody’s got a bomb, we could all die any day/ But before I let that happen I’ll dance my life away.”
So it’s a song that says, essentially, don’t worry about things over which you have no control. If the world is going bang, it’s gonna go bang with or without you and you may as well enjoy yourself until it does. In some ways, it’s the ultimate un-empowerment (disempowerment?) song: you literally can’t do anything about what’s going to happen, so don’t worry about it. But in other ways it says kind of let love and fun triumph over war. It’s a measure of its popularity that even now, twenty-two years, as I write this, after the year in its title has passed, the song is still played and nobody worries that the events “predicted” by Prince have long gone and (thankfully) never came to pass - though I guess you could make a case for the fact that once 1999 had seen out the end of the millennium, we did have a whole new and darker world two years later, but that’s beside the point.
The song for which Lisa became his inspiration, and the next single, is up after this, giving no chance for breath to be caught, as we slide into “Little Red Corvette”. Here Prince reverts to form, singing the lead himself though allowing the band to take the backing vocals, as mentioned. It’s a slower, more restrained song than the opener, still dancy but with a different, almost sexual-evangelical message from Prince as he petitions the lady in the song to quit her partying ways and settle down. To a great extent I think the song’s slightly wimpy, self-satisfied and frankly somewhat hypocritical message was ignored by those who heard it, most concentrating on the melody and the danceability of the song. The handclaps add a new dimension to the song, and Prince lets loose the guitar so he can hook in any rockers who might be hanging around the fringes wondering what this is all about.
However, in placing both singles first on the album, has Prince, um, shot his load too fast? This is a double album and we’re only at the beginning of it. Can he keep this sort of quality up all through the remainder? This is surely the question critics and fans were asking as they listened to the new album, and indeed we have another single next, and then another, so we kind of really don’t find out if the album can stand on its own merits until about five tracks in. “Delirious” is another handclap-driven, almost rockabilly song in a way, with squeaky synths and a pulsing bass line, bopping along like the best of the Stray Cats or Matt Bianco. It’s a little throwaway if I’m honest, and I don’t see why it was chosen as a single, but there it is. Kind of reminds me of “Everybody Needs Somebody” - you know the one from the movie
The Blues Brothers.
I suppose it was because the age of the CD had yet to arrive that this had to be made into a double album, but by today’s standards it has few tracks, only eleven in all, and though some of them are longer than normal - one nine, one eight and one seven-minute song as well as two that edge over six - it still only comes in with a total playing time of about seventy minutes, not that huge for a double album. The seven-minute track is up next, also the fourth single, and “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” is a catch little upbeat number with a sort of lower-key vocal and again a sense of rockabilly in the beat, with synths sprinkled all over it and Prince utilising what would become his trademark moans and sighs, with a sort of foreshadowing to some degree of the main beat and melody from “Let’s Go Crazy”, though not really.
He uses the basically innocuous melody to slide in some pretty graphic sexual imagery, and also starts spouting about religion, one theme which had already been part of his image, the other which would become increasingly more so as his discography grew. Sequences continue as we go from the seven-minute song to one of the eight-minute ones, with the longest, nine-and-a-half-minute “Automatic” following that, but first it’s “DMSR”, recalling the best of Harold Faltermeyer in the bouncy, squeaky synth and also tipping a nod to Herbie Hancock, the sexual content continuing in this, with the title being an abbreviation of “Dance, Music, Sex, Romance”. Another super-catchy beat makes this one that would be popular on the dance floor, had it been released as a single, which it was not. Hmm. This is one of the first, I think, to feature what would become recognised as Prince’s trademark scream and features questionable lyrics such as “Work your body like a whore”, “strip right down to your underwear” and “wear lingerie to a restaurant”, which may very well have precluded its being chosen as a single, though the length might have had something to do with that.
Prince is obviously confident and self-assured now of his own fame being secured that he can wink “All the white people clap your hands on the four” and get away with it, singing next “one, two, three, one, two, three” with wicked abandon. The longest track, as mentioned, is the new-wave infused “Automatic”, running for nine and a half minutes, with whistling keys and hooks aplenty, and again within the simple melody there’s a tale of bondage and submission as he sings “It's strange, I'm more comfortable around you when I'm naked, can you hear me? I wonder if you have any mercy, don't torture me”.
It’s odd, but for a song of this length the same basic melody and phrases run right through it, with no real verses and certainly no chorus as such, but it doesn’t get boring. Some interesting sped-up vocal effects, lots of murmuring, and again plenty of handclaps. Beautiful smooth guitar solo just puts the icing on this particular cake.
One of the shortest tracks is next, just four minutes of “Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)” with swirly computer sounds made on the synth, a staggered beat and a low vocal, pretty stripped-down really, other than when Prince lets loose an animalistic screech, then we’re into the first of two ballads, with “Free”. A thick heartbeat rhythm introduces scratchy drum machine beats before a simple piano takes the tune for a simple be-thankful-for-what-you-have song with more than a little Lennon in it. Prince sings this in what will be his usual voice, the high-pitched falsetto he would become known for, the song a nice breather from all the dance and funk and soul going on; there’s a nod back to seventies soul too, then things hot up with the final eight-minute track.
“Lady Cab Driver” is another funk jam, stuffed with more handclap beats, synthy brass and a deep, thrumming bass line and frankly, some rather embarrassing, um, sounds of female pleasure. Not so sure about this one. Way too long for what’s in it. That leaves us with “All the Critics Love U in New York”, the first track on his first real commercial album to use the practice he would start of replacing words with numbers and single letters (2 for to, 4 for for and so on). It’s a pleasant little sort of whistling tune that hums along nicely, with what might very kindly be called a rap of sorts in it, some good guitar riffs, and you have to wonder if the title is a sort of sly dig at his fractious relationship with journalists, reporters and critics before the release of this album?
The final track then is the second ballad, the bluesy, soul-infused “International Lover”, driven mostly on piano and synth, which sways along with smouldering sexual energy as Prince goes a little ballistic on the vocal, screeching and shrieking out the lyric and generally having a whale of a time. I like the idea of him comparing love-making to an airplane journey too. Good way to end the album: opens with - if we’re going with the overall sexual motif running through most of it - a powerful ejaculation (sorry but there it is) and ends with a slow, satisfying… you know what? Let’s, ah, just leave it at that, shall we?
TRACK LISTING
1999
Little Red Corvette
Delirious
Let’s Pretend We’re Married
DMSR
Automatic
Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)
Free
Lady Cab Driver
All the Critics Love U in New York
International Lover
This may be almost the pinnacle of Prince’s recording career already, but great as this album is, it serves to illustrate why I personally am not a bigger fan than I could be. I haven’t heard all that many of his albums, true, but the ones I have heard, including this, always tend to have weak tracks. Certainly, I could listen to his greatest hits and have no complaints, but it would be a rare Prince album I would listen to all the way through otherwise. They always seem to fall short of greatness for me, and while there are undoubtedly great songs and many hits on various albums, I’m still the sort of person who, where Prince is concerned, would prefer listening to a compilation rather than an actual album. That may change as we go along, who knows, but right now that’s where I am with Prince.
But that doesn’t matter.
1999 demolished all previous barriers and walls that were holding him back, and as the singles and the album rose in the charts, he was assured of having announced his arrival, even if to him it was four years and five albums later. People were now talking about Prince: the radio, magazines, music shows, and had the internet been around at this time no doubt it would have been buzzing. But Prince, of course, having reached what for many other artists would be considered the summit of his career, was not satisfied and was determined to go far further, always bending genres, always setting trends, always showing there was something new he could do. All but a black Bowie, he refused to stand still and was already planning his next project.
The attitude of his manager, Steve Fargnoli, reminds me of that scene in the Simpsons episode where Bart becomes “The I-Didn’t-Do-It Kid”, and Krusty the Klown, realising how big this kid is about to get - and the profit he can make - grabs him in front of reporters and cameras and yells “He’s mine! I own him and all his marketing potential!” or something similar. I don’t remember exactly the quote, but the idea is the same: once your client hit the big time, it was time to start squeezing him or her for cash. And so it went with Prince, as only he and Fargnoli travelled on one tour bus and the rest of the band in another, making the now-called Revolution feel as if they were being sidelined. Mark Brown put the feelings of the band into words: “Steve only cared about Prince and his money.”
Tensions continued to grow. Dickerson was a devout Christian, and like Gayle before him, felt somewhat conflicted at the message the band was putting out, or to be more accurate, they were putting out for Prince. He used to pray for forgiveness. Meanwhile, Morris Day was pushing for a raise, Vanity was sulking because she had to share Prince with Susie, one of the other members of the trio, and Wendy was angling to replace an increasingly frustrated Dickerson, who looked bound for the door. When a writer for
NME, the
New Musical Express, one of Britain’s most influential and respected music magazines of the time, flew in to spend some time with Prince and write about him, the newly-minted star basically ignored him. The girls took care of him - he had come all the way from England, for god’s sake! - while Prince did his thing, but Barney Hoskyns, the
NME writer, noted that it wasn’t only him that Prince was ignoring, and that there appeared to be a gulf between the main man and his band and supporting cast.
When two members of the Time missed a gig due to a snowstorm, Prince did not accept the excuse, annoyed that they had been off seeing another band, which he saw as disloyalty. He fined them three thousand dollars each. They really were just his employees, and he wasn’t happy about them making decisions he had not authorised. Soon after he pulled the band from his support slot.
Prince did all of this without apology, concern or possibly without even taking note of how it was perceived. He already had a much bigger project in his sights, and Hollywood beckoned. It would be the next to fall before the mighty Prince juggernaut, proof that at the tender age of twenty-eight, there really was just about nothing this kid could not do.