11

PURPLE RAIN

When Prince fired Jimmy and Terry, I could have walked away. I could have reached out to them and said, “Fuck Prince. Stay in The Time. It’s our band. We’ve got our own hits. We’ll tour without him.” I didn’t do that. Why?

First of all, I was getting high—and being high hardly helps clarity. But no matter how high I might have been, I knew that trying to walk off with The Time would involve a legal entanglement I couldn’t afford. By then Prince had major money. My minor money couldn’t afford fancy lawyers. But it was more than my financial inability to walk away from the Prince machine. It was the plain fact that I didn’t want to. I was part of Prince’s magical enterprise just when the magic was spreading. He was going to make a movie. And not only that, he was making the damn movie in the dead of winter in Minneapolis.

Crazy? You bet. But did I want in? Hell, yes. Who doesn’t wanna be in a movie? It’s the ultimate show-biz fantasy. All my anger at Prince, all my frustrations at his controlling nature melted away once I heard the word movie. Movies are fun. Movies are seen by millions of fans. And besides, I didn’t even have to go to Hollywood to make the movie. Hollywood was coming to Minneapolis. That’s how much power Prince exerted.

For all this excitement, the process itself came close to falling apart. Fact is, I was hired, then fired, only to be hired again. Chaos is always hard to break down and Purple Rain was born, bred, and shot in chaos. Chaos resulted in triumph, but the triumph resulted in more chaos.

Prince dug the movies as well as movie stars. He always said that the biggest musical artists—going back to Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Barbra Streisand—also became movie stars. Given his good looks, natural swag, and coy charm, he saw no reason why he couldn’t become a movie star. And of course he was right. So I wasn’t surprised that as soon as his music career hit the stratosphere, he wanted to make a splash on the silver screen. Couple that with the fact that MJ, Prince’s chief competitor, was putting out a long video version of “Thriller” and had big film ambitions of his own. Prince wasn’t about to be left behind. Fact is, Prince was determined to leap ahead. Let MJ make his long-form video. Prince would best him by making—and starring in—an actual wide-release feature film.

Hanging out with Prince, I heard how hard it was to get the film financed. The record industry saw Prince as a superstar, but Hollywood was skeptical. Even supersmart moguls like David Geffen couldn’t see this movie making money. But telling Prince he couldn’t do something was a guarantee that he’d do it. He used a lot of his own money to underwrite the $7 million budget and finally found a director. It happened because one of the guys he wanted, James Foley, who’d just directed Daryl Hannah in Reckless, said no. But the editor of that same film, Albert Magnoli, who’d never directed before, said yes.

Back during the 1999 Tour, Prince was talking about this movie. He had an idea for a story. The story, like so many of Prince’s songs, was autobiographical. I heard it in bits and pieces. It was about a musician with two challenges—his career and his love life. His career isn’t as big as he wants it to be, and he hasn’t yet found the girl of his dreams. Combine that with the problems he’s having with his parents—especially his dad—and you have the bare bones of the story.

That story didn’t change much. When he brought in Magnoli and William Blinn, another writer, the story got a little darker, then a little lighter. The story was always evolving to the point where we, the characters Prince had chosen, never knew what was going on. Movies are shot in short segments, so without being shown the big picture, it’s easy to feel lost. We were never shown the big picture until the actual premiere.

We were the supporting players. To keep the autobiographical edge, Prince was adamant in including me and The Time. He cast us in the role of his competition. Given how hard we had pushed him with our blistering opening set during the recent tours, that was close to Prince’s reality. He also cast members of his own Revolution band, Wendy and Lisa, as frustrated side musicians trying to get the boss to hear their own songs. Also close to reality. The third element was Vanity 6. Because he and Vanity had parted ways, he found a substitute, a former beauty queen, LA Raiders cheerleader and TV actress Apollonia, another total knockout. To further increase the competitive heat, Prince set up a rivalry between me and him not only for musical superiority but for Apollonia. No doubt he’d come out winning on all fronts.

U make it sound like u didn’t benefit.

I benefited big time. I not only accepted the role of the losing villain, I got into it. I dug it. Turned out to be fun. And also mind-bending. I say mind-bending because no one knew anything. The film went down in the weirdest way possible. Even though it was lights, camera, action, we were kept in the dark.

There was no big meeting—or for that matter, no meeting at all—where Prince called us together to explain the Big Concept. It was only him saying, “Hey, we’re making a movie. Wanna be in it?” Well, of course I wanted to be in it. I also wanted to be paid. “I’ll give you fifty grand,” he said, “but that’ll also cover your band.” What he meant was that when we weren’t on tour, The Time was on retainer. And that retainer was paid by me. I should’ve had a lawyer negotiate for me, but I knew Prince wouldn’t put up with no lawyer. I didn’t want to risk losing the chance to hit the big screen, and besides, as I said before, weed and blow weren’t exactly helping me think straight.

My participation in the project nearly ended before it really got started. That’s because we were given an acting coach, a dude I didn’t like. He had these exercises. Pretend you’re a weeping willow tree. Pretend you’re a butterfly lost in the forest. Well, I didn’t wanna be no weeping willow. I didn’t wanna be no butterfly lost in the forest. I thought that was some dumb shit and said so. I turned into the class clown. So much so that word got back to Prince, who took me aside for a scolding. He said this was serious business and I better not fuck up or I’d be out on my ass. I’d be out of the movie. I’d be out of The Time. He’d banish me from his empire.

I heard him and I didn’t. I heeded his warning and I didn’t. I tried a little bit harder in class, but I still cut up. I still turned it into a joke. Something told me that yes, I probably did have some acting chops, but this class wasn’t building them up. My acting chops were more of a natural thing. Like humor. Humor comes naturally to me.

The one cat who saw this was the director, Albert Magnoli. He came to a couple of those classes when I was acting the fool and suddenly saw the potential of my on-screen character. He had Prince back off. He started holding special sessions with me where he’d ask me to read the script out loud.

Albert was extra cool when he said, “If these words don’t come natural to you, switch ’em up. Change the language any way you want. We want you to sound real.”

That was a great request, and I did it. I rewrote a whole lot of my part. Looking back, though, the predicament was this: What was real?

Was I really cool, or was I pretending to be cool? When the cameras started to roll, the very thing I had been criticized for—cutting up—was the same thing that Magnoli and Prince were now praising me for. Without trying, I’d turned it all around. Now Magnoli and Prince saw me turning into a comic character that could give this dark movie the light side it needed.

All this was:

Confusing.

Exciting.

Difficult.

Easy.

Fun.

And not so much fun.

Wasn’t much fun 4 us when u wouldn’t show up on set on time. I’d have 2 send out a patrol looking 4 u.

No one wants to be on set at 5 a.m. Five a.m. ain’t when I get up. Five a.m. is when I go to sleep.

U were wasted half the time. U didn’t take the thing seriously.

And that’s just why the thing worked. I took out the serious and put in the fun. The fun part was running around a movie set where dozens of women were running around in flimsy camisoles. We shot a lot of the scenes at First Avenue, a downtown Minneapolis club that had once been a Greyhound bus station. Its first name as a music venue was the Depot. Back in the day, groups like the Ramones, U2, and Iggy and the Stooges played there. When our homegrown bands came along—I’m talkin’ ’bout Grand Central and Flyte Time—First Avenue wouldn’t look at us twice. White bands for white fans were always preferred. Prince changed all that. His thing was to write something, arrange something, and then test it live. He saw First Avenue as a great testing ground. He liked the tight feeling of a place holding hundreds of people squeezed together, all eager to get grooved up. He liked that up-in-your face energy. He used First Avenue as his lab. Given his stature, he could have picked any place. He landed on First Avenue because it was right there in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. He transformed the club and single-handedly turned it into the hub of Minneapolis funk.

During the filming of Purple Rain, we were standing in front of First Avenue in the freezing cold. Makeup trailers were parked in the alleys. Generators broke down; heaters were always on the brink. But the show went on. The half-clad honeys waiting patiently until they were called into the club. Extras everywhere. My brother, Jesse, was an extra. Seemed like half of Minneapolis were extras.

Between rehearsals, sound checks, and the actual shooting, I felt chaos lurking around the corner. That wasn’t fun. Impending doom is never fun. We had a first-time director, first-time star, first-time cast, first-time everything. Yet despite all the inexperience and out-of-breath last-minute preparations, despite the concern that it could really all collapse, it didn’t. Cameras kept rolling. Scenes kept getting shot. Whether it’d all come together or not, who knew? Didn’t matter. It was a force unto itself. The force was Prince.

Prince was on a natural high because he was pulling off the biggest operation of his life. I was on a drug high that I was somehow able to use to enhance my character. I’m not advocating drug use for singers or actors. That shit will kill you—and it damn near killed me. But I do have to report that in that dead of winter of 1983, I used my altered state to slip into a role that was both me and not me. The character I played bore my real name. I was “Morris.” The character I played led my real band, The Time. The character I played had a love/hate relationship with the film’s star, who had renamed himself the Kid. He did that to add to his mystique. And just as Morris was and was not Morris, the Kid was and was not the real Prince.

The real Prince did have a rough relationship with his parents, but not as rough as the one shown in the film. Prince’s father and the Kid’s father both played piano. Prince’s father and the Kid’s father both gave Prince a hard time. Prince did leave home, just as the Kid left home, to live in André Cymone’s basement, the very basement re-created in the film.

Prince and I didn’t have to re-create the competitive fire between us. It was boiling hot. Even when he saw that he needed my humor for the film to work, he stayed on my ass for being even a minute late. In one instance when I came on set behind schedule he was beside himself. He actually shoved me. I was about to lay him out when Jellybean grabbed me just as Big Chick grabbed Prince. The last thing this picture needed was two stars with black eyes. It was the only time we almost came to blows. I’m glad we didn’t.

The drugs popping off in my brain might explain my behavior. But what explains Prince’s fightin’ behavior? He wasn’t the violent type. What was going on? I have at least one explanation.

All during the making of the movie, Prince was in macho mode. I was there when he was booed at the Rolling Stones shows and called out for being effeminate, and I know that humiliation remained on his mind. Through the Kid, he retaliates. He answers those critics by dressing in black leather, zooming around town on a badass Harley, and seducing Apollonia, the foxiest chick since Pam Brown. He does this all with style and swag. In the midst of this manly action, he sings three of his greatest songs—“Let’s Go Crazy,” “When Doves Cry,” and “Purple Rain.” It’s a triumph. But also overcompensation for his earlier image of sexual ambiguity.

Man, what r u accusing me of?

Not a fuckin’ thing. When cats claimed you were gay, my response was always the same: “Try leaving him alone with your fine honey and see what happens.” At the same time, you had your sense of sexual identity as mysterious and undefinable as your musical identity. Sexually, you gave the impression of being all over the place. Same with music: Don’t even think about stuffing you in some category. Don’t think about putting you in a box. And if anyone tried, you’d break out. You were always breaking out with some crazy new shit.

Whatever u r doing, u r overanalyzing me 2 death.

Ain’t overanalyzing you enough. I truly believe Prince—or the Kid—is asking to be analyzed. Begging to be analyzed. That’s what the mystique is all about. The mystique is saying, Think about me. Obsess on me. Dream of me. Try to figure me out.

I never offered that invitation.

Come on, bro. You cultivated it like crazy. Ain’t sayin’ it’s bad. It worked like a motherfucker. You pulled it off. Film was huge. Soundtrack was huge. Fans went nuts.

Let’s get back 2 psychoanalyzing u.

Cool. I willingly and even joyfully got sucked into your success. There’s a Marvin Gaye line that talks ’bout getting drowned in a sea of happiness. That was me. As it became clearer that my role as your nemesis was becoming central to the film, I couldn’t help but be happy. Interestingly enough, I didn’t see that till the premiere. That was the first time I saw Purple Rain in its entirely. You never showed us the dailies. You never even showed us a rough cut. Far as I knew, most of my big scenes could have been dumped. But it went the other way. The spine of the story was the Kid’s defeat—and humiliation—of Morris.

But Morris & The Time got prime time in that film.

And I’d be the last to say I didn’t dig it. We played what turned out to be two of our biggest hits. Yes, Prince came up with the titles. If I suggested a title of my own, no matter how good, it was batted down. That stung. On the other hand, Prince’s titles were so good the sting didn’t last long.

“Jungle Love” was Prince’s notion of uninhibited hot sex. The groove originated with Jesse Johnson’s killer guitar line. I put my own hurting on it and the thing started sizzling like fresh meat on the grill. A tasty dish that still tastes good today.

“The Bird” was born out of a strange conflict. Onstage I’d come up with a move to a groove where I was flapping my arms. Prince got pissed. He thought I was mocking a dance move he made. I wasn’t. I was actually modifying that dance move from the cartoon I mentioned earlier, The Flintstones. Prince said stop. I asked why. “You making me look bad,” he insisted. I insisted he was paranoid so I kept on doing what I was doing. I realized I was doing a new kinda dance.

Now, coming up with a dance craze ain’t exactly nothing new. Chubby Checker had his Twist. There was the Shimmy, the Swim, and the Locomotion. In one song alone—“Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”—James Brown gives a shout-out to the Jerk, the Fly, the Monkey, and the Mashed Potato. At some point, Prince did a boomerang. Yes, there were times when he reversed himself and changed up an attitude. Once Prince saw the audience eating up our stage moves he decided to name it rather than fight it. He called it the Bird, saying, “Morris, you win. Do this Bird to death. I think the thing’s gonna fly.”

The thing flew to number one.

Although the songs were huge, Prince made a point of not including them on the Purple Rain soundtrack, which wound up selling over twenty-five million copies. Because I’m a writer on both “Jungle Love” and “The Bird,” if Prince had kept them on the soundtrack, I would have made a whole lot more than my $50,000 actor’s fee. Given their importance in the film, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have been on the soundtrack. It’s hard to argue that other filler songs that made the soundtrack are better jams or more seminal to the story than the ones played by The Time. The world knows that when Prince sang “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Purple Rain,” he rose to a new level. But part of what spurred him on was the heat we provided with “Jungle Love” and “The Bird.” Sure, he outdid us, but we also outdid ourselves. We deserved to be on that soundtrack.

I had a dozen other songs I could have put on that soundtrack. Songs I’d written by myself. It was a Prince & the Revolution soundtrack, not a soundtrack of The Time.

You got your bullshit arguments. I got mine. You had your power. I had none. You had the skill to scramble up elements of your life into a great movie. The way you incorporated those musical extensions of yourself—the Revolution, Apollonia 6, and The Time—and had them working against you and for you is another testimony to your genius.

U keep kissing my ass & then kicking my ass.

Doing neither. Just setting out the story like I see it. Morris in the movie accepted the role as the cool fool. The comic foil. It’s not a role to sneeze at. I love comic characters. Love ’em all from Red Foxx to Richard Pryor to Dave Chappelle. I’m not putting myself in their category. I’m a musician before anything. But like Cab Calloway with his “Minnie the Moocher” or Screamin’ Jay Hawkins comin’ out the coffin to sing “You Put a Spell on Me,” I understood how comedic elements could enhance my act.

I also understood how the tension between the real me and the movie me could enhance a story in which the movie me and the movie Prince were at each other’s throats. You put on a double whammy on our real-life story by casting yourself as the underdog who has to knock off Morris’s crown. At the start of the film, the Morris character has everything; at the end, nothing. The Kid is crowned Prince.

But u dug it. I remember u at the premiere. U were glowing.

Cause I was thrilled by how much screen time I got. Then we were all stoked when the premiere audience responded with a standing O. Fans ate it up. But something else happened at that screening that took me completely by surprise.

What?

I saw another character emerge. Someone who was me and also not me. Someone whose voice needs to be heard in this book.

Last thing this book needs is another character with another voice. We already got u & we already got me. Enough’s enough.

It’s not enough. This other character’s gotta speak for himself. I can’t shut him up.

Who are u talking about?

MD’s got some shit to say.