Music icon Prince loved being in the recording studio and was very quick to record new songs, but he was also known to rapidly shut them down
Iconic musician Prince still has hundreds of unheard songs and unreleased albums that could one day be heard by fans, according to a new book.
Author John McKie says there is so much still to come from Prince’s back catalogue which was famously hidden away in a place known as ‘The Vault’ and only select people had the combination code to open the door to the vast storage room.
Musician and songwriter Prince died in 2016 with a host of hits including 1999, Purple Rain, When Doves Cry and Little Red Corvette. But there could be many more still hidden away in his hometown of Minneapolis.
John said: “Morris Hayes was a keyboard player with Prince for 20 years and he said to Morris there is stuff in here that’s better than Purple Rain. Morris said ‘you have to put this stuff out’ but Prince said it was ‘for his kids’ but he didn’t even have kids! What’s going on in Prince’s head is not always easy to decipher.
“I spent five and a half years speaking to 200 people that were close to him, but there’s still elements of mystery around Prince, which is kind of cool. Legacy is part of it.
“Prince released about 40 studio albums, But there $is probably minimum 100 albums in there[The Vault] unreleased, not including live shows. Yeah probably 1000 songs of unreleased material in the vault because he recorded a lot. I’d love some of it to come out. I think Prince did want some of that stuff to see the light of day and not be lying in the cupboard.”
The book also talks about Prince’s rivalry with Michael Jackson early in their career and how a gig supporting Rolling Stones spurred him on to succeed. The Stones were playing LA Coliseum in 1981 and Prince was the support act.
But the audience, made up in part by some Hell’s Angels, didn’t like Prince’s funky routine and he found himself getting whisky bottles, chicken wings, shoes and even cups full of urine thrown at him.
Music producer Andrew Watt says he heard about the legendary incident but it helped shape Prince’s albums to be bigger and louder. Watt says in the book: “He got beer thrown at him. His heart broken,
“He says to Mick Jagger backstage ‘They hate me!’ Mick told him, ‘if you’re going to play to a crowd this big, you have to have a rock band. You have got to have a big sound’. If you listen to the drum sound versus the earlier albums, the drums are huge. It’s a bigger sound.”
Prince’s accountant Donnie Graves agrees. He said the Coliseum gig drove Prince “to a place to achieve heights he might not have. That’s how self-aware the guy was, that’s how pissed off the guy was. I don’t think he would have reached the level he reached without that level of humiliation.”
Prince went on to make 1982’s double album 1999, which paved the way for albums like Purple Rain in 1984 which would make Prince a global star.
* Prince: A Sign o’ the Times By John McKie is released on Thursday September 18 published by Bonnier Books.
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