PROLOGUE

Following a string of both critically and commercially successful albums in the eighties, Prince was all set to continue his streak of greatness by releasing a Rave Unto The Joy Fantastic album in 1989, but Prince's record company Warner Brothers would not release a new album so soon after the Lovesexy album. But then Prince was approached about writing a few songs for a Batman movie and he grabbed the opportunity to get some new music released, resulting in an entire Batman album. Although it contained some great songs, it wasn't exactly the great follow-up to Lovesexy which both critics and fans had dreamt of. They didn’t lose faith in Prince, though, as it could be excused as being a soundtrack album. However, in 1990 Prince disappointed again with the introduction of the Game Boyz rappers on the Nude Tour and with the Graffiti Bridge album that would have been great if it had been just a Prince album rather than a collection of songs also featuring his protégées of the time. Again, it could be excused as being a soundtrack album to the critically lambasted movie of the same title, which went straight to home video in Europe.

In 1991 Prince released the Diamonds And Pearls album that pandered a lot to popular trends in music where it used to be Prince himself who set the trends for others to follow. And this album couldn’t be excused as being a soundtrack album. However, Diamonds And Pearls became a huge commercial success. It reached number three on Billboard’s Pop Chart and spawned four hit singles. It sold about 2 million copies in the US and almost 4 million copies outside of the US. And so the stage was set for the deal that would change Prince’s career forever.

The contract

On 31 August 1992, Prince signed a new recording contract with Warner Bros. It would reputedly earn the star $100 million. It would fund six albums, each with an advance of $10 million, and provide joint-venture funding for Paisley Park Records, another new label, and payment for Prince in the role of vice-president of A&R, including a suite of offices in the Warner building in Century City, California.

Jill Willis, Vice-President of Paisley Park (until she was fired by Prince and replaced by Gilbert Davison on 17 September 1993), was one of the people who put that deal together. “At first, Prince was very happy with the deal,” she later told biographer Liz Jones for her book Purple Reign.

Although that $100 million deal made the headlines, many in the industry called it absurd. If Prince had been guaranteed that amount, it was unlikely that Warner would make a penny. The figure was the very highest he could make at the very best levels of sales performance. At his royalty rate of 20 per cent, he would have to sell five million copies before Warner could recoup its advance. At best the label had a chance of breaking even, and they certainly wouldn’t want him putting out album after album, not giving them a chance to recoup their money. Once the label had committed themselves to figures of that sort, they felt they would have more control over his output. They wanted to apply proven hit-making strategies: Release one album a year; ensure it contains a string of potential singles and put those out with a variety of mixes, as well as ensure that their artist adhered to the advice of in-house promotion and marketing departments.

The $10 million per-album advance, it was reported in Time, kicked in only if his previous album had sold five million copies or more; if sales fell below that number, a new figure would have to be negotiated.

The beginning of the friction years

The first of Prince’s contracted six albums was released 13 October 1992. The O(+> album didn’t feature the Game Boyz as prominently as on Diamonds And Pearls, and musically fans were generally pleased with the album. It wasn’t quite the “comeback” album some fans might have hoped for, but it certainly appeared to be a step in the right direction.

However, Prince wasn’t happy with its sales performance. O(+> reached number five on the Pop Chart and sold 2,8 million copies world-wide, a respectable showing but far short of the smash Prince expected and below the number that would ensure him a $10 million advance for his next album. He became furious about the sales figures, which he blamed on slack promotion by Warner Bros.

Prince’s griping helped generate a pervasive gloom about his career at the label. Having so recently signed him to an expensive contract, Mo Ostin (Warner’s Chairman) and Lenny Waronker (Warner’s President) were worried about the brisk pace at which he insisted on releasing albums. Warner Bros. noticed an increased resistance from radio stations to play the singles from O(+>, clearly indicating that the audience couldn’t absorb more music from Prince for the time being. By generating records more frequently than once a year and touring almost as often, he had become seriously overexposed – another point Prince would not think of conceding.

Matters weren’t helped when the Prince protégé album Carmen Electra was released 9 February 1993. The record sold very poorly and failed to even enter the Pop Chart. From the perspective of Warner Bros., which had sunk $1 million into promoting Carmen Electra, the entire effort was nothing short of a catastrophe.

For more details on The Journey From Prince To O(+>, check out that blog right here: The Journey From Prince To O(+>

It’s a prequel to this Prince Vs. Warner Brothers – The Fans Lost blog. In the preceding chapters on The Journey From Prince to O(+> blog, the O(+> album and all of Prince’s side-projects with other artists like Carmen Electra, The New Power Generation, George Clinton, Mavis Staples and Rosie Gaines from 1991-1993 as well as Prince’s songs for the I’ll Do Anything movie are examined with the stories behind his music, his girlfriends and his dealings with his record company that led to the infamous feud – it’s all there!