Prince Vs Warner Brothers

Photo: Claude Gassian

The making of Come

“The Come album really evolved from boredom during Christmas vacation,” Prince's drummer Michael Bland told Guitar World in 1994. “Bassist Sonny Thompson and I were the only two cats in the band who hung around Minneapolis during Christmas vacation. And Prince got bored, as he usually does. Because when he’s not creating, he’s not alive, you know. So he went down to the soundstage where we were set up for rehearsal before vacation began. And he just played by himself all day; they say he stayed in there for like eight, 10 hours, just messing around with ideas. And then the second day he got up the courage to call us up and ask, “you guys bored too?” So we came out and worked on a good half-dozen tunes. And we went in the studio and started cutting them – we cut the rhythm tracks for Dark, Come, Papa and a few other things like that.”

The recordings took place on 2 January 1993 and also spawned the songs Endorphin Machine, Dolphin and Dream and a re-recording of the Diamonds And Pearls-outtake Laurianne. Tommy Barbarella and Morris Hayes were brought in to add keyboards to some of the tracks after the initial session. At this point, the track Come reportedly sounded more like a jam than a fully finished song and had no repeated chorus.

On 18 January Prince also recorded Dance Of Desperation and at some unknown date Pheromone followed. O(+> said in a 1999 fan Q&A that Pheromone was inspired by "Carmen Electra & the Crazy Horse." On 18 February, the song Peach made its live debut at a preview at Glam Slam, Minneapolis of the upcoming Act I show. The song had reportedly been recorded while on tour in Sydney, Australia in late April/early May 1992 as well as in London in mid-June 1992. It featured a sampled moan by actress Kim Basinger from the 1989 The Scandalous Sex Suite maxi single, but when playing the song at an aftershow in Barcelona 23 August 1993, O(+> presented it as “a song about Mayte.” It is unknown if Peach ever got intended for any of the later 1993 Come album configurations, but it was included on the Papa EP assembled on the same date as its live debut. Its presence in Prince’s 1993 live shows makes it very much a song that like Race got to belong to the Come album era despite them not getting included on the initial March 1993 cassette.

Prince: Papa EP (18 February 1993)
1. Papa (2:48)
2. Come (4:54)
3. Peach (3:48)
4. Race (4:54)

Race was a song Prince had recorded in November 1991 with Tony M. of the NPG adding rap in January 1992.

In February, Prince recorded Loose and, prior to assembling a tape with the new songs in March, Prince also recorded Space and Orgasm, the latter featuring a guitar sample from the 1981 Prince song Private Joy, as well as moaning from Vanity lifted from the unreleased 1983 Vanity 6 track Vibrator. The cassette featuring the new music was untitled and the tracks making up this first known configuration of what would become the Come album were:

Prince: untitled cassette (March 1993)
1. Come

2. Endorphin Machine

3. Space

4. Pheromone

5. Loose

6. Papa

7. Dark

8. Dolphin

9. Orgasm

Most of the tracks on this first configuration remain unreleased versions.

Come – the Musical
Prince met with playwright David Henry Hwang while in New York 24 – 27 March 1993. Hwang was most known for his Tony Award-winning Broadway play M. Butterfly. Prince told him a story about the relationship between a rock star and a fan, an intense erotic affair conducted through letters, spinning off into exercises of fantasy and dominance – sex between lovers who never met in the flesh. From this premise, Hwang wrote the libretto for a musical titled Come, incorporating the songs on Prince’s tape. Hwang later revealed that all the songs on his copy of the cassette tape included a middle section where the song faded out and back in to prevent bootlegging. The Come musical never became a reality, however.

David Henri Hwang told biographer Matt Thorne for his 2012 book Prince: "He (asked) me to write a poem for him about loss. The way you feel when you’ve lost someone you love, and you know they’re never coming back and that for the rest of your life you’re going to be alone. He (wanted) to do a song that suddenly breaks into a spoken word interlude. They’re gonna say, “the boy’s really lost it this time.””

While David Henry Hwang worked on that assignment, Prince was on a tour of the US entitled Act I from 8 March to 17 April 1993. "Somewhere around this time, he wrote a song called Courtin' Time that came out later on the Emancipation album," dancer Mayte Garcia recalled in her 2017 book My Life With Prince. At the concerts, fans were offered previews of the songs Peach and Loose. Loose was played in continuation of Partyman. At aftershow concerts, Prince also played Come and Papa.

On 10 April 1993, Prince met with journalist Alan Light in San Francisco. Alan Light’s interview with Prince was published in Vibe in 1994. Prince told him: “We have a new album finished, but Warner Bros. doesn’t know it. From now on, Warners only get old songs out of the vault. New songs we’ll play at shows. Music should be free, anyway.”

Still, in April it was reported by MTV News that Prince intended to release the Papa EP with four of the new tracks on his birthday, 7 June 1993. His new track Fuck D Press, recorded 21 April, didn’t make the cut.

Photos: Claude Gassian

Prince “retires”

Warner Bros. refused to release the Papa single, so on 27 April 1993 Prince’s publicity firm announced that Prince was retiring from studio recording to concentrate on new forms of “alternative media projects, including live theater, interactive media, nightclubs and motion pictures.”

A week before the announcement, Prince had been in the office meeting with Ostin and Waronker, expressing his dissatisfactions and frustrations during a 5-hour meeting.

According to the announcement, Prince would fulfill the remainder of his six-album contract with Warner Bros. with old songs from his “library of 500 unreleased recordings.” He would not stop producing songs for other artists or continuing other aspects of his career, including touring and operating Paisley Park.

Earlier in the day, Gilbert Davison had informed Warner Bros.’ chiefs, Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker, that Prince woul not be delivering any more new studio albums to the company. Despite an official attitude of “amused skepticism,” many Warner Bros. top-level executives were shocked by the announcement, fearing that they would not get any new music from one of their best-selling artists.

Prince, who was very disappointed in the sales of the O(+> album and lack of reaction to most releases on his Paisley Park Records label, accused Warner Bros. of failing to support the records adequately, expressing his dissatisfaction with their promotion staff, which he felt was weak. Arguing that his job is done once he delivers the music, he blamed the company for relying on him for interviews and participation in promotional activities and then using his reluctance as an excuse when something didn’t sell as expected.

Finalizing Come

Hesitant to give Warner a new album, Prince was increasingly thinking of new means of getting his music to the public. On the same date as the retirement announcement, an instrumental version of Pheromone debuted as a theme song for the TV-channel BET’s Video LP show.

The hit dance performance by The Joffrey Ballet, Billboards, which featured four different ballets set to 12 Prince songs from 1978 to 1991, probably inspired Prince to conceive a dance performance of his own set to his brand-new music. Initially called Glam-O-Rama, the idea was conceived by Prince and Kenneth Robbins, and produced by David Haugland.

During the month of May, Prince continued to write songs despite his retirement from studio recording. David Henry Hwang had written a poem for Prince as assigned and related it to him on the phone. Prince then recorded Solo based on that poem with his drummer Michael Bland and bass player Sonny Thompson in May 1993. The first version was labelled “rock version” when Prince recorded a second version on his own later that same month. It was the second version that got released on the Come album a year later.

In May 1993 Prince also recorded Strays Of The World intended for Glam-O-Rama, as well as Pope which featured backing vocals by Mayte and was an obvious stab at Warner Bros. President Lenny Waronker. Zannalee was obviously about Prince's ex-fiancée Susannah Melvoin. Nothing is known about I Wanna Be Held Tonight (19/5) and Emotional Crucifixion (26/5), but Prince also recorded What’s My Name and updated Race, removing Tony M.'s contribution to the track. A new version of the song Come was also recorded with The NPG around this time. It got segued with Endorphinmacine.

Photo: Terry Gydesen

By the end of May, Prince assembled a new sequence of his new music. According to a fax his dancer Mayte sent to the fan magazine Controversy on 1 June 1993 (published in Controversy #42), the sequencing took place two days earlier and included the following tracks:

O(+>: Come (29 May 1993)

Track list unknown, but includes Come, Race, Pheromone, Dark, Dolphin, Pope

Photo: Randee St. Nicholas

Come free?

Mayte, who admitted to having had help writing the fax by someone whose name wasn’t Prince, wrote: “All I can say is that it’s unlike any music he’s done before. All one word titles and strange.

He seemed happy when he played me the sequence but when I asked him, “what are U going 2 do with this new music now that U have retired?” He looked me in the eye and said, “I’m going 2 give it 2 my friends.” I don’t know what friends he’s talking about."

"But I remember once he told me, “Music should be free – just like air.” Did he mean – the way it’s played or paid 4? I’m really afraid he’s not going 2 release any more new albums because now we’re rehearsing only the new music. With just Michael, Sonny, Tommy and Mr. Hayes.”

Considering Prince’s newfound attitude of “music should be free”, it is amazing that the Come album escaped bootlegging. During much of the eighties, Prince freely handed out cassettes of new songs to friends and acquaintances, but by the mid-1990s he had tightened up this practice. So did he really give Come to his “friends”?

“There was a time when my contract said I couldn’t even give a tape of new songs to a friend,” O(+> revealed in a 1999 interview with The Guardian/The Observer.

The name-change

Adding to the confusion of who would be getting his new music, Prince’s publicity firm announced on 7 June 1993, his 35^th birthday, that Prince had changed his name to the symbol of his latest album. O(+>’s intention was to fulfill his Warner Bros. contract with “Prince” recordings from the vault while continuing to record and release new material as “O(+>.”

The media avalanche that followed was filled with derision and mockery about what to call him. Even his band members pondered this question. "After a while, everyone settled on "boss,"" keyboard player Tommy Barbarella revealed to biographer Alex Hahn 10 years later for the book Possesed - The Rise and Fall of Prince.

Among fans and in some media articles there was speculation that Prince was seeking to escape his contract with Warner Bros. by changing his identity and then arguing that the label’s agreement was with “Prince”. When Prince made the announcement in May 2000 that he was discarding the symbol name, he basically admitted as much. At a New York press conference, he said that the O(+> name had been a means of escaping “undesirable relationships” – that is, his contract with Warner Bros. He wanted the freedom to put out more material under his new name. Warner Bros. might have wanted Prince to put on the brakes, but he had other ideas.

When O(+> completed work on the side-project Goldnigga with The New Power Generation in late June 1993, his plan was for Warner Bros. to release it by summertime. For Warner Bros., the time had arrived to draw the line. They told O(+> that the company had no interest in the album, but instead wanted a reasonable pause in new music to allow for the release of a greatest hits package. They presented the best-of concept to O(+>, who with some reluctance agreed to support it.

Departing Paisley Park Records
Alan Leeds, president of the Paisley Park record label from 1989 to 1993, told Prince Podcast in 2021: “It was getting to a point it was obvious he had lost interest in Paisley Park Records, because he had lost interest in Warner Brothers. So, I’m sitting there running a label that basically has no support anymore. It was just pointless. And totally frustrating because I thought if we had approached it right, you know, I actually thought we had a shot at doing something, but it wasn’t gonna happen because he wasn’t gonna work with the artists and the idea of just signing girlfriends got old real quick.”

“It was uncomfortable,” he continued. “The whole environment between the war with Warner Brothers – and I had no idea how that was gonna end up and of course it ends up, after I’m gone, he’s wearing 'slave' on his face and shit, and I’m like, ‘You’re the only slave who owns the plantation. You own Paisley Park. Come on, man. None of it makes sense to me.’ I understood his frustrations, but I didn’t understand the emotions that he chose to fight the frustrations with. It didn’t make sense to me. And it was clear he was trying to find himself and (…) by this time he had cut people off. He wasn’t listening to anybody except his own demons. And it just wasn’t pleasant to be around because it wasn’t the same guy. It was a guy who was really really unhappy that he wasn’t at the cutting edge of things anymore and trying to figure out how to handle that and it was just unpleasant to be around so we just kind of agreed to disagree and parted ways. It was a pleasant parting. It wasn’t like an angry confrontation because he knew my feelings and it was obvious Paisley Park Records wasn’t going anywhere and I didn’t want to go back to being his tour manager. It was ten great years, and it was time.”

Photos: Terry Gydesen

The movie that didn’t happen

Although having just sequenced an album of songs with one-word titles, O(+> continued to record one-word titled songs as work on the Come album concept continued while awaiting release. In early June, O(+> recorded the song Interactive for which a video was shot on 22 June. It was shown on the music TV channel The Box 30 August 1993.

On 14 June 1993, O(+>, with Michael Bland and Sonny Thompson, recorded an EP entitled The Undertaker that included a prelude of Zannalee and a new version of Dolphin. The recording of The Undertaker was filmed and released as a home video in March 1995, albeit with some changes made to Dolphin. O(+> also recorded a different version of Space with his side-project Madhouse on 7 July 1993.

On 15 June, O(+> recorded another great guitar rock track, Calhoun Square, and on 26 June he recorded The Mad Pope which may be a remix of the song Pope.

Knowing that Warner Bros. would not allow him to release a new album only about eight months after the release of the O(+> album, Prince was still thinking of other ways to let his fans hear his new music. He contributed six previously unavailable songs to The Hits/The B-Sides, including Peach and Pope from Come.

During June and July 1993, O(+> developed an untitled film project with director Parris Patton. The film was shot at Paisley Park and featured music interspersed with dramatic footage. General Hospital star Vanessa Marcil and Nona Gaye, daughter of singer Marvin Gaye, starred in the leading roles.

“The movie is about the relationship between two girls,” Vanessa Marcil told Soap Opera Weekly. “We deal with racial, social and sexual issues. Most of the action takes place in this underground club. Prince is the performer there.”

The film project was never completed, but the performances of Loose and Papa from the movie turned up in The Beautiful Experience TV movie in 1994.

On 12 July 1993, the premiere of Glam-O-Rama was cancelled and it would be over a month until it opened under a new name, Glam Slam Ulysses.

On the same day as the cancellation, Alan Light talked with O(+> again for the interview published in Vibe in 1994. Alan Light noticed that O(+> was fixated on one thing: “He has too much music sitting around, and he wants people to hear it.”

A soundtrack for Glam Slam Ulysses was prepared for official release, but call it an album or a soundtrack, Warners still wasn’t going to release it. Well, maybe if the Glam Slam Ulysses show had become a hit…

O(+>: Glam Slam Ulysses – The Soundtrack To The O(+> Inspired Play! (June-July 1993)
Track list unknown

Photos: Terry Gydesen

Come live

Some lucky fans got a chance to hear some of O(+>’s new music on the Act II tour of Europe, which started 26 July and ended 8 September 1993. At some of the concerts, he played Come, Endorphinemachine and Peach in a row. Dark also made a rare appearance.

Before launching into Come, O(+> would usually quote the lyrics of What’s My Name and give a little speech. At Wembley Stadium in London, 31 July 1993, he said: “The only reason why I retired is because I can no longer give the music to someone else to give to you. I wanna come to your house and give it to you myself. You don’t need no records. Next time bring a tape recorder. When it’s over, press save.”

“People say I make too much music,” he continued. “People say you can’t keep up. But I’m under the impression I make just enough music. I’m under the impression, can’t nobody keep it up like you.”

Other Come era tracks performed during Act II, usually at aftershows, included Calhoun Square, Race and Pope. What’s My Name and Dolphin were played during a soundcheck in Paris. On 7 September, Prince played a live medley on BBC Radio One that included Pope and Peach.

The Act II tour was generally well received. Gone were the Game Boyz, leaving more room for exotic dancer Mayte. The NPG Hornz were also featured more prominently. Along with the new songs played, it had become exiting to be a Prince/O(+> fan again.

Photo: Terry Gydesen

Photographer Terry Gydesen followed O(+> on his Act II tour and took the pictures that would be used on the covers for the Come album and the Letitgo singles in 1994 where more of her Act II photos would be released in the book The Sacrifice Of Victor. One picture was left out of the book, though. It was of O(+> in a car with Nona Gaye.

Glam Slam Ulysses

While O(+> was in Europe, Glam Slam Ulysses finally opened 21 August 1993 at Glam Slam in Los Angeles. The 65-minute show was described as an “interactive musical theatrical production” inspired by Homer’s classic Odyssey. The choreography was by Jamie King who would later become Tour Director for Madonna. Carmen Electra and Frank Williams danced the lead parts.

The production combined dance performances with videos and featured O(+>’s most exciting studio recordings in years: Strays Of The World, Come (chopped into three parts), Interactive, Dolphin, Pheromone, Dark, Loose, Space, Orgasm, What’s My Name, Endorphinemachine, Race and Pope.

However, the critical response to the show (not the music) was unmercifully negative and O(+> himself wasn't pleased with the end result when he saw a videotaped performance while on tour in Europe. The show only ran for two weeks, until 4 September 1993, and plans to tour US nightclubs were abandoned, although the Glam Slam Ulysses dancers did get to perform to Endorphinemachine on the Arsenio Hall Show on 6 October 1993.

Even though he had very little interest or involvement in the hits compilation prior to leaving, O(+> expressed some interest in taking on a more active role in the project upon returning from Europe. Warner Bros. preferred to avoid delays and actually paid O(+> not to get involved. When The Hits/The B-Sides was released 14 September 1993, O(+> helpfully backed it up with the announcement: “Greatest-hits albums are for artists who are dead, physically and professionally.”

Peach was released as a single 18 November 1993 with an accompanying video featuring Mayte and just Michael Bland and Sonny Thompson from the band. Despite being a great rock song, Peach failed to chart.

Prince: Peach single (November 1993)

CD 1:

1. Peach (3:48)

2. Mountains (3:58)

3. Partyman (3:11)

4. Money Don't Matter 2 Nite (Edit) (4:12)

CD 2:

1. Peach (3:48)

2. I Wish U Heaven (2:43)

3. Girls & Boys (Edit) (3:27)

4. My Name Is Prince (Edit) (4:05)

Prince: Peach US single (November 1993)

1. Peach (3:48)

2. Nothing Compares 2 U (Edit) (4:17)

A 12” remix of Pope appeared on a vinyl promo-single. On Pope, fans were once again invited to “every time U want it I’ll be live, bring a date, I mean computer, when it’s over press save”. This practice never became allowed at concerts, though, and in 1995 O(+> stated his reason why in the song Feelgood: “Come to the show and bring a tape recorder ‘cause you oughta have a copy of the – yo! Wait a minute, no, in 1999 I’ll be free, so…”

Prince: Pope 12" promo (1993)

1. Pope (12” Remix) (6:06)

2. Pink Cashmere (12” Remix) (6:19)

Photo: Nicole Nodland

Back in the studio
O(+> continued recording songs with one-word titles in October 1993, like Now, Ripopgodazippa, Shy, Gold and Strawberries. He also reworked some of the Come tracks. He remixed Loose and edited Space and Dark, making them shorter. Much to the dismay of his band, he also changed Come and Race from band recordings to solo recordings.

O(+> eventually decided to include the new one-word titled songs on a new album project entitled Gold rather than rework the Come album to incorporate them, so in January 1994, rumors began to circulate that two albums were being readied for release. The first, Come, was to be an album by Prince, and the other, Gold, was to be a work by O(+>.

In early 1994, O(+> worked on making a movie entitled The Beautiful Experience which featured some of his new music. To coincide with the TV premiere of the movie, O(+> hoped to release an EP of the same title that included seven songs from the movie, including Come. However, Warner Bros. would only allow him to release just one song, so The Beautiful Experience instead became an EP with seven different versions of the same song.

In late January 1994, O(+> first made an untitled configuration of new music that included Interactive, Space and Endorphin Machine and then transformed that into the first configuration of The Gold Experience which included four Come tracks (Interactive, Endorphinmachine, Space and Pheromone) before deciding to just stick with the concept of Come and The Gold Experience being two separate albums after all.

On 6 March 1994 the largest TV and radio network in Holland, Radio Veronica, began broadcasting a tape they had purchased from O(+> which included Pheromone as it had appeared on The Gold Experience featuring an intro with spoken lines taken from a new version of Orgasm retitled Poem.

Photos by Nicole Nodland

The devolution of Come
By now, it had been a year and five months since the release of O(+>’s last album. The time had finally come to present Warner Bros. with a new album for release. On 11 March 1994, O(+> delivered a scaled down configuration of Come to Warner Bros. Gone were potential hits like the title track and Dolphin. But it wasn’t all bad. It still retained the guitar rocking tracks Interactive (segued from Poem), Endorphine Machine, Loose and Strays Of The World, plus the funky, highly danceable tracks Pheromone and Race (now edited for length). Thankfully, this configuration got bootlegged and the songs on it actually told a story - about Internet dating (Interactive), desire (Space) and lust (Pheromone), only to get one's heart broken (Dark) and suffering an existential crisis (Solo) before being offered salvation (Strays Of The World). All of the song lyrics seemed easily relatable.

Prince: Come (11 March 1994)

1. Poem (3:36)

2. Interactive (3:05)

3. Endorphine Machine (3:49)

4. Space (4:30)

5. Pheromone (4:23)

6. Loose (3:26)

7. Papa (2:48)

8. Race (4:17)

9. Dark (6:03)

10. Solo (3:50)

11. Strays Of The World (5:18)

The line "welcome 2 the Dawn" had been replaced with a giggle at the end of the opening track, Poem - a track which could be interpreted in three ways. On the surface, it was just O(+> urging a female to come, but it could also be heard as O(+> guiding the listener onwards to the actual beginning of the album with Interactive (“keep going” and “you’re almost there”), while at the same time teasing Warner Bros. with lines such as “isn’t that what you want” and “imagine what you look like from across the room.”

The provocation certainly sparked a strong reaction from Warner Bros. “The company was so upset with that album. People said it was a piece of shit,” Vice President at Warner Bros. Marylou Badeaux recalled to biographer Alex Hahn. "There was a feeling that he was dumping garbage on us."

Ostin and Waronker bluntly told O(+> that the album was unacceptable. They asked for the title track and The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, as well as two or three other really strong songs. O(+> agreed.

On 16 March 1994, O(+> recorded Let It Go, that would be included on the final configuration of Come. It featured flute by Eric Leeds, additional keyboards by Ricky Peterson and additional background vocals by Kathleen Bradford, as well as The NPG Hornz.

On 22 March 1994, the video version of Endorphine Machine that was later included in the Interactive CD-ROM game was recorded.

An exciting time to be a fan

The Beautiful Experience-film starring Nona Gaye premiered on the British Sky One TV channel on 3 April 1994 followed by broadcasts in many other countries. It was a science fiction movie set in a future where O(+>’s website offered “over 500 experiences” for only $19.99!

Besides the videos for Loose and Papa from the abandoned 1993-movie, The Beautiful Experience also featured a video version of Interactive with the NPG Operator in the middle, a charming video featuring the entire band in a long version of Race, and an extremely cool dance video of Pheromone starring O(+>, Mayte and the hot choreographer Jamie King. The new version of Come and the old version of Poem, Orgasm, could also be heard in the movie.

Combined with bootlegs of the radio tape, the Glam Slam Ulysses show and Act I and Act II performances of Come songs, fans had heard all of the songs from the Come album by now. O(+> had indeed succeeded in finding alternative ways to let his music reach the fans.

And the new O(+> music and the image he presented in the videos were well-received among longtime fans. It was his most guitar driven music since Purple Rain and he was back to being the mysterious, dark, brooding and sexual, yet spiritual person they had first fallen for back in 1984.

Meanwhile, O(+> kept busy reworking the Come album while both trying to accommodate the record company’s request for a couple of stronger tracks AND servicing his own desire to give them as little as possible. This meant adding Come instead of Poem and adding Dolphin, but at the cost of Race and Strays Of The World. Supposedly, Dolphin was longer at this point than the version that would get released on The Gold Experience.

Prince later stated in the inlay for the Crystal Ball collection that he didn’t think Interactive and Endorphinmachine worked back-to-back, so here Interactive was moved till after Space before disappearing completely from the Come album with the next configuration. It is unknown if Pheromone had the Poem intro like in the Beautiful Experience TV movie on this configuration and the next. After Loose! the album takes a thematic sad turn with the songs Papa, Dark, Solo and Dolphin in a row, so maybe O(+> brought back Strays Of The World for the next configuration to end on a more uplifting note?

Prince: Come (March/April 1994)
1. Come*
2. Endorphinmachine (3:49)*
3. Space (4:30)
4. Interactive (3:03)
5. Pheromone
6. Loose! (3:26)
7. Papa (2:48)
8. Dark (6:03)
9. Solo (3:48)
10. Dolphin*

With Mayte at the NPG Store opening in London 30 April 1994

The 5^th Come configuration

In mid April, O(+> recorded a maxi-single version of the song Come to which The NPG Hornz added overdubs on 17 April. Supposedly it drew inspiration from an instrumental section of the unreleased 1991 The Insatiable Suite. Then he made a new configuration of the Come album which he brought with him on a trip to Europe where he met with three journalists in Monaco, 2 May 1994. One was from Q, the other from Max and the third was Alan Light from Vibe once again. O(+> wanted them to check out two albums that may or may not see the light of day: The next Prince album, Come, scheduled for an August 1994 release, and the first O(+> collection, titled The Gold Experience, both pressed on CDs with hand-drawn cover art.

“Now you have two albums from two different artists in your hands,” O(+> told one of them.

“First comes the Prince album which includes Endorphinmachine, Come and a fleshed-out version of Dark, complete with a slinky horn-arrangement that completes the sketch I heard a year before” noted Alan Light. “O(+> skips back and forth between tracks. It all sounds strong – first rate, even – but he seems impatient with it, like it’s old news.”

Prince: Come (April 1994)
1. Come
2. Endorphinmachine (3:49)
3. Space (4:30)
4. Pheromone
5. Loose! (3:26)
6. Papa (2:48)
7. Race (4:17)
8. Dark (6:03)
9. Dolphin (4:59)
10. Come (11:13)
11. Strays Of The World (5:18)

Warner Bros had requested Come, so with this configuration they got their heart’s desire when O(+> included two versions of Come. The first version of Come was supposedly the version from the Beautiful Experience TV movie. Dolphin was most likely the updated version featuring keyboards that was later released on The Gold Experience. Race was back, but Interactive and Solo were now gone, replaced by the maxi-single version of Come which concluded the album. It was probably both filler to keep from giving Warners too many songs while still serving as a provocation of Warners by being as dirty a track as Poem had been. Strays Of The World was a hidden track.

Live at Stars & Bars in Monte Carlo in Monaco 4 May 1994

While in Europe, O(+> played some concerts in Monaco and Paris, 3 – 6 May 1994. He played Come, Endorphinmachine and Space in a row, leading to speculation that those three songs were now the opening tracks on Come. He also played Race, Dark, Peach and a rare performance of Solo. While in Paris, Prince performed Endorphinmachine on the TV channel Canal+.

The final devolution of Come

Before turning Come over to Warner Bros. on 19 May 1994, O(+> decided to make further changes to the album. Solo was back instead of Dolphin and Strays Of The World was replaced with the weaker Let It Go that got retitled Letitgo to fit in with the one-word titled songs concept. Pheromone, Race, Dark and Letitgo had annoying bits of Poem added at their beginnings, and what was left of Poem was retitled Orgasm again and placed at the end of the album.

O(+> refused to include The Most Beautiful Girl In The World because it had been released as a O(+> song and Come was going to be a “Prince” release. Endorphinmachine and Interactive were excluded from the album on the same grounds. O(+> reasoned that those were now “O(+>” songs because of their inclusion on the soon to be released Interactive CD-ROM game. These decisions left O(+> with a very short album, which may explain why he decided to include the maxi-single version of Come on the album instead of the shorter version from the Beautiful Experience TV movie.

Another reason for including the maxi-single version of Come might have been to provoke Warner Brothers who had asked for the song for the album and now got a version that included enough "fuck you" and "suck you" to prevent radio airplay anyway. Certainly, O(+> himself subsequently seemed to lose interest in the song and stopped performing it live.

Prince 1958-1993: Come (May 1994)

1. Come (11:13)

2. Space (4:28)

3. Pheromone (5:08)

4. Loose! (3:26)

5. Papa (2:48)

6. Race (4:28)

7. Dark (6:10)

8. Solo (3:48)

9. Letitgo (5:32)

10. Orgasm (1:39)

And predictably, Warner Bros. wasn’t satisfied with the album O(+> submitted. They thought that it was worse than the last configuration they had received. They asked for Shhh, as several radio programmers were aware of it from The Beautiful Experience TV movie and there was a great deal of interest in the song. O(+> said no, leaving Warner Bros. no other option than to accept the album as it was since released.

O(+> delivered The Gold Experience into Warner Bros. around the same time as this new version of Come. He proposed that Warner Bros. should release Come by “Prince” and, a few weeks later, The Gold Experience by “O(+>,” and he wanted both to count toward the fulfillment of his contract. The idea didn’t meet with much enthusiasm, however. Flooding the market with material was exactly what the executives wanted to avoid. Nor were they optimistic about releasing music with an unpronounceable symbol, rather than the powerful “Prince” trademark on the front cover. They agreed to release Come; The Gold Experience would have to wait. Again, O(+> was furious and complained that the label was censoring him.

Ironically, twenty years later in 2014 Warner Bros. would have no problem releasing the Prince: Art Official Age and Prince & 3rdeyegirl: Plectrumelectrum albums simultaneously.

The first Come single

On O(+>'s birthday 7 June 1994, the CD-ROM game Interactive was released. It included the version of Interactive with the NPG Operator from the March 1994 configuration of The Gold Experience as an audio track and the videos for Interactive and Endorphinmachine. An instrumental version of Race and an a capella version of Race were also included.

O(+> had also made a "live" single for release on his birthday, but it never saw the light of day.

O(+>: "Live" single (summer 1994)
1. Come (4:49)
2. Endorphin Machine (3:51)
3. Hide The Bone (5:03)

This single contained tracks with a “live” feel and was supposed to coincide with O(+>’s The Love Experience summer tour of clubs in Minneapolis, Miami, Los Angeles and New York. Come and Endorphin Machine appear as they probably did on the unknown May 1993 Come album configuration. Hide The Bone was a track that hadn’t made The Gold Experience. While these versions of Come and Endorphin Machine remain unreleased, Hide The Bone ended up getting released on O(+>’s 1998 Crystal Ball compilation of Vault tracks.

The summer tour lasted from 28 May to 26 July 1994 and included performances of Space, Papa, Race, Dark and Peach, as well as a short version of Interactive and Endorphinmachine which he also performed on the TV channel VH-1 on 26 June 1994. The Glam Slam Ulysses dancers guested on stage for that performance.

During the tour, O(+> released the previously mentioned photobook The Sacrifice Of Victor by Terry Gydesen, as well as a smaller A5-sized book Neo Manifesto with photoshopped photos by Claude Gassian from O(+>’s shows in Paris during the 1993 Act II tour. The pictures were accompanied by lyrics for some at the time mostly unreleased Prince songs, making it read like a poetry book. Fans yearned to hear the actual songs and with the 12 August 1994 release of the 1-800-NEW-FUNK compilation, they got to hear The Steeles sing Color. And How had been released by Jevetta Steele in 1991. Crystal Ball, Don’t Talk 2 Strangers and Old Friends 4 Sale had been bootlegged with Crystal Ball getting officially released in 1998, Don’t Talk 2 Strangers in 1996 and Old Friends 4 Sale in 1999. Everybody Want What They Don’t Got would get released in 2020. A video of Empty Room appeared in 1995, but it remains unreleased, as does God Is Alive, but it got bootlegged around 2002.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. decided that Letitgo should be the first single from Come. O(+> refused to shoot a video to support the single that was released 9 August 1994. A maxi-single followed on 27 September 1994 with remixes that had no involvement from O(+>, but the single’s Edit version of Letitgo starts off without the annoying Poem intro of the album version, so if you splice the beginning of the edit with the ending of the album version, you get the original song.

Originally, Come was supposed to be the B-side of the Letitgo single, but Warner Bros. considered Come a strong contender for its own single and replaced it with Solo.

Prince 1958-1993: Letitgo single (July 1994)

1. Letitgo (Edit) (4:15)

2. Solo (3:48)

3. Alexa De Paris (Extended Version) (4:54)

4. Pope (3:28)

Prince 1958-1993: Letitgo maxi single (September 1994)

1. Letitgo (Caviar Radio Edit) (4:59)

2. Letitgo (Cavi’ Street Edit) (5:02)

3. Letitgo (Instrumental) (5:02)

4. Letitgo (On The Cool-Out Tip Radio Edit) (4:34)

5. Letitgo ((-) Sherm Stick Edit) (5:42)

6. Letitgo (Original Album Version) (5:33)

Strangely, Caviar Radio Edit and Cavi' Street Edit were identical and Letitgo only reached number 31 on the Pop Chart and number 10 on the R&B Chart.

“You know the song Letitgo?” O(+> asked a journalist from Echoes in a March 1995 interview. “Now that was a great pop song. If Warner had promoted it properly it would have been a huge hit. Now I don’t have any control of that. They can stop working an album after one single if they want to.”

“If they don't want to promote a song, they don't make the effort to cross it over into other markets and the fans don't get to know it,” he continued in an interview with The Guardian.

“Now if Letitgo sold two million like The Most Beautiful Girl In The World did, people wouldn't be saying that I'm slippin',” he added in The Voice in March 1995. “But to sell two million, the dudes gotta PRESS two million copies, see what I mean?”

Meanwhile in Germany, a promo single was released in advance of the Come album, containing the full version of Orgasm (previously titled Poem).

Prince: Come promo single (1994)
1. Orgasm (3:42)

The release of Come

Come was released 16 August 1994 and it was not the strong album one might have hoped for or even expected based on the bootlegs. The new, longer and sexually explicit version of the song Come would have been fine for a maxi-single release, but not as an opening track of an album. It seemed to have no other purpose than to provoke Warner Bros. at the cost of disappointing the fans that loved the original version.

Gone were all the guitar rocking tracks with the exception of Loose!, transforming the album from a funky rock album to an ordinary R&B album. At least the middle section of the album was still intact, so fans finally got Space, Pheromone, Loose!, Papa, Race, Dark and Solo in good sound quality.

If O(+> had never released Come in any form, it would have gone down in history on par with the mythical Black Album from 1987. But instead of just skipping the album and moving on to his newer, equally unreleased album, The Gold Experience, O(+> unfortunately felt Come should be his next album to see release despite the fact that he was actually consciously devolving it by removing songs with every new configuration he made. Why he would want to release a shadow of the former masterpiece that was Come remains one of the universe’s great, unsolved mysteries.

"It was a collection of lackluster songs with dated production," O(+>'s drummer Michael Bland later told biographer Alex Hahn. "I felt we were cheating the fans."

Critical reaction
The reviews of Come were fairly negative. Many critics labeled it as Prince’s “sex album,” picking up on the sexual contents of songs like Come, Pheromone, the Poem-bits and Orgasm. They complained that the lyrics were too explicit and sexually preoccupied, while most of the music was dismissed as uninspired or lackluster.

Simon Price wrote in Melody Maker: “This, the last recording under the name Prince, is apparently his parting gift to Warner: An album containing no feasible singles. Touché.”

Not everyone was all-negative, though. “In the middle of it all comes a run of more tenuously related tracks, which are actually pretty good," Ian Cranna of Q concluded. "There's the harder, up-tempo excitement of Loose, the bumping equality rap of Race, the '60s Southern R&B-style lament of Dark and the poppy, bouncy funk of Letitgo. This segment also includes the album's one genuinely shocking track, Papa.”

Chuck Arnold of Philadelphia Daily News wrote: “It marks a return to his more bare-bones pre-New Power Generation days, although NPG members do play here. This back-to-basics approach results in some of his best dance music in years.”

Jim Walsh of St. Paul Pioneer Press was probably the one person most pleased with Come: “Dead or alive, Prince - and Come, his most powerful record in years - provides pleasure and warmth in a cold, cold world.”

Despite Jim Walsh’s enthusiasm, Come became a commercial failure. It reached number 15 on Billboard’s Pop Chart, which was O(+>’s lowest position for an album of new music since Controversy in 1981. The record peaked at number two on the R&B Chart. It sold around 345,000 copies in the US, making it the poorest selling album of O(+>’s career up until then.

Neither O(+> nor Warner Bros. did much to promote Come. Much like the case with the greatest hits collection in 1993, O(+>’s heart wasn’t in the Come album. The former masterpiece had quite simply ended up as contract filler, but it did end up selling over a million copies.

O(+>’s Come singles
In the middle of September 1994, O(+> made a cassette collection of new remixes of various songs from Come.

Prince: Come EP cassette (14 September 1994)
1. Come: 18 & Over (12” Remix) (6:36)
2. Dark (7” Remix) (3:03)
3. Space (Funky Stuff Remix) (5:51)
4. Loose! (Muster Bass Remix) (3:52)
5. Come: 18 & Over (7”) (4:22)
6. Space (Funky Stuff Remix Dub #3) (4:53)
7. Space (Acoustic Remix Vsn #1) (5:26)
8. Loose! (Dub Remix) (5:14)
9. Space (Universal Love Remix) (6:19)

This sequence was used a lot at O(+>’s Glam Slam clubs and at Paisley Park, so a CD test-pressing was made of the Come EP on 29 September 1994 even though by then, O(+> had sequenced a Space single containing the Space mixes from the Come EP.

The initial track lists for the Space single were:

Prince: Space single (19 September 1994)

1. Space (Universal Love Remix Edit) (4:00)
2. Pop Life (Kirky J Remix Edit) (4:36)

Prince: Space maxi single (21 September 1994)
1. Space (Universal Love Remix) (6:10)
2. Space (Funky Stuff Remix) (5:41)
3. Space (Funky Stuff Remix Dub) (4:47)
4. Space (Acoustic Radio Remix) (4:41)
5. Space (Album Version) (4:31)
6. Pop Life (Kirky J Remix) (6:13)

The single was only released in the US, and it contained the album version of Space instead of the Pop Life remix edit.

Prince: Space US single (autumn 1994)

1. Space (Universal Love Radio Remix) (3:57)

2. Space (Album Version) (4:28)

When the maxi single was released in the entire western world on 1 November 1994, O(+> had removed the Kirky J Remix of Pop Life, but otherwise it was the same. Despite some very good new recordings of the song, the single failed to enter the Billboard Pop Chart and reached only number 71 on the R&B Chart. There was no video to support the single.

The unreleased Dolphin had a video, however. It was released to TV on 30 September 1994 without a single for it to promote. O(+> had “slave” written backwards across his cheek in the video, which also featured his band and Mayte dressed as an angel.

O(+> also worked on a Come EP that autumn. He recorded Come (Techno Mix) and included Come (18 And Over). A video of 18 And Over was made which was shown on The Gold Experience Tour in 1995 along with a video for Zannalee. A Straight Pass Remix of the album version of Come with the beat from 18 And Over was also made.

Prince: Come single (pre 14 October 1994)
1. Come
2. Dark

Prince: Come maxi single (pre 14 October 1994) – mentioned by Neversin
Track lists unknown, but incl. Poem, three Come remixes (likely 18 & Over, Straight Pass Remix and Techno Mix), the album version, 18 & Over (Instrumental) and Race remixes.

A song entitled Alone In The Dark was offered to the From Dusk ‘til Dawn movie soundtrack in 1995 and it may or may not be identical with the Dark remix So Dark, of which an edit was released on Crystal Ball in 1998.

When the Come EP wasn’t released, O(+> came to regard 18 And Over as a song unto itself. It may have been included on the compilation The Vault Volume II from October 1994 and was certainly included on a 1995 collection of songs entitled Playtime by Versace that was intended as a gift for Gianni and Donatella Versace. Finally, an edit of the song was released as 18 & Over on the 1998 Crystal Ball collection.

In late 1994, O(+> worked on yet another single from Come that wouldn’t see release. This time, the chosen song was Loose! The Dub Remix of Loose! from the 14 September cassette now got titled Loose Dub and was renamed (Lemme See That Body) Get Loose! and credited to his alter ego Tora Tora when a snippet of it appeared on a give-away NPG Records Sampler cassette on The Gold Experience Tour in 1995. Another version of Loose Dub was released as Get Loose on Crystal Ball in 1998.

Performing Come era songs on TV
O(+> performed Peach at MTV Europe Music Awards on 24 November 1994 with a changed second verse: “Summertime, feelin’ fine, here she come, lookin’ fine, here she come, dressed in gold, get her done, ‘fore she gets too old, her hot pants can’t hide her cheeks, she’s a peach.”

But O(+> almost didn’t go perform at the show according to NPG keyboard player Morris Hayes who told the story to Yes! You CAN Play Guitar! on YouTube in 2023: “Aerosmith had this record. It was huge! Prince turned it down. He said, “We’re not gonna do it.” He called me and said, “Hey, get everything together. We ARE gonna do the MTV Awards. I heard Steve Tyler just said that why are we headlining when they got a bigger record than us?" So, Prince was like, “So we’re gonna go ahead and go do it now. We’re just gonna whoop that ass! It’s like this.” I said, “Oh cool!” So, we got over. And it was crazy, because all of these rockers, man. He said, “We’re gonna play our rock tunes. We’re gonna do this and we’re going hard.” And that was his thing."

Before launching into Peach at the show, O(+> sent “peace to Aerosmith,” so “I had Steven Tyler and Joe Perry come in the dressing room after and it was brutal,” Morris Hayes told Yes! You CAN Play Guitar! “Prince didn’t say nothing, dude. He’s got his shades on. He’s got his lollipop. He’s eating this thing. And all of the band, we’re all sitting in this room. Nobody’s saying nothing. I’m new. I’m a bleeding heart. Steven was cool to me. He was cool to us. (...) Steven came in. Nobody’s saying nothing, man. I’m just sitting there dying. I’m like, “Oh my God!” He’s trying, he’s talking. Nobody’s saying nothing. (..) I finally said, “Hey, man, Steve, Joe, thank you man, thank you all” and I walk over the counter, like walk them out. (…) I just had to end it.”

O(+> also performed Dolphin on CBS’ The Late Show with David Letterman on 13 December 1994. “Prince didn’t like David that much at this point,” Morris Hayes reminisced in a 2023 interview with Wings of Pegasus on YouTube. “He thought he was real funny style and made fun of his name he had changed to a symbol and all of this. We rehearsed this thing before we left Minneapolis. We’d rehearsed it. But we’re standing outside the door, two minutes to go on, Prince decides ‘I’m gonna change the arrangement now before we go on.’ He says, ‘Okay, Morris. Do you have a gun sample?’ I said, ‘Yeah, we got the standard. The one we use for stuff.’ He says, ‘Alright. Put that on the key. I don’t want to shake David’s hand when we come off the stage. I wanna just leave. Put in the gun sample and when I do like this (points fingers to his head) when I get to the end of the song, you shoot the sample. It’s gonna be a theatrical thing. And we also cut the second verse and go straight to the bridge. No mistakes.’ ‘I’m not thinking I’m gonna make a mistake anyway, but now you’ve put that in my brain.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, just gonna make this. They’re not labelled!’ Thank God I hit the right thing and it went off. It got to the end of the song. We played the song called Dolphin. And then he goes ‘Pow! Dooolphin.’ And he falls out and Big Coco comes to get him, and they do this whole thing. (..) We’d rehearsed all week how we’re gonna do this thing. He just changed it on the fly. (…) It was crazy. (..) But it worked out. That’s the kinda stuff we would do. But it was fun.”

The final Come tracks
A home video of a 1993 Act II tour aftershow, The Sacrifice Of Victor, was released in March 1995, featuring a live version of Peach.

The European Gold Experience tour started 3 March 1995 and lasted until 31 March 1995. During the rest of 1995, O(+> gave concerts at Glam Slam Miami and at Paisley Park, before embarking on a Gold Experience tour of Japan 8 – 20 January 1996 and of Hawaii 17 – 19 February 1996. Endorphinmachine, Letitgo and (Lemme See That Body) Get Loose! were a fixed part of the set list, which occasionally also included Race, Dolphin, a playback of Orgasm and a shortened version of Peach

At aftershows, O(+> also occasionally played Come (18 & Over), Dark and Zannalee. At the end of the tour, O(+> disbanded The NPG, signaling the end of an era.

The Gold Experience had been released 26 September 1995 and it contained the Come-era tracks Endorphinmachine and Dolphin. Unfortunately, O(+> had decided to ruin Endorphinmachine by remixing it and adding an annoying cowbell, as well as Mayte speaking Spanish at the end of it, before releasing it.

A similar fate befell Zannalee. A new, horribly overproduced version of it was released on Chaos And Disorder, 9 July 1996. O(+> had also changed the lyrics, leaving out the line “then we watch a movie, one of them dirty kinds.” This new version was performed live on The Today Show on the day of the album release.

The final Come era tracks to see the light of day was the full version of Interactive, Calhoun Square, What’s My Name and Strays Of The World on Crystal Ball in 1998. Thankfully, O(+> had not messed with those four, great tracks.

In 2005, a live version of Letitgo recorded at Paisley Park 22 October 1995 became available as a download from Prince’s now defunct NPG Music Club website.

Prince Vs Warner Brothers - The Fans Lost

torsdag den 31. januar 2019

INTRODUCTION

mandag den 28. januar 2019

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE: THE COME(BACK) ALBUM THAT NEVER HAPPENED