CHAPTER TWO: NO RECORDS ALLOWED, ONLY VIDEOS

The making of The Undertaker

Having just wrapped up work on the Come album in late May 1993, O(+> conceived the idea of doing a different kind of album, using just drummer Michael Bland and bassist Sonny Thompson as he had done for the original Come session, 2 January 1993. It would be the first music to actually be recorded by O(+>, just a week after the name-change from Prince.

Nicknamed The Paisley Park Power Trio, the three of them set up together on the soundstage at Paisley Park 14 June 1993, their amps cranked up full, and did some bluesy jamming. The result was an album called The Undertaker.

“Picture this,” Michael Bland told Guitar World in 1994: “A DAT machine, a 32-channel board, two techs and three players. It was about three o’clock in the morning. We got our sounds together and just let the DAT roll. We took about an hour to make that record, from start to finish, playing straight through with no overdubs. The sequence of songs on the record is exactly the way we played it. The guitar segues from one song to the next, like when we do live stuff.”

“He tends to really start opening up and playing a lot of different things when me and Michael do a trio thing with him,” added Sonny Thompson. “There’s no keyboards there – no nothing. So he can venture out and play what he wants to play.”

The songs and the video

The Undertaker was a mixture of two new songs, The Ride and Poorgoo; a cover of The Rolling Stones’ Honky Tonk-Woman from their 1969 hits collection Through The Past, Darkly; a preview of the new song Zannalee; and new versions of old songs: Bambi from the 1979 Prince album, the Mavis Staples-song The Undertaker, and Dolphin from the Come-album.

The Mavis Staples album featuring The Undertaker had yet to see release. The song had been recorded in August 1992 and was written by Prince, Tommy Barbarella, Michael Bland, Levi Seacer Jr. and Sonny Thompson. It was inspired by Mavis Staples telling Prince about her eight-year marriage to a mortician. Prince doesn’t play on her version of the song.

Poorgoo was supposedly inspired by James "McGoo" McGregor who worked at Paisley Park from 1991 to 1996. He started as a stagehand and quickly became the Production Manager and Stage Manager. He basically did everything including videotaping all the rehearsals and sometimes playing percussion in the band when Kirk Johnson was dancing. The name McGoo was not given to him by Prince but was a nickname he had for a long time. People just called him Goo for short.

The song came about when Goo and Prince both had their eye on this girl from New York named Maria. It turns out that Goo was the one that got her affections and not Prince. So, Prince wrote the song Porrgoo basically teasing that Goo would rather be hanging with Prince eating Trix than gettin' with that girl. Poorgoo also refers to Goo's shakey camera work when taping the rehearsals. Goo never wanted to tape them anyway because it wasn't his forte. Prince would always say, "Why should I pay someone else when I got you to do it?" All this was in good fun and not meant to be mean.

A camera team filmed the live in the studio-recording of The Undertaker and O(+> produced a 42-minute film directed by Parris Patton focusing on the Power Trio’s performance and featuring limited acting by Vanessa Marcil from the day-time soap General Hospital. She plays a drug addict in the video. "I don't do any dancing. I wear no makeup and my hair's kinda messy throughout the whole thing,” she told Soap Opera Weekly about her part. “I look pretty scummy. Those are the kinds of roles I really like to play. I'd much rather play someone basic and real than someone who's all done up wearing pretty tight outfits.”

The destruction of a masterpiece

O(+> privately manufactured a CD in around 1000 copies containing the Power Trio performance. Unfortunately, when the sleeve cover was at the printer’s office, Warner Bros. heard of the record and ordered O(+> to destroy the whole edition. Luckily, some copies of the 36 minutes album escaped and appeared on the collector’s market in 1995, although at very high prices. Fortunately, it got widely bootlegged, ensuring that fans got to hear it.

O(+>: The Undertaker (14 June 1993)

1. The Ride (10:54)

2. Poorgoo (4:24)

3. Honky Tonk-Woman (3:01) (Mick Jagger/Keith Richards)

4. Bambi (4:03)

5. Zannalee (Prelude) (0:44)

6. The Undertaker (9:45)

7. Dolphin (3:40)

The album seemed like a natural continuation of the guitar rock style on the 29 May 1993 Come album configuration which it complimented perfectly. “It starts off in a blues vein,” O(+> told Guitar World in 1994, “but then quickly goes to funk. But because of the first song, (The Ride,) people tend to want to put it in that glass of water. It’s real garage, you know, but Warners won’t release it.”

The Undertaker live

A few lucky fans got to hear some of The Undertaker performed live at some of the aftershows on the Act II tour of Europe which started 26 July and ended 7 September 1993. A section of the shows would feature just the Power Trio, usually performing The Ride, Honky Tonk-Woman and a cover of Elvis Presley’s 1957 hit Jailhouse Rock written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Bambi and Poorgoo were occasionally included in the set.

The song The Undertaker was also performed at the aftershows, but in a version more resembling the Mavis Staples recording as it featured the entire band including the NPG Hornz. Mavis Staples’ album The Voice featuring The Undertaker was released 24 August 1993 during the tour and O(+> would then also introduce the song as being from that album rather than from The Undertaker. Mavis Staples herself joined O(+> and the NPG for a performance of it at the tour’s final aftershow in London, 8 September 1993.

The final aftershow was filmed and parts of it were released as a home video, The Sacrifice Of Victor, in March 1995. It included The Ride, Jailhouse Rock and Mavis Staples’ rendition of The Undertaker.

On 8 October 1993, the NPG store invited visitors to view The Undertaker video. Less than 50 fans got the chance to see the film. After the showing, questionnaires were given out and the attendants were asked of their opinions and if they would buy it if it was released as a video.

Then, on 6 March 1994, Holland’s largest radio network, Radio Veronica, began broadcasting songs recorded during a concert at Paisley Park 13 February 1994. They had purchased audio and video tapes of the performance which included a short version of The Ride. O(+> also played The Ride at concerts in Monaco and Paris 3 – 6 May 1994.

Photos: Nicole Nodland

The mysterious blues-album

From 28 May to 26 July 1994, O(+> embarked upon a summer tour of clubs in Minneapolis, Miami, Los Angeles and New York. The tour, dubbed The Love Experience, included occasional performances of The Ride, usually as the show opener.

At this time, O(+> gave an interview to Guitar World which was published in November 1994. O(+> revealed that, although there’d been talk for a while of a straight-up blues album, The Undertaker was not that album. It is possible that he was hinting at The Vault Volume II which was sequenced around the time of the Guitar World interview. Certainly, the Zannalee prelude on The Undertaker ended up being of the version on The Vault Volume II.

As for when The Undertaker would come out, Levi Seacer Jr., head of NPG Records, didn’t know. “The thing here is that he’s always working on something. But I think this needs to be heard.”

O(+> would have liked to give The Undertaker away with the issue of Guitar World containing the interview. “I’d like to put out 700.000 copies of some blues guitar music with a guitar magazine but Warners won’t let me,” he told New Musical Express in March 1995.

In an interview with Q, also from March 1995, he added: “I have a song called Undertaker, which I wanted to give to Guitar Player, so they could give it away free with the magazine – to remind people that, hey, I’m actually a guitar player, too. (Laughs.) That’s what it is – really long guitar solos. But Warners wouldn’t let me.”

The release of the video version

O(+>’s European Gold Experience tour, 3 - 31 March 1995, included occasional performances of Dolphin and The Ride. Now keyboards were added to The Ride. The Ride, Jailhouse Rock and the Mavis Staples-version of The Undertaker were also performed at aftershows.

To coincide with the tour, the 1993 The Undertaker movie was finally released as a home video, although under the name of Prince, not O(+>. Vanessa Marcil’s character pops some pills and runs rampant at Paisley Park, stumbling upon the Power Trio performance. Strangely, O(+> doesn’t have her thrown out - not even when she pukes all over his guitar solo during The Ride.

The amusing puking sound was actually used to cover up the video version of The Ride being an edit of the album version. The video version of Poorgoo supposedly also has subtle differences from the album version. Dolphin is an edit of the Come album version with the ending of The Undertaker album version added.

Although one critic complained that O(+> only played obscure tracks and no hits, the psychedelic video featured O(+>’s most inspired, awesome and impressive guitar playing to date. It was a riveting, masterful performance.

To celebrate the release of the video, O(+> performed the entire The Undertaker album at an aftershow at The Emporium in London, 23 March 1995, except for Dolphin, but with a full version of Zannalee. Keyboards were added to all of the songs, except Bambi. O(+> decided to include the version of Poorgoo (now entitled Poor Goo) performed at this date on a summer 1995 collection of songs entitled Playtime by Versace intended as a gift for Gianni and Donatella Versace.

Release of The Ride (Live)

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. The Ride was occasionally played.

On 26 August 1995, a concert at Paisley Park included an Undertaker segment. O(+> played Dolphin, Zannalee, Bambi, a cover of Steve Vai’s instrumental Tender Surrender and The Ride.

In 1998, a fairly short live version of The Ride from Paisley Park, 28 October 1995, was released on the Crystal Ball collection. Prior to that, the Crystal Ball version of The Ride had been featured in the TV movie Love 4 One Another that premiered on VH-1 27 January 1996.

In November and December 2001, members of Prince’s now defunct NPG Music Club got the opportunity to download the song The Undertaker and the video version of Poorgoo, but the album remains unreleased.