QLS Classic: The Revolution

Recorded from Minneapolis: A special visit with Prince's band, The Revolution, where they talk about Prince's early days, his life and the truth behind the legend.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode
was produced by the team at Pandora. Ladies and gentlemen,
this is QLs classic. My name is Quest Love, and
we go back in the archives to September twenty sixteen,
some months after Prince's death. The members of his legendary band,
The Revolution, gathered together can give us reflective moments of

(00:25):
his life and his career. We hope you enjoy. Here
we go.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Suprema Supremo So some Supremo who call Suprema su su
Supremo Ro call Suprema Sun So Supremo who call Subprema
sun Suprema ro call.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
My name is Questo? Yeah, shut up already, damn. This
is a special Purple News. Dearly beloved, check this out.
This is Questlove and you're tuned to a very special
episode of Questlove Supreme, only on Pandora. Right now, I

(01:12):
think it's about time that me and the whole Team
Supreme take a road trip up to Uptown, up the
mini wood of the Minneapolis, the home of the legendary
Prince Rogers Nelson. That's right, We're going on a road trip,
all of us, all of Teams Supreme, Von Tigelow Sugar, Steve, Unpaid, Bill,
Boss Bill, and now our recent edition Life this very

(01:36):
special Minneapolis episode of Quest Love Supreme, We're going to
talk to one of the hardest working bands of all time.
That's right. I say they're the hardest working band. No
band has prep more, rehearsed more and perfective more the
Revolution Prince's band, that's right. I know you're like the
Revolution exactly. We got them all. We got Bobby C.

(01:58):
We got Brown One, Doctor Fink went Da Lisa. We
also got de Dickerson, and we got Andre Simo, and
we got s Sanna Milk, the subject of many a
print song. So, without further ado, or if you're right
back with Bobby Z, Brown Mark, Doctor Fink, must Leaf
Sepree only on Pandora without further ado, ladies and gentlemen,

(02:22):
I'll probably say probably one of the most influential group
members of of I don't know, I mean behind the
creativity and the work ethic. I know no other band
that's ever worked harder than The Revolution. We like to
welcome Bobby z, h, Doctor Fink, and Brown Mark to
Quest Good. You're good, that's awesome. That's awesome. So I

(02:54):
have to, you know, there's so there's so many questions
to ask, but I really would like to start with
the with the beginning, the very beginning of how the
group came together, but even before then, Like what were
your backgrounds? Like, are all of you from Minnesota?

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Or I was raised here?

Speaker 4 (03:10):
Born in uh Bronx, New York b Yeah, yeah, but
I did not know?

Speaker 5 (03:17):
Yeah, yeah, when did you move here?

Speaker 1 (03:19):
How old were you ago?

Speaker 3 (03:20):
I was about seven seventh, Okay, it's been a long time.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
So what what brought you here?

Speaker 4 (03:24):
My mother, she just wanted to Uh, my my dad
was military and h he's based out it.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
He he's from here, so this is where all his
family was when they got married, and then we came along.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
She just wanted us to be closer to his family
cause he was always overseas okay, and so that's how
we ended up here.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Think what about you, what's your your early big you
know your well.

Speaker 5 (03:48):
I was born here, okay, and uh, Bobby and I
were both born in the suburb of Saint Louis Park,
which was one of the the you know what we're
called the Inner Ring suburbs, like ten minutes from downtown.
So you could just you know, shoot downtown to Minneapolis
really quick and easy. And so we started with music

(04:08):
pretty early. I mean my parents had me studying piano
at a very early age, right around six, and studied
classical really throughout through high school and jazz. Jazz came
in about age of fourteen when I demanded to be
hooked up with a jazz teacher here in town.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
You demanded, yes, I did.

Speaker 5 (04:31):
I told my parents that I really want to study jazz.
So they we found these really great teachers here that
had studios downtown here in Minneapolis, and they were called
Wigley and Associates. There's just two guys, and Tom Weakland
was my teacher. I credit him with a you know,

(04:53):
teaching me improv and improvisational techniques and all that.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
And well this isn't usual because most people, I would think,
would like, like see something influential rock and roll in
television and be like that's.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
What I want.

Speaker 5 (05:06):
Oh well that was there too, I mean definitely throughout
all that. I mean I was six when the Beatles
came on Ed Sullivan. I watched it live and then
I was off and running from that too. That was
a huge influence on me that time.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, Okay, sir Bobby, both you and your brother.

Speaker 6 (05:24):
Yeah, I was just gonna say, well, Matt mentioned Saint
Louis Park, which was produced a lot of great people,
Al Franken and you know Wilson. It's just kind of
a strange outer ring suburb that really did produce a.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Lot of fun.

Speaker 6 (05:40):
But yeah, my brother David was kind of the godfather
of this whole thing because, like Matt said, our families.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Knew each other.

Speaker 6 (05:49):
But David was before the Beatles with Peter Paul and
Mary in the case to Trio. You know, the hippie
folk thing that was just moving with the anti war
movement grew, you know, the folk music. Of course, Bob
Dylan came from here, but David was also. They created
their own band. It's a whole Soma scene here with

(06:12):
Soma Records was Amos spelt backwards and Amos Highlacher own
music Land, So they had a label with the Chancellors
and the high Spirits and and the trash men with
Surf and Bird, and you know there was the cast
raised with liar liar. I mean, it was exploding here
in the in the late sixties, and those guys eventually

(06:35):
laid the kind of the fertile ground for the musical
Messiah to come. And you know Owen Husty of course
was part of that group and it. But Matt and
I had known each other because our families, our mothers
worked together very creative people. Matn's dad was very creative
and actors and radio and skits, and my mother was

(06:58):
very creative, and so Matt I.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
They would come to the house.

Speaker 6 (07:03):
When we were very young, and my brother David was
already showing us how to poke holes in the player
piano to make more notes and.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
So really, yeah, so David's old. David's eight years older. See,
in my head always thought he was like your little brother. Yeah, yeah,
I didn't know that he's the older brother.

Speaker 6 (07:24):
Yeah, older than Steve's in the middle of four. But
when David met Prince, you know, Prince had worked with
a with the eight track, and then David was working
at Sound eighty and the.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
First digital actual.

Speaker 6 (07:38):
I think multi track digital was three AM and they
gave it to Sound eighty one of them anyway.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
So all all of that was the main that was
the centerpiece of Minneapolis. Yeah, it was her.

Speaker 6 (07:51):
Pilhoffer, a big jingle writer, a big orchestrator, and he
built this incredibly beautiful facility for its time, you know,
forty eight track two inches and you know, incredible.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Drum boots and stuff. You know.

Speaker 6 (08:08):
It was really it was something and put struck to
out like a fish to.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Water, you know.

Speaker 6 (08:14):
And Peppy Willie we recorded their studio Beat two with
the Polydor deal with ten fifteen and those tracks are
played on.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Did any of you guys have any like lofty goals
of like world domination or was it just like, hey,
we'll just start a band, maybe I'll go to college
or the army And yeah, no, I'd suburb definitely wanted
to you wanted to break out of Oh yeah, no question.
Did you feel there was a legitimate scene to nurture
in Minnesota or was it like I gotta get to

(08:44):
New York.

Speaker 5 (08:45):
Or it was more about getting to New York or
LA and doing it. But we I always thought you
could still do it anywhere in the country because you know,
a lot of groups broke out from different cities.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
But we were.

Speaker 5 (08:57):
Really at that time one of the few groups that
was able to do it at that time, just because
Prince got his deal with Warner Brothers, you know, but.

Speaker 4 (09:07):
For me, I was on the I was like right
on the cusp of that generation gap. They were in
a d different generation than me, okay, and.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
You saying we're old. Nah.

Speaker 4 (09:18):
You know it was weird because m the generation of
musicians that I hung out with, it was there. There's
there was this distinct border of the type of music
that we we approached. But I just remember when I
was about seventeen, sixteen seventeen, I was determined.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
It was nothing gonna stop me.

Speaker 4 (09:39):
I was in the studio by the time I was
sixteen years old, recording, trying to start my own thing.
Even though I couldn't even say I, I didn't care. I
was gonna do whatever it took. Cause I saw Prince
did it, went in there and did all the instruments,
and I was like, well, wait a minute, you know
this can be done.

Speaker 3 (09:56):
And so I was determined.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
So how how did p into your Who's the first
kid into the radar? Bobby Okay? I was.

Speaker 6 (10:08):
A runner for Hustny. He had an ad agency.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
I had.

Speaker 6 (10:13):
Just done it one summer from my junior year, and
then in his senior year, I graduated high school and
was U I inherited the job from Jeff Siegel, who
went on to do the Renaissance Festival here and just
amazing talent. And he had created this yellow excuse me,
yellow paper delivery service, which just was kind of a

(10:36):
invoice that you turn in on a yellow piece of
paper on Friday, so it was you handed it in
the hustney.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
It was like fifty dollars a week or something to
drive around.

Speaker 6 (10:45):
And then I was in this this band, Kevin Odergarden.
The KO band was kind of a country rock band
following Marshall Tucker and all that stuff back then. And
you know, my job became kind of mixed because at
the studio I was walking from the back room, which

(11:06):
when the studio, I've heard too.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
His Moon sound. So Chris Moon owned that.

Speaker 6 (11:10):
Chris Moon owned the studio and photography studio, and I
think he used it to get girls mostly, but I'm
a photographery English accent, but he was very charming guy.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
And so I was with this band.

Speaker 6 (11:24):
That we were helping build in the back room for
free rehearsal. We were kind of painting it or doing whatever,
wrecking it, whatever we were doing. And this one fateful
day I was just walking from the back hall from
Studio B to the front door, and I heard this
sound coming out of the door wide open Studio A.

(11:47):
I just looked in there and saw the fro first
and just heard this sound, and he was he was
working on baby, and he stopped. I got the half
turned startled. Just the eyes move, you know, more of
a different electricity current than anything I've ever felt. I mean,

(12:10):
we're all in the same current. He ran on a
different electric current. So you could just kind of tell
as the personality, even though he was shy that there
was just so much going on in there. And so
I just sat down because it's like, you know, he
was just a guy recording at that point.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
I just sat down and.

Speaker 6 (12:32):
He just looked at me like, you know, with that
horrified look that we found out later was you know,
who are you and what are you doing in my chair?
You don't get out of here. So I just sat
there and I just kind of listening and just go
ahead and play it. You know, look, that's amazing. You
know what's going on here? There's nothing, you know, I said, yeah, sure,

(12:54):
And then Chris moonwalked in, What are you doing in here?

Speaker 1 (12:56):
It's you know, this is exprience and everything.

Speaker 6 (12:58):
I said, Oh okay, I didn't know this was like
a nuclear you know, we need a special you know,
suit to get in here. And uh. And so that
the laughter, the first laugh I got out of him
was the connection, and humor is kind of how I
got into it. And then I'd see him like every

(13:18):
day until one day he went with the hand you know,
come in and he goes, sit down, and I was
just like okay, and he goes, watch just I want
you to make sure that drug. I want you to
hit record, and I said okay. So I'm sitting there
and I hit record and he's out there in the
drum booth and he's putting down a drum track and

(13:39):
I go, okay, well that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
It's like, where is he going? What is he doing?

Speaker 6 (13:44):
Is is a drum track, comes back in the boot,
picks up the bass. He's putting on a bass truck,
and I'm going, that's pretty incredible.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Picks up the tarn.

Speaker 6 (13:55):
There's the keyboards, and I'm sitting there pretty numb at
this point, you know, watching all this go down. And
then he goes, I want you to punch me on vocals,
and you know, it's like I'll just hit record, you know,
and then he just recorded. He goes, stop, okay, go
back to the next track, and we did the next track.
So I kind of like got in there a little
bit there and then.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
So he jed on engineering.

Speaker 6 (14:16):
Yeah, of course, I mean it's just you know, I
was like, you didn't realize all the things were. So
then I became Then the studio, I met him, and
then we were hired by Chrismin for slide shows because
that's what the back the work was. Back then, there
wasn't any needle drop. There wasn't any music, so you'd
hire these musicians to come up with, you know, jams
basically that had no publishing rights. So me and Prince,

(14:39):
my brother David, and the bass player from this country
rock band, Gary Lopak, were doing a thing and that's
the first time I saw him play an acoustic pianolok
a regular upright panel and it was just like that
was it when you saw the piano and the panel
was moving and it was like a Max Fleisher Betty
Boot cartoon and with Cab calloway, the thing was just

(14:59):
kind of uh, you know those extra notes he kind
of puts in those chords. It was just kind of like,
I've never heard anything.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Like that before. How was he at this point? He
was seventeen. Wow, So slide shows like these events would happen.

Speaker 6 (15:15):
Well, you know when corporate shows get together now they
put together slick video and all stuff about the car.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Someone just tells me and put a playlist together. So yeah,
back then, y'all have a playlists.

Speaker 6 (15:26):
Yeah, but it was that was the beginning of the friendship.
And then Andre entered the mix, and then the three
of us were the three Musketeers for a while because
they got Obviously some stuff happened with Morris. I. I
came new to it because the history from the whole
community in the North Side, but the flag time, Alexander

(15:47):
O'Neill and everything, and Andrea and I was just kind
of like they you know, I Prince wanted a you know,
a rock drummer, and he said, I want, you know,
spin sticks on fire.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
I said, I can't, I'm not gonna because I'll show you.
So he took it.

Speaker 6 (16:03):
He took you to Mother's finance and the guy was
spinning sticks on fire.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
That's right, okay. I was sparklaying whatever they were doing.

Speaker 6 (16:11):
And and then we walked away from He goes, what
did you think? And I said, you know, it's crazy
rock band. It's just you know, because he had these
beautiful melodies too, and then he had these big rock
chams like baby. It was kind of like what, you know,
are you Mother's Finest or are you Joni Mitchell or what?

Speaker 1 (16:26):
And then we saw.

Speaker 6 (16:27):
Fleetwood Mac together and that was that was achieved later
with Wendy and Lisa.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
So the goals were there for a long term.

Speaker 6 (16:36):
It's kind of a combination of Mother's Finest, the Rolling
Stones and Fleetwood Matt.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
But did he let you know that he wanted this
utopian poster group of white gerummer, white keyboard player in
the basically.

Speaker 6 (16:50):
Not in the beginning with Mac and we were looking
for identities and costumes and we were out with Rick
and you know, it was it was, you know, pretty
chaotic as far was getting to the revolution, as far
as the whole concept. But it's also the look like
between Meet the Beatles and Abbey Road. I mean, there's
a lot of things that go into that. The success

(17:13):
breeds more creativity, but there was an identity search, you know,
by him in the beginning, you know, the early.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Costumes.

Speaker 6 (17:23):
You know, we're, for lack of a better word, you know,
we're not formed. And then of course the fat, the
bikini briefs, and.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
The Okay, so I kind of want to skip to
the point where you guys are now professionally hired. I'll
say that the one thing that I witnessed that I
now know is key and important is the only because
you know, I'm like one of those collectors that really

(17:51):
gets off on the process of how it gets done,
not the final product. But I know that you guys
have put in endless hours of preparation before you even
hit a stage. Just the amount of times that like
when you hear the word body heat be flat, like,
does it like sen me to hysterics, Like because he'll

(18:14):
just yell it at the most hitting opportunity time and
you guys are like instantly there. I mean, I don't
want to go to the point where you guys are
already a perfective machine, like around eighty three eighty four,
But just in the beginning, at what point did you
realize that, oh god, he really wants to do this

(18:35):
a twentieth take or till four in the morning, or
you know, oh so all of sound check is going
to go right before the show.

Speaker 6 (18:44):
I'll let them answer. Mark and Matt get to that.
But I'll just tell you I was already on that clock,
you know, because I had started so early that I
already knew that it was. You know, we were jamming
until dawn. It was already like that from day one.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
So even in the beginning before you guys down the
would move on furniture out, jam put the furniture back,
and they would open at eight nine am, and we
would be done at six. Wow. Not that I think
he would know about the ten thousand hour perfection rule,
but do you just think that for him, playing was

(19:18):
much more better than socializing or just playing with his life.

Speaker 4 (19:23):
Yeah, when I came in, I was so stunned because
I mean I had a pretty busy schedule, you know.
I was in high school, got out at three point thirty,
had a job from four to nine thirty at the
pancake house.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
That's where I met him, actually cooked in.

Speaker 7 (19:47):
That he was he was I was a young guy.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
That's that's you got yourself.

Speaker 4 (20:01):
But you know, from nine from I got off at
nine thirty, I headed over to the North Minneapolis to
the community Center. I rehearsed till one, so from about
ten to one. That's what I was used to when
I got in the band. We'd start at ten am.
We'd be on a jam, one groove till correct me
if I'm wrong, three four o'clock in the afternoon.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Trust me.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
I would get a sandwich.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Playing my bass.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
I'd be in the kitchen area opening up, making the
sandwich one handed and playing with one hand because the
groove couldn't start if you stopped the groove.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
He's gonna be looking at you.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Really. Yeah, no lunch breaks or anything like that. Yeah,
he was a driver.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
Man, That dude was a driver.

Speaker 8 (20:43):
When y'all with jam like that? Would he use those
as like bassis for songs? Like would songs be born?
Kind of in the moment that bault is probably packed.
We jammed all the time, Susan Rogers.

Speaker 6 (20:55):
Which is he'd be like rollo tapes yea, and he
would just listen to it on I just pull stuff
out of it during mine came out of stuff like
that with Matt just jamming on something and come out
of the house.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
And you could tell that story. That's that's so weird
because now I'll say in the early days of the roots,
like we would jam that relentless. But then once I
discovered like, oh, I could just loop this because Daike
would like write in real time, like as we were jamming,
like four hours later, I'm like, all right, dude, we
play the same loop like wasted. Just listen to this

(21:30):
loop and then Tarik will use that as a basis,
But do that in real time? Is the word loop was?
You know?

Speaker 6 (21:39):
Was was a limb pattern and there was no you know,
everything was pioneered. The drum machine arrived. I walked into
a rehearsal and Eden Prairie and but I heard Private
Joy when he recorded it. That was I think one
of the first lum one tracks. And and he looked
at me, he looked at the machine. He looked at me,

(22:00):
didn't say anything. He's looking at them, you know, he
just give me that smile. It's kind of like yeah.
And so I walked into rehearsal and the thing was
blasting away, and I went right up to Steve farn
Only and I felt like a union auto worker or something,
and be all drummers everywhere in the history of all drummers.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
This thing is evil. You know, He's a Mustard with
the machine, and he.

Speaker 6 (22:23):
Gave me the best advice I ever got. He looks
at me and goes, it's here, learn how to use it.
That's what we did, and we had to created Don Batts,
who's working on.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Our crew in our recent shows. You know, he created
an interface with.

Speaker 6 (22:42):
Guitar pickups that we're using for acoustic guitar interfaced with
this spaghetti thing that they created to interface with the
outs of the limb to trigger pads.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Nobody even had that. Yeah, I want to say, you,
did you guys invent at least create? Did you?

Speaker 5 (22:58):
Guys?

Speaker 6 (22:59):
Don was a genius, Don Bout a genius, and he
and Prince staid, you know, I want him to play pads,
and Donald was like, I have an idea, but you
know it was a jalopi at best. I mean, it
would just kind of run and then work. And then
you know, when we did the American Musical Awards, the
fact that it didn't double trigger was was you know,
because the double trigger it was your fault.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
It's not it was always your fault. Was a machine.
I was going to ask you, all right, maybe I've
used it three times in my life. And we started
using Indians because the vibration of the monitors on stage
and the base would offset the drum set right. And
I mean of the hundreds of hours I've watched, I

(23:43):
mean I've watched concerts just to see how you react
to stuff, to queues and all that stuff. Has there
ever been a faux pile like, oh, I don't have
a job tomorrow, Like oh, like twenty five times? I mean,
has water ever spilled doing it? Has a machine just
got off?

Speaker 6 (24:01):
First of all, maybe I'm a star turn into Simon says,
So he's hiding his stop on the one.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Mark had to relay them to me because.

Speaker 6 (24:10):
He would sell, he would go, he would just lose
himself or do it on purpose.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
I never really knew, you know, it was like is
he just messing with us?

Speaker 6 (24:20):
Or he would just go way over the way to
the corner over there, right, and then he'd look at
Mark and goes stop on the money, I can't see.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Well, yeah, they would go, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (24:32):
Besides that, though, the biggest problem was he would hold
his hands up, fingers up in the air to give
us how many horn punches?

Speaker 1 (24:39):
And then it would if you if.

Speaker 5 (24:40):
You saw it sideways like that, You're like, you couldn't
see how many, and then you know, he could tell
if you weren't playing, if you were like, well, no,
because I didn't see how many. You know, there's one.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
There's ones where Bill and I just discovered, h was it?
And New England somewhere Oh, the Worchester mass Show. Yeah,
we yell from one hundred. That's that's Atlanta. There's one.

Speaker 9 (25:09):
Oh, but there's one in Boston where I think you, Bobby,
I think you actually played.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
A little bit. Yeah, he did five extra Well, yeah,
it was no. The show was so loose, it was
doing possessed. The show was so loose that he actually said, Okay,
I'm gonna get you, and I'm gonna get you, and
I know I'm gonna get you, and I'm and I'm like,
wait a minute, who challenges his band to mess up
an actual show? You know?

Speaker 5 (25:33):
Yeah, well I'll slay one more technical glitch that used
to take place for me.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (25:40):
We were using the first what are called MIDI Musical
Instrument Digital Interface switchers for the keyboards, you.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Know, racks.

Speaker 5 (25:48):
We'd have like racks of sounds and if you were
making a program change in the middle of your song,
and there would be sometimes several If you were holding
down notes or a stain pedal and you made a
program change, the whole thing would just lock up and
and whatever chord you were playing would keep playing and
you couldn't shut it off. So if you'd be sitting

(26:10):
there in the middle of the song and just be.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
I'm doing this, and.

Speaker 5 (26:14):
Then we'd have to hit the panic button or the
keyboard tech would have to run over and hit the
panic and make it shut up. But then you had
like nothing, and it was a big it was a nightmare.
So you had to time your your switches really, you know,
really quickly, you just right split second stuff because it
didn't the technology hadn't caught up.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Quite yet with technology. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (26:35):
So then so one one day I get called in
the dressing room after the show after one of those
problems happened, and Prince goes, what what happened during that song?
And I go, well, there's a technical issue and nothing
I can do about it, And he goes, all I
could say was I can't have that in my show.
And that was it. And I'm saying, well, I don't
know what else today we got this technical limitation. I'll

(26:58):
do my bed and then you just have to work
with it.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
You know, one thing, what was it?

Speaker 1 (27:03):
What happened on any song?

Speaker 5 (27:04):
It could happen any song, It didn't matter.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
That's what I liked about him though.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Yeah, but he was okay.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
There was a work ethic that he plays that we're not.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
We would never get anywhere else he put. He trained us.
We were like battle ready at any time.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
That's why we could leave for twenty five years not
see each other.

Speaker 4 (27:25):
When we came back together and we hit the room,
it was we all just looked at each other and
started laughing because the energy, the power, everything was still there,
and there was.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
This sound that is so distinct.

Speaker 4 (27:38):
I played with many bands since I left this band,
but nothing, there's nothing like it. I don't know why,
but there's a chemistry that we have that he developed
with us.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
It just it's there. It's prevalent.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Was he always the first to arrive? No? Was he
great thirty years? No?

Speaker 6 (28:02):
We waited, man, I mean, first of all, going back
to the again, you know, I see.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
I thought he was the first new riding in the
last leave.

Speaker 6 (28:09):
Like we Wendy's story, you know what she told our
recent shows about the freezing cold purple ran and his
advice to you know, start your car and let it
run for three hours when we did the Capri Theater
and it was just I drove them over and rusted
out pinto station wagon.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
You know.

Speaker 6 (28:25):
He he just said, I want to put gas in
your car, run all day because he didn't want it
to get cold.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
He just wanted to make sure that was warm. It
was so it was really I hear these over exaggerating,
like it gets we can give you. You know, Siberia
and Minneapour is kind of connected really if.

Speaker 6 (28:46):
You look at the globe on the top. But yeah,
I mean it gets, it gets. It's just it gets
purple here on the weather map. But you know, I
just want to go back to the show. On top
of all that stuff, there was audibles four or five,
maybe six audibles that I have a tape called ice Cream,

(29:07):
which is a fifty nine minute jam which is just
working on the sixteen bars of ice cream.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
We got it all right.

Speaker 6 (29:14):
Let me explain though, when he's when he gets to
confusion at the end of the fifty nine minutes, that
means we had just done that for confusion a month
or a week earlier where we spent one hundred hours
figuring out these audibles. The audibles were extra hard to see.
They were a sleight of hand. There were a stomp

(29:35):
on the foot, they were, you know, a stripper butt move.
They were just all kinds of things that you had
to watch.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Remember the napkin drop.

Speaker 10 (29:45):
The napkin dropped, you had to hit when it hit, damn.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
It still keep the pace. But and it was fans
blowing everywhere. So the thing was kind of like being
on a journey on the.

Speaker 4 (29:58):
Way down and watching he had Alan Lee's on the
side of the stage just wait God, and.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
You know he goes, Bobby see two hundred dollars. When
the fans are going, It's like I just got fired.
Those fines were real. They were real.

Speaker 6 (30:16):
It all depends what kind of Yeah, they were real,
but it all depends what kind of mistake if he remembered.
There was two kinds of mistakes, whether he was in
the spotlight or not in the spotlight. If he was
not in the spotlight changing over here and he heard it,
you could sometimes hear him laugh at you. But if
he was in the spotlight.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
And you missed something, it was usually a two hundred
dollars now.

Speaker 4 (30:38):
Yikes, I remember I lost twelve hundred.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
I just couldn't figure stuff out. Yeah, brain Free had
a new song.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yeah, you get a brand new.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Song every day. Set changes every day. On top of
everything else, is he was bored to dad. So here's
a question for you guys. You mentioned that new song.

Speaker 9 (30:55):
So how long would he give you guys to learn
a new song soundtrack?

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Why?

Speaker 4 (31:00):
I developed the rumble tank rumble technique on the base
because I got tired of getting fine.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
So I started going, you know, in the beat with
the drummer, and I started.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Doing being like yeah, that's so weird because I'm thinking
like held just trying to get through, like like a
play that's broken play. And he loved it. He loved it.
I mean when he hear that, yeah, that was like

(31:34):
like okay, just.

Speaker 10 (31:35):
Rumbling and then we start a whole new song like that.

Speaker 4 (31:39):
You know, most of the stuff I play, if you
listen on stage, ain't no notes.

Speaker 11 (31:44):
I know, Like that's amazing.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
I feel I can do spins and foot back flips.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
I can't believe, like I'm thinking like this is this
is a new technilo. Because I tell my player Mark
to do the same thing, like, listen, you're stolid, so
U think while I have you So you're saying that
at no point where you I mean, this is in

(32:20):
the early dayes. Of course, the technology was not invented
for perfection.

Speaker 5 (32:25):
Yet it was not the glitchy you know, things could
be glitch.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
So every night that that when doves cry, solo had
to be spot on and and and just how like
well like when you heard it, you just thought like, oh, okay,
like how would you he said decide he would decide for.

Speaker 5 (32:53):
You or not always. But I know when I first
heard that solo, I was scared out of my.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Well.

Speaker 5 (33:01):
There was a studio technique he used to create it was.

Speaker 1 (33:04):
That that wasn't it was too it was too quantized. No,
not exactly.

Speaker 5 (33:08):
He never say yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
There's I'm not supposed to tell that killing.

Speaker 5 (33:23):
No, I told his story before, but he played. But
he could play that if he really wanted to. He's capable.
But he could, I mean in real time he could have.
But been in the studio. He used it to write
it so he could really perfect it and write it
just the way he wanted it, and then sped it
back up again. So then I had to of course
cop that solo and play it live.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (33:47):
Yeah, And then of course it's just his problem, like
Darling Nikki, like all photography. You know, it looks like
one day, okay, Darling Nikki three four, and I'm just
sitting there going, how are we going to do that?

Speaker 1 (33:58):
You know on the records.

Speaker 6 (34:00):
So it was like double kick drum next day, and
it's like, well, that's not gonna work. So I figured
out He said, all right, well you got to indite
to figure it out.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
It's on you. And I'm like, how am I going
to recreate Darling Nikki live? So when he just calls
us songs of random, all the stuff is preprogrammed in
your lin drum depends on the song. Some are live drum,
some are played. So this is beautiful ones, you know
automatically that's nine program nine.

Speaker 6 (34:25):
Or like right, but you're jumping way ahead. When we
were rehearsing for the Purple Raine tour, the record is
like this this you know, creative, overlayered, amazing thing. But
to do it live, all these parts like he's talking
about that, Matt was saying, there's tricks to everything he did.
I mean he meticulously you know, whether it was us

(34:45):
playing or him playing would kind of you know get it.
You know, he was set up in Sunset Sound. He
was just the wizard there and he was just completely
you know, just.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
Just did you have those flans effects on your one
your lin drum?

Speaker 6 (34:59):
And yeah, we were on through petals, you know, through
you know, just boss delays and stuff and you know,
just getting that's where all the loops.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
There wasn't anything like that.

Speaker 6 (35:07):
So Mountains is just the limb through all these boss
delays into the you know, so everything was was new.
But you know, he the technology was, as we discussed earlier,
it was being developed and techniques. So like Darling Nicky,
is that that double kicked room where he's just against
his the other track, he's just going with his fingers.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
He could play with his fingers on that thing. I
mean he could just go, I mean the buttons and
he was just perfect. Everybody goes, okay, let's do Darling.

Speaker 6 (35:41):
Nicky and it's just like okay, okay, so you know
then I'm gonna be fired. The final show up and
I say it took the Box home, and me and
the Box had that come.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
To Jesus moment.

Speaker 6 (35:52):
We really just kind of really got I just said, well,
I'll just do this program going with a visual light
and then get to the program data right, data. So
during data I had to switch patterns. I had the
one actually data, but and then I just.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
Go to and then it looks at me. So then
I did I did it like he did it, which
was the big kick from softer pad right. So I
had a technique and then he came back to he goes,
nice job, let me fix something.

Speaker 12 (36:29):
And then he puts them both on the loud kick.
So when people heard it, stuff and the whole place
was a kick drum. There's yeah, that's what I want.
It's like it was just weird things. Well you know,
and I would die for you to speak.

Speaker 5 (36:47):
Getting back to Don Batts, he added MIDI to the
lin so that we could connect it to my synthesizer
and have the bass part play sequenced through the whole
I was going to ask, how who handled you know
that whole thing, But it was in the studio. Prince
actually played that manually through the whole song. It was

(37:11):
not sequenced.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
It was him on the.

Speaker 5 (37:13):
Overhind like he's talking about on the drum machine doing that.
He did it in the studio and created that tight
through the entire song perfect.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
It was many times you just felt like that's a
musician and you're not. Many times Okay, so I kind
of have to know, and I know everyone has like
these Purple Rain questions, but surely life had to have
been there must have been a sea change leading up

(37:46):
to Purple Rain and then life after Purple Rain. I mean,
did you guys took the Rolling Stones to Purple Radio?
That was similar as you brought that up. What was
could you describe the the the Rolling Stone La incident? Well,
I want Mark to speak to that because that was
just the first time on stage. Wow.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
Yeah, that was pretty interesting because I was scared to death.
I'm sitting there, but I knew the Rolling Stone, see
you know, I knew that was rock and roll, bikers,
Hell's angels.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
You know, And I was like, how is this gonna work?

Speaker 1 (38:23):
We sing it head jerky Jack you off.

Speaker 4 (38:27):
I'm like, this is gonna be interesting. I think we're
going to be dead after this. You're right, man, I'm
telling you. We hit that stage and it just looked
like cattle.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
Have you guys heard the tape? Yeah? It sounds good,
but there's a guy. There's one tape I heard with
the guy. Yeah, I look at that. Whoa, they just
threw something.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
Whoa.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yeah, you're not gonna last or something. But but it
started with an orange that hit.

Speaker 10 (38:53):
His got stuck on the keys, the tuning keys. So
I was so out of tune.

Speaker 13 (39:05):
I didn't even know how to tune a thing, you know,
And so we're playing what song?

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Is that something? No, it was we came out of
the game with Bambi.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Yeah, it was why you want to cheat me so bad?

Speaker 1 (39:16):
I think? And I was way out of tune. Basse
was out of tune.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
And I saw Jack Daniels bottle came up on the stage.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah, crash his head.

Speaker 6 (39:24):
He he just ducked his head in an empty Jack
Daniels I just went like right, crash against the drum riser.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
And then I looked at Lisa. And then when I
was looking at Lisa, things started coming like projectile incoming.
I got hit with a bag of chicken. I don't know.
I mean, it's like second way taking around to me.
The second thing right, like you did know what was coming.
The second night they brought stuffed them from Yeah. The

(39:51):
first night it was like are they do. They hate
us that.

Speaker 6 (39:54):
Much that they you know, they're just throwing their lunch
at us. I mean, it's like where were these objects
come went from?

Speaker 1 (40:00):
It was just like you can bring one to Rolling Stones.
I mean that's what I mean. It's like, you know
what it's like.

Speaker 6 (40:06):
It was just a but like Mark said, so it
was like bikers and you know it's the Stones, but
they were The doors were at six in the morning
at the at the Rose ball it was the coliseum coliseum,
and so they were there all day and then we
went on it two in the afternoon.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
So it was like an all day Rolling Stones festival. Yeah,
and j Giles and George Yeah, you guys were first. Yeah,
we were meeting and yeah, we were just raw meat.
So then so you say the stadium was school by
then because yeah, and my physician like it's always influent
like when we do, like Dave Matthews was twelve people.

(40:45):
There were a lot of people.

Speaker 5 (40:46):
There was at least you know, after sixty sixty thousand,
it was a ninety thousand seat venue.

Speaker 4 (40:52):
Yeah, I just remember it looked like cattle and they
had the fire hoses and they're spraying people down.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
Yeah, it was crazy and then there was a food fight.
There was an actual food.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Amongst themselves, like clouds just clouds. Yeah, so that was
like the wrap show of the Yeah. But you know
what you never hear about this. One thing I just
want to.

Speaker 5 (41:15):
Say is that that later on during the Stone set,
they actually threw must have been two dozen pairs of shoes.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Up on ye love.

Speaker 5 (41:27):
When you think it was out of love they rescue,
this was yeah, one was love one waste.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Why were they throwing shoes though to get pick to
pick it up? You know, just it was you know
this they were aiming at our head. I know they
were throwing nicely.

Speaker 5 (41:44):
I just thought it was odd that they shoes up
there on stage at him. And then of course he
just said, you know, I'm not a fing door Matt
back to the audience.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
I mean, wait, you stayed to watch the show? Oh yeah, sure,
Prince like literally he left too. I was going and
went to Minnesota and had to call him. Mick and
Dez said to call him, and and and and now
with that without the technology like it's I don't I.

Speaker 6 (42:11):
Think it's like both on a phone technology back in
the day where you used to both kind of put
the phone up and both listen to the phone and
and Mick, you know, was with with Dez and I
know the management and but the story I remember most
is that he had had enough and we couldn't end
songs without his cues. So when he left, we left

(42:36):
and he went down and he walked up the we
we're playing and he's walking back up the big red
carpet with the stones villages, and I see Bill Graham
at the legendary promoter, like tear after him and say
a few things and expressions. Who knows what he said,
you know, the classic you'll ever work in this town
again or whatever he said, and he just turned around

(42:58):
and came back into the song, got on a.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Plane, went to Minnesota. Mix.

Speaker 6 (43:03):
Do you want me to talk to the crowd, you know,
because Charlie and Bill came back and they were great.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
You know, they were.

Speaker 6 (43:09):
Apologetic, apologetic, and you know that you know, our fans
are routing stuff and they were apologetic or mixing the Prince,
do you want me to say something to the crowd
that I wanted you? You know, Mick was the reason
why we did it. He loved Dirty Mind so much.
And Prince said, I don't need my mom to go
up there and tell anybody anything, you know, so he
he he.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
He was indignant about.

Speaker 6 (43:31):
It, and but he came back, and that dressing room
before the second was the most tense, thick air I
ever had with him in all the years. That moment
before the second Rolling Stone show was just we're gonna die.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
Yeah, well, I got hit.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
In the head, remember the limbo.

Speaker 5 (43:53):
Prince almost got hit with glass.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
But then we go ahead.

Speaker 4 (43:56):
I just remembering the limo when we were leaving because
I got out of there, and I remember he said
he was so embarrassed, I think because that was my
first show. Yeah he was, Yeah, he said, he says, Mark,
it ain't like this, And I said, well, I said, friends,
that's the Stones, and.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
You don't have to talk to me. I know how
rowdy they get. And he says, no, no, you don't understand.

Speaker 4 (44:18):
When we hit our first show, you're going to see
my audience. And he says, it's night and day from this.
And I didn't know what to think of that, you know,
because I haven't seen anything I come from the Chitlin circuit.

Speaker 6 (44:31):
So was he the same after that or was it
like even more into title I usually talked to him
at least every third or fourth day. I didn't talk
to him for about him four weeks and he was
just in the in the Purple House which became the
Purple House later, but on Lake Riley, and he was
down in the studio. And then he called me one
day and he said, I want you to put some

(44:51):
you know, the syndromes on a song. And we put
syndrums on nineteen ninety nine and little word Corvette. And
I was excited that, you know, he was in good
spirits and he was ready to you know. Then we
kind of went down south where it was safe and
just and played and played and played gainst the rolling stars.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
It was food. We went back to find the love.
You know, that is weird, you think, like a show
in l A Like to me, that's like the best
thing in the world.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
We man, we did Pittsburgh, We did the Stanley Theater.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
That was my first real Prince Frinch audience.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
And I'll never.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Forget the love was different. It was, oh man, this
is not so South. But we went to find the loves.

Speaker 6 (45:46):
But you know, eventually Atlanta, and you know, I mean
Atlanta was another you know, Fox theater.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
You know, we just we did it.

Speaker 6 (45:54):
Whatever happened, he figured out who his audience was and
it certainly became the Stones audience later.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
It just you know, he learned from all that.

Speaker 6 (46:03):
But the physical I mean it was definitely you know,
this is like professional baseball football, you know, you know that,
and we're at that standard. That was a loss and
there was many w's to come, but you know, that
was a big you know, forty one to nothing beat it.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
I almost think that maybe it's a good thing you
guys went through that too. In my head, I was like, Okay,
that's going to make.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
A stronger, more determined totally.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
That's what you had to go through that. I've never
cried before, I mean like that. I mean it was terrible.
I mean it was just really traumatic, to tell you
the truth.

Speaker 5 (46:36):
Yeah, oh yeah, I was actually pretty shocked at what
happened because I didn't.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Come to it. We're you excited, like, yeah, that was
a dream? Are you kidding me?

Speaker 5 (46:47):
It was like amazing, I.

Speaker 6 (46:49):
Mean from I mean, you know, the Beatles, Stones and Sullivan,
you know, the whole thing, and it was like this
was you know, meet Charlie Watson.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
You know, everything was just but you know, well, so
someone else and put it to me that and this
this is like this person's theory on on being born
in nineteen fifty eight. At least were prints that even
though Prince was technically a baby boomer, that the audience

(47:17):
of baby boomer wasn't his audience. That technically he was
the older brother the generation ex So all the kids
and the younger siblings of the Rolling Stone audience would
be Prince's right audience.

Speaker 6 (47:30):
He wrote the Stevie Earthwind and Fire ride was where
he went earth Wind and Fires audience. Obviously with Kavala Ruffalo,
they knew how to do that, and earth Wind and
Fire was had done such incredible you know with Doug
Henting Magic, earth Wind and Fire really changed everything right,

(47:51):
and then then you know it was it was just
crossovers smashes, and that opened up you know us really
in a way that we could uh kick going, but
the way we did. But obviously, you know, at the
midnight special and there was you know, there was a
lot of TV that didn't go right until Saturday Night
Live and that went right, and then all of a

(48:13):
sudden we were, you know, more focused after all that.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
So when things are heating up. During the nineteen ninety
nine tour, I know that the time was, uh, the
openness for you guys, what's the folk were really as
tense as as it was as far as like to
the where every guys cannot open forest in New York?
Like were they Was it really that much of a threat?
Or man?

Speaker 3 (48:37):
I can speak on this. I mean I used to
have conversations with dude every night.

Speaker 4 (48:41):
I'd be like, friends, these cats are burning it up,
as that they are burning up the stage.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
Dude, He's like, that only got nothing on us. You watch,
you watch, And this was every night, and I think
he started seeing it and it was.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Like, was it really that? Because even though I've seen tapes,
I've not seen audience reactions to the time. I think
there's just no comparison.

Speaker 13 (49:08):
This is what I saw.

Speaker 4 (49:09):
Okay, this is what I saw. Prince was starting to cross.
Prince was starting to cross. The time was still in
that that that black audience.

Speaker 14 (49:18):
So that's what you saw, But that was the whole goal, like, Okay,
this is me as the black group, and this is
me you know exactly.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
I thought he wanted that, but he did.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
But the audience, you know, they come from the hood.

Speaker 4 (49:31):
They the time was like oh what the bird and everything,
and so we were going more rock and roll, and so,
you know, they are certain songs like let's work. You know,
we would play certain songs because we had to. But
he really wanted to do the little red corvettes. In
the nineteen ninety he was changing.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
So there were points where the audience just wanted to
like okay, okay, they're doing let me sit down.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
And it got tight. You could really see the shift.
And that's when and he took them off the tour and.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
He had to. He had to. He had to. He
had to, in my opinion, that's just my opinion, because
he took them off in a market that my my
relatives never got to see him, which was New York,
and they were heated because they thought like we never
got to see the time in their prime, like doing that,
doing that, doing that period. So it was really tense.

(50:24):
But the tension.

Speaker 6 (50:28):
At the end of the tour became really bad to
the point where it was real. The food fight ensued,
so I was just weird.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Food fight. It's another show, but it was insane.

Speaker 6 (50:45):
So I'm standing at the stairwell in New Orleans at
the Stanley Theater in New Orleans, and all of a sudden,
Jerome looks at me with an orange in his hand
and then.

Speaker 10 (50:53):
Just helps up.

Speaker 6 (50:56):
I have a light colored suito and I walked back
dressing room and Prince, I mean, he says, what happened
to you?

Speaker 1 (51:02):
I said, Jerome to sent me with an orange? And
he went what? And it was like I just thought
nothing of it. And to him that was like Pearl
Harbor shot, first shot been fire, and it.

Speaker 6 (51:16):
Was like he got so enraged that it just all
I can tell you is is it turned into two
days of complete chaos. Hotel rooms trashed. Uh, Jesse Johnson
is a prisoner of war.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
It'll be a shamed the.

Speaker 5 (51:35):
Witch handcuff handcuffed to a cobra who had handcuffs.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Chick.

Speaker 6 (51:47):
Chick had everything, brass, nuggles and guns, whatever you want,
you know, was actually part of this as well. Yeah,
Chick was there. Got Jesse Johnson, picked him physically up,
carried him in the room and handcuffed him to.

Speaker 5 (51:59):
The because he was threatening Prince, you verbally threatening him,
you know, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (52:05):
Jesse was so he didn't gonna kill you. Never saw them,
so we had a room manager, nam Hewett. At that
point he sent him out to the store camera with
maple syrup and eggs and tooth based and Justin Johnson's
being interrogated and they're probably maple syrup over his head
while he's chained up and they're putting tooth based on him,
and the time is hearing them that kind.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Of prisoner in there. And so Jesse, jam and Lewis.

Speaker 6 (52:31):
Show up at the end of our set with shields
and hefty bags suits.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
They made suits out of hefty bags with shower cats
and they had eggs. So we were on the audience
in the show they have no stage. Yeah, it was
having it all through sound check on stage. Jesse Johnson
was captured on stage. He was bagged on stage and
dragged off. Jerome was during the show, during their show,

(52:59):
and then the rule was the time.

Speaker 6 (53:03):
Okay, so the time couldn't touch us. But Prince, I
think Prince jumped up there as Jesse or something. They
captured Jesse. He took him to the room and Prince
waited for him while they chained him up. And then
but the end of the story is Jesse breaks free.
We want coat wrap like a monster. He breaks free.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
Walk and then Prince everybody scatters. We went outside jamming.

Speaker 6 (53:28):
Onis are waiting for us, pelting us with eggs. We run,
Matt and I run into Roger's room and he's like.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
Going, what the heck's going on?

Speaker 6 (53:35):
Vacing See we're like outside and we just kind of
He's like looking at him come out into the party.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
So we hide out in Roger's room for a minute.
We come back out.

Speaker 6 (53:44):
They're still waiting. You know, they've got eggs, they got stuff.
And then the end of it, Prince had sent Hewett
out to get pies.

Speaker 15 (53:54):
Wait what Supermark is the late hour the hotel or something,
and the car pies playing pies came in like in
a movie and we had a pie fight, pie fight,
and then but the Prince was done.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
So then he goes, come on, let's call to the hotel.
He gets the hotel to open up.

Speaker 6 (54:12):
Jesse's room and we're hiding. Lisa and I and Prince
are in Jesse's room with yellow mustard. Wow, Prince princess
with yellow princess yellow mustard.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
This is gonna cost a fortune. I don't care. It's
like putting yellow mustard all over his clothes. And all
over everything.

Speaker 6 (54:29):
And then when we hear a noise outside and Lisa
and I are in the closet and it wasn't Justice,
So then we got out of the room.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
But he's putting yellow mustard on his door. It's a princess.
I got to pay for this.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
It was like twelve fifteen, twenty thousand dollars in damage.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Who had to pay for that? Let's m throws TVs out?
This is nothing the tour.

Speaker 5 (54:50):
The tour paid for it.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Yeah, So I mean, was there at Kumbaya Mooman at
the end or was that like the last Prince Time
show ever? Jam us for out so not really. Me
and Prince end up sitting in for them, you know
during the Atlanta Ship stage.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
Yeah, because they were they weren't.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
There, so you guys were playing like backstage stage.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
I hit jams Terry's parks. Prince had jams first.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
It's it's a movie in itself.

Speaker 6 (55:21):
It's just really an amazing story, and uh it was
war really yep yep yep.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Well, you know, I just want to thank you guys
for I mean, I can go on forever and ever
and ever and ever, but I really really just want
to thank you guys for uh, everything that you've done
for music and for you know, for for me personally.
But ladies and gentlemen, you're you're very I.

Speaker 6 (55:50):
Just want to say thank you for being a disciple,
and thank you for carrying our torch for us and
in the love everything you've done to keep our name
alive and be on our side.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
If we love you. From that, Bobby C. Brown, Mark
and Doctor place each other, we'll be back. We're more
Quest Love Supreme and we're broadcasting from Minneapolis, and we
just wrapped up a great conversation with Mark, Bobby Z
and Doctor Fink of the Revolution about a crazy food fight.

(56:23):
I guess normally I would come with a real mushy, heartfelt,
emotional intro, but based on what we just heard, I
gotta cut to the chase. Lisa, could you please give
us your account of the food fight in the Cincinnati
the Lord. Sure.

Speaker 16 (56:44):
I mean it's such a story.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
I don't know how were you was just all women
and children and Jesse.

Speaker 16 (56:54):
Yeah, women, children and Jesse.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Please welcome the uses of all muses of all Now
no like music just feels like assistance. I feel like
you guys are really the epicenter that he came to.
So no more muses ladies and gentlemen. Wendy Melbourne Lisa Coleman. Okay, So,

(57:20):
I mean there's so many questions that I know you're
tired of answering and whatnot, but just for formality's sake,
actually no, there's a lot of your background before you
even came to Uh, I guess under the Purple umbrella
that I would like to know about. Both of you
are first of all from LA correct, yes, okay, so

(57:43):
how did how did you two meet? Like you two
were childhood best friends? Correct?

Speaker 17 (57:48):
Yeah, Well, here's the story is pretty interesting where Lisa
and I are a second generation LA musicians. Our fathers
were studio cats. That's what they're called, right, They are
part of the wrecking crew.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
And in the.

Speaker 17 (58:05):
Sixties and the seventies, being a studio musician was really
a really respectable career. You know, you got your pension
based on how many sessions you did. So when my
father and her father, you know, were in their fifties,
only fifties, and all of those cats were losing their

(58:26):
gigs to machines and to single room producers, they started
living off of pensions based on sessions, right, which really
don't do now. Our families grew up together. We went
to the same schools together, we had the same doctors,
we had the same hippie friends, and the parents had

(58:47):
the same drugs and the same the whole thing, right.
So there were three kids on Lisa's side, three kids
on my side, and we grew up together. Growing up
in that kind of environment, we were very well versed
with what it's like to be in the business, what
it's like to be musicians, what the separation between entertainment

(59:11):
and artistry.

Speaker 18 (59:12):
We knew the difference. So I think being hired by
Prince that.

Speaker 17 (59:17):
I think that was an asset for him because we
had a real we had already had a big definition
of that in our own personalities by the time, at
least I joined and Lisa joined, and you know, we
had bands together with our friend with our siblings. There

(59:37):
was an unreleased record on A and M. It's it's
based off of a really horrible food substance, Waldorf Salad.
It's we all went to a Waldorf school. We all
went to Highland Hall, which was this Waldorf schools. A

(59:59):
Stein in her education.

Speaker 18 (01:00:00):
It's real hippie like you get to crochet and do
you're with me and make cut me. Yeah, I mean I.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
Remember at the time you're making it like it was
a lame thing, but at the time was like fun.

Speaker 18 (01:00:12):
Like the name of the band is lame Waldorf Salad.
I'd have to say, my father rest in peace.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Okay.

Speaker 17 (01:00:26):
So well, my father and her father are also the
ones that were the band for the Partris family. My
dad was a uh was Shirley Jones and Lisa's father
was the little girl tambourine player in all the sessions.

Speaker 18 (01:00:43):
Wes Farrell was the producer on those things and.

Speaker 17 (01:00:48):
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, and the Syden Marty Craft show,
which I've told you about.

Speaker 16 (01:00:54):
You're gonna make my dad like freak out if he
hears this. He's done.

Speaker 19 (01:00:59):
Your father did.

Speaker 17 (01:00:59):
All with the Seely Dan record, So your dad was
much in mind at that time.

Speaker 16 (01:01:04):
Well though they were both cool. They did a lot
of cool things.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
So what else, like go through the resume, like, what
else is your father does?

Speaker 20 (01:01:13):
Well, my father really started on motown sessions and he
I mean he played with everybody. I didn't even know
what all he played with until recently when he tried
to design a website and he was trying to write
his discography and all the albums he's played on, and

(01:01:33):
it was.

Speaker 16 (01:01:34):
Just sad immense.

Speaker 20 (01:01:37):
I mean almost every record that was on the radio
in the sixties, like from sixty three on, my dad
was on every song, you know, being a percussionist. Yeah,
so back then it was like a percussionist was really
a cool thing to be.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
I want to be on a.

Speaker 17 (01:01:55):
Phil Spector session as a percussionist. That's the wall of sound, right.

Speaker 20 (01:01:58):
I mean my dad also played on like Marvin Gaye,
he played congas you know, on What's going On and
that whole record, and yeah, stuff like that. When we
went on tour with uh when I don't know what
tour it was dirty mind, maybe with Prince in Detroit.
They took us to the Motown mansion for a little

(01:02:20):
tour and there was a picture of my father on
the wall.

Speaker 16 (01:02:24):
My dad never knew that. His name's Gary, Gary L. Coleman.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
Amazing.

Speaker 17 (01:02:33):
So you can go on the internet and see both
of our fathers on the pet Sounds recording sessions. Because
my father is doing all the he did played all
the organ stuff, yeah, like good.

Speaker 18 (01:02:46):
Vibrations and all that kind.

Speaker 16 (01:02:48):
Yeah, there's great area.

Speaker 18 (01:02:49):
My father, young Michael, Michael Melbourn.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
I remember your father beaming with pride as he entered.

Speaker 21 (01:03:01):
Do you know it?

Speaker 17 (01:03:02):
On that very night when my father introduced us on
the Grammys and my daughter happens to be one of
the members of the Revolution, Prince looked over at me like, I'm.

Speaker 18 (01:03:12):
Going to kill you. Gonna kill you because normally I
didn't do it.

Speaker 10 (01:03:18):
I didn't know, I know nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Normally, like you know, they would you know whoever, I
think John Denver was still hosting at the time, like
for for artists of you guys stature, Normally, I guess
someone would big would do that. I was like, that's
normally like a narrow staff member would just say what
the rules and regulations were, like, not introduced the biggest
act of the night. So I always wondered.

Speaker 17 (01:03:44):
My father was the president of the National Academy of
Recording NARS and and that year, which is really funny
because all of our Grammys and all of our plaques
have my father's name.

Speaker 18 (01:04:00):
As the president of NERS. It's very trippy. It just
is there's so many connections. So that night, my father,
you know, the National Academy Recording Arts and sciences.

Speaker 17 (01:04:11):
Was like to welcome everybody to the Grammys tonight and
blah blah blah blah.

Speaker 18 (01:04:15):
Which they normally do. And then he introduced the Prince
and the Revolution.

Speaker 19 (01:04:24):
And it's special for.

Speaker 17 (01:04:27):
Me because my daughter happens to be a member of
the Revolution and Prince.

Speaker 18 (01:04:33):
At the time.

Speaker 17 (01:04:34):
He would be like if he was like you know,
I mean, there was this whole esthetic we had, like
doude smile man, look bad ass and if there was
any kind of cuddling cuddlingess when you needed to be,
I'm going to kill you.

Speaker 18 (01:04:52):
You're don't blow the bubble bss, don't do it. I
don't want to care about this at all.

Speaker 16 (01:04:58):
Yo.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
So okay, this is one. Do you remember anything about
the Sunshine Superman sessions with Melbournmore at all?

Speaker 18 (01:05:06):
Remember very much?

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
So really, what's what's the story behind that? Wait before
you get into the story, Let's let's set out Melbournmore's
Sunshine Superman with you, Wendy and your twin sister Susannah
singing in the children's course. That was Melbournemore Sunshine Superman

(01:05:33):
on Quest Love Supreme. We're here with Wendy and Lisa
Princess Band, The Revolution. I don't know. For me with
Sunshine Superman, I meant just as a digger, as a
great digger. No. I mean, like the way that you
know hip hoppers discover stuff is look up the most
unusual things ever, and then that's how we dive into

(01:05:55):
the pool of music to research. So you get these albums,
you're like, oh, okay, I'm gonna that, And then you know,
some producers actually read the credits and see who else
is on it, and I kept seeing hmm, melvoy Melvoint,
oh crap, and then you know, and then.

Speaker 17 (01:06:11):
There's not very many Melvoin's. We're all very closely related.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
I know this now. So I guess I got to
bring you guys to Middle America. How did you why
did you leave LA to go to Minnesota? Like how
did your paths even cross? Or I guess Lisa you
were first.

Speaker 16 (01:06:30):
Yeah, well it it is.

Speaker 20 (01:06:33):
It is kind of strange growing up in LA and
Hollywood and being born to the into the music business.
You know, like that was the steel mill, you know,
our town. You know, I grew up in Hollywood, went
to Hollywood High.

Speaker 16 (01:06:47):
You know, my dad worked in the studios.

Speaker 20 (01:06:49):
All local you know, it was all right there and uh,
and then I moved to Minneapolis to make it big.

Speaker 16 (01:07:01):
So lucky.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
I mean, did you go there specifically to work with
Prince or was like let me let me.

Speaker 17 (01:07:10):
Know.

Speaker 16 (01:07:11):
It was like are you kidding?

Speaker 20 (01:07:12):
Because it's like funky Town just came out. It was
about getting out of there. It's like, take me to
someplace else. No, it was just through his management company.
He had a female keyboard player, Gael.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
And so how to own hunt, you know, to seek
you out.

Speaker 20 (01:07:30):
Well, by that Owen had just been fired and he
had a new management Farnoi.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
And can we probably say their name because.

Speaker 18 (01:07:42):
Steve Farnoli, Bob Cavallo and Joe Ruffalo, so it was
Ruffalo fern So it's only three.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
I always thought it was like four or five.

Speaker 18 (01:07:52):
Well, it sounds like a lot of.

Speaker 16 (01:07:56):
Guido, and you don't want to know the other guys.

Speaker 18 (01:08:01):
You don't talk about those guys.

Speaker 20 (01:08:02):
So they so, well, they were looking for another girl
and a friend of mine who was my best friend
in school, she had run away from home and got
a job at their company, you know, secretary, and she
heard about it and she was, oh, my god, Lisa
would be perfect and she told me about it, and

(01:08:23):
she said, Prince is looking for and I was Prince.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Yeah, No I didn't. When did you first hear of Princeville? Oh?

Speaker 16 (01:08:30):
When I was seen, and I was.

Speaker 17 (01:08:33):
I left my It was the summer of seventy seven
and I went My sister and I escaped our houses
in the middle of the night and we went to
the Starwood, which is an old club here in town.
You could look it up and they had two places.
They had two There was a disco and then there
was a live stage. So the live stage you'd see

(01:08:54):
like secret concerts of devo and you'd see you know,
I mean, I saw amazing performances there. But in the
disco that's where I was. And this one night, the
DJ puts on soft and wet and I'm.

Speaker 18 (01:09:10):
I'm thirteen, spok, but I'm like.

Speaker 17 (01:09:13):
I literally ran up to the booth and went, who's
that girl?

Speaker 18 (01:09:24):
And the guy looks at paintings. That's not a girl.
It's Prince. He's seventeen. He's from Minneapolis. From that moment on,
I knew and studied everything.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
And then.

Speaker 18 (01:09:38):
Finding out that this one got the job playing with him,
I was like, you're kidding me. Do you know who
he is now? And then she's I'm in the.

Speaker 17 (01:09:51):
Kitchen of the Coleman's house in Hollywood Hills, and Lisa
has a cassette. She's just come back from Minneapolis, comes
back with a cassette of Head and puts it on
in the kitchen. So that when that song came on
and I was listening to it, I was like crushed
with envy and pride and like she was perfect. She

(01:10:16):
was the perfect addition to his. She was so schooled
and highly cultured. And to hear her voice say I'm
just a virgin and I'm on my way to be wet,
you could tell it wasn't It was uncomfortable for her
to say.

Speaker 18 (01:10:33):
The way she speaks, it was so innocent sounding.

Speaker 17 (01:10:36):
But behind that voice, if you listen carefully, that's a
really serious person saying that. And I got that from it,
and I was like, this just makes this whole song
that freakier.

Speaker 18 (01:10:51):
This is great. It was almost so dangerous to me.

Speaker 17 (01:10:56):
It's like, oh my god, it's not like some weirdstute
sounding person.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
He was like this sound like acture sounded real. It
was that's weird, Like you had a pride and I
had a moment of how to not give It's weird,
like everyone has a sophoment story, a moment of discovery.

(01:11:21):
This guy so uh, I mean, obviously I know that
Gail Chapman left h the band under tints uh kind
of this under under this tension of having this sort
of closure line. Well, yeah, I mean religion sometimes, I

(01:11:44):
mean can impress people from doing certain things. So did
you were you automatically told from the gate like we
are trying to push boundaries never seen before and that
sort of thing, Like did you realize that you would
be the No?

Speaker 16 (01:12:01):
I just I didn't. I don't think.

Speaker 20 (01:12:05):
Between Prince and myself, I think it was a different
kind of relationship. It wasn't really that like we didn't
really conceive of anything first. We sort of just explored
it and then conceived you know, you.

Speaker 16 (01:12:21):
Know what I mean. So it was back and forth.
But I did see that in what he was doing,
and I loved it. I loved that he was outrageous and.

Speaker 18 (01:12:29):
You know, but you didn't see his stars Born.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Poster in the house he had the Stars Born first.

Speaker 16 (01:12:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 20 (01:12:36):
Yeah, when I first flew out to meet him and
he picked me up at the airport and it was
pretty funny and yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:12:43):
Yeah, oh wow.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Then I was like, have a manager's car service pick
so there.

Speaker 20 (01:12:50):
No, no, no, his little Fiat and we drove to
his house and I even like smoked a cigarette in
his car, like mind if I smoke, and he was like,
I'm sure he wanted to say, don't smoke, lef he
smoked and he used to smoke.

Speaker 1 (01:13:06):
And yeah.

Speaker 20 (01:13:07):
So we got to his house and it was it
was a trip because I didn't know what he was about,
you know, and he didn't know what I was about.
And we were looking at the dressing, like what are
you about? And he pointed downstairs. I go down there,
there's a piano and and then I was looking at
the posters on the wall.

Speaker 16 (01:13:23):
There's like Chris Christophers and.

Speaker 1 (01:13:29):
It was a little bit like what, I'm certain that
somebody put that up there for him. I can't see
him doing his own housework.

Speaker 18 (01:13:37):
Oh that's not true.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
He did a little bits.

Speaker 16 (01:13:41):
Oh yeah, he knew what he was like exactly that was.
And he was like just putting things on the wall
like it's spray paint, pieces of paper.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Was he extra meticulous?

Speaker 18 (01:13:55):
He seemed like he was somebody that was extra meticulous.

Speaker 16 (01:13:57):
Later on, later on he was in the beginning, he
was he was sloppy. Yes, he was sloppy.

Speaker 18 (01:14:04):
Yeah, you know it's messy.

Speaker 16 (01:14:06):
I have pictures of the launy.

Speaker 18 (01:14:07):
But you know in the yeah, you know it's funny because.

Speaker 16 (01:14:13):
I ended up doing it and making Friday sandwiches.

Speaker 17 (01:14:16):
He one of his last piano concerts, he talks about
meeting Lisa for the first time the second to the
last performance of his Knees.

Speaker 18 (01:14:26):
He says, in that very moment where he points down.

Speaker 17 (01:14:29):
And says, you go downstairs, he calls Steve Farnolan and
he says, I don't think this is gonna work out. Really, Yeah,
I don't think this is because there was something about
the way.

Speaker 16 (01:14:40):
And I didn't look him in the Yeah, something was
weird to him. And then and then he says, you're
not supposed to look me in the eyes. Oh, he
didn't know exactly.

Speaker 17 (01:14:54):
So what is it ends up happening is he says,
you know, go downstairs, and then he calls for only
and the phoney. He says, you get a gator, gotta
get her out of here. I don't think get her
a flight home. I don't think this is gonna work.
And as he's saying that, she's downstairs and she opens
the piano and she just starts playing. And if anybody
in here has ever heard Lisa play by herself and what, yeah,
what comes out between Sawtee and hinder myth And.

Speaker 18 (01:15:19):
He said, I'll call you back.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
So you had a classical background. I mean when when
did you first start playing piano?

Speaker 20 (01:15:31):
As soon as I could reach it. Yeah, yeah, it
was just in the house, you know. And my mom
was a singer and she'd have piano players come over.
And there was this guy, Dick Gray who was very
depressed man, but played so beautifully and woul.

Speaker 16 (01:15:48):
Accompany my mom was.

Speaker 20 (01:15:50):
She would practice and she was a jazz singer and
I would just watch and I look at the shapes
and I just always and I still have that in
my mind, like shapes.

Speaker 16 (01:16:00):
It's shapes, you know, what sounds like.

Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
Yeah. Yeah, I was about to say these former centers. Yeah,
so when you heard sound, you saw shapes. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:16:11):
Well it's it's kind of funny because Prince always said
that your sound always added a lot of color to
his music exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 20 (01:16:16):
Yeah, so I just yeah, it's really visual, you know,
and and and that's how I would try to recreate
it when I when after they would finish and I
go to the piano and try to make shapes again.

Speaker 4 (01:16:28):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:16:30):
Usually, well every virtual as I know, at least in
pop music, you know, they have this higher education first,
like they they s like the Motown guys were jazz musicians.
This pop stuffs whatever.

Speaker 16 (01:16:42):
Yeah, jazz.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
So I did you feel as though or did your
family make you feel as though, like, uh, you're kind
of luring yourself like you could be the next you
can be on this level of classical music.

Speaker 20 (01:16:56):
Yeah, a little bit. My father had a bit of
that because he really did. He did a lot of times.
You know, you said you got the talent to be
a concert pianist, you know, and I really I saw
that for you and your future, and you know, I
would marry the conductor and you know all this stuff,
and I was like, Dad, no, I'm going to be
the conductor. You don't understand, you know. And it was

(01:17:21):
and he shouldn't. He knows, I mean, and my mom
knew the truth because.

Speaker 16 (01:17:25):
I grew up.

Speaker 20 (01:17:27):
I mean I didn't, I didn't know, and I didn't
care what I would play. I just wanted to play,
and I wanted to play everything forever, and they got
me lessons and I was just, you know, lucky to
be advantaged the way I was that they supported me
playing it, you know, at all. And it was just
my house and my brother, My brother and sister were

(01:17:48):
both musicians. My sister was a guitar player and my
brother was everything cellist.

Speaker 17 (01:17:54):
Well, here's a nice little tidbit as well as that
Lisa's father, Gary was friends with Tom ober Time and
they had some of the first since in the house
and at Lisa also learned all of her skills with
an our twenty six hundred in the house, and so
Gary was doing a lot of music concrete in his sectonic.

Speaker 18 (01:18:15):
He was a composer, Yeah, yeah, a total composer.

Speaker 17 (01:18:20):
And Lisa learned all of her tape skills and marking
and patching.

Speaker 20 (01:18:25):
Yeah we had we didn't, you know, synthesizers were They
were just like modular things that you had to patch
together and then we would cut tape and little pieces
and flip it.

Speaker 16 (01:18:35):
And my dad taught me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:37):
Earlier.

Speaker 18 (01:18:38):
Yeah, she was a team with like a young team
learning that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
So by the time the Oberheim came when you were
able to actually play chords on it and like one
noted right exactly. Oh my god.

Speaker 17 (01:18:48):
Then I know I knew how she was the perfect
person for Prince Perfect.

Speaker 20 (01:18:54):
Yeah, And in that way, my dad was right because
he said, if you have the skill and then you
have this knowledge, you're going to do something.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
Okay, So I have to jump ahead a little bit.
Uh Rick James's street songs, and Rick and the at
least the David Rich edition of his autobiography talks of
stealing your keyboards and there already made patches to record

(01:19:20):
street songs. So by that point was the overheime, like
how much programming did you like? Now? Of course, if
you ever tried or whatever, it's like ready made and
you know it kind of does have to work for
you at least to get the patch sound you want.
But how did you have to pre program the stuff

(01:19:41):
specifically to get that?

Speaker 16 (01:19:43):
Well, to be honest, at the very beginning, it was.

Speaker 20 (01:19:47):
It was actually really cool to just have the big fat,
kind of like sloppy sounding you know, whatever the presets
were when they were first coming out with presets, well,
and they just had a sound.

Speaker 16 (01:20:01):
The only thing that we used to do was just like, wow,
just turned the filter up.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
So there's no grand design like you just.

Speaker 20 (01:20:08):
No, in the beginning there kind of wasn't It was
just yeah, and it just had a sound of its son.
It was just as we would as we progressed and
started learning more than we would kind of tweak the
sounds and make more sounds. But in the beginning, no,
it was really like, that's why you can get an
Oberheim now and it sounds like you know, you're to

(01:20:29):
whatever ce one and it's those are those horns?

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
You know?

Speaker 16 (01:20:32):
Weren't you right?

Speaker 1 (01:20:34):
So did you? Did you guys discover that your equipment
was stolen to make this record and every time you
listen to super Freak like.

Speaker 17 (01:20:43):
That, well no, I mean my purple rain guitars were
ripped off.

Speaker 18 (01:20:50):
That pissed me off. Really yees wait who.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
Whoa how there was no other opening.

Speaker 17 (01:20:58):
Act but you guys, well, and we were loading the
trucks and someone was eyeing, so they knew instantly the
price listened.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
So another theme that uh I noticed that's recurring is
the meticulous, uh hours of and relentless hours of practice
that you guys have had to put in. And I
guess the ongoing joke, at least for all the things
that I've collected, was that if there's anyone that's an

(01:21:41):
expert at James Brown's body heat, it's you guys.

Speaker 16 (01:21:49):
Just when you said body heat, it was like a.

Speaker 19 (01:21:55):
Flat like slowly I turned step by step.

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
Well, I would assume that he was working out stuff
in his head in real time.

Speaker 18 (01:22:09):
But he'd have us not move for four hours and
he'd be practicing dance moves.

Speaker 1 (01:22:14):
Oh wow, really yeah, we were machine.

Speaker 20 (01:22:20):
We were the little presscoa. Okay, go and then don't
don't move, and he'd be doing well.

Speaker 1 (01:22:28):
I kind of want to There was a period at
least that I knew this, uh, somewhere between late controverty
no even I'll say between late nineteen ninety nine tour
where his dancing was sort of awkward. I eve a
dirty mind thing like it was more like a big
Jagger thing. And then I guess the first time I

(01:22:52):
realized like, oh god, this this guy's inherited the baton
from James Brown's TAMMI show was I guess when you
guys released the baby I'm a Star video clip from
Maryland and I actually saw you guys as the new
JBS like, was that just the relentless hours of rehearsing,

(01:23:14):
and you know.

Speaker 17 (01:23:15):
If someone mentioned something about that, and I have to
say that this is all a maturity thing, you know,
And in those specific years, he became mature and he
felt very comfortable in his body. And the band that
was behind him was relentlessly in tune to every movie made.

(01:23:38):
And that was countless hours of not moving and giving
him as much confidence and safety.

Speaker 18 (01:23:47):
In that environment to perfect that thing.

Speaker 16 (01:23:51):
It's like he was on the high wire, you know,
and we were like the balance, you know.

Speaker 20 (01:23:55):
We gave him theoph underneath to keep him up there,
you know, and he could just spin around on it
and we just never kept never looked away, you know,
we kept our eyes on him.

Speaker 16 (01:24:06):
And that that we just became a body.

Speaker 1 (01:24:10):
Yeah, there's there's probably i guess out there in the
in the in the atmosphere, it's probably i'll say, maybe
eighteen or nineteen hours of the morphing of Baby I'm
a Star from when you guys were first rehearsing it
for the show and it sounded very much like the

(01:24:32):
album version. And then suddenly, like the BPMS gets hired,
and then suddenly you hear like the cues come in,
and I mean, at what point did you realize that,
you know, with the idea of him stopping and all
these cues that had to have been a nightmare at
least tour wise.

Speaker 16 (01:24:52):
And no not, it's kind of the contrary.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
It made it.

Speaker 17 (01:24:58):
It made it the job at hand, and we were
it was you know, if you choose to take this mission,
you know what I mean, we were there and ready
to do it.

Speaker 16 (01:25:07):
Yeah, and like what else you got trying stumping bad exactly.

Speaker 18 (01:25:12):
But at the same time, you know, every time we'd
add some kind of like.

Speaker 17 (01:25:16):
If we put mutiny into something, or if we took
a groove from somewhere else and you know, like tacked
it in. It was every time we were dialed in
in a groove, we looked forward to getting to that
spot where that groove would happen.

Speaker 16 (01:25:32):
It could happen because and then he would start doing
the little yeah do that.

Speaker 17 (01:25:37):
Whenever it was dial it was almost like that thing
that happens when you're when you first hit mocked two
or three and you just you're it's like, yeah, you
feel like the groove actually sits so tight you feel
like you're in slow motion. When the groove is that good,
and everyone looked forward to that moment, and every time

(01:25:58):
he wanted.

Speaker 18 (01:25:58):
To push it and do more and more of it,
we had the runners high with him.

Speaker 1 (01:26:04):
So it okay. I know I'm asking like a lot
of privileged questions, like the only only stuff that I've heard,
like the average person hasn't heard. But I kind of
have to wonder if this is true. So if I
tend to notice that better, the best shows ever are

(01:26:26):
always the shows with the least or in the cities
with the least expectations. So I'll say that you know
a town like Providence, Rhode Island, of I mean, as
a person who's heard maybe at least seventy percent of
all the Purple Rine concerts and like studied meticulously, I
noticed that some of the smaller cities, you guys, were

(01:26:48):
just like in this incredible zone. But I would listen
to a New York show or an LA show and
I'd be like, ah, man, they didn't they didn't do
it like that. So I can only imagine and and
only having talked to Alan noticing that like Michael Jackson
might be in an artist, I was just.

Speaker 17 (01:27:06):
Going to say, it depends who's on the list, who
was on the guest list, So there was a lot
of people on the guest list.

Speaker 18 (01:27:14):
The show became really mannered, intense.

Speaker 1 (01:27:17):
It was like, you know, if it was you know,
like it was Kalamazoo Michigan. You guys had the time
because it was.

Speaker 16 (01:27:23):
For the fans.

Speaker 20 (01:27:24):
I mean yeah, it was more we didn't and it
wasn't because it was famous people. It was more like
we found it them in suits.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
Yeah really yeah, Well you two also hold that I
guess that this distinctive doubIe signer of sort of crossing
over from his stage world into his studio, which I
guess the focal is that you know that that was
Fort Knox or you know, just like no one gets

(01:27:54):
influenced into and it didn't.

Speaker 18 (01:27:57):
It's true, there was just a small group of people.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
How are you able to even gain trust on that
level at least to play him things like here, listen
to this and listen to this.

Speaker 16 (01:28:08):
He just offered it. I mean, well he.

Speaker 1 (01:28:11):
Said, I need inspiration.

Speaker 20 (01:28:12):
No no, no, no, no, I mean for me, if
you don't mind, because I was there early on and
even you know, like I lived in his house, you know,
in early early days and you know, he'd take a
nap or something like, I'd be in the studio messing
around and he'd said, one time, I remember that piece of.

Speaker 16 (01:28:31):
Music I did for Miles, just my stepdad. It was
just for fun.

Speaker 20 (01:28:35):
And he was taking a nap and he was hearing
me play and everything, and he was just like, that
was the I had the best dreams.

Speaker 16 (01:28:42):
And you know that was so beautiful, and so he
knew what we had, you know, and.

Speaker 1 (01:28:49):
I can't stop you one second. You said the most
amazing thing what Prince left?

Speaker 20 (01:28:54):
Oh yeah, oh no, it was just he blinks, that's
really funny, got something in his eyes for a second.

Speaker 18 (01:29:05):
This is this is something people don't know, but this
is really really cute.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
Okay.

Speaker 17 (01:29:12):
So in his bedrooms they're you know, I mean because
he sleeps slept at funny hours. So you know, the
rooms were black, but the blankets and the comforters were
about three ft deep, right like just so he'd like
you you you just see like a little tube of

(01:29:33):
like an imprint of a little bag on the bed.

Speaker 18 (01:29:39):
In his little just maybe a tiny little pillow imprint,
but this is tube. I mean, it was he was
that sounds he was a tender button.

Speaker 1 (01:29:50):
I thought it was like the nineteen ninety nine intercover
with like the neon lights and watercolors.

Speaker 16 (01:29:57):
Well you know on his crow in the bathtub.

Speaker 18 (01:30:01):
Yeah, you know he was, Oh no, he was.

Speaker 16 (01:30:04):
He was kitty with little pony.

Speaker 18 (01:30:07):
Yeah, Lisa and I used to call him my little pony.
Did he hate that or like, no, he hated it,
but he loved it.

Speaker 20 (01:30:18):
Who you know, and girls, girls love ponies, cute ponies.
Never mind must change itself.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
So I meant at the at the rate where you know,
I guess uh laid eighty four, mid eighty five. I mean,
you guys were pretty much a Lennon McCartney combination together.
I mean, could you speak of an on just at

(01:30:50):
the point where you were full fledged collaborators.

Speaker 17 (01:30:53):
And it became a parent that he really relied on
us for a certain thing when he would be sending
just a master with just a scratch vocal and a
piano idea and say finished this.

Speaker 18 (01:31:12):
Trust And so a lot of Sign of the Times was.

Speaker 16 (01:31:15):
Done that way.

Speaker 20 (01:31:17):
So just scale he was really he was more you know,
making the movies and getting you know, he was getting
his head into other things.

Speaker 1 (01:31:26):
Strange relationship was like that right. Yeah, what's weird was
that you guys weren't using patches. You guys were there's
we played those were Middle Eastern like.

Speaker 16 (01:31:34):
Yeah, we would get yeah, I mean whatever.

Speaker 18 (01:31:36):
Brother was also like a proficient So the song we
Can Fuck was David.

Speaker 17 (01:31:45):
Song Around the World Day was David and his you know,
Arab and Farsi influences, so we used that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:31:53):
You know, that's amazing. Okay, I know in private, I'll
always ask about out the Japanese run. But I guess
in the past few months, I guess video has finally surfaced.
The smashing of the guitar. He told me, when you

(01:32:15):
saw the smashing, we just.

Speaker 18 (01:32:18):
Me and Lisa and Bobby looked each other and went,
it's over.

Speaker 1 (01:32:21):
It's over, because why would he destroyed because.

Speaker 18 (01:32:25):
He was already pissed. He was pissed anyway. There was
something happening and he was.

Speaker 17 (01:32:29):
Pissed, and there were more people on the stage, like
Sheila's band was on the stage. He looked at me
a couple of times during really pivotal sections and said layout.
And when he says layout, you're out.

Speaker 18 (01:32:44):
It's not good. When Prince.

Speaker 17 (01:32:48):
Right, when he looks at you and doesn't want you
to play, he says layout. And when he said I
was like, Oh, this is not good. What's going on?
And then he looked at Miko and said turn me
go up.

Speaker 18 (01:33:05):
And I was like, ooh, there's something happening here. And
then when we played Purple Rain that night and he
smashed the guitar, I was just wow, really is this happening.
I think it's happening. And we got off stage and
I was panicked. I felt it.

Speaker 17 (01:33:21):
I felt it big, and Lisa, it's like, stop overreacting,
stop overreacting.

Speaker 18 (01:33:26):
Done it done? And I said no, no, I'm telling
you this is it. It's done.

Speaker 17 (01:33:30):
We all flew back to our homes and Prince flew
back to La had a rental there. It's a funny story.
We flew back again and he called us two days
later to go to the rental and pulled us into
the room and said, I'm going to be going in
a different direction and I can't ask you guys to

(01:33:51):
wear nipoles, bras and crotchless panties.

Speaker 16 (01:33:58):
He drew that true, and we went that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:34:02):
You know something. Letting somebody goes probably or at least
reprimanding someone is that's one of the hardest things I
have to do, and I hate I.

Speaker 18 (01:34:14):
Can't stand it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:15):
No, I mean, I'm amazed that he even.

Speaker 15 (01:34:17):
He it was.

Speaker 17 (01:34:20):
It was incredible that he had that and that that
he what he said was the way for him to
feel comfortable enough to let He knew that Willis and
I would go, well, you're right, we won't do that.
He knew that that was his in and I understood
that was his way of saying it, and I knew

(01:34:41):
ultimately that wasn't the truth. He just was ready to
take full control back and felt like I've spread myself
to Yeah. Yeah, it was just turning into it was
almost eighty seven.

Speaker 1 (01:34:57):
Wow, and did you guys go straight into your.

Speaker 18 (01:34:59):
Solo album right away? Me and Bobby and Lisa, we went, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35:03):
I have to say that you know more more than
I think. The album came out with August thirty, first
of eighty seven. I'm sorry, I like the album came
out the same day that Michael Jackson's Bad came out,

(01:35:25):
and I distinctly remember listening to their record more than like,
you know, the whole world was waiting for bed and.

Speaker 16 (01:35:33):
I know it's hilarious.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
Wait what happened.

Speaker 16 (01:35:36):
She heard Bad on the radio. She called me from
on the freeway.

Speaker 18 (01:35:40):
I had one of those phone with the big phone
on the phone after I heard bad on the radio whatever.

Speaker 17 (01:35:49):
And I was like, here's the single, but wait for it, Lisa,
keep that in your head, but.

Speaker 18 (01:36:05):
Put them together.

Speaker 16 (01:36:08):
And that was I was like, you're kidding me.

Speaker 18 (01:36:10):
This is a musician joke, like circus music. Circus music.

Speaker 17 (01:36:14):
It's something that we joked about years prior as it
being like a joking musician yes, thing that goes like this,
this is a single, and we're both like, it's a
it's a.

Speaker 16 (01:36:32):
Smash, smash my circus music.

Speaker 18 (01:36:35):
Give the people what they want exactly real quick.

Speaker 1 (01:36:38):
One of both of you were there for a meeting
between Michael.

Speaker 13 (01:36:42):
And Prince right, not me, No, we were.

Speaker 16 (01:36:44):
We weren't there. He came back, No, we were.

Speaker 1 (01:36:49):
No.

Speaker 18 (01:36:49):
That was different was that when he wanted when he
when Prince got the call to sing on No.

Speaker 20 (01:36:58):
And he's like the first line, your buddy is mine. Okay,
who's seeing that one?

Speaker 22 (01:37:06):
On an interview with Chris Rocks, Like imagine me saying
your blood is mine?

Speaker 1 (01:37:09):
Right going to happen? I'm not singing it to you
you're not seeing it. He was like, so how did
I mean not how did it feel to, you know,
start creating music on your own without his input? In put?
I mean, what were those first? If you know, I've

(01:37:30):
loved everything that you guys have done in your west Wing,
like everything. There's even west winging boot legs out there,
and with the Yes, that's that's funny, that's all that's
obsessed with your fan base.

Speaker 18 (01:37:46):
Here's the thing.

Speaker 17 (01:37:47):
And I said, this is one of his memorials. Everything
that I played then and still playing now. I say
to myself, I wonder if you'd like it really to
this day, I still do it. So he was sort

(01:38:09):
of a measure of my push and my standards.

Speaker 1 (01:38:14):
That's a hell of a standard to have. That's an
amazing standard to have.

Speaker 18 (01:38:18):
Well, I'm sure you feel exactly the same way.

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):
Hell yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know why
no one's just called.

Speaker 23 (01:38:27):
You because you're not no, but I mean it's it's
I mean to me, the you maintained an identity.

Speaker 18 (01:38:40):
You maintained identity. You're not an imitation.

Speaker 17 (01:38:43):
There are plenty of people out there that are fanatics
for him and have emulated and learned everything.

Speaker 18 (01:38:50):
And they do not have an identity.

Speaker 16 (01:38:53):
There's appreciation and then there's imitation exactly right.

Speaker 1 (01:38:56):
You know, it's actually okay, I have to ask what
did we you guys aware of? Okay, Okay, I work
with a lot of hip hops, which I mean, yeah,
I don't know those hip hop kids. I mean, you know,
we we once had an aesthetic in the nineties, like
you know, no bite allowed, no copy and like, you know,
do your own thing individually. Now like everything's just derivative

(01:39:18):
of each other. But were you guys aware of the
ready for the worlds And but I don't know.

Speaker 18 (01:39:30):
As soon as I heard oh Sheila, I was like,
oh my god.

Speaker 16 (01:39:34):
Here we go, Here we go.

Speaker 1 (01:39:36):
But the thing is is that I feel like I
always felt that this wasn't just like oh let me,
let me copy prints or whoever this. I just feel like, Okay,
you guys just happen to have the blueprint and these
are the new set of rules. So the way that
cameo meds should in the comedy, like that was out
the windows and now this is this is the standard.

Speaker 18 (01:39:58):
So yeah, it's just like pink se elists, you.

Speaker 1 (01:40:01):
Guys like laughing at like, you know, those groups in
the early eighties that were like.

Speaker 18 (01:40:06):
Some of them, only some really only some, But for
the most part I got it. You know, it's just
like everything.

Speaker 17 (01:40:13):
You know, Chick singers in the sixties don't sound like
chicks singers in the eighties. Chick singers now with all
that malisma and.

Speaker 18 (01:40:21):
The and the mid range stuff is like.

Speaker 17 (01:40:26):
What everyone sounds like that now, And that's just a
standards just.

Speaker 20 (01:40:30):
How we Yeah, it's a human thing, how we evolve
kind of a hundredth monkey.

Speaker 1 (01:40:36):
Yeah. Yeah, were you guys this accepting in this politically
correct patient now?

Speaker 16 (01:40:45):
No, No, we were, No, we were cocky kidding me.

Speaker 1 (01:40:49):
Well, because at one point, I, until I started hearing
the remsal tapes, I didn't even know if you guys
were even aware of modern music. But then I would
hear like rehearsal taps in here, like, oh, okay, he
doesn't know about talking heads, and well, i'm.

Speaker 16 (01:41:06):
I you know, I have to say, I'm the Wendy's always,
I'm I'm the DJ.

Speaker 18 (01:41:14):
I know, I know everything.

Speaker 17 (01:41:17):
And when I when something was good, I pulled him
aside immediately, I mean I played him slave to the
rhythm and said, you have to listen to what happened
with these chords right now right.

Speaker 19 (01:41:36):
Steve Libson, Trevor Yes.

Speaker 17 (01:41:39):
Co producer, but Bruce Lipson and Bruce Willie did those, Yeah,
And that was important for me to make sure he
heard that.

Speaker 18 (01:41:51):
When when I remember after we had broken the band up.

Speaker 17 (01:41:56):
And Do the Right Thing had just come out and Lisai,
I went to Minneapolis and I was a fanatic for
the main title song and ah, and I put it
on there and at Paisley and he.

Speaker 1 (01:42:16):
Wait, you were still friends, yea, And.

Speaker 17 (01:42:19):
He seemed visibly angry at the track, and it was
because he was so uneasy I think with Chuck d
and what that The cadence of Chuck's voice being in
that lower, sort of demanding frequency kind of freaked him out.

Speaker 10 (01:42:41):
It didn't seem it was like why are you?

Speaker 18 (01:42:43):
Why am I being assaulted with that?

Speaker 17 (01:42:46):
And everybody as soon it was played in the room,
everybody's getting up and dancing, And I think he really
it's like the metal people when they hear Nirvana, they
oh my god, it's changed.

Speaker 18 (01:42:56):
And I think that he knew it changed right there.

Speaker 16 (01:42:59):
He knew it, yeah, But he also he had a
different goal, you know.

Speaker 20 (01:43:05):
And I think he sometimes maybe found it hard to
when when the weight would because I mean, come on,
Chuck D, that was genius and he knew it, but
it was it was the It was almost the antithesis
of what Prince was trying to do, Like he was

(01:43:25):
aiming at your grandmother, now not at your kids.

Speaker 16 (01:43:29):
Chuck D was aiming at the kids.

Speaker 17 (01:43:32):
And then Prince came back with sexy motherfucker house quake,
and yeah, it's like I can do that.

Speaker 16 (01:43:39):
I can fuck you up.

Speaker 1 (01:43:44):
Like you know, there's syndromes of people kind of embracing
things that they normally would resent in the first place
and then wind up embodying that it's just youth.

Speaker 18 (01:43:58):
Just you know, time goes by and you go get it.
I totally get it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:04):
Well, okay. On on a final note, I would just
like to know, uh, with the reunion of the group
and carrying out the mission, how how's this process been
bringing the band? It's like the Blues Brothers. Wow, it's

(01:44:24):
blood on your.

Speaker 16 (01:44:25):
Thumb, It's blood on your thumb.

Speaker 18 (01:44:29):
Lisa Lisa.

Speaker 17 (01:44:31):
Lisa described me and Bobby and Matt and Mark as
five people jumping out of an airplane with our parachutes
on trying to do formations.

Speaker 19 (01:44:41):
Each other's hands, and someone went down there too far
and we're trying.

Speaker 1 (01:44:49):
To I have to say that I haven't seen the show,
especially when when April came on. I mean, I told you,
I ran out of there like I couldn't take it.

Speaker 18 (01:45:03):
Some people cry, some people cry, I.

Speaker 1 (01:45:11):
Was like, I need to run out. Well, I really
want to thank you to uh for for everything that
you guys represent. I mean, you know, I mean you
you would think the smallest SoundBite would mean nothing, but

(01:45:31):
it's just like you know, you read like, oh okay,
she's in joy Menchell. Now I'm at the library skilling
all the joy Mental records and I'm hearing that you're
playing more chords with your fingers, and now I'm making
my keyboard players play like nine notes with just five
fingers and.

Speaker 18 (01:45:49):
Lisa, Lisa does three on each.

Speaker 1 (01:45:53):
And I've always told you, like you know, you're the
heir apparent to Jimmy Chank Nolan of the JVS, and
it's it's you two are definitely one of my favorite
people ever, and I thank you so much for doing
the show with us.

Speaker 18 (01:46:06):
And just on a note for you, you.

Speaker 17 (01:46:12):
Have been the greatest champion of him in such a beautiful, respectful,
intelligent way, and you have such a way of pointing
out just the right stuff that would be would help
the listeners understand him and what his musical influence is.

Speaker 18 (01:46:33):
And you know, look, the Revolution.

Speaker 1 (01:46:36):
Wasn't you know.

Speaker 17 (01:46:37):
We're not, you know, a bunch of Julliard grats. We
were a band that was meat and potatoes and clocked
really well, but we were an entity and to have
you validate that for us is really lovely for us.

Speaker 1 (01:46:54):
Wow on it, ladies, and gentlemen, Lisa and Wendy, we're
on the road broadcasting from Minneapolis where we just finished
talking to some core members a Prince's former band of Revolution.

(01:47:16):
Now let's chop it up with Prince's original guitarist Deus
Dickerson an original bassist, Andre Simone. Give it up, ladies,
and yeah, So we've been pretty much just reminiscent telling stories,
and I'm kind of interested in everyone's beginnings before they

(01:47:39):
arrive in Minnesota and sort of develop, I guess, or
become a part of the movement that will become the
movement that will influence a lot of people. Now, of course, Andre,
I know that you're probably key to the very beginnings
of Prince's life as far as his uh musical movement is.

(01:48:05):
But what was w what was your musical background as
far as your family's concerned, and before you guys developed
what you did, Like, what was childhood like? And you
were born in Minnesota?

Speaker 24 (01:48:16):
Yeah, okay, Oh, my dad was a musician. That was
my musical background. And to my family, my brothers and sisters,
I was the youngest of six, and you know, they
all had various musical you know, tastes, and that had
a lot to do with uh, you know, just my
pers my personal kind of perspective on music.

Speaker 1 (01:48:38):
So what did your father play base? Okay, was the
d d D? I mean, what was the environment like
in Bobby and and Fink explain, uh, sort of explained
how they grew up in the suburbs of Minnesota. And
I didn't realize that there was such a deep music
culture here. I mean as far as them explaining what

(01:48:59):
the folk music was like. But I mean, what area
was your father in.

Speaker 24 (01:49:04):
That we are the projects projects are pretty much all
the same all around the country.

Speaker 1 (01:49:15):
So so how did I know that, you know, the
music was very regional. You know, now with the internet.
You know, someone in Siberia can get right a reference
that came from southern Georgia that you know, in in
lightning time. But I mean, how how did culture and
and and what was hip and what was not hit

(01:49:38):
and what was you know, how how did you discern
what was what? Well?

Speaker 24 (01:49:42):
I mean, you know again y and I don't I
probably don't have to tell you this. I mean, you know,
being black period, you know in America is an interesting
you know, just reality, right, And so being black and
and a predominant, very predominantly society, you know, and and

(01:50:03):
obviously during the time that I was growing up and
becoming conscious and understanding what was going on in the world,
you know, it's a very very you know, moving experience.
Cause music is g is is unbelievable. I mean, cause
you Motown, you know obviously M James Brown, you know,
and then you know, obviously you know the Beatles, and
you know Jacksonville. Well a lot of n lot of

(01:50:24):
stuff was happening, and a lot of people were saying
some very very interesting stuff, you know. And for you know,
f my my family was very very militant, very much
you know, into the community. So just I mean I
think that combination really had a lot to do with,
you know, musically, a lot to do with at least
where I came from, where my family was coming from,

(01:50:46):
cause we were you know, I had a cousin that
was in the music. He was in a band, and
that's how he even got exposed to a band. You know,
my cousin, uh was in a band, so we'd you know,
I went to go see and rehearse when I was like,
you know, a kid, and that's how I even knew
how you conducted rehearsals. So I brought that you know
attitude toward uh when we started a band.

Speaker 1 (01:51:04):
So your your band experience, Uh, I would assume in school, Like,
what was the first band that you joined or formed?

Speaker 24 (01:51:11):
We started Grand Central?

Speaker 1 (01:51:12):
Yeah, so the fir Grand Center was your first.

Speaker 24 (01:51:15):
That was all of our first band? Yeah, R well,
me and Prince and and Charles you know stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:51:19):
How did you two meet to even know that you
had something in common?

Speaker 24 (01:51:23):
You know, I, like I said, I I came from
the projects.

Speaker 1 (01:51:26):
Right.

Speaker 24 (01:51:26):
My mom uh, you know, she was I guess at fifteen,
you know, had a first child at fourteen whatever. But
you know, my dad was very old fashioned. They divorced.
She wound up going back to school college, got a degree,
and uh wound up getting a a a really good job,
moved our family out of the projects into a an

(01:51:49):
upper middle class black neighborhood. And I had to go
to a different school, and so I just, you know,
the new school was like, you know, I didn't know
anybody there, right. Literally, I just they they line you up,
they put you in the gymnasium. They line everybody up,
and it was just a line of dudes, and I
didn't know anybody, and I just thought, I don't know

(01:52:09):
any of these dudes, and I I don't even know
if I like any of 'em. So I looked down
the whole line, and then I saw this one dude
that looked a little bit like me, and I thought,
I'll go stand next to him. So I stood next
to him and I said, hey man, I'm My name
was Andre, you know. He's like, oh, my name is Prince,
I said, you know. So we start talking.

Speaker 1 (01:52:26):
I said what do you do?

Speaker 24 (01:52:27):
You said, I do music. I said, oh, so do
I I said what do you place it? I played piano.
I said, oh, I played bass, you know, And he
said we should hook up. My dad has you know,
like a piano and you know, a little I didn't
have a bass at the time, so he said his
dad has a little, uh, four string acoustic guitar kind
of bass slash whatever. So we went over there and

(01:52:49):
that's that's how we hooked up.

Speaker 18 (01:52:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:52:51):
Wow, everyone's f bass story in Minnesota starts with just
four string, right. Frown Mark was saying that he ordered
a a base in the series catalog and broke two strings.
Two strings were broken, So that's he came from from.
Faced by default, was the name Prince a usual thing
in in the sixties, like you know, I you know,

(01:53:16):
it wasn't John or Thomas or you know, like.

Speaker 24 (01:53:19):
Mostly among probably small four layen animals. But his dad's
stage name was Prince Roger.

Speaker 1 (01:53:28):
But you didn't think that was unusual that that's your name, Prince,
like you know, he wasn't relentlessly teased for having.

Speaker 24 (01:53:35):
You know, well, I don't know, I mean you have
to well you can't ask him, but I have no idea.
But I know that in that community, in that neighborhood,
we had Caesar, you know, we had.

Speaker 1 (01:53:47):
So unusual names were just starting.

Speaker 24 (01:53:49):
Yeah, there was a lot of veryous sort of you know,
regal names and then you know.

Speaker 1 (01:53:55):
Yeah, so at what point did you two start playing
together to know that that, okay, we gel and maybe
we should do something right then? Yeah, that was.

Speaker 24 (01:54:04):
That was cause when we went over to his dad's
house and we jammed, you know, we were like, we
hit it off. I mean, cause it was it was
the first time I ever met anybody that had the
same passion about music that I did before that. I
you know, tell you know, I would tell anybody you know, look,
I I you know, I'm gonna be i'm'a be a superstar.

(01:54:25):
I'm gonna be you know, Jackson five, I'm gonna do this.

Speaker 1 (01:54:27):
I'm'a do that.

Speaker 24 (01:54:28):
And people would laugh at me. And when I would
say it to him, he was like, it was like, yeah,
let's do it.

Speaker 1 (01:54:33):
So anyway, so was there a a a thought to
make it happen in Minnesota or did you two think that, Okay,
well we have to go elsewhere and let's go to
Los Angeles and there we'll make it as musicians.

Speaker 24 (01:54:48):
Like no, no, no, no, Well it wasn't that, you know,
I mean, I think the the reality is, I don't
think kids think like that. Cause we were like thirteen fourteen.
Maybe you don't think I don't think you think like that.
I think you just put together band cause I think
at the time that.

Speaker 1 (01:55:03):
Was what was going on.

Speaker 24 (01:55:04):
I mean, there was a lot of really cool bands,
you know. Like I said, my cousin was one of
the he was a drummer from one of the the
the dopest bands in the in the city. And he
was unbelievable drummer. And then you know, you had other
things like the Elks and stuff like that that were
all those were big things for you know, young kids
who wanna be a musicians. So but I think you just,
you know, the attitude was that you gotta start here first,

(01:55:26):
you gotta start, put put a band together, and you start,
I mean, you know does knows this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:55:30):
I'm sure you did the same thing. You gotta put
a band together.

Speaker 24 (01:55:33):
And then you gotta you know, then you gotta you know,
move from there.

Speaker 1 (01:55:36):
So it does. Were you born in Minnesota, like, what's.

Speaker 13 (01:55:39):
Your I was born in Saint Paul, Ah, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:55:42):
So it was life different in Saint Paul than it
was in Minneapolis or was it really a twin city?

Speaker 13 (01:55:48):
And I I I it's definitely a twin cities thing,
you know.

Speaker 25 (01:55:50):
Saint Paul was sort of the more provincial, you know,
twin sister of of Minneapolis, but but less so then,
you know what I mean. There was a lot more
similarity I think, between the cities then. But my folks
had moved up from from the south. They were from Clarksville, Tennessee.
My dad moved up to go to art school and
then basically cool.

Speaker 1 (01:56:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:56:12):
Yeah, His older brother was at the U of M.

Speaker 25 (01:56:17):
And was in his like his senior year or something,
so he brought no, no, he was, he was in
his doctorate, that's what it was. And he brought my
dad up because my dad wanted to come over here
to go to art school. So he convinced my mom
to marry him, brought her up, and so I was
born and raised up here.

Speaker 1 (01:56:36):
Really, So, what's your musical angle, your connection, Like, what
was your first moment in discovering music?

Speaker 13 (01:56:42):
And well, my dad was a musician.

Speaker 25 (01:56:44):
He was a sax player, and he quit to raise
the family. So he actually joined the navy, was actually
in the ship's band, played sacks in the navy and
got out and you know, started working two three jobs,
so one of my earliest memories is hearing waking up
in the middle of the night hearing music. When my
dad was working like sort of second shift post office.
He would get off work and I remember one night

(01:57:07):
waking up hearing music and kind of creeping halfway down
the stairs so I could see what was going on
in the living room and there's like four cats playing
saxophone in the living room at you know, two o'clock.

Speaker 13 (01:57:17):
In the morning.

Speaker 25 (01:57:18):
Well, that's because my dad would get off work, you know,
wide awake work with some other guys that were also musicians,
and it would be like, well, just come on over
to my place and we'll jam. So they would jam
like in the middle of the night when I was
a little kid. So to me, music was just something
that was just there and that was what people did.
He had a huge, huge record collection and you know

(01:57:40):
that whole thing.

Speaker 1 (01:57:42):
So, knowing your history and your vocabulary and knowing how
much of a tredder you are in the rock influence,
am I'd just assume that you chose that particular route
to go straight rock to adapt into the environment that
you were in, or like, did it just naturally speak

(01:58:04):
to you, Like, well.

Speaker 13 (01:58:05):
It just spoke to me. It chose me.

Speaker 25 (01:58:06):
I mean when I was until I was in fourth grade,
we lived in the Inner City. Then my dad it
was really he really felt it important to move us
out into a better school system. So but even while
we were still you know, in the hood, it was
it was guitar that spoke to me. I remember going

(01:58:27):
through my dad's record collection and he had this King
Curtis single and I flipped it over, played the B
side and it was this rocous like rock and roll thing,
and I was like mesmerized. I mean I would listen
to it over and over again. So I just always
felt like rock chose me.

Speaker 13 (01:58:46):
I didn't choose it. You know, it was in my
DNA somehow, some way.

Speaker 1 (01:58:51):
What were the early bands that you joined before.

Speaker 13 (01:58:56):
I started a slew of bands?

Speaker 25 (01:58:58):
My first one, I was fourteen years old and I
had to pay to get in my first gig. We
played like the ninth grad dance, you know, Junior High had.

Speaker 13 (01:59:08):
The first gig.

Speaker 25 (01:59:10):
But you know it was like all like Grand Funk
Railroad and you know, that whole thing, and the first
several lands.

Speaker 13 (01:59:17):
Because I was in I formed or was in like
nine different bands.

Speaker 25 (01:59:22):
Before the audition at Dell's Tire Mart, you know, all
those years later, so you know, it was always about
power trios in the beginning, you know, playing a whole
lot of like Black Sabbath and led Zeppelin and Deep.

Speaker 13 (01:59:33):
Purple and you know, anything with long guitar solos in it.
That's what it was about.

Speaker 1 (01:59:39):
So okay, well to hear this, this this tale the
Two Cities, I mean, how expansive did your vocabulary And
this is for Andre and I mean how expansive did
your vocabulary have to be in order to get these
soap hop gigs and whatnot? Like, you know, would you
say that you're would you have to adapt to whatever

(02:00:03):
environment you were in. If you knew that it was
a high school for you know, black kids, you would
know what the black stuff was. And then if you
I mean, was it integrated audiences?

Speaker 25 (02:00:15):
By that point was in my background because we we
had to literally go from playing little tiny towns you know,
East Crevice, Iowa at the teen Center.

Speaker 13 (02:00:27):
You know where we would go from playing huge traveling.
Oh yeah, I was.

Speaker 25 (02:00:30):
My folks used to have to write me notes to
get me out of school early all through high school
so I could go.

Speaker 13 (02:00:36):
We found a dude that could drive, and we would
go and we would play.

Speaker 25 (02:00:39):
So we would have to go from like playing you know,
an Emerson Lncoln Palmer song to an average white band
song to you know whatever.

Speaker 13 (02:00:47):
So it was definitely about that.

Speaker 25 (02:00:49):
But again I had grown up seeing that because in
the Twin Cities at that time, in the sixties, there
were multi racial bands. There were bands that had you know,
blacks and whites and Hispanics and and everybody.

Speaker 13 (02:01:02):
Some of the most popular.

Speaker 25 (02:01:03):
Bands in town were multi racial, and you know, so
in this market, it was just it was just a
different thing.

Speaker 13 (02:01:10):
Now you had to play the people's music. But that's
just the way it was.

Speaker 1 (02:01:14):
So was it as utopian for you? Andrea's Oh was
it just straight?

Speaker 24 (02:01:18):
Like no, no, no, We you know, we played phone
R and B and we played in the hood. We
played at one of the clubs called a Bucket of Blood.

Speaker 1 (02:01:32):
It was called Bucket of Blood.

Speaker 24 (02:01:33):
We literally my brother, I mean, you know, because like
I said, we came from the other side of the
town and so we were playing at you know clubs
where you know, people were getting shot stabbed.

Speaker 1 (02:01:44):
And you know, my brother was there with his girls,
and you know, it was just it was.

Speaker 24 (02:01:49):
It was a different reality, you know. And then my
mom you know, would get a lot of our a
lot of our gigs and so you know, and then
you know, we played at barbecues, We played it back
as you know, we played it, you know, anytime somebody
was you know, having to get together. You know, sometimes
there even be you know, parties people have down their
basement and they want somebody to play and we you know,

(02:02:10):
so we you know, it was it was, it was
another reality.

Speaker 1 (02:02:14):
Okay. So at the rate where I kind of want
to push it up a little bit that you guys
paths cross because I assume that in Prince's first incarnation
of the band included both Des and Andre.

Speaker 25 (02:02:32):
Well, Andre is definitely the og because you guys started
out in school together.

Speaker 1 (02:02:36):
Right, But I mean at the rate where when he
got a deal, like how big of a deal was
that once it reached the local Minneapolis circuit, like one
of us is gonna make it or that that's like
was it a big deal or was.

Speaker 24 (02:02:51):
It just like okay, yeah, it was a big deal. Absolutely,
it was a big deal. I mean it was like
this is what we you know, what we had worked
for and built.

Speaker 1 (02:03:03):
Up to I mean, was it was it awkward though,
I mean, because I don't know if I'm pretty sure
that with anyone it's like, okay, if we get there first,
then I'll pull you with me and that sort of thing.
But this is clearly like, okay, one of you is
going to be the focus in the center of it,
as opposed to it being a group situation.

Speaker 24 (02:03:25):
You know, it's interesting. I heard a I guess there
was a documentary with Chris Moon, okay, because our band,
you know, we had won a Battle of the Bands
and one of the prizes was free recording studio time
and I think maybe seventy five dollars or.

Speaker 13 (02:03:44):
Something like that.

Speaker 24 (02:03:45):
But so that's that's really kind of how it happened,
you know, I know that it's you know, there's all
sorts of different stories and everybody's got the myths and
all that, but the reality is that's what happened. And
Chris Moon, you know, heard us playing. He was trying
to figure out how he could get in, you know,
get in involved with this this band because at the

(02:04:05):
time we were hot. We paid the dues and worked
that way up and everybody was you know, really talking
about us. I mean at the time. It was as
a band, right, and it wasn't like oh just this
guy or oh just that guy or what oh whatever,
But cause he came in and if you watch the documentary,
he says, you know, I went up to you know,
cause he came up to me and he asked me,

(02:04:27):
and I said, you need to talk to my manager.
And then he went to Prince, he said, cause he said,
he looked like he'd be the you know, easiest guy
to sort of deal talk to you.

Speaker 1 (02:04:34):
Right, yeah, I would like to know at what point
do you really push the envelope, because you guys weren't
just an average group. I mean, your your television debut
caused many many Uh yeah, I mean I I remember

(02:04:59):
seeing a thing. It was Midnight Special before or after
American Bandstand. They were real close together, close to the well.

Speaker 3 (02:05:08):
I remember.

Speaker 1 (02:05:11):
That whole story. I remember Midnight Special and just the
utter tone and discuss my dad had about it, you know,
and all he took away from it was no, no
boys should be wearing no dipe on no stage like

(02:05:31):
you guys just looked like nothing ever on, Like who's
I mean, how are you guys like with a straight face?
Like Okay, we're just gonna do things that we've never
done before. I mean, how has that even come to fruition?
Like who you know?

Speaker 25 (02:05:52):
I think a lot of what that that sort of
natural chemistry between you and Prince when you just first
saw each other in school that day. I mean I
think that actually kind of play itself out in the
band a lot.

Speaker 13 (02:06:02):
Absolutely well, it wasn't like you know, we we.

Speaker 1 (02:06:05):
So you guys even stood out even in the local
localization of Yeah, no, I mean we were. You know,
it's like, who is your closest competition band wise and
nobody who's in second?

Speaker 3 (02:06:22):
No?

Speaker 1 (02:06:22):
No, no, I just meant in terms of when you
I'm talking about in terms of Grand Central, what other
band would you Okay?

Speaker 24 (02:06:32):
Uh, Sunny Thompson their band, They had the most unbelievable
band in the city at the time, bar and I
mean like, I mean I would go see them. I
mean I was, you know, I was extremely cocky. You know,
I was like, I you know, my attitude about being
a musician because I really felt like, if you really

(02:06:53):
do what you're supposed to do, practice and play and
all that kind of stuff, then you know, you pay
the cost to be the boss. So I would talk
a lot of trash and just you know, it was
basically in my nature at the time, you know, you know,
Prince was a little more laid back, but I was
probably the opposite of that. So I was always talking trash.
But the one band and I didn't talk. You know,
I went I remember going to one of their gigs

(02:07:14):
a you know, thinking about t I went there specifically
to talk trash so we could that's how we would
get gigs mm And I went there specifically, you know,
to talk talk trash. And I went there and I
was like, cause Sonny was killing it and the drummer
and then Randy Barber.

Speaker 10 (02:07:27):
But the drummer was.

Speaker 24 (02:07:28):
Joe Lewis is still a friend of mine. I mean,
Joe Lewis is just I mean, he was the coolest
drummer ever because he would do all of this stuff
that you know, you know, all the funky stuff, all
the funky licks, but he just always had this ram
and he had this fro and he just looked like
I mean, it was the seventies and it was just
he was the epitome of the cool drummer. And so

(02:07:50):
I was just blown. I'm that just that, and I
went back and said, we got up our game, you know,
and so and that wasn't even a you know, distance act.

Speaker 1 (02:07:58):
That was like a distant way beyond our whole thing.

Speaker 24 (02:08:01):
And that's when I was like, we got out our game.

Speaker 1 (02:08:03):
So anyway, there's one particular project I would like to
talk about that never really came to light unless you're
deep in the bootleg circle, and that's the Rebels. What
was the was the Rebels just like a weekend idea, like, hey,
let's just for start as you guys record at the

(02:08:25):
speed of sound and you know, the the entire project
can be done within a week. So t to even
have that much output in in such a little time, Like,
what was the the beginnings of the Rebels or the
idea of it? Or was that just a folklore that's
only in Minnesota fan music? Mind? It's real?

Speaker 24 (02:08:46):
But yeah, I can I can tell you what the
real give me the real I mean, like you know,
I mean, I know the folk lore, but what was
the what was the basis? The real deal is is
he had a band of very talented musicians, you know,
and you know we had done some stuff, you know,
and we probably could have gone off and done other things.

(02:09:09):
So rather than have us scramble out into different areas
and go do solo things here on our own thing,
then it might be a good idea to give them
something to occupy themselves.

Speaker 1 (02:09:20):
So this is keeping from moonlighting.

Speaker 13 (02:09:23):
It's kind of like it's kind of like the same
theory that some parents use.

Speaker 25 (02:09:27):
Well, would rather have you have the party here, We'll
get the alcohol and make sure that you don't leave
the house.

Speaker 1 (02:09:36):
But it was so fun.

Speaker 24 (02:09:36):
I mean, you know, we had I mean, we had
so much fun. And that was that was you know,
I got to know Des a whole lot better.

Speaker 1 (02:09:43):
And does why didn't you guys come out?

Speaker 24 (02:09:45):
Dez is one of the funniest dudes on the planet Earth.
He kept me and Stitch especially that project go ahead.

Speaker 1 (02:09:52):
I'm sorry, Yeah, why didn't it come out?

Speaker 25 (02:09:56):
It was a decision that was never really clear articulated
to us, you know what I mean, which happened from
time to time subsequently, because.

Speaker 1 (02:10:06):
Those songs weren't complete. There's at least five or six
that oh yeah, it could have easily been on the
Dirney Mine record.

Speaker 25 (02:10:12):
Yeah, it was a record, and it had the different
personalities of the different members of the band because everybody
wrote stuff and everybody brought things to the table, and
that was his His vision was that everybody contribute, you know,
so personally maybe you know something I know, but I
don't know what happened to it.

Speaker 1 (02:10:29):
Who always in this band? Who exactly were the members?
It was the band, yeah, Andre and I. Gail Chapman
was a keyboard player at the time, and it was
the same band. But I guess Prince would have lessened
his rule and made it less about him and more
about a band unit. At least that was the idea,
I assume, yeah, And I think.

Speaker 24 (02:10:49):
What happened because the record company when they got it,
they wanted thriller or killer to be the single.

Speaker 1 (02:10:56):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 24 (02:10:59):
That probably might have been a b you know, cause
the whole life, the whole idea was to get the
band and occupy them until we did the next to
already finished, you know, his next record, to put out
a single with one of the band numbers, you know,
this song as the lead single. It could maybe be successful,
which would change sort of, you know, you could lose

(02:11:21):
a certain amount of control, you know, possibly, But you know,
I think the thing is is it bottom line is
I think everybody at the time were very dedicated to
his thing, to his project. I know I was to
So it was like, I mean, and I only found
that out through obviously through the management, cause i'd you know,
the manager was constantly talking to me because you know,

(02:11:41):
you know, Prince wasn't a big talker.

Speaker 1 (02:11:44):
I know, it has to be word to mix friendship
with business, and it's like, at one point you guys
are best friends, but then like, clearly someone has to
be the forty nine fifty one percent of it all
and that could make it awkward. Probably the most notable thing,
at least for both of you is that both of

(02:12:05):
you stepped away from the camp and left camp right
at the moment when the I I guess, the the
the the climax or the explosion at least for what
you guys have been relentlessly doing all these endless hours
of rehearsal for. And you know we we've already discussed,

(02:12:28):
uh the Rolling Stone situation, what's happened in LA and
uh another segment. But at what point I mean, I'm
not saying for regrets or anything like that, but I mean,
how hard was the decision at least for both of
you to step away at the times when you both

(02:12:50):
did uh to to pursue your own career in your
own interest.

Speaker 25 (02:12:54):
I mean, for me, it really wasn't hard at all
because the the day that I auditioned at Dell's Tire Mart,
the infamous fifteen minute audition, Prince and I went out
in the parking lot. He asked me some very deep,
very career minded questions for a young man of that age,
and basically said, you know, he posed.

Speaker 13 (02:13:17):
It to me this way.

Speaker 25 (02:13:18):
Would you be willing to come help me do what
I do? And then when the time comes, you know,
you help me make this thing work, then I'll help
you do what you do. So we had a deal
from the beginning that at some point I was going
to go back to being a front man, to be
a band leader guy. So he came to me after

(02:13:38):
nineteen ninety nine and said, look, here's the deal this film.
I need a solid three year commitment to the films. Yeah,
and at that point in time, I just couldn't get
my mind around three more years. So the other option
was management will take you on right now and we'll
get your record.

Speaker 13 (02:13:58):
Do you can go do your thing?

Speaker 25 (02:14:00):
It just for me, it really really felt like I
need to do this now. So it was it was
not hard at all, and I was back out on
the road within you know, four months. I was out
solo shows first, then on the Rebel Yel tour with
Billy Idol the special guest out there.

Speaker 1 (02:14:16):
Yeah yeah, I remember that, uh, Dre, I guess it
should also be noted. I mean, you've done a lot
of work, uh since your actually probably the the the
most notable is uh your production for Jody Whitley's uh
first three, first three albums. What was that transition like?

(02:14:37):
And I mean what was the feeling to I mean
really really truly score. I mean because this wasn't just
like you know, throw it on the wall and see
if this you know type of m I mean, this
was really impactful and it was Grammy nominated, well it won,
you know, yeah, so what was that just process?

Speaker 15 (02:14:57):
Like?

Speaker 24 (02:14:57):
Well, I'd have to agree with that as it was
easy easy to leave that situation, not just because it's like,
you know, my old thing was you know, three albums,
you know about it. You know, that should give you
enough time for your thing to jump off, and you
know then I wanted because I never thought about being
anybody's band so so, and then I did the solo
stuff and I did space music and the record company

(02:15:19):
didn't get it.

Speaker 13 (02:15:19):
And they didn't promote it.

Speaker 24 (02:15:20):
So I went and said, if you guys are not
gonna promote it, why don't you just drop me.

Speaker 1 (02:15:23):
They wouldn't drop me. They heard Kelly's eyes and didn't
feel like, yo.

Speaker 24 (02:15:27):
This isn't like and so I mean, but that's that
was it, and so they wouldn't let me off the label.
So I quit recording, and so I thought, well, I
gotta make some money. And I met Jodie when I
was doing the video for Fans Electric, and you know,
we wound up hanging out and I was like, you

(02:15:48):
are really really talented.

Speaker 1 (02:15:51):
You should you know.

Speaker 24 (02:15:51):
And she had some some stuff that she was working on,
and I was like, I'd love to, you know, shoot
you some tracks, and I shout up, I think five tracks,
and she wrote lyrics to him, and I guess the
rest is history.

Speaker 1 (02:16:05):
And he started working on That's amazing. I wish I
had more time because I have so much more I
want to ask, but I want to thank you Des
and Andre for being on the show. And we'll be
back with Susannah Melvoyn Wow, What can I say about
our next guest? One of my favorite favorite people ever.

(02:16:28):
Can't say enough about Susannah Melboyn, twin sister of Wendy
Melvoy and member of the Family Seminal Group, who's nineteen
eighty five record Like had tremendous influence on me, and
not to mention just her presence alone is inspired so

(02:16:50):
much life changing material. Welcome Susannah Melvoy to Quest Love Supreme.

Speaker 13 (02:16:58):
Susanna's Pajamas.

Speaker 1 (02:16:59):
Yes, Susanna, how are you?

Speaker 16 (02:17:01):
I'm good?

Speaker 1 (02:17:03):
I have to know growing up in such a musical
family in California. And first of all, do you play
any instruments? Because I'm curious about siblings who where one
particular sibling picks up an instrument and the other doesn't.
I know that Alan Leeds's brother, Eric's a monster saxophonist,

(02:17:27):
but doesn't necessarily he doesn't play instruments himself. Like, are
you do you play any instruments?

Speaker 18 (02:17:33):
Well, I, like many singers, I can play the guitar,
I can play piano, but that's not the that's not
what I do. Okay, So yeah, no, I was well,
while Wendy was playing guitar lessons, I was ballet answer,
and then we were both session singers as kids because

(02:17:54):
of my dad.

Speaker 1 (02:17:54):
So, I mean, in did you have any design I
used to become singing yourself? You were you just you
just happen to have a good singing voice. And that
was that.

Speaker 18 (02:18:07):
And you know, I never thought of anything else ever
I had. I was terrible in school. I was great
in art, and I was horrible in school. And I
was thankful that. I was like, I don't need to
go to school anyway, because I I have this other

(02:18:27):
thing I want to do, and that's all I know
how to do. That's that's what I do. That's what
I was born into. Wendy and I and even and Lisa,
all of our families grew up together. Our parents were
session players and they were wrecking crew, and we just
we were just in music all the time. We went
to schools where you know, you had to play recorder

(02:18:49):
and nursery school and you had to play violin in
the second grade, and you were we were. Wendy and
I were in all state choruses. And it says, you know,
we just that's what we did. And but there was
a time when.

Speaker 1 (02:19:02):
Your sister mentioned something when she talked about her first
encounter with Prince and she said, it's so as a
matter of fact that it didn't even hit me to
question it. She said, we were thirteen years old inside
of a nightclub. I'm like, wait, what was the carning
policy or y'all that developed physical? Yeah, I was going

(02:19:24):
to say kind of both. It was you know, before
those times where you know, I don't know how we.

Speaker 18 (02:19:30):
Got away with it, but dad were going out tonight.
How old are you thirteen?

Speaker 17 (02:19:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 18 (02:19:35):
So as I was picking us up, we're going to
go to the Starwood and uh oh he told them
the truth right straight up? Oh, straight up, like we're
going to library.

Speaker 1 (02:19:45):
No, no, no, no no. I went to church to
sneak to see the Thanksgiving purple range that I got
a busman.

Speaker 19 (02:19:52):
Oh, this was crazy.

Speaker 17 (02:19:53):
Wendy and I would go at thirteen year old girls
and we would We were the only I don't I
know how it happened, but Wendy and I were the
only girls at thirteen who were not going out to
do dope or we were.

Speaker 18 (02:20:07):
Going out to dance. That's all Wendy and I wanted
to do. We were kids that we were so heavy
into disco We were just such dancers. We were just
we were doing the line, we were doing the hustle,
we were doing everything. We were doing all this new stuff.
We went to school with. We went to this crazy

(02:20:28):
little art school and the Jackson five had gone to
this school. Michael had graduated already, but Randy was in
a grade or grade or two ahead of us. And
we'd sit in the parking lot and we'd do line
dances together and do all that, you know, just crazy.
It was all about us dancing and are you going
to go to Xenons tonight? Are you going to go
to blah blah blah, We're going to We're going to

(02:20:49):
Star Wars on Saturdays.

Speaker 1 (02:20:52):
Is an amazing thing when it works out perfectly well.

Speaker 18 (02:20:54):
When you've got kids that come home and they're not,
you know, effed up and they've just been dancing all night,
there's something that you know, and if your kids are
sort of straight up, I guess we were, you know,
or my my father was a knucklehead.

Speaker 1 (02:21:09):
So did you just meet Prince at the same time
that Wendy Metmore did you come in later? When do
you realize, like, oh god, there's another one of you.

Speaker 18 (02:21:17):
I was working when I got out of high school.
And this was right before I got the gig with Quincy.
I was working for David Geffen. Got out of high school,
I got a gig answering the phones at Geffen Records,
the David Geffen Company, and after awhile, I'd be like,
have a cup of coffee company, Have a cup of
coffee company, David Effen Company, Have a cup of coffee company.
It was just running, running, running anyway. Christmas Party nineteen

(02:21:40):
eighty whatever. I'm seventeen years old, Christmas party for Warner Brothers,
and I already know Lisa's got the gig already, Like, hey,
my sister's got gigging Wendy and I'd been listening to
those records. We'd be dancing at the Starwood too. You know,
I want to be your lover and all of that.
We're like, who this woman? So I, you know, I

(02:22:08):
get this silly outfit and my first time, like you're
gonna go to a really big corporate party, and I
just was like, oh God, I can't believe I'm gonna
do this. I had my hair permed and it looked
like a poodle and it would just like the whole
thing would move at once with the wind and it
was a silly little black thing. I just felt ridiculous.

(02:22:28):
And I walk in and there's Prince in Vanity standing
at the wall, two of them together. Me, my little
little self. Hi, I'm Wendy's twin sister, Susannah. I just
wanted to meet you.

Speaker 19 (02:22:42):
And say hi.

Speaker 16 (02:22:43):
And you know, no clue that like, And.

Speaker 18 (02:22:52):
He gave me that sweet little smile and he said,
Wendy's your sister, right. I said, Lisa is my sister too,
and he.

Speaker 1 (02:23:02):
Was like oh.

Speaker 18 (02:23:03):
And then Vanity leans down, she grabs my face and.

Speaker 16 (02:23:06):
She goes, ooh, you're so cute.

Speaker 10 (02:23:08):
What theouts are?

Speaker 18 (02:23:17):
And I was like, great, okay, bye, are you cute?
Aren't you cute? Cut to Purple Rain rehearsals. She's out
the door, walking out the door, the last day of
her gig. She's out. It's like, we gotta find another lead.
And here comes Susannah walking in to rehearsal and she

(02:23:39):
came right.

Speaker 1 (02:23:40):
Up to me.

Speaker 16 (02:23:41):
You're gonna have the best time ever here.

Speaker 4 (02:23:43):
Wow.

Speaker 18 (02:23:49):
And I literally I was like, I kind of gave
her like, why do you keep talking to me like this?
And I could see him and he looked over and
he was like took his head like that. And that
is funny because Des had his birthday party and shortly

(02:24:09):
at like within that weekend. It was in August, and
I went to his birthday party and I'm sitting on
the couch and incomes Prince. He comes walking in, he
jumps on the couch, sits next to me, and he goes,
did you dream of me last night? And I said,

(02:24:30):
just so happens I did, and I had uh huh.
And you know, there's other stories, but that's when it
all started. That's when it all started. And then Prince
had heard my demo. So we used to have we
used to go to the airport and pick him up
in Lisa's car and he comes stay with us at

(02:24:51):
our when the three of us lived in this teeny
little house on Melrose, and so we would go pick
him up and Betty Flounder that was Lisa's car, and
so it would be Lisa, we'd have Betty Flounder, and
no Betty was around through all of Purple Rain, and
even you remember, Betty Flounder was like an old Buick
fifty six fifty seven Buick salmon colored, so we'd all

(02:25:11):
go to pick up Prince with Betty Flounder. He called
her Betty. We were all like in Betty Flounder, and
he'd come and stay with us.

Speaker 1 (02:25:18):
I got two questions, huh, I got two questions. And
I don't know if the fact that I come from
and the era of music that was just so overdone
with budgets and whatnot, but I would think during this
time period, like like you guys were picking each other
up from the airport. Oh yeah, First of all, Prince

(02:25:41):
was taking a plane. Because in my head, I'm like, oh, he.

Speaker 18 (02:25:43):
Took a plane by himself. We go pick him up
at the airport and he comes stay with us, and
my cats would jump all over him and he'd be
on the couch and he'd be.

Speaker 1 (02:25:49):
Like, least were a baseball caategory something to what you
was like, what eighty for four? Was this post post purple?
So okay, so at least in our heads, because I'm thinking, like,
this guy cannot step out the door without getting mobbed.

(02:26:09):
Now I know that some of that stuff is, you know,
what we just saw growing up as kids. But he
could take the plane and maybe one or two people
be like, oh, there's.

Speaker 18 (02:26:21):
Prince and yeah, yeah, particularly with the three of us, and.

Speaker 1 (02:26:25):
I'll pick you up from the airport.

Speaker 18 (02:26:26):
But time you need to be here, and we'd be
there and pick him up.

Speaker 1 (02:26:29):
And there's no prince sign like Prince Nelson, not during
this time.

Speaker 25 (02:26:33):
No.

Speaker 21 (02:26:33):
But I imagine his flying outfit is different from his
you know what I mean, Like his whole look is different.

Speaker 18 (02:26:38):
Who was always different? But he was a this is
a beautiful kid. You know, he was a beautiful kid.
I mean, and he would you know, just wear a
you know, a vintage old you know, grandpa coat and
he'd looked so beautiful in it. And he'd wear his
you know, his jeans, and he'd wear a you know,
whatever top I mean, and that's he just come out

(02:26:59):
like that. I mean, there was no it wasn't like
who's that weirdo? It's just like who's that cutie pie?
And he'd be so confident and he'd be so happy
to be coming and hanging and there was it.

Speaker 1 (02:27:10):
I just can't imagine him flying commercial or him all
the time a Pinto or that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (02:27:18):
Oh no, you.

Speaker 18 (02:27:21):
Not many people know how important this particular period of
time was for him and for us because this was
like this we became. It's so interesting because talking about
it now, but we became like pals, but deep, like

(02:27:41):
you know, not many people know that. Like he's sleeping
on the couch and our cats are running and jumping
on him, and he's saying, can somebody get the cats
off me?

Speaker 21 (02:27:52):
You don't imagine prince sleeping on a couch in a house.
An I'm gonna say that right from the job.

Speaker 1 (02:27:57):
No you don't.

Speaker 18 (02:27:58):
But then it's that's what it all threw. No, but
I'll tell you a really funny story. So one of
the nights he's there, we lived in this eighty bitty
place and it didn't have bathroom door. It had one
of those sort of saloon doors. It was horrifying, and

(02:28:18):
it was in my bedroom and so it's like if
anyone needed to do their business, it was like, Okay,
everybody's going to get out of the house now, right,
or nobody's gonna be around.

Speaker 1 (02:28:30):
Here anything.

Speaker 18 (02:28:31):
It's like just horrifying.

Speaker 19 (02:28:33):
So I'm in that room and.

Speaker 18 (02:28:38):
Lisa, when what am I supposed to you know, if
I need to what you know, if I need to,
she said, well, just tell her sleep the room. So
nothing went further than that.

Speaker 17 (02:28:50):
But he did come into my room and he sat
on my bed and I was on one side of
my bed and I had this really crappy mattress and
I had a huge, huge, deep dent in it.

Speaker 18 (02:29:02):
And he said, he went, you sleep in this thing?
And he said do you have a job? And I
was like, and he said, can't you get yourself a
new mattress? How do you sleep in that? I was like,
I sleep on that side. I don't sleep in the hole.

Speaker 16 (02:29:17):
Right.

Speaker 18 (02:29:21):
But I came home the next day from working for
Deaf and Records David, and there was a huge mattress
at my door.

Speaker 22 (02:29:29):
So it was like, so, yeah, yeah, you're a good lady,
because I would have been like that for me or
for us.

Speaker 18 (02:29:46):
That's that's so funny you should say that.

Speaker 17 (02:29:48):
I mean, it just never occurred to me at that
point that like he was actually courting me in any way.

Speaker 18 (02:29:55):
I just, you know, I was just like, this is
a really sweet gesture. And again he heard that demo,
he heard that demo in that house, this one of
these particular things. And he said, well, when you said up,
can we play him the demo? And I said, no,
don't play him anything. God, don't don't blame in. It
was so flipped out because I loved everything he'd done.

(02:30:17):
And I was working with Quincy. I was doing like,
you know, session work, and you know, just wasn't that
And I said, I want to hear it. And so
I said, okay, I'm leaving the house. So I left
the house, came back, and he came right up to
me and he said, you want to come and do
what we're doing, because wouldn't you rather do that? And

(02:30:41):
I said yes and uh, and he said, well, I
think I think you'd have a really good time.

Speaker 1 (02:30:50):
I said, wait, okay. Before I let you go, I
just had to ask.

Speaker 18 (02:30:53):
One, Oh oh god, what a bummer that I'm just
talking about this?

Speaker 1 (02:30:56):
No, no, no, I know, because there's so much more,
but I I would like to discuss. Yeah. I know
that he would often communicate with cassettes, which I mean
blows my mind. I mean, if I'm in the studio
making a song, I'm thinking like, Okay, how can this
be a hit? How can like I'm not just gonna
make like a song aimed at one person, like that's it.

(02:31:20):
Instead of us talking out a problem or whatever, like
here's the thing, I mean, how many cassettes have you
received of like just stuff for like here just for you,
like like of just custom made songs because that's me
is an amazing aren't too.

Speaker 16 (02:31:39):
None?

Speaker 15 (02:31:43):
Even la?

Speaker 18 (02:31:45):
I mean the tapes that I would get, the tapes
that I would get were on the floor of my car.
You wouldn't hand them to me. They'd be dispersed at
the bottom of the car, and so'd be like.

Speaker 1 (02:31:57):
Oh, oh, like these are for you or never put
them in your hands.

Speaker 16 (02:32:01):
There mine now.

Speaker 1 (02:32:04):
No, I don't mean like songs just made that he
just left there specifically for me. Well, I know that
he made Lisa song strange way of saying I love you,
like they had.

Speaker 18 (02:32:14):
An argument, whatever, and no anything anything that we did.

Speaker 16 (02:32:17):
Anything.

Speaker 18 (02:32:18):
He would specifically say, let's go in the studio.

Speaker 1 (02:32:21):
You and me.

Speaker 18 (02:32:22):
We're going in.

Speaker 1 (02:32:23):
Oh so you were there, just we're.

Speaker 18 (02:32:25):
Going in, You and I were going in, and then
you're gonna hang here until you're I'm ready to have
you come and sing your vocal and this is what
we're doing and this is what I'm thinking about. And
then that would be it. And then we'd listen to
everything together in the car and that would go on
for days and days and then we'd go in and
do more overdubs or do you know it just be

(02:32:46):
like that? But I was it was never, it wasn't
It wasn't that much. It wasn't that disconnected, like here's
your tape. It was like, we let's go.

Speaker 1 (02:32:57):
We're doing this.

Speaker 18 (02:32:57):
Yeah, we're doing Not that I'd even collaborate, but it
was like there, you know, I need you buy my
side because I'm gonna have you do this. But you're
gonna be with me from the get go. Now, I'm
not gonna call you at some point you're gonna come in. No,
You're gonna be with me.

Speaker 1 (02:33:13):
Before we go. I gotta ask her the Starfish and
Coffee Store. Okay, all right, for our listeners, could you
please please please give us the genesis of the Starfish
and Coffee Store.

Speaker 18 (02:33:26):
During the many, many car rides together, he would have,
you know, occasionally asked.

Speaker 1 (02:33:32):
Me, wait before you say that you seen car rides?
Or you just drive around the city listening to music.

Speaker 18 (02:33:41):
We'd live in the car, lived in the car. We
would drive everywhere for any reason all the time, from
vanilla milkshakes to going to Minnie Haha Falls and drinking
that milkshake, then getting back in the car, listening to
the music, listen to our music and talking, going to
the lake, sitting at the lake, going back in the car,
listening to more music. No, because he wasn't listening to it,

(02:34:05):
like listen, how badass I am, although I'm sure he
was doing that. It was work, you know, like we're
listening to it. Does it sound right? What's it sound
like in the car when we put something else on?
And there were other there were times when we would
listen to other records, you know, and it was the
kind of records that he'd never heard before that you know,
I had introduced him to, or Wendy and Lisa had

(02:34:25):
introduced him to. And so we would listen to those
records and you know, sonically and you know, the audio
the became audio files, like how does it sound? And
what was going on with those records? So but these
this there were many of those rides, and you know,
we would talk about our histories and our secrets and
you know, what was it like here and would you

(02:34:46):
do with that? And I'm going to take you over
to where I grew up and what was it for
you guys? And I would tell him about this one
story about this girl Cynthia Rose, who Wendy and I
were in school with from nursery school up into sixth
grade and back in this particular other time. You know,
nobody knew what autism was, but she was an incredible

(02:35:06):
in just the most extraordinary girl. And he would ask
me on occasional way, like, tell me about Cynthia, tell
me about this story. And so we would tell I'd
tell him and we'd laugh because I would get to
the part where she would say, you know, she'd rock
back and forth. She was like, would you have a
breakfast this morning, Cynthia?

Speaker 19 (02:35:24):
She was like, I had.

Speaker 18 (02:35:24):
Starfish and Peevie.

Speaker 19 (02:35:29):
Yeah, starfish and peep.

Speaker 18 (02:35:31):
And you know what my favorite number is, It's twenty
and she I mean, this was for years, and I
loved her. I thought she was the sweetest coop ever,
and you know, I just like that she was. It
was just anyway, so this one particular day and I would,
I want to say some in the fall of eighty five,

(02:35:55):
we were at the house and we were in the
kitchen and he came upstairs from the stud he said,
can you you tell me the whole story of Cynthia again,
can you tell me the whole thing with Cynthia Rose.
He goes, can you write it down? And I was
like sure, And so in detail, I'm writing him about
you know who the class was. There was Kevin and
Lucy and you know, Wendy and myself and many other kids.

(02:36:16):
And there's Cynthia and there's my teacher, Miss Kathleen, and
doing the whole day, what it was like to be
with her, to watch her do her And he was
like okay, And then I wrote down, you know, and
then she would say a starfish and then he was
He took it and he was like okay. He runs

(02:36:38):
downstairs and the studio comes back up, and he says
starfish and peepe. That's gotta go. He goes, do you
mind if it's coffee? Because he goes, he goes, do
you mind if it's coffee? Because I don't think I
can sing peepe. I was like, it's all good, go ahead,
you do what you gotta do, which and it was

(02:36:59):
so sweet. It was like, yeah, I of course you're not.
I gotta sing peepee. So he goes downstairs the studio
and like six hours later, seven hours later, I mean,
it's like early in the morning and he comes up
and he says, come down, and uh, actually it was
Susan who came to get me. And Susan Rogerson brought
me back downstairs and he was standing at the console,

(02:37:22):
exhausted and sweet little smile on his face, and he goes,
here it is and he just pressed play and starfish
and coffee was there, and yeah.

Speaker 13 (02:37:32):
Thank you for that.

Speaker 18 (02:37:33):
You're welcome.

Speaker 1 (02:37:34):
I have so much more, but I gotta wrap.

Speaker 16 (02:37:36):
It up another time.

Speaker 1 (02:37:38):
Yes, there's plenty more, Uh, Susannah melvoyn Uh, thank you
so much. I have to say. Uh, that was an
edgy location. We learned a lot about Minnesota and and
and what it had to offer, and.

Speaker 3 (02:38:00):
That was like a pH d. That was a doctor
of course, and all things Prince Minnesota.

Speaker 1 (02:38:05):
Like. The only thing we needed was Kirby Pucket.

Speaker 26 (02:38:07):
And Kirby's dad. Actually, oh, yeah's stead Kirby's dead.

Speaker 1 (02:38:25):
Uh.

Speaker 21 (02:38:26):
Learned that I'm a lazy bastard. I thought I was
lazy just being your friend for the last few years.
But now that I really learned about friends in his work, I.

Speaker 1 (02:38:34):
Need to get my ship together.

Speaker 22 (02:38:37):
It was a lot of stuff, but at the end
of the day, it's about me, Like, yeah, shit.

Speaker 1 (02:38:41):
Together, I'm paid Bill.

Speaker 27 (02:38:43):
Why is everybody from Minnesota in a fucking musical family?
Every one of them was like my dad played the dance,
my mom did this.

Speaker 1 (02:38:50):
And I was just like, my parents are doctors, like
I did this is like I.

Speaker 27 (02:38:54):
Thought to myself, I was wondering, like what it would
be like to grow up it because you did grow
up in a musical family, Like what that's like and
how that because like music wasn't in my house. I
didn't live in that world. Like I had to go
find it myself. It wasn't on me, Like I didn't
learn it at church, I didn't do anything.

Speaker 15 (02:39:07):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:39:08):
It just music. The way they were presenting it was
like music was like an option in my case, Like
I don't know if my my mom was probably Jedi
mind tricking me into music to keep me off the streets,
really to keep me from getting my ass whoop by
the neighborhood kids.

Speaker 27 (02:39:29):
Like Wendy and Susannah growing up in like the Wrecking
Crew house, like it was that was an option.

Speaker 1 (02:39:35):
It just well, I'm amazed that they told the truth
like We're going night and the fact you had parents
that would be cool enough to be you know, I
mean I worked in the nightclub, but I mean, you know,
my parents, like they put me in the nightclub to
keep an eye on me, to keep me from wanting
to go to the nightclub, which you know, it didn't work.

Speaker 3 (02:39:59):
That's what I felt.

Speaker 1 (02:39:59):
I like, wow, yeah, that must be nice.

Speaker 22 (02:40:01):
Yeah, it's I didn't wanna say.

Speaker 1 (02:40:03):
Like wow, hashtag must be nice. Uh is there anything
that we didn't cover? Built? I mean, you and I
probably the biggest Prince fans that we know, Uh, like,
did we missed something there?

Speaker 9 (02:40:14):
There was one thing I really wanted to talk to
Matt and Bobby about, and that was the bullhorn incident
on the plane when uh oh that led to the
wh when when they all got taken taken taken to jail.
There is so much that I wanted to ask about,
but we just didn't have enough time.

Speaker 14 (02:40:29):
We need to do like four hours actually, I mean
we had like just forty different Yeah.

Speaker 28 (02:40:40):
Yeah, Susanna, I'm proud off I mean to our supreme leader.
Yeah that sounds very Jenny Jones.

Speaker 1 (02:40:53):
I just think that at least with Susannah alone, Like,
you know, there's a lot that I wanted to go
into but you know, I felt it was too soon,
but like a lot like the Beautiful Ones, like all
those songs were about her, but didn't feel ill to

(02:41:13):
you yet that you know, even when Wendy was here.
And I think that a couple of other.

Speaker 22 (02:41:17):
Band members the way did they feel about.

Speaker 1 (02:41:19):
You and what you've done? That was real? That was
really well yeah, I mean I just it's again like okay,
so I were interview in the car with No. It
was I was in the car with Maya Gretchen from
Princess last night and this weird Prince fan stopped the
car and like actually said you know, he starts the

(02:41:41):
sentence with I have one hundred thousand dollars and I
want to give it to you just so I can
tell you my life story. And well exactly I said
it verbatim. Yes, I know Steve's like I me or
you are exaggerated.

Speaker 13 (02:41:59):
Well, it was probably like.

Speaker 1 (02:42:05):
No, and it just hit me like, yo, Prince has
the weirdest even watching that audience. Uh that when we
went to see the Revolution show, he has the weirdest
looking audience. I might just might have been arms length
with my audience as well. If that were my Familyase,

(02:42:28):
I'm not saying like, I'm not saying anything. There's a
guy with the ones he wo like all these images
of his body. No, it just I know that Prince
fans can seem weird, and I know that Prince also
felt a certain way about his male fans, I mean, any.

Speaker 9 (02:42:50):
Fans in general, because like he had the whole thing
about the word fan how he hated the word because
it was short for fanatic.

Speaker 1 (02:42:57):
Yeah, it's it's just you know how like the trick
rabbit always had to conceal his excitement for tricks without
you know, and then you get busted by the kids,
and hey, guys, it's really me like, I don't ever
want to be that guy, Like okay, I gained your trust,
let me not let you know, like the only indication
that they really gotten that. It's like, oh, mirror, his

(02:43:20):
level of fandom might be average, you know, more than
the average person was. Just like the demos that started
pulling up in their present. Well, I mean I've I've
learned that you gotta be cool in those situations. I know,
for me, like fans be thinking like, oh man, if
I mentioned that Japanese b side, you have and you'll

(02:43:41):
know we're like organics. Yeah, yeah, that in order to.

Speaker 14 (02:43:51):
In order to like to the way to gain the
I think it's like, wait, wait, wait before you answer,
are you sure you want to give this this away?

Speaker 1 (02:43:58):
Before everybody starts trying.

Speaker 8 (02:43:59):
To know even though trust me, even if I gave
it away, people will still okay, they'll still they'll still
fu I think for me, and I mean for me
and maybe different, I think there's a fine line.

Speaker 1 (02:44:11):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 8 (02:44:13):
For me is if I meet quote unquote a fan,
the last thing I want to talk about is music.
And I think this is just something for you know,
whatever person you're meeting in that field, you know what
I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (02:44:25):
If it's uh, you know, if they're.

Speaker 8 (02:44:27):
Actors, uh, sports people, whatever, that person has been talking
about what they do all day every day, you know
what I'm saying. If I'm Michael Jordan, you know what
I mean. I don't want to talk about basketball.

Speaker 1 (02:44:40):
You know what I'm saying. From K I don't want
to talk about you know, he ain't talking saying ship.
But other than that, you know what I mean.

Speaker 13 (02:44:51):
I think you know there that being a an artist
or being a famous person.

Speaker 1 (02:44:57):
Let's let's be clear to about fame. You know what
I'm saying.

Speaker 8 (02:45:01):
I think, like my theory on famous is that it's
kind of like jail, right, you know what I mean,
It's like whatever year, Like how you know people say
whatever year you go to jail in whatever age you are,
that's the age you stay.

Speaker 1 (02:45:12):
You don't really develop past that point, you know what
I mean. I think that, oh wow, you striking. But
so it's like I think fame is the same way.

Speaker 8 (02:45:29):
I think whatever year, however age you are, that when
you pop, like when you just become the man or
the woman whatever, that's kind of you kind of live
in a state of arrested development.

Speaker 10 (02:45:39):
So to me, the thing that is most endearing is
when you meet people and they just talk to you.

Speaker 1 (02:45:46):
Just like regular fucking people. You know what I'm saying,
Like I don't want to like.

Speaker 8 (02:45:51):
Or whatever, Like yo, you see that on Instagram and
you see the twerking chip, Like we can just talk
about just regular ship.

Speaker 1 (02:45:57):
You know what I mean. But it's weird. That's a
hard middle to do because.

Speaker 13 (02:46:02):
I have people in my life that do the opposite, Like.

Speaker 1 (02:46:06):
A mere I'm gonna let you know you ain't ship,
just to let you know, I don't want to get
I got you. Yeah, and then they got people right now,
the people to try to just take it too far.
Just yeah, but that's that's being super obvious that it's

(02:46:27):
an issue. But you're doing like I have. Probably this
room is is as normal as Yeah. I mean, that's
why I'm not saying I gathered you here like a
master plan, like please get your kool aid st put

(02:46:47):
all your Nike culture purple. I think they were I
think they were hail o. Wait did they take that
Nike off the off your place? Because not I think
they might have went up in sales calls. Everything else's
but well we we thank you to Sugar Steve you

(02:47:10):
a little found of this episode.

Speaker 29 (02:47:16):
Shout out to Henley audio of thank you, Andrew Handlenk,
great job, great job, thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:47:22):
Because I'll be honest, I thought we were all just
going to have to turn on.

Speaker 29 (02:47:26):
That was my first plan when you said this, Yeah,
everybody bring an iPhone. I thought it was interesting.

Speaker 30 (02:47:35):
Everybody who was interviewed there you were sort of pressing
them on when Prince would make them, you know, stand
there and loop some music for an hour or two
hours whatever while he practices dancing, and nobody seemed to
resent anything. Everybody saw that there was a purpose behind it,
and they kind of took pride in it.

Speaker 3 (02:47:51):
Like if you told me play.

Speaker 30 (02:47:52):
Drums four hours, you just sit there and watch.

Speaker 1 (02:47:54):
Me or whatever.

Speaker 30 (02:47:56):
You're fucking crazy, but you know, everybody seemed to see
the method to his madness.

Speaker 3 (02:48:04):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:48:04):
Yeah, so that was pretty cool. Well and going the hotel,
all right, Well, this is an amazing, amazing episode of
Quest Love Supreme. Hope you guys join us next time.
Uh on behalf of Quest Love Fante Bill both unpaid

(02:48:29):
and Boss Bill Layah Steve. Hope you join us next
Wednesday for another episode. Uh I guess what one PM
and ten a m specific standard time specific specific, yes, specific.
This is Quest Love signing off Quest Love Supreme. Thank

(02:48:53):
you very much, Quest Love Supreme. It's a production in
our iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team
at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

(02:49:16):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.