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Purple Rain, 1984

Take Me with U

© Warner Bros.

Production on Purple Rain officially wrapped in late December 1983; but as the film’s chief composer as well as its star, Prince remained on call through the post-production phase. Just about a month after the end of shooting, his services were once again required: Director Albert Magnoli wanted a song for the sequence where the Kid and Apollonia ride through rural Henderson, Minnesota on his motorcycle. So, at Sunset Sound on January 22, 1984, Prince started work on “Take Me with U.”

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Ice Cream Castle, 1984

The Bird

© Warner Bros.

In the months since Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were dismissed from the Time, the group’s morale had reached an all-time low. Singer Morris Day, in particular, was all but fully checked out: “When we started switching musicians,” he later recalled, “it wasn’t my favorite band anymore” (Tudahl 2018 72). Only the promise of a costarring role in Prince’s upcoming film kept him from leaving the camp entirely–that and, he admits in his 2019 memoir, a burgeoning cocaine habit (Day 83).

The powder keg was primed in the summer of 1983, when Day and the rest of the movie’s principal cast were enrolled in mandatory acting lessons with coach Don Amendolia. “He had these exercises,” Day writes. “Pretend you’re a weeping willow tree. Pretend you’re a butterfly lost in the forest. Well, I didn’t wanna be no weeping willow tree. I didn’t wanna be no butterfly lost in the forest. I thought that was some dumb shit and said so.” Eventually, Day’s “cutting up” got back to Prince, who “said this was some serious business and I better not fuck it up or I’d be out on my ass… He’d banish me from his empire” (Day 86).

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Purple Rain, 1984

Let’s Go Crazy

© Warner Bros.

I

(1) Black Screen

“SOUND under: MUSIC building in INTENSITY as–”

PRINCE
(over)

“Dearly belov’ed
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing
called life…”

Draft screenplay for Purple Rain by Albert Magnoli, 1983

William Blinn submitted two drafts of Dreams–the working title for Prince’s feature film debut–in May of 1983. There wouldn’t be a third: Blinn’s main gig as Executive Producer of the Fame TV series had been renewed, and he no longer had time to spare. Still, Prince’s management deemed the script good enough to shop: Bob Cavallo recalled thinking, “It’s a little TV, it’s a little square… but it’s a good idea, and I figured the director will rewrite it anyway” (Light 2014 67).

But therein lay the rub: even with a screenplay in hand, Cavallo still couldn’t find a director. After a few dead ends, an industry contact recommended he see an early cut of Reckless: a steamy youth drama by first-time director James Foley about a romance between a motorcycle-riding rebel (Aidan Quinn) and a cheerleader from the other side of the tracks (Daryl Hannah). “I go to screen this movie and I’m the only one in the theater,” Cavallo recalled to journalist Alan Light. “I see it, I walk out, and a young man comes up to me and says, ‘What did you think?’ I said, ‘Well, I thought it was pretty good, and that’s really all I thought. I thought the editing was good.’ He’s like, ‘Really? Good. I did that’” (Light 2014 67).

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Ice Cream Castle, 1984

Chili Sauce

Unidentified men at the Taste Show Lounge, circa early '80s. Photo by Charles Chamblis, stolen from the Minnesota Historical Society.

It’s tempting to assume that the filler tracks Prince penned for the Time–of which there was at least one on every album–were dashed off quickly, without the level of care and attention he reserved for his own music. But, while that may have been the case sometimes (looking at you, clumsy edit at the end of “I Don’t Wanna Leave You”), it wasn’t always. See, for example, “Chili Sauce”: my personal vote for the most egregious filler in the group’s discography, and yet also the subject of a staggering five nights of sessions at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles.

According to Duane Tudahl’s essential studio chronicle, Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions: 1983 and 1984, Prince started work on the unnamed instrumental that would become “Chili Sauce” at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 14, 1983, after completing a mix for the ill-fated “My Summertime Thang.” He began with a sleek, sinuous Linn LM-1 pattern, reminiscent of the one he’d used on “Electric Intercourse” in January–or, for that matter, the one he would later use on “The Beautiful Ones” in September. From there, he layered on more tracks, before ultimately deciding that the song needed live strings–a sound that had been absent from his discography since “Baby” on his 1978 debut album.

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Ice Cream Castle, 1984

Jungle Love

Maureen O'Sullivan and Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan the Ape Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1932); © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Prince, as was his wont, had already moved on to his next phase by the time the 1999 tour entered its final stretch in March 1983. The centerpiece of his master plan was, of course, the untitled film project that would become Purple Rain; but he also intended to cement his musical dominance with follow-up albums by the 1999-era “Triple Threat” of himself, the Time, and Vanity 6. Much as he had a year before, he focused on the Time first: booking a few days at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles before playing the Universal Amphitheatre and San Diego Sports Arena on March 28 and 29, respectively.

The Time’s first two albums had been cut primarily by Prince and singer/studio drummer Morris Day alone; for the new project, however, Prince allowed the rest of the band to take on a more active role. “They played on a lot of the stuff,” former Sunset Sound engineer Peggy McCreary told sessionographer Duane Tudahl–though Prince remained the unquestioned “leader of what was going on” (Tudahl 2018 64). The Artist Formerly Known as Jamie Starr was even willing to share songwriting duties, basing “Jungle Love” on an instrumental demo by guitarist Jesse Johnson.

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