S U N DAY, M AY 1, 2016
Prince and the Revolution on tour in 1986. He kept evolving and bringing in new equipment every year, trying to find the next cool sound, said keyboardist Matt Fink (far left).
The sound of genius
Among the many singing his praises, its his peers who come through the loudest
By CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER
chrisr@startribune.com
Think of all the other rock stars
who wasted no time covering his
songs. The president who took ample
time talking him up to reporters. The
late-night TV show that used all of its
weekly time slot to honor him. The
city that ignored time altogether and
stayed up dancing until dawn three
nights in a row.
So much love was shown for Prince
over the past week and a half, dare we
say even he wouldve been humbled.
However, may we also be so bold
as to suggest that all these tributes
still havent done him justice?
Its likely that Princes impact on
popular music and American culture
wont be fully understood for years
to come. Thats in his nature: Leave
em guessing.
His wild mix of bravado, libido,
topicality, equality, spirituality and
plain ol electricity was sometimes
deceptive, often misunderstood and
occasionally off-putting. And cer-
tainly it wasnt always genius. So
much of it was, though. His huge
canon of music will be pored over
and dissected in ways not unlike his
fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylans out-
put, and that of Bruce Springsteen.
I never met Mozart, Duke Elling-
ton, Charlie Parker or Elvis, but I met
Prince, Bono bragged last weekend
via an Instagram photo of the lyrics to
Princes 1987 opus The Cross.
Musicians seemed to know best
just how rare his talent was. Artists
who have covered his songs in recent
A champion of diversity, he was ahead o the times
By KIM PALMER
kim.palmer@startribune.com
Beneath the glyph, the flamboyant
outfits and all that purple, a sociocul-
tural revolution was brewing.
Decades before celebrate diver-
sity became a corporate buzzword,
Prince was doing just that with his
music and persona blending races,
blurring genders and paving the way
for people trying to stake out an iden-
tity outside traditional boundaries.
For Mike Mattison, a biracial boy
adopted into a white family living in a
white neighborhood in Minneapolis,
Prince symbolized a crazy, multicul-
tural world of inclusiveness.
Here was this guy you could
identify with, said Mattison, sing-
ing about these magical places like
Uptown. He created this wonderful
metaphor that invited everybody
black, white, Puerto Rican, gay,
straight, male and female a world
days range from the Dixie Chicks to
Pearl Jam to Mumford & Sons, who
happened to be in St. Paul the night of
his passing. The British folk-rockers
version of Nothing Compares 2 U
at Xcel Energy Center has gone viral,
like so many such tributes. Maybe the
most shared video clip of all is Spring-
steens version of Purple Rain at
Barclays Center in New York. He
opened his show with it.
I always left one of his shows
humbled, the Boss said of the Kid.
And these are mostly musicians
who never worked with Prince. The
musicians who did, though, marvel
the most about his musical genius.
He had every facet of talent a
musician wants: songwriting, pro-
duction, singing and playing ability,
not to mention business know-how,
said Monte Moir, keyboardist in the
Time, whose heyday material was
largely produced and co-written
with Prince. And as much as it was
natural talent, he did his homework,
too. He worked really hard at every-
thing he did.
As a player, Prince is best known
for his spine-rattling guitar work,
but the most cutting-edge part of his
music early on was its prominent
and innovative use of synthesizers.
Both Moir and Princes Revolution-
era keyboardist, Matt Fink (aka Dr.
Fink), recounted how he used Ober-
heim keyboards and other relatively
basic synthesizers to create cutting-
edge sounds.
He kept evolving and bringing in
new equipment every year, trying to
find the next cool sound, said Fink.
that really didnt exist, but that we
craved. It kind of seeped into reality.
It also encouraged Mattison to
aspire to a career in music. This guy
comes out of nowhere and becomes
not just a local hero but an interna-
tional phenomenon, said the singer,
who now lives in Atlanta and is touring
with the Tedeschi Trucks Band. You
think, Thats possible. You could be he left has been moved forward.
from Minneapolis. You didnt have to
go to Hollywood or New York.
For Chelsea Reynolds, who grew
up in Des Moines, Prince represented
freedom to explore gender identity.
He showed our culture that men
can embrace their femininity, said
Reynolds, a doctoral candidate in
mass communications, gender and
sexuality in the media at the Univer-
sity of Minnesota.
Princes style and lyrics (Im not a
woman. Im not a man. This is some-
thing that youll never understand)
expanded the boundaries of whats
Prince didnt miss a lick while playing in the rain at the 2007 Super
Bowl halftime show. Warned of the conditions, he reportedly told the
director, Can you make it rain harder?
Moir recalls Prince showing him
a part and saying something to the
effect that: This is something a horn
section would play, but since we dont
have horns this is what it will have to
be. Those synth-type horns were one
of the elements of the Minneapolis
Sound he created.
The Minneapolis Sound wasnt
just a catchphrase, it was a discern-
ible blend of electronic dance music
and the new wave sounds of the era
acceptable for heterosexual males,
particularly black males, said Andrea
Jenkins, a poet, transgender oral his-
torian and librarian who oversees the
University of Minnesotas LGBT col-
lection. He also cut a path for todays
transgender community. He opened
up a whole lot of space for people,
Jenkins said. A big part of the legacy
Even his sound fostered diversity,
said Jenkins. By blending black and
white musical genres, he invited lis-
teners across the racial spectrum to
dance side by side.
But his biggest contributions, in
Jenkins opinion, were to social justice
and black liberation. When Prince
renounced his name for a symbol and
appeared with slave scrawled on his
face during a dispute with his record
label, it may have seemed like a stunt
to white observers, but it had a deeper
resonance in the black community.
Black creativity has been
CHRIS OMEARA Associated Press
with traditional funk and R&B styles.
Beyond those layers of synths, Princes
self-made genre featured electroni-
cally processed and often sped-up
drum parts, and clean, crisp guitars
that gave way to hard-rocking solos.
Even after blueprinting the Min-
neapolis Sound, Prince continued
to boldly blend styles and incorpo-
rate new ideas, said Michael Bland,
who drummed with his 90s-era New
Power Generation lineup.
exploited for so long, she said. Its
crucial for black people to own their
creative output, to achieve financial
equality and to have control over the
way their stories are told. Inspired by
Prince, Jenkins established Purple
Lioness Productions to publish her
work, including her recent book of
poetry, The T Is Not Silent.
But Princes inclusiveness has masculinity suggested Prince could
also come into question. After his
death, some in the LGBT commu-
nity pointed to his views on gay mar-
riage after his religious conversion to
Jehovahs Witness. There have been
comments that he was homophobic,
said Jenkins. But his actions, through
his music and lyrics, really let in the
LGBT community.
Reynolds agreed: I saw so many
articles in the queer press, disputing
his status as an icon. But thats erasing
the entire history Prince had before
his conversion.
Its safe to say Prince will continue
S TA R T R I B U N E SA7
ROB VERHORST Redferns
He just didnt hear things like a
normal person, and he kept trying
to explore whatever sound he had in
his head, Bland said. It was a real
pressure cooker for those of us who
played with him, because he was
always testing our abilities.
For all of Princes edginess as an
arranger and bandleader, perhaps
his greatest gift was the more natural
gift of songwriting. Amid all the cool
sounds he created were songs with
insatiably catchy hooks, dramatic
melodies and lyrics that constantly
provoked, amused, inspired or moved
the listener.
He wasnt just good, he was
incredibly prolific, Moir said. We
would be messing around, and he
would go away for a minute and come
back with an entire new song.
Said Fink, He was just born with
this mind that music just poured out
of, and he couldnt shut it off.
Fortunately, that valve still cant be
shut off. Prince is known to have a
vault of shelved, sidelined or unfin-
ished recordings thats the rock n roll
equivalent of Fort Knox. This is one
recording artist whose posthumous
new albums could truly be gold.
I know theres a lot of stuff we
worked on just in the Revolution that
never saw the light of day, so I can
only imagine how much else there
is, Fink said.
One more reason Princes musical
genius might not be properly appreci-
ated for decades.
Chris Riemenschneider 612-673-4658
@ChrisRstrib
to influence future generations. Katie
Dohman, for one, is making sure of
that. After his death, the West St. Paul
writer penned Lessons I Hope My
Kids Learn From Prince, posted on
a wellness website.
He made it OK to love what you
love, she said. Nothing in the main-
stream handbook about sex appeal or
become a worldwide sex symbol, but
he did it anyway. He was bending our
ideas about what it is to be male, to
be female, and showing us that you
didnt have to follow a stereotype to
be sexy and appealing.
But really, he had a bigger-pic-
ture [message], whether he overtly
intended it or not.
That message of freedom and
independence of spirit will endure,
according to Jenkins: He left an
indelible mark.
Kim Palmer 612-673-4784