My Name Is...?: When Prince Was Not Prince

CHAMELEONIC SHABOOGIE

In my previous post, I recalled the time Prince’s music first impacted my life and how much the allure of his humour and confidence helped shape my own character. I had shaken off more than a few childhood shackles to the strains of Batdance, Party Man and Thieves In The Temple et all, but what maintained my fascination with Prince, was the ease of his shape-shifting identity, which seemed equally as vital to him as music itself. In seamless succession, the neon-lit bohemian artist-in-nude-sans-gloves from 1999, had apparently slipped out only to re-emerge a few years later as comic book icon The Joker, with total commitment to the transformation. Along the way, he gender-bended from cocky lady killer (Christopher Tracy) to clichéd gay archetypes and everything in between like a care-free child skipping along a stony path – always avoiding the cracks.

Prince unveils Gemini in Batdance

Many Prince fans have a favourite era, or favourite Prince look. For me, the late '80s Batman-era was it. At this stage, he wore his hair long and appeared louche and brooding, even lowering his speaking voice. Still new to Prince’s world, I had yet to discover that he was in fact playing a character – his latest in a long line – who went by the name Gemini. Also the artist’s astrological sign, Gemini remains my favourite of Prince’s identities. Perhaps his most famous dalliance in role-play was Camille, who in 1987 was responsible for the portions of Sign O’ The Times. However Camille was seemingly abandoned in the wake of the planned-and-scrapped Crystal Ball album leaving fans guessing on what triple album of songs by Prince’s female alter-ego might have been.

'Camille' in 1988

While Camille saw Prince firmly embrace an ongoing dalliance with his feminine side, Gemini allowed his hairy-chested masculine self out to play. One of the strongest drawcards for Prince taking on the Batman project was how much he identified with the dark/light struggle within AND between the lead characters. He would never have been satisfied with simply recording a soundtrack to a film in which he did not have a part, and so Prince created roles for himself. Gemini appeared as an amalgam of The Joker and Batman in the promotional video for Batdance, while a black leather-clad Prince helmed an elaborate recording studio deck from which he appeared to urgently maintain control of his creation. Ultimately, Gemini opens fire on Prince before detonating an electric chair – symbolically destroying his guilt – as Prince brings the escalating madness to an end with an understated cry of “STOP!”.

The timing of the Batman project along with Prince’s desire to compose and perform music under several guises went beyond mere experimentation. It’s widely known Prince could perform a multitude of tasks as band, bandleader, producer and writer, which certainly fed into his schizophrenic reinventions. But he saw himself with such rare clarity that frustration was inevitable when it came to the dealing with business of marketing, and by 1990 a decision to end business as he/we knew it was set in motion. That same year, Prince did the unthinkable and returned to a character from his past. In 1984, The Kid had served him well as the protagonist in Purple Rain, and was as far as Prince’s fans were concerned as close to the man himself as you could get. It was only upon his return in Graffiti Bridge that the sheer flimsiness of the character became clear. It was surprisingly difficult to warm to The Kid in his sophomoric years despite his very clear agenda of standing up to The Man.

The sexually ambiguous Gemini in Party Man

Regardless of the challenging aspects of Prince’s characterisations, audiences loved his many faces and happily went along on for the ride. His fragility in Purple Rain quadrupled Prince’s fan-base while his playfulness in merging Camille with Gemini in Party Man sparkled with mad genius. However a thoroughly confounding challenge for his devotees was to come at the start of the 1990s. Following 1986’s Parade and subsequent film, Under The Cherry Moon, the artist suffered a backlash from his black fans, proclaiming he had sold out to white audiences. As rap and R&B were began to take a strangle hold on the charts Prince, for the first time in his career, decided by 1991 to cut in on another’s wave. Pushing his new backing group The New Power Generation to the forefront, he cut Diamonds and Pearls as an indirect reaction to his black detractors, which only served to highlight a chink in his once flawless armor. Prince was no rapper and he knew it.

D&P

Saved by a solid portion of smooth R&B grooves, Diamonds and Pearls was let down by the NPG’s frequently awkward rap babbling and ultimately the project began to look a lot like a quest for attention at someone else’s birthday party. Always the pioneer, Prince suddenly seemed unrecognisable in spite of his former ‘masks’, and while his new identity seemed shaky, nobody could have predicted his next move. In what I’ve come to see as a stroke of unbridled genius, Prince was largely met with ridicule and confusion over his sudden announcement - via cryptic messages on 1992’s Love Symbol album, and less subtly on 1994’s Come – that Prince was dead and in his place S was born. Spirituality has always taken equal billing alongside sensuality in his music, thus initially in response to his reasons for changing his name to the glyph, Prince declared his pre-mortem reincarnation as an explanation.

S

Prince spotters noted variations of his S symbol had been present in his visual output from as far back as the early 1980s. Through his many incarnations it remained an inconsistent constant; an amalgamation of the common ‘gender glyphs’ which fitted nicely with Prince’s apparent gender duality. To adopt it his name was to render himself not only unpronounceable but also unreachable in the eyes of even many long-time fans. The decision left a palpable nasty taste in the mouths of journalists, who saw it as Prince’s attempt to baffle without good cause. Subsequently, he was demonised and even written off as a joke at a time when he was laying plans to regain his pioneering spirit. Perhaps if he had been more articulate in his given reasons, he would not have suffered such prejudice. In the grey world of business, Prince was a purple bolt of lightning which the creaky, inflexible establishment at Warner Bros. had little tolerance for, and as it turned out, a considerable chunk of his audience failed to warm to as well. As his battle for the rights to his back catalogue and complete artistic freedom are well worn stories by now, I find reactions to Prince’s decision the more fascinating angle to review.

In brief, he was under contract as Prince Rogers Nelson. As in most cases of record contracts, his signature ensured the label had a sizable say in various aspects of the money and creative sides to all operations. The pioneer in Prince, after growing frustration, hatched a never-before-known get-out plan which dragged the imbalanced power game of the music biz into the public eye long before reality talent shows did. Until now, his meanderings into alternate personalities/name changes had been seen as a side effect of his feverish creativity, but once the choice to rebrand himself as S became known as a strictly business decision, the public were less forgiving. Under this name, Prince produced duelling bodies of work, which in fairness did nothing to endear him to his audience, as many saw him as losing his mojo; a result of his now very public battle with Warners. Still under contract, Prince went to war with his label offering them offcuts and half-baked albums to promote as he put out rival sets under his adopted – and therefore not contractually bound – name.

Prince as Tora Tora

The overabundance of Prince/S albums, coupled with further mockery to Warners in the form of his disguised character Tora Tora - who briefly fronted a re-jigged NPG anonymously - caused an imbalance in the vein of quantity over quality. The perception was that Prince’s battle had embittered him as he took to writing the word SLAVE on his cheek and his interviews became increasingly abstract. Looking back at that time, it’s easy to write off Prince as behaving like a spoiled child, incapable of articulating himself to any degree. But I always saw an artist finally fighting the David and Goliath battle he had put off for years and dealing with his enemy using highly original tactics never before tried or tested in what is ultimately an extremely unfair business. It was a massive risk to do what he did and many would never view Prince the same way again. However after the dust settled, there was no doubt who the winner was in the end. Not only Prince himself - with his victoriously re-instated birth name – but also artists who had felt unfairly done by through dealing with the money minders.

For the first time, the old music business model began to look very unstable indeed as more and more artists sought smaller, independent labels to promote their work and retain sizable profits, while the Fat Cats were lumbered with fame-hungry lame duck artists, good for two or three hits before contracts were annulled and tours were cancelled due to lack of interest. Attitudes towards Prince’s perplexing rebellion have softened over time, as more and more musicians stand up to take issue over intellectual property ownership. Perhaps in time his overall least popular period will be heralded as Prince’s greatest legacy.

lEIGh5

In memory of Prince 1958-2016

1989: WHEN PRINCE CAME TO RULE MY WORLD

By the time he entered my little suburban life as a young teenager, Prince had already recorded the bulk of his most legendary records. Purple Rain, Controversy, 1999 and Sign O’ The Times established this one-man super band as one of the top acts in the world during the 1980s. His very worthy credentials however were unknown to me that fateful morning – a Saturday, in 1989 – when my bleary-eyed adolescent self, decided to switch from my usual morning cartoon fix to a newly discovered music video program. Prior to now, my exposure to music was largely down to my brothers’ KISS records, my parents’ Bony M collection and commercial radio. Yet my hand-me-down tastes were unceremoniously pummeled into oblivion after tuning in just in time to catch the Batdance music video. After those 6 plus minutes, I was convinced I had just witnessed the coolest man in all humanity and sad as it sounds, I wanted to be Prince.

I’m happy to admit that Batdance as a single was hardly Prince’s greatest effort and as my knowledge of the man’s work grew, I discovered this Frankenstein’s monster track was in fact a rush-recorded bastardisation of several other half-finished cuts from the maestro’s Batman soundtrack project. Director Tim Burton famously hated the track and it even caused a rift between to the two artists, but to my ears, Batdance was a game-changer and my personal year dot in terms of a never-ending music obsession. That initial burst of musical puppy love manifested first in daily calls to request radio shows – my voice and singular request became so familiar to DJs, I needed only to say ‘hi’ to get my reward – and secondly in a new found interest in dancing. The Prince/Joker dance routine in Batdance had to be learned. Not having danced anything bar forced, dusty old ballroom style routines before, I like to think my childhood bedroom bore witness to something approaching an enthusiastic funkateer in the making. 

As fans know too well, Prince was never seen in flat-soled shoes and looking back, an elevated heel would most certainly have afforded me the missing ingredient in perfecting my contortions and twitches. There’s no way a boy can request high-heeled shoes from his parents without a long, long conversation, so in a compromise, I decided adopting a pair of found silver gloves would bring me closer to Princely greatness. One’s teen years are of course filled with shame, so this life-changing obsession was a closely guarded secret. After all I was in unknown territory, and how such a passion might be perceived by others bothered me. Prince-inspired dancing in oversized silver gloves was restricted to the bedroom along with the air guitar solos. Naturally, my shame was soon discovered after my father walked in during a three-turn pirouette followed by a knee-drop (Batdance again) and, rather than have him think I was dancing, I pretended I was having a fit. For the first time, I had a ‘thing’ that was all mine and I was enjoying my obsession and wished for it to remain un-scrutinised by the Bony M fans in the next room. 

Apart from owning a copy of the Batdance cassingle bought for me by my older sister, I had no claim on a single piece of recorded music. Then roughly a year after Batdance I discovered the wonderful world of second hand record shops. In those days, well-worn back catalogue albums and singles were dirt cheap and my local outlet boasted an absolute goldmine of Princely gems. It was however, the 12” single of Let’s Go Crazy that came home with me on that first visit, primarily for its evocative and luxurious cover art and a possibly salacious b-side track entitled Erotic City. This latest discovery left me enthralled and did not disappoint. The duet in which Prince writhed around in neon-lit urban sleaze offered a scintillating, funky peak into a more adult world than Batdance. I had not one, but two new dances to learn. Let’s Go Crazy’s over-the-top party cry grew on me instantly and fast became a bedroom dance session staple. Erotic City meanwhile yearned for a completely different expression. Where the idea came from to strip stark naked bar a bed sheet worn as a cape and stomp and writhe around, I’ll never know. The power of Prince’s music is all I can offer as explanation (coupled with a good slew of suburban boredom) and that same explanation will suffice for what possessed my 14-year-old self to take the naked sheet dance into the yard of my parents’ home under cover of darkness. 

So as I grew and started to catch up on the years of music that had come before my awakening as well as the very latest, I began to encounter stories of rock music’s negative influence according to various killjoys, and was reminded of my sheer indulgence and slight hint of shame at how much I enjoyed Prince’s music. The danger element that had apparently been ruffling the squares feathers since the 1950s was well and truly in me now. Prince as an introduction to music it turned out could not have been more perfect. Here I was, already on the verge of disowning the rather lazy Catholic teachings of my childhood, buzzing with a new set of hormones and in possession of a fairly advanced understanding of how to embarrass my parents, and along comes Prince. Unlike the (in my mind) glam metal clowns, KISS from my brother’s collection, who seemed content to parade around looking like your grans’ worst nightmare, Prince to me was a far more relevant icon of rebellion. His playfulness, eroticism and untouchable style equated to the antithesis of all that was bland and acceptable in my world. 

In the wake of the shock news that Prince died at the age of 57 seemingly without a prolonged illness, I was compelled to go back to that period in my life when so much change was happening and acknowledge how much Prince’s music was a part of that time. As the cliché goes, he was an important part of my life, but perhaps less so clichéd is how. I saw wilfulness and abandon in Prince, as well as a strident bucking of the rules and for a time, it was all that made sense to me. I still believe that to make something truly great, these elements are essential ingredients. Ultimately though, through all his triumphs, failings and backlash, he was never contrived or fake, which is why what Prince was, will always be more than enough for me. 

lEIGh5

Peter Murphy (Bauhaus) interview: 2013

HAUS MUSIC

Robert Smith, Nick Cave, Trent Reznor, even David Bowie all owe a debt to Peter Murphy and his haunted outpourings as leader of goth-rockers, Bauhaus. According to Murphy himself, that is. It’s a big claim for a man who stumbled into music, only learning of his abilities as he went along. Perhaps his early lack of self-perception afforded him a fearless, unstudied approach to creating music, but Murphy has returned 35 years on to stake his belated claim as unsung genius.

“There is no ‘back in the day’ for me when I talk about the music I made with Bauhaus.” He says of the Northampton-based band he fronted from 1978. “My music did not suddenly grow old and die when we split up.” In 1983, Murphy left Bauhaus after tensions arose from his increasing stardom over and above that of his band mates. This was perhaps illustrated best by his heavily stylised appearance - as himself - in the film The Hunger. Seen performing one of the first songs he ever wrote – Bella Lugosi’s Dead – Murphy’s status as ‘goth icon’ was cemented in those 4 minutes. The film that followed was a modern vampire tale complete with David Bowie in the lead role. On set, Murphy proudly recalls Bowie’s surprising admittance to him.

“He whispered into my ear, ‘I wish we had done Ziggy (Stardust) like you did it.’” He grins. “Almost nobody, including the band, wanted me to do it so when Bowie tells me he likes my version better than his own, it really made think I should just trust my instincts.” The Bowie cover remains Murphy’s biggest hit to this day, but at that stage Bauhaus were already over bar the shouting. While the rest of the band went on to form sleaze-rock group, Love & Rockets, Murphy ramped up the vamp on several solo albums before finding birds of a similar feather (Nine Inch Nails) to hang with.

“Trent (Reznor) was an unashamed Bauhaus fan. When I met him he was just this young guy with one album out – Pretty Hate Machine – and you could hear our influence all over that. We ended up recording a few covers together, which somebody has leaked but they were never officially released.” It was a match made in goth-rock heaven, but the increasing popularity Bauhaus’ music had gained in their absence prompted a return in 2005 and further demise in ’08. “The band I’ve got now, I’ve been working with for quite a few years and, with respect to the other lads in Bauhaus, I can play our music just fine without them there, you know.” He adds, “I learned to play Dan (Ash – Bauhaus guitarist)’s parts years ago and people have long been asking me to Bauhaus songs in my shows, so I thought ‘fuck it’ why not do it. Why not tour just Bauhaus’ songs as Peter Murphy? They are mostly my songs, after all.”

Now assured of his legacy in music, Murphy scarcely sees the point in unraveling the ‘enigmatic genius’ tag he has been awarded by, either his musical peers - or more brazenly, himself depending on how real or not the bravado all is. It’s only in the final few seconds before his deep, arresting voice is replaced by a dial tone does he throw me a clue. “I don’t mind doing press actually, but journalists don’t get the real me. You can only get in as far as I want you to. I hate to be a buzz kill, darling but when you’re the ‘grandfather of goth’, you have to keep at least partway in the shadows.”

lEIGh5

Einstürzende Neubauten live in Melbourne, 2013 (review)

Venue: The Palace
Date: 19/02/2013

The excitement of what to expect from one of the world’s most unusual and  notoriously ‘challenging’ bands begins as soon as I enter the Palace and  catch sight of the darkened stage. One almost expects to see emergency relief workers attempting to deal with a recent ceiling collapse that occurred as some band had been setting up their gear. The sight of a few recognisable instruments jutting out among PVC tubing and compromised steel wreckage creates a sinister image. Although it’s just another gig for Einsturzende Neubauten, it is  essentially anybody’s guess what terrifying racket the monstrosities before us will create once the Berlin band begin to hit, throw, rattle and blow into them.

For long-time followers of Neubauten, many things have changed considerably over the course of their 33-year career, and yet a few have not. A wrecked shopping cart, masses of wire coils and front-man Blixa Bargeld’s banshee-like scream equal familiarity, but whereas Bargeld once held court in leather bondage gear and a haircut that looked as though he had been attacked by a stylist with cerebral palsy, he now more closely resembles a pre-Jenny Craig campaign Barry Humphries in all his dandy-ish finery. Gone also is the guitar he once brutally assaulted - and occasionally played as a member of the Bad Seeds - and the earth shattering electric-hammer. All this means very little however to what is a thrilling career retrospective which never feels lacking despite the aborted, more cacophonous instrumentation.

Song wise, the band choose a lesser-played set for Melbourne - Blixa’s second home for many years. Although we miss out on gems like Halber Mensch and The Garden there is still plenty to get roused over. Headcleaner goes where a lot of Neubauten songs only hint at and for that reason it stands as their true monster-piece. Played in three parts - two brutal, one mellow - it’s a relentless insanity-inducing brain hammering, that teases us with short bursts of calm only to come round again for another pummeling. Die Interimsliebenden ebs towards ‘one you can almost dance to’ but instead evokes some more suitable head-banging from the packed crowd. Armenia is played to demonstrate Bargeld’s signature horror-screech to it’s fullest, and allow custom-made instrumentalist Andrew Chudy to show off an impressive range of percussive flostum, including a bucket of metal scrap which he showers onto an amplified plate near stage front. It’s during Chudy’s carefree hurling of dangerous objects that the venue security become visibly alarmed and brace for possible intervention.

For Bargeld however, the tense moments are not during the crashing of metal on metal or glass on metal but rather when one note is played off key in the sombre Sabrina, completely throwing the singer into a very visual tantrum. It’s a very telling moment on how much Bargeld requires total perfection from his band when he berates keyboardist Ash Wednesday and insists they begin the song again from the top. The apparently short temper and commanding presence of Bargeld make him a fascinating subject to fix eyes on throughout the melee that is happening on stage. The lack of guitar means that he is free to mess around with various objects throughout the show and as such add libs with a loud-hailer, a drill with a vinyl record attached to the bit and various voice-enhancing gizmos. Though if there’s another, equally bright star on stage, it has to be drummer Rudolf Moser. His kit is the perfect enviable big boy’s toy. Much bigger than probably required and composed of chunky wire coils, steel cylinders and saw blades - it ranks as the coolest thing ever seen at a concert. Ever.

It’s impossible to end this review without mentioning the biggest and best non-drum kit related part to Neubauten’s show; the catharsis of sheer non-conventional expression through screams and grinding machines clashing with sounds so intimate, they are little more than a whisper in your ear, or - as is the case of Silence Is Sexy - a drag on an amplified cigarette.

lEIGh5

 
PALACE SET-LIST:

Ein Leichtes Leises Säuseln
Die Befindlichkeit des Landes
Von wegen
Die Interimsliebenden
Dead Friends
Unvollständigkeit
Youme & Meyou
Let's Do It a Dada
Haus der Lüge
Rampe
Armenia
Sabrina
Susej
Headcleaner

Encore:
Silence Is Sexy
Redukt

Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance) Interview: 2013

RESTLESS SPIRITS

While somewhat distracted by the possibility of having to evacuate, Lisa Gerrard from her home in Gippsland, is watching the threatening orange glow of near-by bushfires while valiantly remaining focused on the task promoting the first Dead Can Dance album in 16 years. An impending home-land tour in which the release - Anastasis - will be performed in full is also going ahead now the singer's recent throat-bothering flu has been beaten 'just in time'. “I was seriously close to having to cancel the shows... all that time spent in aeroplanes is what made me sick.” Gerrard has just returned home from Argentina, one of the many non-Anglo countries where her band - a 30 year-long partnership between herself and one-time husband, Brendan Perry - are lauded as musical icons. Yet despite forming in the Melbourne suburb of Prahran, Australia has long remained their final frontier in terms of wide spread acceptance.

“Somebody once asked me, 'why don't we make Australian music'?”, A mental 'face-palm' hangs in the air as Gerrard begins. “It was as if we had to tick certain boxes to be considered Australian.” The daughter of Irish immigrants remembers this throw-away question posed to her long ago, and which has bugged her since. But to argue the case for Dead Can Dance's place in the Australian music scheme, she need only have retorted with AC/DC's Scottish-ness, or Crowded House's Kiwi-ness for effect. “Basically what they were asking was, why don't we sound like a white suburban band, which is after all what we were!” In fact the Prahran which Lisa left behind in 1982 for the excitement and uncertainty of London, provided the ideal foundation for what would become Dead Can Dance. Gerrard recalls unfamiliar and exotic languages and most importantly, music in abundance in the tiny suburban street. “So many of our neighbours were a mix of Greek and Turkish immigrants, many of who couldn't speak English very well, if at all, and because their sort of connection to the countries they had left behind was this very traditional music, it would blasting out of their windows on a hot night.”

The title of the new album, Anastasis, translates (from Greek) as 'resurrected'. Apart from the obvious self-reference following their long break, it could also relate to Dead Can Dance's choice of gear. They employ instruments so ancient their true origins have been forever blurred by time as they changed hands along the Silk Road. Gerrard meanwhile has often sung in a curious, non-specific language; resulting in a suitably inclusive form of expression. “When I was growing up, you didn't get Irish people speaking Italian or Greek or anything like that, so my experience of hearing these other languages on a daily basis meant I could just listen to the tones and patterns and there was a kind of music to that in itself.” She adds, “The Irish have a strong tradition of story-telling and so to me singing without using words to tell a story was such an exotic idea.” Once the foundation for what Dead Can Dance would become was set in place, Lisa and then live-in boyfriend Brendan Perry re-established themselves in London during 1982 at the height of post-punk only to find themselves suddenly starved of the cultural diversity they had become so used to.

















“We were in this very poor, white part of London for a time in this council flat and it was quite depressing when we first arrived.” Gerrard recalls, “But we kind of lived as though we were in this private school by spending all our time in the local libraries and music archives, just absorbing all this literature and music which was beyond what we could have found in Australia. Our own identity really began to develop from that time, so ultimately it wasn't wasted time.” After signing a deal with 4AD, Dead Can Dance quickly established their niche throughout the '80s and '90s as a 'world fusion' band. Releases like Into The Labyrinth and The Serpent's Egg became celebrated classics, and even drew the attention of Hollywood. During DCD's hiatus, Gerrard became an award-winning film-score composer in her own right, and along the way found time to establish her own label, Gerrard Records, with generosity as the driving force. “I wanted to be able to give more to artists signed to my label than I was given when we were on 4AD.” She explains, “That was the idea, but by the time everyone involved grabs a piece of the action, there's really nothing left. I wanted my artists to feel liberated to work on their music and not have to worry about money, you know. I mean when I think about the amount of dough that 4AD made out of us when we had so little... it's kind of criminal!”

Categorising Dead Can Dance's music may be a frustrating task for genreists - and the new album will do nothing to change this – but at it's core, Anastasis is less 'viva la difference' and more about what connects us all across language and cultural barriers. It's a concept album in that sense, and will be performed in full during this tour. “It is important that in concert the work is allowed to tell its whole story. I think it takes on a life of its own that way.” Gerrard explains, “We used a lot of organic instruments on the recording, but touring with a full orchestra wasn't practical. Brendan plays a variety of instruments, and I play my Yangqin and dulcimers... but I think the main detail in our music is the cavernous, 'big sound' that we do. It's very much about creating a landscape of sound when we play live... It's how our music is best enjoyed I think.”

lEIGh5