Prince: Chaos, Disorder, and Revolution by Draper Jason

Author:Draper, Jason [Draper, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Composers &#38, MUS035000 MUSIC / Genres &#38, Musicians, Styles / Rock, BIO004000 BIOGRAPHY &#38
ISBN: 9781458429445
Publisher: Hal Leonard
Published: 2011-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

12

The Exodus Has Begun

I’m not scared of poverty. I grew up being poor … and these times are positive because they force you to decide if you’re interested in living on this planet or not.

Prince1

If Prince’s situation with Warner Bros was turning into a major public embarrassment, behind Paisley Park’s doors he had yet another crisis on his hands. After Purple Rain made him an overnight millionaire, he was suddenly thrust into a world where money was no longer a concern. According to Bob Cavallo, his manager throughout the 80s, Prince had even paid for Paisley Park in cash; by the time he was 27, had $27 million in the bank.

One might justifiably assume that this would have made him financially secure for life. It certainly made him brash enough to claim, in a radio interview: “I wouldn’t mind if I just went broke, you know.”2 He subsequently reminded Rolling Stone: “I never was rich, so I have very little regard for money now. I only have respect for it inasmuch as it can feed somebody.”3 But just a few years later, Prince was facing severe financial difficulties following the loss-making Lovesexy tour and a string of albums that, while critically successful, had failed to reap the financial returns their reviews warranted.

In attempting to scrap the Japanese leg of the Lovesexy tour in favor of getting on with the Batman project, Prince was also beginning to demonstrate a tendency toward making less-than-sound business decisions. Had manager Steve Fargnoli not been able to convince him otherwise, Prince could have been sued for as much as $20 million for pulling out of the concerts.

Prince still seemed unwilling to listen to sound financial advice, choosing instead to do what he wanted, when he wanted. “We had a big graph,” Bob Cavallo later recalled. “I put it on an easel showing the decline in revenue and increase in spending. He just walked [up] and turned it over.”4

Fortunately, Batman was Prince’s biggest commercial success since Purple Rain, and was followed in 1991 by another hit, Diamonds And Pearls, that helped put him back in the black following the failure of the previous year’s Graffiti Bridge movie. Within a few years, however, Prince’s finances would begin to fall apart again. By January 1995 the situation had become so bad that the St Paul Pioneer Press was reporting, “Paisley Park Enterprises, the company that oversees most of Prince’s business interests, is not paying its bills on time or at all.”5

Prince’s extravagant spending appeared to have finally caught up with him. Since opening Paisley Park he had kept the studios fully manned 24 hours a day on the off chance that he might want to record. In Los Angeles, meanwhile, he spent around $500,000 per year on having a studio manned and ready at the Record Plant just in case he decided to drop in on a whim.

Studio costs were just the start of it. Paisley Park’s in-house catering team and ten-strong tailoring department, employed to make bespoke

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