Purple People Pleaser

By Chris Dunmire

Can you believe it took 24 years for me to finally get around to watching Prince's 1984 film "Purple Rain?" It was on TV last night, so with the soundtrack in hand, I finally indulged myself while reading Wikipedia during commercial breaks to brush up on my Prince history. (Now that's just a pun waiting to happen... Princestory... Hisprincestory.)

Yes, I was a 'tween when the movie originally hit the big screen in the 80s, and like everyone else, have Prince's Billboard hits embedded in my consciousness (just in case you don't remember, the three chart-topping songs from the movie were "Purple Rain", "Let's Go Crazy" , and "When the Doves Cry" — reminisce to them on my cool Amazon MP3 Clips Widget above).

"When the Doves Cry" was the first Prince song I remember hearing on the radio during the summer of '84, and I can name the release of each subsequent single from my junior high and high school days. These songs make the soundtrack to so many of my coming-of-age experiences.

I first learned how prolific Prince was in writing songs and making music for other people after reading the liner notes on my Cyndi Lauper cassette when I was 12 (can you still buy cassettes?). Cyndi was my teen idol, alas, I could never get my hair dyed orange or cut in that crazy Cyndi way ( I did wear a collage of bracelets and funky pants on occasion, however). Puzzled over the gender relationship in "When You Were Mine", it made much more sense to know Cyndi was singing a song written by a male, Prince.

I also knew Prince wrote "Manic Monday" for the Bangles, dueted with Madonna on "Love Song", and wrote the hit song "Nothing Compares 2U" that Sinead O'Connor sang in 1990 — among many other collaborations and cross-overs (including with Kate Bush on her Red Shoes song "Why Should I Love You?" He's everywhere!).

Here's some other trivia-worthy stuff I didn't know about Prince and his creative work until last night. (Warning: I'm so not in the know):

1. The music group "The Time" was a side project of Prince's fronted by Morris Day. (Wow, where have I been?) The hit "Jungle Love" was in the beginning of Purple Rain, but not on the soundtrack.


2. Prince released his first album "For You" at age 20, and has been making music ever since.


3. The name "Prince" is his given name that he fought over in court with his former record label (thus spawning the whole symbol and emancipation thing). So it wasn't a self-title after all!

Though most of Prince's early work was off-limits to me due to its controversial nature, I'm having fun revisiting some of the cleaner stuff I missed growing up. For example, "Controversy" has been looping on my MP3 player for the last few days and I'm funking down to some of his other songs spanning the years. What a ride through memory lane!

Yes, Prince Rogers Nelson inspires me on so many levels, artistically, creatively, and spiritually. The irony of his newfound religious faith as one of Jehovah's Witnesses (he converted in 2001) is in the knowing that what influences his music and behavior now is what previously kept his creative work off-limits to a large portion of his current fan-base. I was raised in the faith, and yes, I find this coming full-circle thing fascinating. •

© 2008 Chris Dunmire www.chrisdunmire.com. All rights reserved.