The Artist Formerly Known As Prince but now, at his insistence called O(+> by lesser mortals (though close friends and colleagues get to call him Boss or Tim), made a regal decision this week. He wanted to break his silence. I received the call summoning me to his presence at Wembley Arena where O(+> is about to premiere his Gold Experience show.
On arrival I am told that neither tape-recording nor note-taking will be allowed during the interview. The reasoning being that if the wee man says anything untoward he can always claim to have been misquoted. When I reach his dressing room an unsmiling aide takes my bag and gives me the kind of thoroughly impertinent bodysearch one associates with catching a flight to the Middle East.
Once he is satisfied that I am not wired for sound carrying a portable phone or a loaded revolver, I am introduced to the star who has been watching this ridiculous scenario with a look of mild amusement but no apparent embarrassment.
He proffers a small but perfectly formed bony hand and ushers me to a sofa covered in hippy drapes. The dressing room is absurdly hot with scented candles adding to the cloying atmosphere. Mirrors are draped in muslin. There is a white for rug in the bathroom. A gold runic staff is propped against a cabinet housing a Jar of Gale’s honey, various fruit teas and a large bowl of oranges.
O(+> is wearing a creamy coloured silk creation, flared at ankles and wrists set off by a black scarf and button-sided high-heeled pixie boots. Despite the gloomy lighting he keeps his Ray-Bans on. He speaks in a soft midwest Minneapolis twang, punctuating his remarks with the occasional y’all and goddam.
On his right cheek the word Slave has been written in blue Biro by his valet sister Wendy Nelson, as a mark of ongoing protest against Warner Bros’ refusal thus for to unleash his album The Gold Experience, recently advertised on the Internet with a release date given as “Never!”
“It’s the best album I’ve ever made but it probably won’t come out. If I even played it to you and they found out I could be arrested.” In fact, I get to hear the record later and there are no interruptions from the thought police.
O(+> is not a happy bunny and he claims that Warners has frustrated his career for 17 years. “I’ve made at least seven albums’ worth of unreleased material operas, ballets, films and they won’t allow me to put any of them out. It’s like that movie The Firm. I create the work but they immediately own it and lease it back to me, even though I’m the one who did it all.”
A recent switch in high-ranking personnel at Warner Bros in Burbank California doesn’t fill O(+> with great confidence in his future. “They’re just as corporate. It makes no difference. They’re only interested in money, not music. Nothing’s changed. The old bosses like Mo Ostin and Ahmet Ertegun may have been smiling when they took my records from me but the result was the same.
“Do you think Little Richard felt any better because the people who ripped him off were nice to his face? I doubt if it’s a racial thing; more a question of big guy versus little guy. Y’know I’d really like to show photographs of these people on the backdrop at my concerts so the audience could see how frightening these people look. Then they might understand what I have to put up with.”
The Gold Experience debacle aside, O(+> also claims the record company, of which he is a vice-president, has deliberately ignored his choice of singles in recent years, “They’ve always put obstacles in my way. Last year they wouldn’t sanction The Most Beautiful Girl In The World so I had to release It myself.” That record became his first British number one and sold more than a million copies in America.
O(+> and Warners are battling over huge stakes The $100 million he received some years ago as a loyalty payment was absorbed by his Paisley Park complex, an endeavour said to be haemorrhaging money at an alarming rate. The artist also says Warner’s has reneged on an agreement to bankroll him to the heady tune of $10 million per album ever since he took the unusual step of changing his name. Why on earth did he do that?
“I was told I had to by certain forces.” What? You had a religious vision? “Hmm, that sounds too scary. Better call it a moment of inspiration or intuition. I just knew that everything I was to do had to be in this new guise” Insiders tell me that the 36-year-old is not a man who takes criticism lightly. In the rarefied world he Inhabits he is used to people jumping to his tune any negative comments are met with a cry of “You just don’t understand”.
He is unrepentant about his puzzling and potentially alienating persona. “If my fans are worried or confused should I really care? Surely they want me to be true to myself. If people don’t like the new direction, that’s fine, but don’t come to these shows expecting old Prince material because I don’t do any.”
It might be tempting to dismiss the man’s rap as the rantings of someone suffering from extreme paranoia or delusions of grandeur, but as with George Michael’s drawn-out dispute with the Sony giant he views his stand as a principled attempt to disrupt the entire system. And he has a theory.
“Once the Internet is a reality the music business is finished. There won’t be any need for record companies. Everyone I speak to — Michael Hutchence, Johnny Gill. Lenny Kravltz — they all agree with me.
“If I can send you my record direct what’s the point of having the business? I don’t even have a manager any more. Would you want somebody living off your work? Seal’s got my ex-manager now,” he says cryptically. “Let’s see how he gets on with him.”
The increasing sense of isolation O(+> says he feels in the USA is partly due to his own prolific nature. His recordings post-Lovesexy have seldom been accessible affairs. Sprawling efforts like Diamonds and Pearls and the intentionally substandard Come have contributed to what doctors call Severe Prince Fatigue, so it’s ironic that The Gold Experience sounds like his most commercial venture for 10 years.
As our strange meeting draws to a close, the small symbolic one leaps to his feet and makes a plaintive but apparently sincere request. “If there’s anything you can do to help me, to draw attention to my problems, I’d be very grateful. Welcome to the dawn.”
• O(+> plays Wembley Arena Fri 3 to Sun 5, 7, Wed 8, 21 and Wed 22 March (box Office: 081 900 1234).