Cradle to slave

That "skinny little motherfucker with the high voice”, as he calls himself on the Black Album, was right to change his name. If Prince had arrived in Britain with a Greatest Hits show and another patchy album to promote, his past glories would have towered over his 5’2” frame like one of his autistic muscle-men. However, now re-born as O(+>, he’s offering a rare insight into an artist stretched between musical genius, razor-edged business acumen and extreme narcissism.

A few weeks ago, O(+> decided to talk directly to the media through a dozen carefully regulated interviews. VOX was one of the magazines invited to Wembley Arena for a “20-minute chat” with the Artist Formerly Known As Prince. His agenda was to talk about his contractual dispute with Warner Bros, setting the rules for the “interview” through his blank-eyed security men. They inform us that no tape recorder, pen or notepad are allowed into the star’s dressing room, which means a thorough frisking, as if they suspect me of strapping a machine gun to my groin. The diminutive figure who greets me is in one of his tight, all-blue trouser suits and he’s wearing Ray-Bans. This cuts out any eye-contact, which might be just as well since they prevent him from relying on the doe-eyed expressions he usually falls back on during his TV appearances. That voice, the fey, barely audible whisper, as heavily layered with artifice as his panstick-caked face, is also noticeably absent. Instead, he says “Hello” in a low, disarmingly “normal” pitch.

He hands me a copy of his unreleased album, The Gold Experience, and asks whether I’d like to take it with me to sell on the cover of the magazine. After a brief look at the gaudy packaging (lots of glitzy reflective surfaces and a golden woman on a silver bed), I pocket the CD and thank him earnestly. He looks a bit phased at first and then begins to laugh to himself as if he’s suddenly pleased at his own joke. When I replace the CD on the table, he tells me: “See you understand. I want to give my music to people directly. I want you to be able to walk away with it. But they won’t let me,” he adds, refering to his record company.

O(+>’s current stand-off with his record company is rooted in a complex mixture of business suss, personal grievance, artistic frustration and, more subtley, in the new pressures created by a rapidly changing, technology- led culture which threatens to undermine the longterm relationship between artist and label.

As he sits there with “Slave” inked across his face, it’s clear that O(+>’s approach to this current contractual breakdown is more showy and melodramatic than George Michael’s journey through the courts. “People ask, how can I be a slave with all this money, but it’s not about money. If you don’t like your magazine you can leave. I can’t leave when I want to,” he complains, before adding with emphasis: “They can’t tell me that.”

O(+> claims his dispute is about an inequality in his relationship with Warner Bros, which centres around the company’s ownership of his master- tapes. “I’ve recorded 16 albums for them, but I don’t own any of them. They’re not my songs,” he says. “I offered them The Gold Experience but I told them that I wanted to keep the master. They said: ‘This is how it is in America, boy. This is the American way’. I know they can’t do it because then Madonna and everyone else will want the same deal,” he states, again laughing slyly at some internal joke. ‘‘They keep asking me for the album: ‘When’s that album coming, boy,’“ he says, his Minneapolis twang becoming more pronounced as he talks faster.

“They’re never going to get it. This album will never be released.”

Warner Brothers’ spokesman, Bob Merlis, recently confirmed that Jr has refused to hand over the masters of the album. “We would like to release The Gold Experience,” said Merlis. “It will take his delivering the masters for us to do that. And that’s the hang up. Not that we refuse to do it. We look forward to releasing that, or some other album, and having some hits.”

Although the problem is not simply a publicity scam, .. O(+>’s flair for self-promotion has placed him in a stronger negotiating position. Unlike George Michael, who has put his career on hold, O(+> has offered Warners an album a year from his vaults of unreleased material until his contract runs out in 1999.

“There’s a Prince And The Revolution album which is much better than Purple Rain. There are at least seven albums and duets with Stevie Wonder, Lenny Kravitz, Sheena Easton and Kate Bush,” he declares with a dismissive shrug. With characteristic flamboyance he also claims that on December 1998, he’s going to hold a massive party at Madison Square Gardens to celebrate his freedom.

Meanwhile, O(+> continues to be as prolific as ever. Although the master tapes of The Gold Experience are still under wraps, the songs have been wriggling around the fat, dynamic grooves of his live shows for the past few weeks. He’s even successfully diverted attention on to his work with the New Power Generation whose single ‘Get Wild’ (plugged by O(+> in a much publicised disguised appearance on TOTP) jumped straight into the UK Top 20. They have therefore achieved the kind of chart success which consistently eluded his numerous proteges on the Paisley Park label. When WEA closed the label, ‘‘The Boss” saw it as a personal affront, fuelling the problems which have led to the current argument. “I thought we were a team, but they didn’t promote the artists on Paisley Park. They’re on a power trip. I talk to them man to man like I’m talking to you but they’re not honest with me.”

The personal manner in which O(+> describes his relationship with one of the biggest corporations in the world hints at wounded vanity. One insider claims that ,t was upset when, following a major executive reshuffle at Warners last year, nobody called him to say “Hi”.

The managerial changes also led to the resignation of the Warner label’s chairman, Mo Austin, a man who O(+> respected. It was Austin who gave the go ahead for O(+> to release ‘The Most Beautiful Girl In The World’ on his own, indepedently distributed NPG Records label. This was just the kind of maverick negotiation which the new chiefs objected to and they set about dismantling the old chain of command in order to impose a more corporate style. O(+> wasn’t the only artist who began to view his new bosses with suspicion—REM, Neil Young and Eric Clapton were all rumoured to be following Mo Austin out of the door, until U-turns were made which appear to have handed the power back to record industry men rather than to Time Warner accountants. However, ,t has decided that he’s been poorly treated and there’s no going back.

O(+>’s other gripe with Warners is that he wants them to release his albums as fast as he records them. “James Brown released an album every six months,” he states. However, James Brown had low recording costs and minimal promotional campaigns, while O(+>’s vision of artistic freedom requires a gigantic budget. He has spent huge sums on his Paisley Park studio complex (WEA closed the label because it was losing money at an alarming rate), a second studio in Los Angeles (where it’s estimated that he spends $500,000 a year to have a studio crew at the ready), lavish stage sets, club nights and after-show performances.

Still, changes in technology may offer O(+> the financial life-blood that he needs to free his muse from corporate restraints. This is why he’s avoiding a potentially binding legal dispute as he begins to challenge the need for a record company in the first place. When Warners released his last Prince album, Come, in 1994 O(+> made available an album of his songs performed by different artists on an 800 phone line. Over the next few years improvements in electronic distribution systems via the telephone, cable and satellite transmission will offer artists more direct access to fans. In this case ownership of the music becomes crucial. “I want to get rid of the middle man. I want to give people my music and if I want to give it to them for free I should be able to. I know people at radio stations,” he argues, as if he has just hatched some elaborate but rather mystifying plan. “I would like to pay that man at the radio station to play my record. No middle men. No agents. If anyone wants my music they can have it.”

When I leave, O(+> doesn’t offer me his tatty, heavily fingered copy of The Gold Experience. The album is left on the table, its fate still undecided.