Saturday Flashback.

Prince's gal pals and his backing band re-assemble after the musician's death by overdose to keep the music playing. He didn't always treat them well, but they live on and except for the music, he is gone...

On Thursday night, Prince’s band the Revolution arrived on that stage for the first time since 2012 to honor, and grieve for, one of their own. For three months after his death, the group had remained silent about details of a reunion, finally confirming a two-night stand (which grew to include a third) in early July. “I need this as much as you,” the bassist Mark Brown, a.k.a. Brownmark, wrote on Facebook at the time of the announcement. “Sharing the music with you is what will heal.”

Last night, they kept him alive for just a little bit longer.
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Wednesday, June 25
"Wendy?"

"Yes Lisa." "Is the water warm enough?"
"Yes Lisa." "Shall we begin?"
"Yes Lisa."
...
Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman were young Minneapolis musicians -- working gals -- whose style ended up influencing Prince's Purple Rain album, a bit more than they maybe got credit for.* This is a good interview, the news hook being the album's 30th anniversary.

How conscious was Prince of assembling for the Revolution that racial and sexuality rainbow you described?
Wendy: He was incredibly conscious of it. Look at the way he looked during Dirty Mind and Controversy and 1999. He was so androgynous. He didn't care if you were [paraphrasing Prince's 'Uptown' lyric] 'black, white, straight, gay, Puerto Rican, just a freakin'.' That guy wanted fans. So anyway he could get them -- and a more interesting way he could do it -- appealed to him. The Sly and the Family Stone mentality, that whole black/white/freaky thing on stage appealed to him.
Lisa: I'll give you an example. We had a photo shoot for the Purple Rain poster. We were all in our different positions and he at one point walked over to me and Wendy and lifted my arm up and put my hand around Wendy's waist and said, 'There.' And that is the poster. That's how precise he was about how he wanted the image of the band to be. He wanted it to be way more obvious. We weren't just the two girls in the band.
Wendy: We were the couple.
Lisa: We were the gay girls in the band. It was very calculated.
Wendy: And how did it make us feel? I felt slightly protected by it, which is really ironic. There was so much mystery around him and he never had to answer to anybody or anything and I was so young and dumb that I thought I could adopt that philosophy.
Lisa: It was validating. It was just, 'Here you go. This is the name of the story and this is what it looks like.' And it was all the more reason why we didn't feel as though we had to talk about it. People just saw it. They bought the records and we were successful, so it wasn't that big a deal. It's like hip-hop today. It's dangerous, but every little kid in the Midwest is rapping.

So Prince knew the full extent of your relationship?
Wendy: He wouldn't spend the night at our house. He was very much aware of it. [During the mid-'80s, Prince dated Wendy's twin sister, Susannah Melvoin, who sang the Family's 1985 version of "Nothing Compares 2 U."]

How far back had you known each other before the Revolution?
Wendy: Lisa and I had known each other since we were two years old. Our families grew up together. We had bands together. We went to the same schools together, the whole thing. And then during those pivotal teenage years, we spent a few years apart. I turned 16 and fell in love with her, and we were a couple for 22 years starting when I was 17. We fell in love in 1980, and we were a full-blown couple from 1981 to 2002.

Did you first think Prince was gay?
Lisa: He was little and kinda prissy and everything. But he's so not gay.
Wendy: He's a girl, for sure, but he's not gay. He looked at me like a gay woman would look at another woman.
Lisa: Totally. He's like a fancy lesbian. ...

Prince certainly played up the ambiguity of his sexuality, and yet many straight men have a certain kind of relationship with lesbians that a gay man doesn't have: It's a turn-on for them. Did you feel at any point as though you were being exploited to assert Prince's heterosexuality?
Wendy: Yes. Towards the very end of our relationship together as a working triumvirate, yes. It felt more like he had used up all he needed from us and he was going on to something else.
Lisa: But do you think that was connected to sexuality?
Wendy: Well, it might've been because he got Cat the dancer and Sheila E. to be in the band and be more sexually irreverent on stage with him, and that kind of played to his heterosexual side. Because as a lesbian couple, we weren't playing that sexuality with him specifically, and I think that maybe he needed more of that playfulness, and that probably came from him wanting to exploit his heterosexual side more. Maybe it was unconscious, but yeah, for sure.

Are you hitting a point in your career where things are finally turning around for you?
Lisa: Now it's kinda just fun. I actually find myself enjoying my memories more.
Wendy: But we'll end up getting more calls from Prince because he can't stand when we talk about him.
Lisa: He's always like, 'Could you just err on the side of privacy?' Well, it was our life too, pal! Whatever. It's okay.
Wendy: Trust me, Barry. He will read this article and we will get a phone call and he'll be pissed. Somewhere in this article he'll find something to be pissed about.

Won't he be proud of you too?
Wendy: No. No. No.
Lisa: He's not very generous like that.

Well, I'll do my best.
Lisa: Make it crazy! I don't care.
Wendy: Holy shit, Lisa. I don't wanna get that call.
Lisa: I'll take the call.


Lol. Go crazy! That is from a 2009 interview The Revolution Will Be Harmonized that still cracks me up. "Could you just err on the side of privacy?" (Prince is a godly man.)
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* In 1980, Lisa Coleman replaced Gayle Chapman in Prince's touring band on keyboards and piano. Lisa was asked to contribute vocals to several tracks over his next few albums. In 1983, guitarist Dez Dickerson left the band over religious conflicts. Lisa suggested Wendy, who had been brought on tour, as a replacement. Prince accepted Wendy into the band as they began to record Purple Rain. The film and album were a phenomenon, turning Prince and the newly named Revolution into superstars. Prince's personal life also became intertwined with Wendy's when he began dating her twin sister Susannah.

After Purple Rain, Coleman and Melvoin continued to participate in Prince projects, including Parade, the soundtrack to Prince's film Under the Cherry Moon. In interviews, the two reported they felt they were not getting the recognition and credit they deserved despite their growing contributions to his work. During 1986, Wendy & Lisa became increasingly disillusioned with Prince's decision to expand The Revolution with non-musicians, such as Wally Safford and Greg Brooks, and Prince's increasing machismo that these new members brought with them.



posted by Mary E. Glynn at 7:42 PM