52 Weeks Of Prince: Week 40
- krohnn
- Apr 18
- 11 min read
Musicology
On March 15, 2004 the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame inducted Prince, who attended and played at the ceremony. Like the other inductees (Jackson Browne, The Dells, George Harrison,Bob Seger, Traffic, and ZZ Top, if you’re interested), Prince had a ten-minute set that was mostly a greatest hits montage. It was good, but nobody ever talks about it. Instead, they (and I) are preoccupied by Prince’s other performance at the ceremony, specifically his guitar solo during the George Harrison tribute.
What nobody ever seems to ask is “What was Prince even doing there?” After all, it was a tribute to someone whom, as far as I can determine, never met Prince. Everyone else on the stage had a personal, long-standing relationship with Harrison. On guitars and vocals, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne were friends with Harrison for many years, and had been involved with several of Harrison’s projects. Steve Ferrone (drums) had toured with Harrison and was a member of Petty’s Heartbreakers. Scott Thurston (bass) originally a member of the Stooges, he was also a longstanding member of the Heartbreakers and played on several Harrison albums. Steve Winwood (keys) had been a friend for decades, and played on Harrison’s self-titled 1979 album. Winwood’s fellow Traffic alum Jim Capaldi (keys again) had Harrison as guest on one of his albums. Marc Mann (lead guitar) was an associate of Lynne’s who had frequently worked with Harrison as a result. And of course, standing in front of the drum riser and dutifully strumming away on his guitar was Harrison’s son Dhani, who was the only one who really seemed overawed by any of these proceedings.
At first, however, there seemed little to be overawed by. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is one of George Harrison’s greatest songs, and one of the best tracks ever released by the Beatles. The original (if you are not familiar) had Eric Clapton as an uncredited lead guitarist and soloist, and he was in the middle of his psychedelic period, so the guitar howls most of the way through the song. Even now, I could probably sing you every note Clapton plays in that song. It is that distinctive.
Meanwhile, the barely-restrained energy of that track is not really present in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame presentation for most of the run of the song. This, in itself, is not that much of a surprise. These performances are often billed as “all-star jams” but they rarely live up to even that tepid hype. It’s understandable, really. The venue is a banquet hall somewhere in NYC, everyone is sitting at tables – it is simply not where anyone would expect to hear Rock N Roll. So any energy or momentum an act wants to develop has to overcome the inertia of the sterile environment.
For much of the performance, it feels more like a recital of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” rather than a jam of any sort. Everyone knows the song, everyone knows it’s a tribute, and Petty, Lynne and Winwood have more professionalism than inner fire. Even Mann’s lead guitar is a note-perfect recreation of Clapton’s decades-old improvisations. You can tell he spent some time really dialling in the tone so that people would squint at him, thinking perhaps it was just Clapton in a golf cap. I know I did.
Then Prince steps from the far stage left position for his solo. Moments before, you could be forgiven for not noticing him. He was barely there. This must have required monumental effort from Prince. He is not the sort of person who is on a stage without being noticed, yet he managed it. So, almost by sleight of hand, Prince is invisible one second, and the next second he is blowing the roof off the place. It took everyone but Dhani by surprise. If you watch the video, keep your eye on Dhani, because he was geeking out the whole time.
So much of the solo just washes over you and reads as “badass guitar solo” – even if you’re a guitarist and can see what he’s doing. I am both a (hobbyist) guitarist and magician, and there is a feeling you get when you watch someone do a card or coin routine and the quality of the work is such that you know what they’re doing and it doesn’t impact your amazement at all. I almost never get that feeling watching musicians, but this guitar solo is one of those.
In this case, Prince had a kind of perfect storm scenario to do something like this. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is a perfect soloist’s song because so often the key (A minor – ish) is given these other notes within them (an A minor chord with an additional F# in the bass being the most audible), meaning that as a soloist, you can be a little more loosey-goosey with the notes you play and it still sounds good.
Another element is the band itself. I know I just got done talking about how they were nearly asleep at the wheel, but they were still some of the best musicians to ever play this kind of music, so as soon as Prince started playing you can see everyone come awake and start playing like a band. And if you know what to look for, it’s clear Petty is in charge, and Prince takes his cues from him.
As to the technical aspects of the solo, I don’t want to dwell too long on them (although I’m obviously about to), but Prince really does almost everything you can do short of finger-tapping. Part of what makes this all work so well is his sense of where he is in the song, the often-overlooked ability to also know what is about to happen, and keeping both ears on the band. The opening notes of the solo establish his home base of the A Dorian mode (which is A minor with a major sixth, again giving us A minor-ish), and he seems to deliberately choose to use a bend through the fourth to the fifth to make his “crying” noises as opposed to Clapton, who used his old trick of bending the root to (I believe) the ninth. And he does some amazing melodic and harmonic stuff, but he will also come back and play small bits of the chords to let the song breathe for a second and let the band know he’s still with him.
At 3:44 in the video, he slowly opens up his wah-wah pedal as he’s playing, giving that classic rock guitar scream, and it really shows how he thought differently about playing lead versus rhythm, as his wah-wah as a rhythm guitarist often had the classic keeping-the-beat-on-the-pedal sound (wokka-chikka-wokka).
At 4:02, he lets loose with one of the most wild-sounding bits in the solo when he starts out hammering on a bluesy couple of notes as he again slowly opens the wah, the pedals down the A Major scale and finishes these textural flourishes with a melodic, memorable, singable lick before letting loose with a four part “guitar throw,” which is where you pick or strum some strings while sliding your fingers across the fretboard. A four part throw in this case is up the neck, back down, back up and then down again to his position for the next part of the solo. I will say nothing of his “fall back into the crowd” showmanship except that if you pay attention, you will notice that Prince made damn sure his bodyguard was the one catching him.
At 4:55, you can see Prince give a long look over to Petty. Prince is asking him if the song is over. Prince is in the way of the camera, so we don’t see Petty’s response, but he clearly told Prince to take another round. Check Prince’s face in the next shot. He’s having fun now.
What’s cool here is that he starts his second round almost how he started he first, only now with a more open wah, and in the same point in the song as the record he gives a few of the “cries” Clapton did, only using the fourth rather than the root, so it still sounds Prince-y.
Then right about 5:22 he begins to land the song by playing power chords (meaning he’s playing the bass notes with his thumb and third finger and muting everything else) in a low, slick, rhythmic riff (in a song with no riff!). Then he runs up the neck, following the chords of the band, and playing the strings with his second, third and fourth fingers, flamenco-style. Not only does this sound dark and a bit funky, it’s also a pretty bold move. This is a huge band playing, and to suddenly start playing these thrumming power chords risks being lost in the mix. I personally think Prince was so with the band that he knew he could blend his guitar with them and it would still sound sick (it does) and even if he’s suddenly playing at an effectively lower volume, by now he knew everyone was willing to strain to hear him if they needed to because whatever he was doing was 100% choice. Finally, before bringing it all home, he plays an F chord.
This may not seem significant, since that chord is what the band is playing at that moment, but all through this, when an F hits, Prince is somewhere else playing any note in the chord but F, opting to use F# in its place, which you can’t do in the middle of an F chord. At last, he shifts back into a rhythm guitar mode before giving us the classic noodly-guitar ending of a rock song. Another little flourish as he throws the guitar into the rafters where it disappears, and then he swaggers off, his work done here.
Pfew!
And instantly, Prince was recognized as a guitar god. Which was odd, since he had been one since 1982, but whatever.
It was not that Prince had ever hid his skill on guitar. Around this time every year, there are always clickbait articles floating about social media about the “real reason” Prince was there. Most seem to think Prince was seeking revenge on Rolling Stone for leaving him off the list of greatest guitarists or somesuch, but I don’t give that much credit. It’s not that I think Prince didn’t feel burned by that – I’m sure he did – but he also had to know how he had always recorded, produced and marketed his work.
The history of Prince as a guitarist is not the story of a guitar hero. He had always been a songwriter, producer and arranger first. It’s a side effect of being so good at so many instruments that he never really pushed the guitar to the front of his songs. He could play the hell out of the guitar, true, but the same could be said of the keyboards, bass, even drums. He was always more concerned with the whole than with any particular part, which is not how a guitar hero behaves.
For example:
Jimmy Page: Led Zeppelin’s first album is a prototype for how guitar heroes would announce their presence to the world thereafter. It started with a commercial-sounding song, “Good Times, Bad Times” and then proceeded to sound like the psychedelic blues beast Zep’s legend was founded on.
Stevie Ray Vaughan: SRV & Double Trouble’s first album had as its second track “Pride and Joy,” Vaughan’s signature song. It’s a master class in his techniques of playing both lead and rhythm guitar simultaneously.
Eddie VanHalen: the second track on the first VanHalen album is called “Eruption” and it’s a two-minute guitar solo. That’s it. Very little drums, almost no bass, and absolutely no David Lee Roth.
Contrast this with the first track on Prince’s first album: A million voices, no instruments.
Even on many songs that could, and by rights should, have been guitar forward (“Let’s Go Crazy,” “Joy in Repetition,” “U Got The Look,” and even “Chaos and Disorder”) the mix was assembled to serve the complete song, not any one instrument, so the audience seems to have missed how good the guitar work was.
In any case, that guitar solo threw a spotlight on Prince for a moment (as I’m sure it was calculated to do), and reminded the world of how incredibly good he really was at his job.
So next, he did something every smart “legacy artist” does when inducted into the Hall, and capitalized on it as much as he could.
Don’t Call It A Comeback, Cause That’s What It Is
To be inducted into the Rock N Roll HOF these days is not so much an honor as a financial opportunity for an older artist to receive a momentarily higher profile. Usually, there is a tour in the pipeline and possibly a greatest hits package.
Prince decided to release a new album and mount a huge stadium tour. So far so good. His other goal, though, was to create buzz around his music in a way that hadn’t really happened since the 80’s. He would hate this term to be applied to him, but his spirit will just have to forgive me: he wanted to make a comeback.
Now, I’m not suggesting Prince was washed-up at this time. Far from it, but he wanted to end his “wilderness years” and sell some albums. There is nothing wrong with that, any more than there was something wrong with his decision to withdraw in the first place.
And it was a positive decision, let’s recall. In his conflict with Warner Bros, he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol. Once released from his recording contract he continued to use that name because “Prince” was still on the contract that administered his publishing, which was also with Warner Bros. Once that settled down, his deliberate attempts to become irrelevant to the pop music scene had completely succeeded. At that point, he opened the NPG Music Club, further isolating him from the mainstream music ecosystem. Now, as it turned out, there was less money in that than he would have liked, and less attention to his work, so it was natural he would eventually want to take his career bigger again.
But he still didn’t like the way major labels treated artists, so he needed to do something to retain that sense of independence, but he also wanted the buzz generated by big numbers of record sales. The problem there was that he could still sell out stadiums anywhere in the world, but that would no longer generate record sales. So what could he do?
He did what he did in 1997. He cheated a bit. When Emancipation was sold as a triple album, each 3-album set was counted as three sales, not one, artificially driving up the numbers. The next year the rules were changed so he couldn’t pull that trick again. What he could do, however, was include the new album in the price of each and every ticket on the tour. One ticket gets you one copy of the album. Sell millions of tickets to people who wanted to hear you play “Purple Rain” and you also sell millions of albums. And the hope was they would like it well enough to not only listen to it, but be anxious to hear the next album.
This worked well enough to expand Prince’s base enough to keep him selling records and selling out venues until his passing. And, to be fair, Musicology is a good start to that process.
Musicology
The album feels like a classic Prince hodge-podge of themes and techniques used, yet still somehow retains its identity as a cohesive album.
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