Purple Rain – Prince and the Revolution

**Adam Maness** (0:20)
I'm Adam Maness and I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the Youll Hear It Podcast.

**Peter Martin** (0:25)
Music Explored.

**Adam Maness** (0:26)
Explored with Purple Fringe, Peter. Brought to you today by Open Studio. Go to openstudiojazz.com. That's openstudiojazz.com. For all your jazz listen needs, Peter over at Open Studio. There's big stuff happening. We got our summer sale going on right now.
That won't last very long as you're listening to this. And if you're listening to this later and it's not the summer, we already missed it, but our biggest savings of the year, go check that out. We've also got a new course from you and I called Jazz Piano for the Bandstand. Talk about how to play with other people. Give you some real concrete examples of how to play the piano with bass and drums.

**Peter Martin** (0:59)
Most of my contribution to that course, to be honest, is just, this is how you play with other people. Follow me.

**Adam Maness** (1:04)
Yeah.

**Peter Martin** (1:04)
Jump on my back.

**Adam Maness** (1:05)
And then Peter rips it. Go to openstudiojazz.com for all your jazz lesson needs. Peter, this has been a long time coming.

**Peter Martin** (1:12)
It has been. You said Purple Fringe. And I thought you were saying Purple Friend. I was like, oh, I'm your Purple Friend for the day because we're doing Purple Rain.

**Adam Maness** (1:20)
Like Barney the Dice, sir, what are you talking about?

**Peter Martin** (1:22)
Love that dude.

**Adam Maness** (1:22)
That dude's good.

**Peter Martin** (1:23)
Good dude.

**Adam Maness** (1:24)
That's a good dude, man. Shout out Selena Gomez.

**Peter Martin** (1:27)
You know who else was a good dude? A great talent. Generational talent, perhaps?

**Adam Maness** (1:32)
Oh, not even perhaps.

**Peter Martin** (1:33)
Prince Rogers Nelson.

**Adam Maness** (1:34)
100%.

**Peter Martin** (1:35)
Right?

**Adam Maness** (1:36)
Maybe the greatest dude.

**Peter Martin** (1:37)
Maybe. Whoa. Whoa. Look at that flag. Just got planted in the carpet.
An amazing talent, a controversial controversy, controversial gentleman.

**Adam Maness** (1:48)
That's a great album.

**Peter Martin** (1:49)
Maybe not anymore, but at the time kind of controversial. I mean somewhat.

**Adam Maness** (1:52)
No, for sure.

**Peter Martin** (1:53)
But not even, you know, we're going to talk about some of the kind of pop culture stuff, but also a very, I was thinking about this. I was like, what made Prince so unique?

**Adam Maness** (2:03)
Well, that's exactly the word I use from. For a pop star especially, at the time especially.

**Peter Martin** (2:08)
At a time of unique other, I'm like, if everybody's unique, who's unique, right?

**Adam Maness** (2:12)
Yeah, but for him to be so huge, and this album that we're listening to today, Purple Rain, really is the album that made him a huge, huge global sensation, a huge star. Blockbuster movie.

**Peter Martin** (2:23)
Biggest album of the year.

**Adam Maness** (2:23)
His biggest album ever up to that point, and I think maybe ever, right?
And the biggest album of 1984 This really put Prince over the top in the global superstar.

**Peter Martin** (2:33)
1984 into 85

**Adam Maness** (2:34)
But he's a really interesting, unique global superstar. Because he's so specific. And so, I mean, he's so interesting, has a really unique point of view that's different from any other pop star. I mean, this is not Whitney Houston, right? This is not Huey Lewis. This is like a guy, this is a guy who's got some religious things happening in all of his music, some, a little bit of sex happening in his music, just a hair, just a touch. But I mean, the androgyny, the outfits, the dance, the band, this is the first album made with the Revolution.
And to me, this is like an incredible pairing of Prince who had made basically an album per year up until this point since they did Savage South. Mostly by himself.
But on this album, the Revolution, full band on six tracks out of the nine tracks, which is pretty stunning for a Prince album.

**Peter Martin** (3:28)
And that was a big deal for Prince. I mean, obviously this record was so big, it was such a big pop hit, biggest album of really almost two years. I mean, almost for a continuous year from 84 to 85 I remember that because I was a freshman in a little thing called high school. Did you ever attend that? I barely did.

**Adam Maness** (3:44)
For a little while.

**Peter Martin** (3:45)
Yeah. But so a lot of people, this was their first introduction to Prince for sure. And not just the scared parents that heard their kids listening to this freaking out.