Purple Rain by Prince (1984) — what a copy is worth and which pressing to own, in a full Lead-In dossier: Prince's sixth album, made for his film and credited to the Revolution. Three of its songs began at one First Avenue concert, and 'When Doves Cry' lost its bass at the final mix.
Prince's sixth album, credited to his band and made for a film built on his own idea. Its best moments come from what he cut away, and so does its one weakness.
Purple Rain is remembered as a live band at its peak and a soundtrack that ruled 1984. It's really a feat of editing: a concert take cut by about a third, a hit with its bass pulled out. The same knife left a gap in the middle.
On 3 August 1983 Prince played a benefit for the Minnesota Dance Theatre at First Avenue in Minneapolis. About 1,200 people paid $25 each. At the last minute he called in a mobile recording truck from the Record Plant. It was Wendy Melvoin's first show with the band. It was also the first time 'Purple Rain' had been played in public. The engineer David Rivkin remembers that nobody clapped, because nobody had heard the songs before. Three of the album's nine tracks come from that night: 'I Would Die 4 U', 'Baby I'm a Star' and the title song.
That night is why Purple Rain gets filed as a great live band record. It's only partly one. The performances are the ones from that night, but they were reworked. The bass was overdubbed later, two of the songs gained strings, and the title song lost a verse and about a third of its length. The album's biggest hit went further. Prince made 'When Doves Cry' alone, then pulled its bass part out at the mix. Purple Rain is a great record because Prince edited as boldly as he played. Its one real flaw comes from the same place. Not every cut served the album, and you can hear where.
The music and the film grew up together. After 1999 broke him on pop radio, Prince wanted a movie based loosely on his own life, with the next album as its soundtrack. Light writes that he jotted down ideas for it in a purple notebook on his tour bus. In Light's telling, the music was conceived in parallel with the film from the start. His managers found a director, Albert Magnoli, who had never made a feature. Prince wanted a different band, too. Light gives his stated aim as a cross between Fleetwood Mac and Sly and the Family Stone. Replacing the guitarist Dez Dickerson with Wendy Melvoin gave the front line a mix of race and gender. Prince was 26 when the album came out, with five records behind him.
The sleeve credits the album to Prince and the Revolution, and that credit is the record's promise. It keeps the promise on six songs. On the other three, the sleeve says Prince produced, arranged, composed and performed them alone. Those three are 'The Beautiful Ones', 'Darling Nikki' and 'When Doves Cry', and they're the strangest things here. The band songs face outwards, towards a crowd. The solo songs face inwards. Prince was trying to be a bandleader and a loner on the same record, and for most of its length he manages both.
The title song was built to a brief. On the road, Light writes, Prince wanted to understand Bob Seger's appeal, and Matt Fink told him it was the big power ballads. Prince set himself the goal of writing one, and first sketched it to the band in December 1982. In Lisa Coleman's account, it began as a country song. Prince gave it to Stevie Nicks, who, Coleman says, felt intimidated by it. Light adds that Prince had asked Nicks to write the words, and that she said no because it was too much for her. Then Wendy Melvoin played big chords over it at a rehearsal. The band played it for 6 hours and had most of the arrangement by the end of the day. Prince even phoned Journey's Jonathan Cain to make sure its likeness to 'Faithfully' wouldn't start a copyright fight. The song people hear as his most personal began as a job he set himself. The band made it his.
What reached the album was rebuilt, though Rivkin puts it more gently. He says the versions on the record were almost exactly what Prince did live. He also says the bass was overdubbed later, because a wireless bass couldn't be recorded well. Strings were added in Los Angeles, arranged by Coleman and Prince. Coleman's brother David played them with Novi Novog and Suzie Katayama. A third verse came out, and the tape was cut and spliced. How long the concert version ran is disputed: 13 minutes in one account, about 14 in Rivkin's. The album keeps 8:41. So the playing on the record is the playing from that night, and the shape of it is Prince's edit. That's no cheat. The editing is where the song became a record.
Put it on and watch the clock. By the last sung line, at 3:42, the title has come round 14 times since it first arrives at 0:45. Then the words run out, with 5 minutes still to go. More than half of the closing track comes after its last line. It was written for arena crowds, and it hands them the chorus early and often, then leaves them room. Prince sang it in the rain at the Super Bowl in February 2007. Light writes that it was the last song he ever performed. The brief, it turns out, was the right one.
The other band songs earn the credit on the cover. 'Let's Go Crazy' had been played at First Avenue too, but Light says the band re-recorded it live in their rehearsal room. Prince overdubbed the closing guitar solo afterwards. It opens as a spoken sermon over organ, with his first words at 0:05, and then the band comes in at full speed. From about 3:32 the singing gives way to the solo, which carries the track almost to the end. 'I Would Die 4 U' goes the opposite way. It lasts 2:49, and the title comes round 12 times, first at 0:30. There's almost nothing in it but hook. That's the band's discipline, and it's why the song still works as a single.
'When Doves Cry' was made the other way round. Magnoli asked Prince for a song to go under a montage. The next morning, by Light's account, Prince handed over two new recordings, and one of them was 'When Doves Cry'. He made it alone at Sunset Sound. It was the last song mixed, with the film edit almost done, and in 1999 he told Bass Player what happened. The track had a bass part. Prince sat with his head on the console, listening to a rough mix that sounded too conventional. Jill Jones walked in and asked what was wrong. He pulled the bass out of the mix to show her how he'd have it if he could have it his way. She asked why he didn't.
What's left is a drum machine, keyboards, guitar and Prince's voice, with no bass line to tell you where the floor is. Light calls the guitar line grinding. Prince's own view, in the same interview, was that the bass had moved into the kick drum. The vocal ends at about 3:39. The instrumental then runs on for more than 2 minutes with the same hole in the middle of it. That empty space is the best production decision on the record. When the Library of Congress added the album to its registry, its essay singled out the missing bass. The song reached #1 on the Hot 100 on 7 July 1984 and stayed 5 weeks, keeping Springsteen's 'Dancing in the Dark' at #2. Kurt Loder's Rolling Stone review that month allowed that the album might not yield another smash like 'Little Red Corvette'. It already had one, and 'Let's Go Crazy' followed it to #1 in the autumn.
The other solo tracks are the album's most private. 'The Beautiful Ones' waits until 0:28 for its first line, then barely lets go of the vocal for 4 minutes. 'Darling Nikki' was made at home, at what the sleeve calls 'a place very close 2 where u live'. Light says Prince brought it in after the band found his first new songs too pop. It's the least comfortable thing on the record. It also became the album's most public song. In 1985 the Parents Music Resource Center, co-founded by Tipper Gore, put it first on its list of objectionable records. By September there was a Senate hearing on record labelling. A song made alone at home became the first example in a national argument about records.
For all that, Purple Rain is less of a single piece than its reputation says. Rolling Stone ranked it #8 of all albums in 2020, and lists like that treat it as a whole. Its middle doesn't hold together that well. 'Computer Blue' once ran past 14 minutes, Light says, and the 'Hallway Speech' version issued in 2017 runs 12:18. On the album it's 3:59, and the words are over by 1:22. What's left sets up a suite and then stops. Light tells the story of its trimming next to another late change. Prince had given 'Take Me with U' to Apollonia 6, then took it back as a duet with his co-star. It's a sweet, slight song. The album would be better with the longer 'Computer Blue' in its place.
Some of the album's famous numbers are misremembered, too. It didn't go straight in at #1. It entered the Billboard 200 at #11, reached the top on 4 August 1984 and stayed 24 weeks. That equalled the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack's run in 1978, and it was no record: the West Side Story soundtrack had held #1 for 54 weeks. Critics were less united than the charts. The Village Voice poll put it second to Born in the U.S.A., and Robert Christgau dissented, hearing despair under the pop. Prince came to call the album his albatross, a record that pigeonholed him. The film has aged worse than the music. Light found its drama sometimes amateurish, and at times misogynist.
None of that touches the playing. The Revolution are at their best on the First Avenue songs, and Prince's guitar and voice hold the album together where the running order doesn't. 'When Doves Cry', 'I Would Die 4 U' and 'Purple Rain' are as strong as anything on a pop album of the decade. 'Baby I'm a Star' is the party before the closer. The first side is a great record with a hole in its middle where a suite used to be. Purple Rain earns its place near the top of the 1980s on performance and production, and on the nerve to cut. It falls short of perfect for the same reason. Not every cut served the music.
The original to own is the 1984 US Warner Bros. LP, catalogue 25110-1, with 1-25110 on the labels. It's a single sleeve, not a gatefold, with a printed dust sleeve carrying Doug Henders's painting and the credits, and a folded colour poster that a shrinkwrap sticker advertised. By October 2026 collectors had recorded more than 45,000 copies of the main US issue, and at least 47 runout combinations are known. No first stamper is documented, so the poster and the condition matter more than the matrix.
© The Lead-In · an independent, reader-supported music publication.
