She called him up and declined, later explaining, “It was just so overwhelming, that 10-minute track, that I listened to it and I just got scared. And after Prince played keyboards on the Stevie Nicks single “Stand Back,” he sent her a cassette of the work-in-progress “Purple Rain” - at a point when it didn’t even have a title - asking her to write some lyrics. You may have heard that Prince wrote “Purple Rain” because the 1999 tour played many of the same arenas as Bob Seger, and he wanted to write a huge ballad in the mode of “We’ve Got Tonight” or “Turn the Page.” But you might not know that Prince was sufficiently aware of the song’s melodic resemblance to Journey’s “Faithfully” that he played it over the phone for the band’s keyboardist, Jonathan Cain (who wrote the Journey hit), to make sure he wouldn’t object. Light didn’t just dive into his clip file, he blended a history of his own super-fandom with new interviews with just about everyone who worked on the Purple Rain project (excepting Prince himself), including manager Bob Cavallo and multiple members of the Revolution, especially Wendy (Melvoin) and Lisa (Coleman). While Let’s Go Crazy won’t fundamentally change how you feel about the Purple Rain album (spoiler alert: it’s a masterpiece), the book is a tasty smorgasbord for Prince fans. Alan Light (author of The Holy or the Broken, and a Rolling Stone veteran) celebrated the occasion with the new book Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain. A true Top 10 record.Dig if you will the picture: 2014 marked the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain, and the glorious summer when Prince simultaneously had the Number One single, album and movie in the USA. ‘Purple Rain’ is a jump that I think very few will be able to argue with. Purple Rain Chords Easy ( Capo 1 ) The only 4 guitar chords you need for Purple Rain are Asus2, Asus2/F, E, and Dsus2. It cemented Prince as one of the greatest musicians of all time, proving that six albums in he was only just getting started (he would go on to release a staggering 39 studio albums in the space of 37 years. Purple Rain is one of Prince’s most celebrated songs and it is a great one to learn for both beginner and experienced guitarists. It was an album that changed pop music, raising the bar in a time when Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ was dominating the world. It was nominated for Album Of The Year losing out to Lionel Richie’s ‘Can’t Slow Down’ (it did have some bangers, must have come in at #501). The song won a Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, and it also won an Oscar for Best Original Song Score. A cohesive record, each of ‘Purple Rain’s’ 9 tracks is a masterpiece in its own right, but none more so than the epic final track, the song that the album spends 34 minutes building to. On release, Prince would become the first artist the #1 song, album and movie in the USA. There were some overdubs, however that drowned most of the crowd out. If you listen very carefully to ‘Purple Rain’ you can hear the crowd sounds bleeding through. The title track, as well as ‘I Would Die 4 U’ and ‘Baby I’m A Star’ were all recorded live at a show at First Avenue in Minneapolis, August 1983. Lead single, ‘When Doves Cry’ would become Prince’s first #1 single, with second single, ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ equalling its chart position. The incredibly risqué song, ‘Darling Nikki,’ which closes out side 1 of the record, created such a stir that activist, Tipper Gore (aka Al Gore’s wife) used it as the catalyst to make it mandatory to have that little black and white sticker with the words “Parental Advisory Explicit Content” included on albums with, well, explicit content. Nicks pulled overwhelmed at Prince’s request to write lyrics to his 10-minute instrumental. The song was originally intended to be a Country duet with Stevie Nicks. ![]() ![]() purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/god guide you through the purple rain.” The most Prince explanation ever. Prince lifted the title from the lyrics of America’s 1972 song, ‘Ventura Highway ’ “Wishin' on a falling star/Waitin' for the early train/Sorry boy, but I've been hit by a purple rain.” While original composer of the phrase, Gerry Beckley had no explanation as to what it meant, Prince interpreted it as “When there's blood in the sky – red and blue = purple. ‘Purple Rain’ is the soundtrack to the autobiographical film of the same name and the first to feature Prince’s band, The Revolution, with Prince stepping back ever so slightly from playing everything on the record. ![]() “Dearly beloved/We are gathered here today/To get through this thing called life/Electric word life/It means forever and that's a mighty long time/But I'm here to tell you/There's something else/The after world.” Amongst my favourite opening lyrics of any album, Prince introduces his masterpiece with a faux preacher-like sermon.
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