Jake Brennan (25:44)
The score was so big that any common thief wouldn't have been able to pull it off. The heist required resources. The King King had those resources and his cunning was unmatched. The theft was brazen, out in the open, pulled off right out from under the owner's nose. A near 50 million dollar heist. Not in jewels, not in cash, but in melodies, riffs, harmonies, emotions, nostalgia, psychedelic inspiration, pure pop power, pop revolution, Yellow Submarine, Strawberry fields, Norwegian wood, and any and all perceived of mega value from the greatest music catalog of all time. The Beatles Publishing Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, had befriended the Beatles. Paul McCartney back in the late 70s collaborated with him on numerous songs, and by the time Michael's groundbreaking album Thriller was released in 1982, the pair had dueted on the album's single the Girl Is Mine. It hit number two on the Billboard chart, number one on the R and B chart. Critics savaged it. In 1983, Paul McCartney released an earlier recorded collaboration between he and Michael say say say. Taking full advantage of the new music video medium beginning to dominate the record buying public's imagination. The video featuring the two multi generational pop stars mugging it up in a way that the world hadn't seen McCartney do since his early 60s days with John Lennon pushed the stage song to number one. It was clear McCartney and Michael had all kinds of chemistry and it appeared that a true friendship had been established, as close friends do, one confided in the other. McCartney griped to Michael that he had lost control of the Beatles music publishing, meaning the vast majority. The massive sums of money Beatles music generated was not going into his pockets or the pockets of John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono. It was going into the pocket of an Australian billionaire who had purchased the majority stake in the Beatles catalog of music back in 1967. McCartney explained to Michael that the Beatles publishing was going back up for sale and that he was trying to put the money together to purchase it back for himself. The going price would be at least $35 million, likely more McCartney had swallowed his pride and went to Yoko Ono to see if she'd be interested in going in on the deal with him, putting up the capital with him to get the deal done. Because McCartney was short, Yoko told him to go pound sand. Suddenly, she wasn't interested in Money. So Paul McCartney sat on his couch with Michael Jackson watching cartoons and explained to him how songwriting publishing worked, how great of an investment it was, how every time the material was exploited, played on the radio, in a film, commercial, stadium, etc. The songs generated money. He explained how he himself had recently purchased the rights to Buddy Holly's music publishing as an investment to help dull the sting of not owning his own music. Michael listened like a thief. McCartney went in for the clothes. He asked Michael if he himself would like to own part of the Beatles catalog. The two would go in on it together, put the scratch together to buy the music back from the Aussie billionaire and cash in forever. Michael giggled. What did he know about any of it anyway? Paul went back to his cartoons. When Michael left Paul's place, he called his lawyer and told him to get into it without Paul. Michael Jackson was the King. He had more money than the Beatle. Hell, he had more money than all the Beatles and Yoko Ono. And so he didn't need Paul McCartney or his silly love songs or his friendship. He went straight from the booty himself. He outbid McCartney and Richard Branson and some others as well, and stole Paul McCartney's songs and his legacy right out from under his nose for a whopping $47.5 million. Say, say, say, what an asshole. But Michael Jackson had what he wanted. Control. And in 1985, when he executed this great theft, Michael needed it. The control. Despite being the King, he felt himself slipping from his throne. Prince knew this. And of course, he knew all about the number Michael pulled on McCartney. Prince knew Michael was slippery as fuck, not to be trusted, and vulnerable. In 1982, Michael Jackson released Thriller. The album went to number one, had seven top ten singles, and catapulted Michael Jackson to becoming the biggest star on the planet. In 1982, Prince released 1999. The album went to number nine, had three top 20 singles, and made Prince a household name. But Michael was clearly on top. However, between the releases of thriller in 1999, Prince had released the groundbreaking Purple Rain album, single and movie, all of the same name. And with that three headed release Monster, Prince had the number one album, single and movie in the US all at the same time. A feat that no artist had pulled off since The Beatles did it back in 1964 with the release of A Hard Day's Night. You can buy the rights, mj, but you can't buy a three headed monster. Prince wasted no time and released his follow up album, around the World in a Day, mere days after the Purple Rain world tour wrapped. With no advance promotion and no advanced single, the album still went to number one. On the back of the infectious Raspberry Beret track. It was clear that around the World in a Day wasn't trying to pick up where Purple Rain left off. Creatively, it was something totally different, psychedelic, but still somehow more pop. Prince was pushing himself and pop music in general, as a genre forward. He was in control, whereas Michael Jackson, aside from bamboozling Paul McCartney, was in a way reeling. Terrified into creative stillness by the success of Thriller, Michael feared the failure of a follow up. He was too scared to write, to record. He heard the rumors that he didn't have it anymore, that he lost it, that he wasn't in control. So he got an idea. Prince sat across from Michael Jackson and heard him out. You see, man, you're bad and I'm bad. So just listen, man. We should duet, you and me. Michael then popped the duetti was proposing its cassette demo into the boombox and pressed play. Prince leaned back, completely nonplussed. The horns kicked off the track, the ticky tock beat kicked in. Prince nodded along. Michael's voice filled out the speakers with the opening verse line. Prince stood up immediately, slammed down the stop button on the boombox. He'd heard enough. He looked at Michael. Hold up. Who's gonna sing that line? That first line? Your butt is mine. I ain't gonna sing that line to you, and you sure as hell ain't gonna sing that line to me. Michael felt the quick sting of rejection. And there would be no Prince collaboration for Michael Jackson. Post Thriller, things would never be the same. Perhaps he knew it then, that this was the beginning of the end. Michael was sunk. Prince was out. He was no fool. He was in control. For the time being anyway. Prince closed out the 80s with another multimedia smash hit, the Batman soundtrack, and he kept up his pace of a new album nearly every year. Art just poured out of the artist. But this created growing tension with his label, Warner Brothers, who disagreed about which songs should be singles, wanted to package his back catalog into greatest Hits and B Sides albums, and actually asked their star artists to slow down his output, partly out of fear of flooding the market, but more to the point, so Prince wouldn't tear through his contractual obligations so fast. Prince was in a battle for control, the kind of battle he always won in order to work around Warner Bros Restrictions, he changed his name to a symbol known to fans as the Love Symbol and tore through record after record until he would be out from under Warner's demands. And the effort took up most of the 90s. But it worked. Finally free of the label, the name of Prince's comeback album was Emancipation. The world's greatest entertainer was his own man again. The success, the envy of his peers, the accolades. Hell, the fun of life, the thrill and the high of creativity. For Prince, the pop life was all anyone could ask for. But he had been experiencing pain due to the non stop physicality of his regimen. But Prince would work through the pain for his next performance. 2004 New York, New York rock and roll hall of Fame induction ceremony Prince was being inducted, but first there was the matter of another Beatle to take care of. George Harrison. He was being inducted posthumously. And his friends Tom Petty, Jeff Lynn and Steve Winwood were planning a send off from the stage. A rendition of George's While My Guitar Gently Weeps, the deep cut from the White Album with the blistering and heavily emotional guitar solo by Eric Clapton. Steve Barone, Tom Petty's drummer, sat behind his kit before their performance, talking with Steve Winwood seated at his B3 organ. Holy shit, that's Prince. Prince was plugging in his guitar on stage. Ferrone got up to introduce himself. All Prince said was, yeah man, I know who you are. Farrone went back to his kit. What's he like? Winwood wanted to know. I dunno, Farone replied, cool. Prince then started making noise with his Telecaster and noodled out the meters via Junior Wells riff to average White Band's schoolboy crush, a song Ferrone co wrote while then staring straight at Ferrone across the stage with that wry smile. Shit, Ferrone thought, he does know who I am. When the band finally gets down to business and kicks into George Harrison's music most famous song with his son Danny Harrison on stage aside, Petty on acoustic, Prince is nearly completely off the stage. In fact, he's in the shadows. It's as if he's embarrassed. Too cool to be on the same stage with this most classic of classic rock lineups, the song is performed magnificently. Petty and Jeff Lynn nail the vocal. Winwood's organ gives the song lift and Ferrone, as usual, is beastly behind the kit a machine. Lin's guitar player Mark Mann nails Eric Clapton's solo, it's note for note, perfect, as good as any hand painted fine art replica. And Prince. Prince is in the shadows of the stage, off to the side with Tora. Tora lying in the cut, strumming along to the chord progression. Nothing special, waiting. Petty propels the band forward forever. The band leader, he's wearing purple, perhaps an affectionate nod to the purple one that he's sharing the stage with. The artist he sparred with creatively in his mind at least throughout the 80s. An artist he has nothing but affection for. And clad in red. Ever the heartbreaker himself, that artist. Prince emerges from the shadows during the song's outro, nabbing the guitar solo from Lin's man, stealing it back and taking it to an entirely new level. Prince is now in control, Control no longer in the cut. It's his song now. His playing is infectious. Petty is cool as ice, but you can see his enthusiasm slip out of the corners of the slight smile forming on his face. Danny Harrison can barely contain himself. The crowd loses their mind and Prince gives them a Hall of Fame performance for the ages. Going above and beyond George Harrison, above and beyond Eric Clapton, clutching the devil's spark straight from Jimmy Hendrix's left hand and lighting up the strings of his telly with it. He smiles, he snarls, he shreds. He turns his back to the audience at the lip of the stage and falls backward towards certain disaster. He's caught midair by a security guard and pushed back onto the stage. His playing never stops. He's possessed. The band is wrapped. Prince continues the solo, bringing the song home. He's in complete and total control, leans into the crescendo. Prince sustains a final note and lifts his guitar over his head off of his shoulders, throws it straight into the air and struts off stage before the rest of the band even finishes the song. To this day, Steve Ferrone swears the guitar never came back down. Prince kept walking throughout the aughts. His legend grew, but so too did something else. His pain. Chronic pain in his hips, his hands, his back. From decades of demanding physical stage performances onstage. Acrobatic somersaults, high jumps, splits. And by the time 2016 rolled around, a demanding solo piano tour led to crushing pain in his hands. It made it near impossible for him to recover from his performances without the use of painkillers. Performing, creating part of Prince's life's blood, it's what kept him going, what propelled him forward. His performances, his recordings. For an artist, they are defining for Better or worse, an artist's entire identity is tied to what they do and what they make. And no artist controlled the whole of their output and their identity more effectively than Prince. Paul McCartney lost control of his music. Michael Jackson lost control of his his life, while Prince maintained until the pain became too much. The irony that the performances led to the pain, which led to the painkillers, which ultimately led to Prince losing control of not just his art, of his life. April 15, 2016, Atlanta. Prince was on stage at the piano, alone. And that's what this tour was all about. Just a piano and a microphone and Prince. No one else. No band, no alter egos, no Tora Tora, no Gemini or Alexander, Nevermind, Christopher or Camille, no Jamie Starr and no Joey Coco. Collectively, they were too much to wrangle. Not with the pain. Impossible for Prince to control all of it. Managing the pain was hard enough that night, especially on the plane ride home on his private jet back to Minneapolis. Prince had already lost track of how many painkillers he'd taken. He passed out in the middle of his meal and the pilot had to make an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois. Prince could have shot a Narcan on the tarmac and was revived. His life was saved. He and his entourage made it home. But the pain wouldn't quit. It took over, wrapping itself around him like a snake, constricting his every move. He could feel it all over. In his hips, his back, his fingers, hands, neck, his legs. There was no moving without pain. He pulled more painkillers from the bottle. Prescription pills. Vicodin, supposedly. But in the bottle, a random pill laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin. It went to work quickly. The drug took control. The drug killed the pain. And ultimately the drug killed Prince. Throughout his career, Prince was notoriously anti drug. Sure, he would experiment from time to time, but when he turned to prescription drugs, it was because there were no other options for the pain. To this day, the authorities and those close to Prince firmly believe the Prince had no idea idea he was taking fentanyl. He had just unbelievably lost control. And that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland.
