James Campion, "Revolution: Prince, the Band, the Era" (Backbeat Books, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

New Books Network with James Campion – "Revolution: Prince, the Band, the Era" (Backbeat Books, 2025)
Release Date: September 18, 2025
Host: Bradley Morgan
Guest: James Campion (Associate Editor, Aquarian Weekly & Music Biographer)

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Episode Overview

This episode focuses on James Campion’s new book, "Revolution: Prince, the Band, the Era", which tracks Prince’s creative evolution between 1979 and 1986—a period where he transitioned from musical prodigy to global superstar. Campion and host Bradley Morgan discuss the overlooked collaborative aspects of Prince’s early career, challenging the myth of Prince as an isolated genius and highlighting the crucial influence of his bandmates and their dynamic. The conversation explores Prince’s musical upbringing, early band days, essential creative partnerships (especially with women musicians), and the turning points that led him towards the cultural watershed of Purple Rain.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Myth of Prince the Solitary Genius vs. The Reality of the Band

• Central Thesis: Campion’s book aims to counter the narrative of Prince as a wholly solitary artist. While Prince wrote, arranged, and performed much solo work, collaboration with band members was pivotal to his development as a songwriter and performer.
• Quote [03:31]:

  “Prince did work as a solitary entity in the studio...But from the very beginning...he continued to bring in—not only write songs for a band and to perform—his first tours were in '79, '80, '81, '82. Also to compose the songs, woodshed the songs, get input from everybody and it's seen on the records...” – James Campion

2. Prince’s Childhood: The Roots of Musical Genius and Trauma

• Prince’s difficult Minneapolis upbringing, with a deeply religious, demanding father and a more bohemian mother, left him with trust issues but also a dual creative impulse.
• Early confidence nurtured by his music teacher, James Hamilton (who’d worked with Ray Charles).
• Quote [07:00]:

  “His father, John L. Nelson, was a wonderful piano player, stoic, very religious, stern, focused...His mother was gregarious, fun loving, sexually...open...those are the two parts of Prince that go throughout his whole career.” – Campion

3. First Collaborations and the Minneapolis Sound

• Prince’s band life started in groups like Grand Central, with Andre Anderson (later Andre Cymone) and Bobby Z.
• The Minneapolis sound wasn’t just Prince as solo auteur, but a fusion developed in a deeply segregated city that forced musical crossover.
• Quote [11:47]:

  “Band is family, Family is the band...it was very important for Prince to have that trust, the family that he couldn't control that...He created his own family.” – Campion

4. The Aha Moment: Discovery of the Studio (Chris Moon’s Influence)

• Working at Chris Moon’s home studio, Prince finds his “true north” and is empowered to realize his vision as a recording artist, writing and recording alone, but with Moon co-writing lyrics on key tracks.
• Quote [15:08]:

  “For Prince, it was seeing a studio. The isolation of it, the infinite possibilities of it...All the things, all the instruments, all the sounds, all the ways to get this music out of him was presented to him.” – Campion

5. First Record Deal: Autonomy at an Unheard-of Age

• Prince gained a remarkable three-album deal with Warner Brothers, retaining full creative control—unprecedented for someone under 20.
• Industry luminaries observed his process and unanimously supported his autonomy.
• Quote [18:35]:

  “…They all went to the studio and he didn't know...they all reported back, ‘this kid knows what he's doing. Just leave him alone. You're gonna mess it up.’” – Campion

6. Formation and Evolution of Prince’s Early Bands

• Formation of the “power trio” (Prince, Andre, and Bobby Z), then adding guitarist Dez Dickerson and keyboardists Matt Fink and Gayle Chapman (one of the few women in early 80s rock bands).
• Fostering interracial, intergender group dynamics was central from the start.
• Notable Story [28:29]:

  "One day [Gail Chapman]'s lying on her couch, her phone rings and says, 'You have to be down where we're rehearsing in 50 minutes'...she was so excited to play, and she was on those crucial, crucial early tours..." – Campion

7. Testing the Band on Stage; Early Struggles

• The band's debut showcase for Warner Bros at the Capri Theater is a disaster—technical issues, lack of stage cohesion—underscoring the move from bedroom auteur to performing bandleader.
• Quote [31:26]:

  “They're just getting together the way kids get together in a garage, right?...within weeks, without any gigs, maybe two, they have to play in front of Warner Brothers at the Capri Theater...” – Campion

8. Breaking Cultural Barriers and the Shock Factor

• Prince’s musical and visual choices (e.g., interracial band, female musicians, gender/sexual ambiguity) challenged both black and white audiences’ expectations. The infamous on-stage makeout with Chapman deliberately pushed buttons about race, gender, and sexuality.
• Quote [38:51]:

  “He was creating a new game. I call it coloring outside of circles...certainly the interaction with a white female keyboard player, the way he did was just another level of commentary for him.” – Campion

9. Tensions of Leadership & Artistic Control

• Despite band family values, Prince retained total control and ultimate credit; some, like Chapman and Andre Cymone, left after realizing there was no path for artistic autonomy within the band.
• Quote [40:38]:

  “[Chapman] realized this is never going to be a place where I can flourish as an artist. I'm going to be backing Prince. It's going to be Prince, Prince, Prince...” – Campion

10. Arrival of Lisa Coleman – Prince’s True Creative Counterpart

• Lisa’s musicianship, wit, and character help Prince finally realize his vision of the band as both musical and social experiment. Their non-romantic, profoundly musical connection is pivotal in shaping the Revolution.
• Quote [42:02]:

  “It's like she was engineered in some factory to be Prince's counterpoint...she challenged him...mostly she was a great piano player, and he knew it right from the beginning.” – Campion

11. Dirty Mind: The Sonic and Visual Breakthrough

• Dirty Mind (1980) emerges as a band-infused, polysexual, genre-defiant album, blending new wave, funk, and explicit themes; a product of the entire group’s contributions.
• Quote [46:21]:

  “He ends the album railing against the reinstation,...touches on so many taboo subjects: bisexuality, incest, sadomasochism, androgyny...not in that coy sense...just right in your face.” – Campion

12. Expansion and Upheaval: Loss of Key Band Members

• Andre Cymone’s exit due to desire for artistic recognition and unresolved credit issues.
• Dez Dickerson’s exit paves the way for Wendy Melvoin, completing Prince’s ultimate vision for the Revolution.
• Quote [51:27]:

  “This is Prince's stuff. You're here to serve Prince's career and his music. Don't forget that.” – Campion

13. The Revolution’s Final Formation: Wendy Melvoin & New Era

• Lisa introduces Wendy, her partner and childhood friend, whose musical and personal chemistry with Prince deepens the Revolution’s sound and image (fully intergender, interracial). Their partnership is crucial to the success of Purple Rain and beyond.
• Quote [56:54]:

  “So these were two young LA kids who grew up with fathers who were introducing him to the Jackson 5 and the Beach Boys and Sly and the Family Stone...Wendy fit like a glove...she played that chicken scratch guitar that he loves so much...” – Campion

14. Prelude to Purple Rain

• By the time Prince embarks on the “movie idea” (Purple Rain), he’s using the Revolution as a conceptual and performing “engine”—insisting that it be shot in Minneapolis, that it document his real band, and that it fuse live performance with the film mythos.
• Quote [58:24]:

  “We're gonna play in First Avenue, where we started our careers...He built this whole thing for this movie to control the mythos of Prince. And the Revolution were a big part of it...He wanted to capture that live.” – Campion

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Prince’s Unique Band Philosophy [26:25]:

  “There's an all in edict to the way Prince picked these people. You had to be fully on board for the look, the attitude, the themes, the music, the presentation, the performance.” – Campion

• On Defying Stereotypes [25:51]:

  “We built this to shock people and not shock them in the way, like shock rock...It was to bang people out of the whole idea of a black artist has to play black music and a black idiom in the black clubs, appealing to black radio and audiences. Prince didn't want to be that.” – Dez Dickerson (quoted by Campion)

• On the Band Dynamic [41:54]:

  “She was just everything that he envisioned. She was fun, she was controversial...she challenged him. But mostly she was a great piano player, and he knew it right from the beginning.” – Campion (about Lisa Coleman)

• On Crossing Musical and Cultural Borders [47:23]:

  “I think they kind of look like the Clash. They're all wearing long trench coats and he's singing about war...Again, an odd thing for a soul black act to do on Saturday Night Live.” – Campion

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Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description |
|-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 01:37 | Show proper begins and guest introduction. |
| 02:28 | Campion explains the scope and thesis of his book. |
| 03:31 | Host asks about the solitary genius myth vs. the band; Campion explains collaborative roots. |
| 06:41 | Discussion of Prince’s childhood and formative traumas. |
| 08:52 | Early mentor James Hamilton’s role. |
| 11:47 | Early bands, the Minneapolis scene, “Band is family; Family is band.” |
| 14:54 | Chris Moon’s studio and Prince’s discovery of the recording process. |
| 17:30 | The Warner Brothers deal and Prince’s industry test. |
| 21:25 | Loring Park Sessions—band chemistry with Andre and Bobby Z. |
| 24:01 | The addition of Dez Dickerson and why it mattered. |
| 27:06 | Recruitment of Matt Fink and Gale Chapman; emergence of an intergender band. |
| 29:43 | First failed major live showcase and its impact. |
| 33:12 | Prince’s first national TV appearances; cultural context and shock value. |
| 37:29 | Onstage sexual provocation and its racial/social blowback. |
| 39:31 | Gayle Chapman’s critique and departure; dynamic of artistic credit/sharing. |
| 41:54 | Lisa Coleman’s arrival, unique musicianship and personal chemistry with Prince. |
| 45:03 | "Dirty Mind" album—musical and visual reinvention. |
| 47:23 | "Saturday Night Live" performance and crossover ambitions. |
| 49:35 | Andre Cymone’s departure and rising tension over creative ownership. |
| 52:11 | Introduction of the Linn drum machine and expansion of the Revolution’s sound. |
| 54:23 | Lisa brings Wendy into the band; final line-up and deeper collaboration. |
| 58:01 | Prince’s vision for "Purple Rain" and how the Revolution becomes central to his myth and global success. |
| 60:41 | Closing acknowledgements and next steps for discussion (host’s wrap-up). |

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Concluding Thoughts

James Campion’s interview provides a unique, comprehensive account of how Prince’s genius was fed by—but also complicated through—his intense, boundary-crossing collaboration with his band. "Revolution: Prince, the Band, the Era" invites readers to reconsider the familiar story of Prince as an isolated auteur, showing instead how the creative tensions, trust, and occasional heartbreaks within his circle of collaborators led to musical and cultural breakthroughs. The episode is essential listening for music lovers, Prince fans, and anyone interested in how true innovation always emerges from dynamic—and sometimes uncomfortable—partnerships.

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(End of Summary)

Transcript

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[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Hello. Welcome to New Books and Music, a channel, the New Books Network. My name is Bradley Morgan and I am joined today by my guest, James Campion. James is the associate editor for the pop culture magazine the Aquarian Weekly and is the author of several books including Accidentally Like a the Tortured Art of Warren Zevon and Take a Sad Song, the Emotional Currency of hey Jude. His latest book is Prince the Band the Era and is published by Backbeat Books. James, thanks so much for joining me today. It's an absolute pleasure, Bradley.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

It's very nice to meet you, sir.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And as we were talking before we went to record, I very much enjoyed your book on Joshua Tree and I.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Said so in a review. And it's really nice to meet a.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Fellow author, somebody that I respect greatly. So thank you for having me on and I look forward to talking to.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

You about my book.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Well, I really appreciate that. So let's get started. To begin, can you share with us what your book is about?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yeah. So the quick of it is it's really a book. It's called Revolution. As you mentioned, Prince, the band, the era, because it's specifically about the period from 1979 to 1986 where Prince really became Prince. And I felt felt a book needed to be written, a deeper dive into his collaborative aspects, which is not covered in other books, I believe enough where he actually collaborated with many great musicians who not only made him a better.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Songwriter, but certainly a performer. And you know, everything we know about Prince was developed during this period.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Before we get into Prince's history as an artist and the albums he made with his bands leading up to Purple Rain, I want to get into the narrative that has come to define his career. And you write that Prince is understood in popular culture as a solitary entity, which was how his music was created and promoted. However, this is only half the story of his total artistic journey. Can you tell us what you mean by solitary entity and how the primacy of the band belies that narrative?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yes. And so like I was saying, you know, the real thesis, the central theme of my book is that yes, Prince did work as a solitary entity in the studio. He most famously. All of his albums have written, arranged, produced and performed by Prince. And that is true up until the Purple Rain record, where it was a.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Lot of input from the members of by then called the Revolution.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

But from the very beginning, not the very beginning. After his first record for your, which was completely produced by him at 19.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

20 years old, he went on to.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Produce records like Prince the second record, and Dirty Mind, his third record, and Controversy, his fourth record, and culminating, I believe, with 1999, in which he continued to bring in not only write songs.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

For a band and to perform.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

His first tours were in 79, 80, 81, 82. And also to compose the songs Woodshed. The songs get input from everybody and it's seen on the records, despite the fact that he plays all the instruments and he produces these records for the most part, except for a few exceptions, a lot of these songs were birthed in a jam or, you know, like I said, a woodshedding experience. So the band, the fact that they were there with him and very, almost immediately, from the very beginning, he was in bands in high school, most famously.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

His Grand Central band, they were called Grand Central.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And then later on with some of the early members of the pre Revolution.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Like Andres Simone, which was his old friend Andre Anderson from middle school, and.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

By Bobby Z, his original drummer, who went on to drum for the Revolution.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

In his early years.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So he was constantly working out songs with other musicians which helped him get feedback for it. And he could hear them Then he would go in the studio and recreate them all. And he was, all of his engineers said, this is the most fascinating part, Bradley. He could play each instrument. And he said this in interviews, and.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

I quote him in the book as.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

If he was the bass player or the drummer trying to make his case for playing and serving the song, but also the personality. He actually got into the headspace of, hey, I'm the bass player. This is my chance to make this song great.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

I'm gonna distinguish myself here.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And that's why a lot of those records sound like a group of people playing.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

But I don't think he could have.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Gotten there if he didn't have those other musicians around him to give him examples. He was a very, very shy, introverted, and later on extremely protective person of his, of his creative life and his personal life. So the only way he can express that was music. And to have musicians around to help him with that was a huge deal.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

So as you mentioned, he was really young when he released his first album, just 19 years old. And you write in the book that this triggered the first of his many transformations and that he was always in a constant state of evolution. But however, before we get into that, I want to go back to the very beginning and explore how that artist came to be. Prince was born in Minneapolis and his childhood was rather difficult and unstable. His father was a part time pianist who worked at the Electric Plant and his mother was a vocalist whose day job was being a social worker. Can you share with us more about Prince's childhood and the balance between music and trauma that had existed within his home growing up?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yeah, I mean, I bring up this.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Point and part of it is poetic license certainly, but he's a Gemini, so.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Already he's got that kind of dual personality working. But he gets it from his parents, John L. His father. He was named after his father's.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Trio.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Which was Prince, the Rick to Prince Rogers Trio.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And his name is Prince Rogers Nelson. His father, John L. Nelson, was a.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Wonderful piano player, stoic, very religious, stern, focused.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

That's what Prince was.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

His mother was gregarious, fun loving, sexually, you know, open, extremely flirty and just somebody who could laugh and enjoy life. And those are the two parts of Prince, absolutely, that go throughout his whole career and how he interacted with women in his life, with other musicians, certainly.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Management and the press.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So he was always wary, he had trust issues. But that's the beauty of his collaboration with the band. I keep going back to the band, but as you know, cause you read the book, anytime I mention the band.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

It'S always in italics.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And I did that as a point to point out that this was very important for him to communicate, to be part of society. Because art, I believe, is a two way street. It's you creating it and people responding to it, or in the case of the band, interpreting it.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And then that comes back, whether you write a horror novel and make a.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Horror film and you want to scare.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

People, you do a romantic poem, you.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Want to move people. And that's, I believe, what Prince was. He was the ultimate artist that way. And he got to that. The bridge to that was working with the band. But yeah, his childhood informed almost all.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Of his relationships, especially when he was young. And he was starting to evolve not.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Only as a creative artist, which he had to do very young, he was, you know, touted as the new Stevie Wonder when he was 17, 18 years old. Warner Brothers unprecedentedly gave him full control of his work before he was 20. But he had to mature. He's still a young man. He had to mature. And, you know, again, the best way for him to do that, I believe, and I came to learn from my research and interviews was through interacting with these other musicians.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

So his musical talent started to awaken when he was just seven years old. But the first person outside of his family that really recognized his talent was his junior high school teacher, James Hamilton, who had previously worked with Ray Charles. How did he support Prince in his musical development?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Well, the first thing, Bradley, is he noticed it. He noticed it. His father was very hard on him. Unless he could play almost perfectly, he.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Wasn'T even allowed to go near the family piano. Prince said when his father left the.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

House for the day, that's when he played.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

But he would never do it in front of his father until he was really adept.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So he goes to middle school and at this time he's having trouble. His parents split up and as you mentioned, at 7.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

They split up at 7.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So it's almost like a Greek, you.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Know, story of an origin story of.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

How he becomes this great musician, how he takes all of his anxieties, all of his fears about life.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He suffered from epilepsy when he was a kid.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He was very small.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He was picked on a lot.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So he funneled that all into the music, learning music. And for someone who's learned in music, like his teacher, Mr. Hamilton, and to.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

See that in the young boy who.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Would go in to, you know, before class and would go into the music room in the school and start plucking on the guitar, start playing on the piano. He knew that he loved it. And he showed at a very young age that he could be a prodigy. And it's always, and this is true, I've written about many artists. You mentioned Warren Zevon. It's very important to Zivon that he was noticed, and not as a prodigy, but notice as a talent. It gave him that inner confidence, and.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Prince needed a lot of that.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I mean, he always had a bravora about him. But I think as a kid, as we all do, he needed that really sound voice, that smart guy who knew about music to say, hey, you're good, you're good. You should take the time and learn this. And the fact that he wrote for Ray Charles, which I think is a wonderful lineage connection, because Ray Charles, when.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

You think of Ray Charles, you think of Prince in a way, or vice versa.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Here's a black man who is playing black, white, country, soul, rock, rock and roll, or, you know, and so is Prince. And he forged his own path. Didn't listen to the record company, didn't listen to management. He did whatever he wanted to, and he forged his way to own his own publishing and controlled his career. So James Hamilton was able to impress the young Prince about a lot of that.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Well, it's great that he recognized that talent because during that time, Prince was experiencing a lot of intense feelings of isolation and loneliness. Loneliness, you know, because of his parents, divorce and several periods of living in different homes. And it was this time that he met Andre Anderson, his friend, who would become his first musical collaborator. And many fans would recognize him for the name as Andres Simone. However, that would come later, and the two started their musical journey together, playing in bands like cover bands, as teenagers. What were those first groups like? And could you tell us about some of those early performances?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yeah, they were apparently a very, very.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Hot band, and they all knew it.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

The great thing about that group is, you know, you hear about the Minneapolis.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Sound a lot, especially in the 1980s.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And I used to joke, the Minneapolis sound is Prince. I mean, Prince made all those records. He made all those Time records. He made all those Vanity 6 records. And later on he worked with Sheila E. And all those records were Prince writing, performing again, this solitary entity. However, I was wrong about that. And thanks to Andrea Swenson, who is a great historian of Minneapolis music. She helped me with the book, we talked. She gave me a tour of Prince's Minneapolis in 2023. She introduced me to the good people at the Minneapolis Archives at the Minneapolis Public Library, which was a Huge, huge amount of my research was done there. So in the early days, Minneapolis, of course, as we know, even today, 92, 93% Caucasian, you have the small pockets of black neighborhoods of which were due.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

To redlining and a lot of, you know, systemic racism.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

But these groups would have to cross over. So you start to see the origins very early on about how Prince navigated the music business. Being a crossover artist. He had a woman keyboard player in the band, which he would always do throughout the early part of his career, certainly through everything I'm writing about from.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

19, you know, 79, 78, 79, all the way through the end of the revolution.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So all those things were happening in.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

A band called Grand Central, which had Andre Simone and it also had Morris.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Day eventually in it, who would become the singer and a very popular personality in the 80s.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He was in the film Purple Rain.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He was the drummer. And a lot of the musicians in the band were either cousins or friends or next door neighbors. So there was a real. And I talk about this a lot. And as you know, Bradley, because you read the book, Band is family, Family is the band. It's something I repeat throughout the book. It was very important for Prince to have that trust, the family that he couldn't control that you said, you know, he. There was a. He just. He felt kind of abandoned by it. He didn't feel connected to it.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And so he created his own family.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And that starts very early on with those early bands, but also the fact.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

That they could play anything. You know, they could play Chicago, they could play the Ohio Players, they could play soul, they could play funk, they could play rock, you know, Graham Funk.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Railroad and Stevie Wonder, they could do all those things.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And boy, that's a trial by fire for a young musician at that age.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Certainly these were performers who were, despite being very young, were extremely polished. And they had to navigate this community and overcome racial, cultural and social restrictions while having the music signal, this progressive community. And it really worked in developing their chops, especially as they moved from working in these cover bands to gigging as session musicians. And that's where Prince would meet a man named Chris Moon, who had a makeshift studio in his home that he had bankrolled, you know, recording radio jingles and doing live concert feeds for radio stations. You write in the book that Chris Moon Studio is where Prince really came alive. What impact did that studio have on Prince as a developing artist?

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Yeah, I think I subtitled that little part True North.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

It's his first time where Prince becomes Prince. There are many I've interviewed dozens of people who have been successful in the music business and you know, moderately or greatly successful, but they all have that one aha moment.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

You know, they always have that moment.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Where like, okay, I was fiddling here, I was trying this, I was going here. But then, you know, and you could apply this to bands too. But all of a sudden something clicked in. Something clicked in. And for Prince, it was seeing a studio. The isolation of it, the infinite possibilities of it. All the things, all the instruments, all the sounds, all the ways to get.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

This music out of him was presented to him.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And because he was so self contained that, you know, the solitary entity, he worked in solitude so proficiently and so quickly that he just absorbed himself in it. And to Chris Moons, and you get this a lot in the Prince story, they all seem to intuit that this kid's got something. And so immediately Moon says, here's the keys, sleep here if you have to. Because Moon had kind of fashioned himself as a lyricist and he was looking for someone and I'm sure because he was older and a lot of people saw Prince as this wunderkind and they thought we could, let me, let me attach myself to this guy. And he wasn't wrong because you know, you see that some of the songs that ended up on Prince's Warner Brothers debut for you, like the song Soft and Wet, was co written by Chris Moon. So Chris Moon got himself on a Prince album, you know, by allowing him to come into the studio and letting the kid compose and produce and play all the instruments. And that was just if there's one, like I said, North Star, if there's one moment in the early Prince years, it was that even though I'm writing about the band experience, it was just getting to himself in front of all those instruments and the studio environs to become Prince.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Besides providing a studio environment where Prince could really blossom and grow as an artist, Chris Moon also helped him develop his image, essentially pitching him as, as you said, this new Wunderkin, this Stevie Wonder in the sense of being a pop virtuoso. And eventually this caught the attention of a manager and promoter named Owen Husney, who shopped around Prince's demo in order to get a three record deal and, and maintain complete creative control, which is absolutely unheard of in the music industry. And Warner Brothers, his prospective label, tentatively agreed under the condition that their most successful and trusted producers observe Prince in action. When those producers went to the studio, what did they see?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

They saw a guy that knew what he was Doing, you know, he. He put those hours in in the Moon Studios. And he had also worked in. In the. In the. In the Sound 80s studio in Minneapolis, which was famous for when Bob Dylan re. Recorded the entire Blood on the tracks record in 1974.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

75.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And so he had logged a lot of. He played on sessions, he played on jingles, and he recorded his own music. So by the time he gets to Warner Brothers, and it is insane that Mo Austin, who signed Neil Young and.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Randy Newman and Fleetwood Mac, just hands.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Over the keys to this kid who goes off to Sausalito in LA and spends millions of Warner Brothers dollars doing 50 overdubs on every song. But the one thing that all these very, very learned and successful producers did, it's Katz who produced all those Steely Dan records, and Templeton who produced the Doobie Brothers, and Templeman, I should say.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Who produced the Doobie Brothers and Van.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Halen and Lenny Warneker who ended up.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Running Warner Brothers later on.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

They all went to the studio and he didn't know. Prince didn't know they were there, but they all reported back, this kid knows what he's doing. Just leave him alone.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

You're gonna mess it up.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And that's one thing that Owen Husney understood, too. Everybody along the way, when they sold him as the new Stevie Wonder, they came to believe it because, you know, it's just like when the Beatles played for America. Everybody always celebrates that moment, you know, the Ed Sullivan moment. But there was a lot of. Okay, let's see what you got, right? It's okay. You got funny haircuts and you're hilarious in the.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

In the interviews.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And you got the cute Beetle Books boots. But can you play? And when they did, it was all over. That was Prince's moment to shine, and he did to one of the biggest record companies in the world.

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[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

So that first album drops in 1978 for you and he produces, arranges and composes all of the tracks on the album. And as you mentioned earlier, he plays all the instruments on the album as well. However, as soon as he finished the album, Prince was already looking ahead and he was missing the interplay that comes with playing in a band. And Robert Rifkin, who would later come to be known as Bobby Z, was a friend of Prince's who did his shopping and chauffeured him around. But he was also a child prodigy and he would join Andrew and Prince. And you write that the band had become a power trio. And the best evidence of this are the Loring park sessions. Could you tell us about those sessions?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yeah. So Lowing park is a part, is a neighborhood in Minneapolis, very business oriented, and Owen Husney had his offices there and he worked in real estate and other things, but he was managing Prince on the side. And so Prince and Andre and Bobby Z would go there when they would close the offices, move all the furniture out of the office, play there as a trio all night. And then when it started to get towards the dawn, they would move all the furniture back, take all the equipment out. It's an amazing story to even think about it. Oh, oh, what the energy you have when you're young. These guys were essentially teenagers and you could go there now. I visited the place again, thanks to Andrea. They show you the doors where they move the equipment in, which is right down the hall. There's a plaque right outside that office, so it's kind of cool. And there's. There's lore.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

There's a lot of lore in Prince's.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Mystique and mythos over the years, and that's one of them because there is a bootleg called the Loring Park Sessions that the word is may have been recorded in that office, but most likely was recorded at sound 80, which I mentioned earlier. And then in the matter, you. You see the very foundation. You see the path that Prince is starting to forge, and you see it with two musicians that he trusted implicitly, who loved him. Bobby Z, as you said, was his Man Friday and absolutely adored him and watched him work in the studio and.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Was gobsmacked, as the English say, and.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Wanted to be his drummer.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And Bobby was a.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

A tough guy who could really lay down a beat.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He was a true pro since he.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Was a teenager as well. And, you know, and Prince knew Andre since gym class when he was 11, 12 years old. So there, again, there was that circle.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Of trust that he built, and you could. You could feel it and hear it in that music.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And I hear a lot of Prince's hits, future pieces of music in those sessions. So, yeah, it's a really big stepping stone. Just part of the evolution we were.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Talking about earlier within this power trio of Prince, Andre and Bobby. They shared a lot of styles and musical ideas that really revealed the heart of Prince's jamming philosophy, which was finding the magic by letting the groove flow. And this was a process of true collaboration. However, soon a guitarist from St. Paul named Desmond Dickerson was asked to join the band. And you write that Desmond instinctually understood Prince's vision, which was a black rock and roller with an ear for a wider scope of musical styles that created duality as image. What did Prince feel Desmond brought to the group with regards to that vision?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

That's the beauty of Prince. He understood, just as he understood his own talents, he understood where other people's talents fit in. I think that's the key element to.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Bringing together a group.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Whether you have a team at work or you have a sports team, it's knowing everybody and how they can fit into the grander scheme and what they can bring to it. He loved DEZ because DEZ was a shredder. He was a rocker.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He loved the Cars, you know, Ultravox, Billy Idol, that kind of stuff.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And Prince was just kind of. I mean, he was. He knew about white rock music and he celebrated it. Andre was more of a rocker, I.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Think, than Prince was at the beginning.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

But he understood the import of having someone with a different musical background and vision. You know, DEZ says in my book, and it's funny, it's one of my favorite quotes, but he's like, there way more funkier white guys in Minneapolis than me. And so he understood the idea that that was where he felt most comfortable. So he brought that wonderful dynamic to the trio to make it a fearsome foursome. And I thought one of my other favorite parts is when he came in to audition, he was known as a lead guitar player. And Prince knew this, and I think DEZ knew it too. But he was a little intimidated by this guy who was signed by Warners and was looking to build a band. So he didn't overplay in the audition. He kind of laid back until Prince nodded at him, he said, okay, you be des now.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And he did.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And I think Prince appreciated that because as I mentioned again, I put this.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

In italics in my book.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

There's an all in edict to the way Prince picked these people. You had to be fully on board for the look, the attitude, the themes, the music, the presentation, the performance.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He had to have it.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And DEZ was, from the very beginning, he understood. I think another quote of his is, I know exactly what was going on. We built this to shock people and not shock them in the way, like.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Shock rock, like Alice Cooper or Marilyn Manson.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

It was to bang people out of that whole idea of a black artist.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Has to play black music and a black idiom in the black clubs, appealing to black radio and audiences.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Prince didn't want to be that. When he said to Warner Brothers, don't make me black, he wasn't wiping out his black heritage. What he was saying is, I know how this music business works, and you're.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Not gonna pigeonhole me like this.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I'm gonna be who I wanna be. So he picked people. Even though DEZ was a black guy, he played a lot of white rock music.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And that helped Prince develop that, which.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Eventually he will do to epic degrees.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

When he gets to Purple Rain.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

So let's dive a bit further into that shock value. So in order to get the sounds that he wanted, Prince understood that he was going to need to add dual keyboards to the band, which at this point, entirely of men. And one of the new keyboardists he brought on was Matt Fink. But Prince also felt that he needed to bring a woman into the band to challenge the male atmosphere. And that other keyboardist ended up being Gail Chapman. And you write in the book that Gale filled provocative boxes that were essential to Prince's early vision of the band that would become the revolution. But when Gail auditioned, she didn't think she was going to get the gig. So can you tell us what happened at the audition and how she would later be asked to join the band?

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Yeah.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

It's funny, Gail's one of the few people, you know, when I went out to start this Book, I wanted it.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

To just be about the revolution. Then I realized it's a larger story.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And then through a lot of people.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

In Minneapolis, like Andrea and Dwayne Tudall, a wonderful author and Prince historian, you.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Know, they started to send me some.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Of the interviews that they did.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And a lot of the people in.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

The revolution were talked out about the whole thing. They were like, well, we've said all we're gonna say.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So I started to cobble together, but.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

There was almost nothing about Gayle.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So I reached out and found Gayle and we had a wonderful conversation one afternoon. And she explained to me that she never truly fit in with the boys club. They hadn't quite developed it yet. Eventually, Prince will get the women in his group that will change him completely. But Gayle fit that paradigm of what he was talking about. Like he wanted an interracial, intergender band. So Bobby Z is a white drummer. DEZ Dickerson is a black guitarist. Andre Simone is a black bassist. Prince, of course, is black. He always used to intimate. But this, of course, was part of his mythos that he was of mixed race, but he was not. And.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And Matt Fink was white male.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So he did need that female counterpoint. But she never really felt comfortable from the very beginning. And when she went into play, they were like, okay, thank you very much. And she went away and thought, well, at least this is a nice anecdote. I met Prince. Very talented guy. I had fun. One day she's lying on her couch, her phone rings and says, you have to be down where we're rehearsing in 50 minutes.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And I think she said she was about an hour away, but she made it in about 48 minutes.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And because she was so excited to play, and she was on those crucial, crucial early tours, including the one that really broke them nationally when he had a hit I Want To Be youe Lover. And he was able to play, you know, they were able to really steal audiences away from more established Rick James, who is, you know, starting to develop his career. So I thought it was fascinating that Gale becomes sort of this template for the rest of Prince's career. Like I said, he did have. Although she was African American, he did have a female keyboard player in his bands in high school. But it taught him this is where he wanted to go and that's where he will go for the rest of his career.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Now that Prince had his band, they would work 10 hour days to build this musical rapport and trust in each other. This process of being all in as you mentioned. And there were certainly some problems in the beginning, such as equipment being stolen during the rehearsal or difficulty playing the songs from 4U. But ultimately these struggles only brought them closer. But in January 1979, the band debuted for Warner Brothers, playing two gigs, one as a warm up and the other as a showcase. And their debut was a disaster. What happened?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yeah, it was because Prince had not done band arrangements except for along with Andre when he was a kid. It was hard to kind of develop this camaraderie. And it's tough.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Think about this.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

They're just getting together the way kids get together in a garage, right?

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

They're all kids for the most part, 20, 21 tops.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And within weeks, without any gigs, maybe two, they have to play in front of Warner Brothers at the Capri Theater, which is a old rundown, cold theater that's still there. I got to visit it in Minneapolis, have seats about 300. And as you said, the first, they had technical problems, but also really, Bradley, they weren't really a big banned. They didn't develop that cohesion that takes what's a 10,000 hours thing, right? It takes weeks and hours and weeks and months of road work and, and, and failing. And they didn't have that choice. And everybody to a person said we.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Just weren't ready, you know, and this.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Is important because I write about this, their image. Because Prince was very much, as we know, into image, not only costumes and, and, and the way he presented himself, haircuts and everything, but just everything about them didn't work. Prince, this is before he had his, you know, high heels. So he's this little diminutive guy with this big Afro. Andres Simone's like twice his size. He's in the back. You know, Matt Fink hadn't developed his doctor personality yet. Gale Chapman was, you know, it wasn't quite. Nobody was really comfortable on stage. So that. That just exuded that. And I thought that that was genius that Warner Brothers got together with Prince. And they both decided equally, I need music. He needed music that reflected the group dynamic. So his second record, I personally believe.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And I write about it in the.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Book, is reflective of that. You hear those songs, they're more anthemic. They sound like a rock and roll band or a pop band or a funk band. And they sound like something you could play live. Whereas for your is way more intimate. A lot of ethereal sounds in that keyboards. But the real beginning of the Prince we know as Prince is when he went back in the studio. And the only reason I believe he goes back there is because he failed so miserably to get those people to jail so quickly. So he wanted material that can help them jail. And one of the things he did so, again, brilliantly. This guy was so prescient at such a young age. He took them all to Colorado and recorded a record that he called the Rebels. And had them all write their own songs and contribute their own styles so he can make them feel like a band.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He knew what it was like.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He knew that he needed to get this thing to gel fast. Before they toured the second record and.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

They went out with Rick James.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And it was very important because on.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

That tour they did grow as a band.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And I think the failure of that show at the Capri, the Flop, as.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

I call it, was a big deal for him.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the Rebels in Colorado and how they kind of went to shape the image of the band. Because you write in the book that with this second album, it also initiated a career arc that defined him. And this was the first in a series of methodical approaches to bridging music with image and purpose. And this leads up to the beginning of 1980, when Prince would make his first national television appearance to promote that new album, performing first on American Bandstand and then on Midnight Special. Although the Midnight Special performance aired first, you write that a critical component of this was timing. Because at that period, a black solo performer presenting the band as a staple to his image was downright revolutionary and even sacrilege in some circles. Why was that the case for a national television audience?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I think, also, not even just for.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

A black artist, for sure, but, you know, for a solo artist.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And the reason why I say this.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Is, yes, there were crossover bands, for sure. Before Prince, I mean, or around the same time, the Commodore, as I mentioned them. The Ohio Players, Parliament Funkadelic, certainly, you know, incorporating rock guitar and, you know, chanting rock lyrics with funky backbeats and bass lines. There's so many.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

There's just too many. And obviously, Stevie Wonder opened up for the rolling stones in 1972 and broke.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Out to be an absolute crossover artist.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And Rick James as well. But really, the difference with Prince was that he was sold as a solo artist, but he came out with the band. And when he came out with the band, he didn't come out as. They didn't all dance around like the.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Jackson 5 or have moves like the Commodores.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

They looked like a rock and roll punk band. And that's why I distinguish. And thank you very much for pointing that out. Bradley because they recorded the American Bandstand first, which was sort of this morning, Saturday afternoon, this late Saturday morning show that really sort of appealed to the Middle American kids to really get pop acts out. Where the Midnight Special was what it was. It was on at midnight, a Saturday. And you got your stoners, you got your rock fans. Everybody's watching that. Different audiences. When he comes out to do his performance, you could see it on YouTube. It's just riveting. They are performing I Wanna Be youe Lover, which is a pop disco rock hit. And then why youy Want To Treat Me so Bad, which is, I believe, his first rock and roll number. And they're doing it. He's knocking over Mike Stanza's guitar goes flying off that, you know, Bobby Z's hands are flailing all over the place. They're just. They're going back to back like an old, you know, like the Scorpions rock band or something. It's. It's amazing to watch. And I think that was so important because Prince wasn't doing Soul Train, which was more like directed to black audiences. He wasn't coming out with a disco.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Ball over his head and a spotlight.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Miming the song, even though they were miming the song. In the case of American Bandstand, he needed the band. You know, he introduces the band. It's so great that he did that. And I think it changed. It was a complete course correction for Warner Brothers. Prince always showed Warner Brothers where he.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Was gonna go, not the other way around.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

They didn't dictate to him. Okay, I know you're okay. We gave you the control, but you're gonna do this now, which a lot of artists all admit.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Madonna, everybody, especially from that period.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Prince wouldn't allow it and he forged his own path. As I said earlier, due to these.

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[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

While the band was on tour, the controversy stemming from the band's racial dynamics would only continue to grow. And for example, Prince grabbing and kissing a scantily clad Gail Chapman during performances. But there were varying different degrees of backlash to this that he would experience at his concerts, you know, from white audiences and black audiences. Can you tell us about that?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yeah. So the makeout session with Gale Chapman.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

That was done during a song called Head, that was the central piece of his next record, which was lauded as one of the great records of 1980, Dirty Mind, and which really, really started to launch Prince's idiom sort of as a sexual marauder, as like a crossover punk funk character.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

But they would do this song in the middle of the set and he would paw and French kiss Gail. And after a while, she did become uncomfortable with this. But at first she just, you know.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

She leaned into it.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

They were doing something. They knew that they were chasing different. They were again, shocking audiences. But some of the, you know, the black women in the audience were a little put off by this, and some of the women in general were put off by it because, you know, it was overtly said and it was pushing a lot of buttons, not only race buttons, but sexual buttons and all those things that Prince would incorporate into his career and later on, you know, bringing religiosity into it. But, yeah, that was really important for his positioning. Remember, he's trying to make it. He's going on American Bandstand at Midnight Special. He's not. He's not. This is not some underground. This is not fear or suicide or the Ramones. This is a pop artist, but yet he is trying out different ways to.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Express himself and not play the game.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He was creating a new game.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

I call it coloring outside of circles.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

That, you know, he did not create that.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

There were boundaries and lines that were.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Written for artists, not just black artists.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

To be a certain way, like a.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Solo artist goes out and plays. They don't need all the band.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And if it is a band, it's just a backing band, then they're not part of It.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And certainly the interaction with a.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

With a white female keyboard player, the way he did was just another level of commentary for him.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Gayle was only in the band for a little over a year before leaving because she was the first to actually see this gaping hole in the band logic that Prince was trying to achieve and convey to the others. What criticisms does she have about working with Prince?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yes. So that's very important. Everything I've said right now is true. Prince did something that a lot of.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Artists, Michael Jackson, Madonna, I mentioned a couple of them from.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And even in the past, even ones that like James Brown, who is a huge influence on Prince, the band was.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

The band and that's it.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And then he's James Brown. There was. Prince didn't have that at first. There was a lot of camaraderie on the buses. There was a lot of camaraderie in the backstage area.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

They would. They would joke, they would have fun.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

They would play tapes and make fun of each other of the shows and try to, you know, improve. But in the end, it was Prince's vision. It was Prince's contract with Warner Brothers. It was Prince's songs and Prince's name on that record and his face on that record on those records, and they were the backing band. That is true. Technically, he did blur those lines in some ways, detrimentally to the people in the band. But Gale did notice that. And for years, until my book, the narrative has been that Gail Chapman was religious, which he says she is. But she left because she was conflicted.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

About all the sexual stuff and everything.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

But she said no. The reason why is because what you said, she realized this is never going.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

To be a place where I can flourish as an artist.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I'm going to be doing Prince.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

I'm going to be backing Prince.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

It's going to be Prince, Prince, Prince. And she saw that dead end and she left. Now, she did admit maybe she left too early and she loved Prince's work after that, and she followed him. And she gives these great quotes about.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

When she heard when he passed in 2016 to me.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

But that was why she left. She saw it. And other people eventually would see it. And maybe they did at the beginning, like Andre Simone, he wanted to be in a rock and roll band. He wanted to be more like the Rolling Stones.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He didn't want to be in, you know, Jimi Hendrix and the Experience, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, which is kind of how it was.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And Des Dickerson, too. But, you know, they weren't gonna mess around with Prince.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He was super talented.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He was getting hits. He was bringing people to the shows, and they were gelling as a band. But in the end, it still Prince.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Yeah, that must be a really difficult dynamic. But certainly, you know, as they say, when one door closes, another one opens. Because Gail's departure from the band would become a watershed moment for Prince because he felt it opened the door for a more musically proficient woman to join who could bring him closer to the ultimate vision he had for the band. And this person was Lisa Coleman. And you describe her as the one person born to be Prince's creative soulmate. Could you tell us more about that dynamic that she brought with her to the band?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yeah.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

It's like she was engineered in some factory to be Prince's counterpoint.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

She was just everything that he envisioned. She was fun, she was controversial. She had a tongue on her cheek all the time. She challenged him.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

But mostly she was a great piano player, and he knew it right from the beginning.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I love that story that she tells.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

In which he picks her up at the airport. They drive back to his house on the lake in Minneapolis, or just outside of Minneapolis.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He points at a piano, she sits down. Neither one of them said a word to each other. Prince goes upstairs, and according to Lisa, she can kind of hear him on.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

The phone, and it sounds like he's kind of calling management, going, this ain't gonna work.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Then she starts playing this Mozart piece. And the way the story goes, Prince grabs his guitar, bounds down the stairs.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And starts playing with her. And from the very first chord she's quoted, they connected. Not through discussion, not through politics or.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Social things or inter in any way. Music. The unspoken language of Prince and the fact that she was gay meant that he couldn't ruin it by sleeping with her or having a relationship, which he would do later in his career. So Lisa became the perfect sort of.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Balance, and I call it a counterpoint, because she was.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

She didn't just. She pushed those boundaries of, I'm Prince, you do this. She tells this wonderful story about how she used to. She used to, you know, play with a yo yo while she was playing his parts just to prove that she can play him as good as him without even, you know, ho hum. Yeah. And I love that she was. And then she said she always dressed sexy, but she didn't do it to sort of just play with his. Because that's one part that Gail Chapman didn't like either. He was always on her for, like, hairdos and, like, losing weight. Lisa kind of embraced it as a fun sort of sexually open way of taking feminism like that, post feminism back. And later on, and I'm quoted in the book, Madonna admitted that Lisa Coleman and her work with the revolution and also many other people that worked around Prince like vanity, that she took that whole boy toy image, that whole, I'm a sexual kitten, but I'm also, you know, I'm also very, very powerful. I'm a powerful woman. And Lisa embodied that.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Prince loved that.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And he brought so much out of it musically. She brought jazz into his life, she brought classical music into his life, and she brought this way of expressing that for the first time.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

I think Matt Fink was a wonderful keyboard player.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Gail Chapman, too, and DEZ Dickerson did some stuff that maybe Prince could do, but in a different way. But there was something about Lisa Coleman's.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Playing that Prince could not fathom, and he needed that in his music.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So she was perfect on all those levels. We talked about earlier, the image, the.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Attitude, the look, and most importantly, the musicianship.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Earlier you had mentioned Dirty Mind, which was the third album that Prince would release in 1980, and you describe it as his sonic and visual tipping point in that this was his creation of a hedonistic panorama as societal emancipation provided as a playground for the band. And you had mentioned Lisa's role in the development of that as the newest member. But how did the rest of the band bring that vision to the album?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yeah, thank you for quoting my book.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Back to me because, you know, I forget these things. I appreciate that.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I mean, was a big. I keep saying about big deals, but you're pointing out all the. The most important elements of those. Those touchstones that you have to have.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

When you're a big star eventually.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And Dirty Mind was one of them. The. The title track was the. The keyboard part was written by.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

By Matt Fink in that Rebels sessions back in Colorado in 79.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

She comes and does the voice of.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

The deflowered virgin bride in his head song.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And she's in the. You know, she's pictured inside the sleeve with the rest of the band. Again, Prince selling it as a band. And that album was watershed because it again underlined Prince's sexual politics, his social politics. He ends the album railing against the reinstation, reinstating of the draft, which had just happened during the recording of the record. He touches upon so many taboo subjects. Bisexuality, incest, sadomasochism, androgyny. He covers it all, just not in that coy sense of so many rock.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And roll songs over the years, but.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Just right in your Face. And it really bowled over a lot of the critics and especially in the rock circles. And they toured all the rock clubs. So there was a way for him to do this crossover. And the fact that he recorded the whole thing in his lakeside house while Lisa Coleman was hanging around. And they were having so much fun together creating.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And it was almost like a demo.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And Warner Brothers was worried about putting it out, but they did. And Prince proved its worth by going on the road and kicking it. And Lisa Coleman and all the people.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

In the band at this time were. Were a major, major force.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

The image and subject matter for Dirty Mind was, as we discussed, more sexually explicit than the previous two albums. But the band's goal was to break through to a wider and more progressive audience. And you. You know, it's difficult to do that when you're so sexualized going forward with your music and your image. But while touring for the album, the band made an appearance on Saturday Night Live that was more toned down than their stage show. How did that performance help them in getting booked into more white rock clubs and theaters?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yeah, I wouldn't use that word. But it was definitely. I mean, they couldn't go all out. They only had one performance, Brad. So they didn't have the customary two that we know from Saturday Night Live. Todd Rundgren, another, strangely enough, another person who Prints had emulated because of all.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

The production work and composing and arranging and playing the instruments that Todd did in the early 70s.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So they had one shot, and I think they kind of look like the Clash. They're all wearing long trench coats and he's singing about war. And in the song Party up, which is a song about. That was sort of a precursor to.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

1999, which is a song about the.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

End is coming, but who cares? Let's we dance and have sex and enjoy life and to the fullest. It's almost like the derangement of the.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Senses, kind of a Blakeian concept.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So, yeah, they were a tough rock and roll unit on that. They only played for about three minutes. And the song is quick. And at the end, they all knock them. Like the knock. The mic stands over again, which seems.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

To be a theme.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And they all walk off stage, sort of like to this weird clapping of. Okay, we're not really sure what we just saw. Again, an odd thing for a soul black act to do on Saturday Night Live. So it was a bit. Again, this is. You're naming another very, very big step for this band to take. And they did it right after that. And all the Club dates. After that it started getting larger and they sold more records. And Prince, as you said earlier, only had a three album deal and they were gonna drop him. He was not selling records. He sold I Wanna Be youe Lover. But after that, not a lot. And there weren't a lot of singles they can pull off of this record. Cause it was hard to play this record, Dirty Mind, on the radio. So they had to do it in the clubs. And Saturday Night Live really was the trigger for that.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

It was only within a week of returning from touring in Europe for that album did Prince begin recording his next album, which would eventually become Controversy. And while working on Controversy, Prince was unaware about the cracks that were forming in the band. And when he was finishing the final mixes, he suffered the first professional blow of his career when Andre, who he saw as a brother, left the band. Why did Andre quit and what effect did that have on Prince with regards to the others?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So threefold. Andre only wanted to be in the.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Band for the first three albums because.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He wanted to be in a rock and roll band.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And he knew he was backing Prince. So that's number one.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Number two is that. And I go into it in length in the book. Prince had this.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

And I talked about it earlier, he had this method, let's call it in.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Which you would get the musicians together and they would play off of riffs or grooves or bass lines or different.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Things, backbeats, whatever they could do.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He'd bring something, he'd say, matt, what do you got? He'd play something, Lisa, what do you got?

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

That kind of thing.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Well, one day they were playing this, or Andre was playing this bass line that became the foundation for controversy. And everybody in the band kind of called it Andre's tune. Well, it just one day resonated with Prince and he said, I'm going to work on it. And he did.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He came back with the full structured song.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Now, there's no melody to that. I mean, it is a melodic bass, it's a great groove. Right, but you can't really copyright riffs. This has been talked about for years. Yes, Prince should have given him credit, but he didn't. And that stuck in Andre's craw because.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Of their close knitness.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And then finally, I think that Andre believed that if he really wanted to.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Be a true artist, a la Gael.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He needed to get out from under Prince's immense shadow. But this cracked the foundation of the band. I mean, it was really hard to get over this. Prince took it hard. As you can might imagine, friends since Middle school. The Andersons took Prince in when Prince's.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Father, we didn't mention earlier, threw him out when he was a kid.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So it was seismic, but it was important. It's just like when you get out.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Of your neighborhood when you're a kid.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Moving on, shedding your past. It was important for Prince to move on, but it was. And it did point out another thing that Gail pointed out, too, which is, this is Prince's stuff. You're here to serve Prince's career and his music.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Don't forget that. And that's kind of where that went.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

But that's why Andre left. But Andre went on to a wonderful producing career with Jody Watley, who he.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Later married, and many other artists.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And Prince, you know, penned him a.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Hit later in his career, the Dance Electric, which became his only hit.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And they stayed close up until Prince's death.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

While recording Controversy, Prince became fascinated with the Lynn drum machine, which would become the foundation of a sound for the remainder of the eight. And because a drum machine doesn't get tired like musicians do. And Prince had full control over the sounds that it made, despite this collaborative, you know, philosophy that he presented throughout his career so far. What effect did this have on the rest of the band?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I think it was a good effect.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

I'll tell you why.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I mean, when people hear drum machines, they're always like, oh, God, here we go. And it can be used.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

So technically, it just sucks the lifeblood out of. And I'm a person right now.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

My niece, Sidney Lee, who's gonna be going in the studio in Nashville next month, and we're gonna go down there together. And I've been sort of guiding her. You know, she's working with some producers that are giving her backbeats, you know, to get a formulation of the song. But we both agree that a drummer really adds that sort of organic kind.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Of feel to it.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And my brother's a drummer, and I.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Play drums, so, you know, it's kind.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Of like a natural thing. But the way Prince played the Lynn.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Drum machine, and he always played the.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

LM1, which is the original one, he never went on to the ones that.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Became much more prevalent in the 80s.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He would play it physically with his fingers, so he would make the beat. Then he would couple it with Bobby Z, who at first said he was a little scared of this, but then he became intrigued and then later on invented ways, before midi, before anything, he would combine live drums with it on stage, as Prince did in the studio. So it wasn't just drum Machines. And even in his opus 1999. That record very much reflects the Oberheim synthesizers and the drum machine, the LM1. And you would think it was Kraftwerk or something like that. Right. But it's not. It's got an organic feel to it. Maybe because of his funk and soul backgrounds. No one was going in these directions.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

The way Prince was.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So I think it actually challenged, certainly Bobby Z, the drummer. And it also gave the band this.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Feeling that they were not being stagnant.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And that they would work with whatever. Like Matt Fink was in charge of finding out the latest keyboards. Like he. That was his job. Find out what's state of the art. Let's do it. That's why they went to Sunset Sound. Because they had a state of the art board. That Prince forever tried to recreate in his home studio. So this was a forward moving operation. Bobby Z always said Prince looked at it like, don't look back, you'll turn to stone. Keep going forward. Whatever you did before, doesn't matter. We're going this way now. So the LM1 was a big part of that. And all the keyboards that I write about during the making of.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Not only controversy, but as I mentioned, 1999.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

So Prince releases 1999 in 1982. And a year after that in 1983. Lisa Colman's contributions to Prince's visions. Would extend far beyond her own musical talents. When she introduced her longtime friend Wendy Malvoin to Prince. And after their meeting, Prince saw in Wendy the key to creating a whole new band for this new period. To build on his recent success. And for Prince, this was the revolution. Could you tell us more about what Wendy brought to the band that made Prince think that?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Yeah, so Wendy was sort of. There was a need for Wendy. But again, Prince is very blessed. And he was always very prescient. He saw the cracks happening with dez. Des Dickerson also felt like he needed.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

To branch out more.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

He had a. What he calls in his memoir, a religious experience.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

So he felt again conflicted about the sexual stuff.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Also, we should mention that Brown Mark.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Brown, his nickname, of course, Brown Mark. More famously that was joined the band replaced Andre.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So the band was moving quickly. And it was moving quickly with very young players. Brown Mark was 19. And when Wendy came along, she was 18. So when Dez was starting to fade, then Prince worked with him to help him get a career.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

So it wasn't, you know, there was no animus there.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

It was just a perfect, seamless maneuver. Not only was Wendy Lisa's longtime friend since childhood, but they were lovers. And both of them, which I didn't mention earlier, their fathers both played in the famous Wrecking Crew, which was a series of LA musicians that played on.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

A ton of music in the 1960s.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So these were two young LA kids who grew up with fathers who were introducing him to the Jackson 5 and the beach Boys and Sliding the Family Stone and the Mamas and the Papas. I mean, this was their, I think Rita Coolidge, where the, you know, the singer was, was Lisa Coleman's babysitter when she was a kid. So both Wendy and Lisa grew up in LA in a music family. Best friends, great musicians, a couple. They were partners. And here they are, here's Prince. Come on in. And Wendy fit like a glove. She played that chicken scratch guitar that he loves so much so beautifully. She could play rock guitar, funk guitar. She would recreate Des Dickerson's famous guitar solo from Little Red Corvette beautifully. And he has two women in the band, so it's a fully intergender, interracial kind of thing. Two white women, a white guy on drums, a white guy on piano. Brown Mark, an African American, and Prince.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Of course, African American.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

So this was where the revolution detonated. And of course, their most famous, you know, the peak of it all was Purple Rain, which, where the story completely.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Takes off into the stratosphere.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Everything we talked about today, Bradley, it never gets there without this amazing evolution. And as I mentioned many times in this interview, and I talk about incessantly in the book, how important this group of musicians were to push him along, nudge him along, take him out of.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

His myopic visions all the time and.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Have him think about other ways to.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Perform and to compose. Oh, that's so important to an artist, especially a young artist that was, as I said, moving rapidly through his early career.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Oh, absolutely. And I wish we had time to talk about Purple Rain because that is like the introductory point for a lot of people in Prince, the soundtrack and the movie. And, you know, I wanted to more focus on the evolution of that band. But, you know, for my final question, you know, just to throw in a Purple Rain question in there, as 1999 is finished and Prince is looking forward to whatever the next project is going to be, which ultimately is Purple Rain. Where is he mentally at the start with regards to him and his vision and his band?

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Well, this was Prince's idea, called the.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Movie idea, I keep calling it in the book, where he would walk around and say, we're going to make this movie.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And he made sure his management knew.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

That if he didn't get him a movie, they weren't going to manage him anymore. And he went to Warner Brothers and.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Said, this is not going to be some B movie, like Rock and Roll.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

High School with the Ramones.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

It's gonna be a full length film produced by a real studio. We're not gonna shoot this thing in New York and la. We're gonna shoot it in Minneapolis.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

It's gonna be real.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

We're gonna play in First Avenue, where we started our careers. And all the bands that I'm writing music for, like Vanity 6, later Apollonia.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

6, when Vanity left the project. And the time, which he cobbled together.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

From Flight Time, which is a brilliant Minneapolis band that was playing at the time.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

He, you know, he put Morris Day.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

As the singer and he built this whole thing for this movie to control the mythos of Prince. And the revolution were a big part of it. Because he wanted the music to sound live. He wanted to capture that live. He never did a live album, so this was his way of doing, in essence, a live album. And half of that record is recorded live. And three of the four songs on the amazing second.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Well, the whole record is amazing. But the amazing second side.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I want nothing, no what is on.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

That second side of it's escaped me now. I always get this one wrong.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I would die for you into Baby.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Youy Star and then ending with Purple Rain. There you go.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

I always get it wrong because in the film it's flip flop. He plays Purple Rain and everyone celebrates and they play those last two songs. But on the record, it flows that way. But that's how they recorded it live at First Avenue. So you could see Prince starting to dip his toes into stardom. And how he reacts to that. Bradley is. Was also a fascinating aspect of what I discovered about how Prince dealt with his fame.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Huge fame.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

At one point, only Elvis Presley and.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

The Beatles had the number one record, the number one single, and the number one movie in America. And Prince Rogers Nelson equaled that.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

After that, everything we talked about up till then changed. And it was really interesting for me as a writer. Almost like a narrative. People always ask me how I approach this book.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Kind of like a novel to me.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

You could see the arc of the character. You're nodding your head, and I'm so glad you got that out of it.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

Well, James, thank you so much for speaking with me today. This was an absolutely entertaining book. And you brilliantly explored all the unsung ways Prince became the artist that we know of him as today and how he achieved his legacy and the ways we continue to celebrate it. I really wish we could have talked about Purple Rain because I know we could have really dived into that, but people could read your book. Truly brilliant work that adds new dimension to an artist that we thought we knew well.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

Bradley, thank you so much for having me.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

I think it's wonderful work you guys are doing here. I support all authors, especially music authors, as well as you.

[James Campion (Author / Guest)]

And best luck with the Frank Zappa book. And yeah, I look forward to doing this again. And we'll talk about another book of mine because this was a lot of fun.

[James Campion (Author / Guest, continued or additional commentary)]

Thanks.

[Bradley Morgan (Interviewer)]

My name is Bradley Morgan and you've been listening to new books and music with my guest James Campion. His latest book is Prince the Band the Era and is published by Backbeat Books.

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