Why Bonnie Raitt rejected a Prince collaboration: “It never got off the ground”
The roots-inspired back catalogue of Bonnie Raitt is undeniably popular, but it was hardly engineered in its construction for instant overnight success.
For the sheer fact that she grafted away for the best part of 20 years without ever seeing a hint of success, and had recorded no less than nine previous albums before Nick of Time hit the big leagues – ironically, just in the nick of time – she well and truly knew the meaning of being a slow burner. It was all about patience and walking one step at a time.
This seemed to be the antithesis of everything that Prince ever achieved. Bolting from the blue and capturing near enough blazing attention right from the release of his self-titled second album in 1979, he was at the height of everything. With his mantra being ‘go big or go home’, he made it to the pinnacle of pop, rock, funk, and any other genre thrown his way was all part of the master plan.
Taking things at a steady pace was never even a thought which factored into his mind within his own career, but it was still something that caught his attention when it came to examining Raitt and the success she was on the cusp of generating from the late 1980s onwards. It led her all the way to Paisley Park, Minnesota, to meet the man in question – only for her to turn him down.
The legend long had it that Raitt had been signed to Prince’s label, Paisley Park Records, but she quickly shut down this rumour when directly confronted with it in an interview with Louder Sound. Rebutting the assumption, she said: “Actually, I wasn’t, though we did discuss a collaboration.”
For most artists, this opportunity would be like receiving a golden ticket straight to the pearly gates of sonic superstardom, but Raitt has always known that she is cut from a different cloth. “I had been dropped by Warners, and he said he loved my music. I went to Minnesota to meet him, but all he played me was finished songs that were not in my key and not topics that I would sing about, whereas I had wanted to work on songs from scratch. So it never got off the ground,” she explained.
While she never overtly slandered Prince for his approach, it was evident enough from her recollection of the experience that his bells-and-whistles musical brand was something that she was never going to get on board with. In this sense, it wasn’t entirely clear why she went to meet him in the first place – maybe just for a fun day out, if nothing else.
The one thing that Prince did have going for him in this situation was his intrinsic eye for spotting talent. Without sounding dismissive, to all intents and purposes, Raitt could have seemed like a lost cause at that point: countless albums behind her without a hit, and having just been dropped from her major label. But he saw something different and knew deep down that success was destined for her.
Of course, he was right about this, even if it didn’t turn out to be under his wing. But it was something that Raitt was clearly well aware of, too – if she stuck to her guns and kept pedalling away, eventually the tides would turn. She didn’t need a sonic pivot and a royal name to steer her off the tracks of her goals.
