“Control”: The artist who convinced Prince to be a bandleader
Not everyone is destined to take the lead in a band. While some musicians are incredible at playing their instruments, they often thrive better in supporting roles, letting others steer the creative direction or handle the songwriting. Prince, however, was always bound to be a commanding presence. Yet, it wasn’t until he saw this particular musician that he realised he needed to take centre stage.
Which is strange considering how Prince looked. Considering the traditional definition of what rock stars are supposed to look like, ‘The Purple One’s smaller figure made him seem like a child prodigy who happened to have some of the best songs of all time in his arsenal. Once everyone looked under the hood, though, what he was making was utter genius.
Going through his first albums, it wasn’t like he was out of line trying to tell the rest of The Revolution what to do. After all, he had played everything on the album, so if something sounded off when they translated that over to the stage, it normally came from someone being out of tune or trying to go off on their own and adding something else to the mix.
That’s not how Prince operated. For as fun as his shows seemed to be or the long jams that he would go on, everything was carefully calculated down to the letter, whether it was the stage lighting, the right guitar being played for any particular song, or making that everyone danced in lockstep with him every time he performed.
But what Prince was doing wasn’t anything new to someone who had seen James Brown. Outside of his pedigree of being one of the hardest working men in show business, Brown always ruled his band with an iron fist, making sure that everyone was hitting their cues at the exact right time or practically playing the band when he did various call and responses throughout his shows with the background singers or the horn section.
Even though sharing a stage with someone that outgoing would have been intimidating, Prince was immediately inspired by what he saw, saying, “James Brown was an inspiration. Was and is. We play JB riffs all the time. I saw James Brown live early in my life, and he inspired me because of the control he had over his band. . . and because of the beautiful dancing girls he had. I wanted both.”
Then again, Prince never managed to go quite as overboard as Brown did during his performances. As over the top, as he could be at the best of times, you weren’t going to see Prince stop midshow and have someone throw a jacket over him or fine any of his band members if they happened to hit a bum note.
Still, anyone knew that Prince wasn’t one to mess around like Brown was. He was always down to get creative if the time called for it, but if anyone was playing with him and wasn’t going along with what he wanted, it wasn’t long before they were packing their bags.
