“If you need a path to follow”: the artists everyone should start with, according to Prince
There was no real limit on what Prince could pull off on a record. He was always exploding with creativity from the minute that his first album came out, and even if he wasn’t lighting the world on fire with every release, it was easy to simply gawk in amazement at the amount of talent this one person showed in a matter of months. Although ‘The Purple One’ had more musical experience in his left toe than most of us will have in our entire lives, that only came from studying some of the greatest to ever do it.
But before listening to anything Prince could do on record, it’s essential to look at his performance first. From the minute he got onstage with The Revolution, he never stopped for a second. He was always making sure that he was dancing and performing in lockstep with every member of his backing band, and that the audience was having the time of their lives every single time they played.
Prince may have carried himself like the king of showbiz, but that was only a preview of the real thing, which is the legendary James Brown and what he could do at his peak. Brown was always one of the greatest performers in the industry, and when production legend Rick Rubin sat down to work with Prince, he even remembered a version of Brown’s performance on The Tami Show being played non-stop while he waited for him.
But beyond the showmanship, one major element shone above every single one of Prince’s songs: rhythm. All great R&B songs are based on a great backbeat, and whether he was dipping his toes into every genre from rock to soul to jazz to funk, he was never going to release anything that didn’t have a firm sense of groove behind it.
“If you need a path to follow, a good place to start is by listening to Ike Turner—he was as tight as they come—or James Brown.”
Prince
And despite being an absolute monster behind the scenes, that rhythmic foundation was one of the few good things Ike Turner did for the music industry. He may have been one of the biggest pieces of shit to ever come out of rock and roll history, but listening to some of the early records that Turner made, you can tell he always knew how to make the jump a little higher when playing along to ‘Proud Mary’ or ‘Come Together’.
Although Prince had a far larger musical palette, he knew that the basis of what he did could be found in what Brown and Turner were doing, saying, “If you need a path to follow, a good place to start is by listening to Ike Turner—he was as tight as they come—or James Brown, who is all about rhythm. Put any colours you’ve learned from Joni Mitchell on top of that, and then you’ve got something!”
Then again, Mitchell’s influence might have been the most crucial for him. Outside of writing some of the beautiful pop melodies of her generation, Mitchell’s adventurousness behind the scenes is what helped broaden Prince’s horizons. To the point where he would sprinkle in songs like ‘A Case of You’ into his jams and make the kind of left turns that felt like they were the children of albums like Hejira.
But if there’s one thing that Prince learned from every one of these artists, it was that being himself was the most important thing. Anyone could try to work on their best James Brown moves until they have everything down pat, but Prince was willing to put in the work to make sure everything he made was 100% authentic.
