The band Prince said had the best players: “This huge, amazing sound”
There was a time when a Prince testimonial was as rare and elusive as some of the greatest figures of folklore. A man who once famously quipped he likes people but also likes to test them, this mysterious cloaked prodigy seemed like he had once revealed the most of himself only through his music. And when he passed away, we revelled in the fact that that was mostly true.
We see Prince now as this mythological subject that’s hard to define with simple words, an artist whose music transcends the expanse of his discography with vicious cultural intent. We see him as such because, in many ways, that’s exactly what he was—almost Siren-like in his ability to wade through situations with a sort of suave demeanour, eyes down, chin up, dismissive only because he’d earned the right to be.
But he was also sort of reserved, laidback, even if the words swimming around in his head were more cutting and abrasive than the expression on his face. When he first met Mavis Staples, he was shy and recoiled into himself like he didn’t know how to act, despite his achievements already paving the way for what could have otherwise been the more well-established ego of a hero in the face of another hero. In other situations, however, he didn’t hold back with quite as much restraint.
For instance, some of Prince’s more scathing interviews are ones that often sit at the corners of his legacy like the weathered gargoyle that tarnishes an otherwise pristine lawn. But also unmoving, like it almost adds an electrical current to something that, on the surface, could seem too polished to the untrained eye. Prince’s discography is, granted, too provocative in many ways to be deemed playing it safe, but these moments, when he’d discuss others with irritation in his eyes, spoke to a soul who truly knew how good he was to know how to spot the bad in others.
And this extended to those he adored, too. In fact, it was often those he disliked that informed ones he respected. “I like the audience to be as sophisticated as my music is,” Prince told Guitar Player in 2004, “And, sometimes, I’ve had more fun doing challenging things in after-show concerts than playing the hits at the main show.” In his world, the bar was set by many “players” in rock ‘n’ roll, with few coming close in the years that preceded.
“The best players used to play rock and roll,” he continued, praising Boston as a band who just had it: “The first time you heard Boston, it was this huge, amazing sound with all that guitar doubling. Same with Brian May—nobody sounded like him. I still think of Return to Forever as a rock band. Those guys could really play, but there ain’t nobody doing that in rock these days.”
Loosening the reins on authentic music with a purpose is something Prince could never stand by, especially when it came to the stuff he’d hear in excess on the radio: “We need to tell music execs that they keep ramming Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran down our throats”. But bands like Boston enabled the kind of sonic extensiveness Prince adored in his own music, the kind that maintained authenticity purely because it wasn’t trying to be anything other than what it already was: raw, unashamed, and brave enough to stand out.
