The song Prince could never play the way he wanted to: “The way I envisioned it”
Creative integrity is one of the hardest things to define, especially as it can appear with multiple faces under several disguises. Even at the peak of his career, Prince was denounced by sceptics for being nothing more than a callous troublemaker when, in reality, he was someone with more creative integrity than perhaps any other player on the scene at the time.
That didn’t stop people from trying to mould him into any shape possible, though. Throughout the 1980s, it seemed like two separate culture wars were taking place: Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi and Prince vs. Michael Jackson. Not really the kind of “choose your fighter” you’d expect, but the intensity was there, one clad in leather with the sort of glare you’d never want to be on the receiving end of, and the other opting for a different, more mass-level sheen that left little room for offending anybody.
But these stereotypes started to feel a little off, especially for Prince, who wasn’t ever really all that deserving of fitting a villainous stereotype just, well, just because. For one, he was arguably far more groundbreaking, bringing weapons to the fight that not only felt far sharper but pleasing to the eyes and ears: like a sense of foreboding that you couldn’t quite ignore, mainly because you just didn’t want to. In other words, it was impossible to look away.
Perhaps that was always because being polarising wasn’t a particularly offensive accusation to Prince. Yes, his music defied the laws of the commercial space by hoisting themes like eroticism and hedonism like a bold red flag, and he himself seemed about as boxed in as running water, but ruffling a few feathers was always the small price to pay for being artistically authentic and brazen in a way the King of Pop cowered away from.
A big part of this was, naturally, nurturing the kind of innate bite that left teeth marks on anyone who contested ideas, kind of like a beast in an expensive purple tux – entirely gracious until the moment comes when it’s time to break out the claws as a reminder of who’s boss. Obviously, culture has long since leaned into this particular Prince persona, painting him out to be someone with little mercy (and, in some cases, this was true), but for the most part, it came as a response to saving his own artistic integrity.
This is also why, when it came to the music, it threw Prince off course when he couldn’t do something himself. A real prodigy through and through, the singer got used to a constant exercising of “if you want something doing right, do it yourself” – a slogan that landed him in hot water from time to time but which was a necessary evil when working on things he knew he wanted to be a certain way. Often, this meant playing and performing all parts himself, but sometimes, he had to grow comfortable knowing he couldn’t always be the one to play god.
As one of the most popular songs, ‘When Doves Cry’ is impossible to imagine any other way, but Prince himself once said he envisioned it differently, but its intricacy means he’ll never be able to play it the way he intended. “On some songs, I just like the way I play drums and keys better than anyone I know. My drummer, John Blackwell, can certainly do things I can’t do, but, if I bring him into the studio, there are things he’ll do differently than how I envisioned them,” he told Guitar Player.
Continuing: “You know, I can’t even play ‘When Doves Cry’ the way I originally envisioned it. It’s like a painting – it is what it is. You know how [legendary director] Billy Wilder got such a seamless quality to his films? It was because he wrote and directed everything himself. It’s the same for me.”
Perhaps the height of creative integrity, then, was never about taking full control but leaving room for imperfections, even those you feel frustrated with in the moment. For instance, it’s anyone’s guess whether the version of ‘When Doves Cry’ that Prince truly wanted would have surpassed the version we know and love, but maybe the not knowing is for the best, because the official version already raises the bar for pure artistic excellence.
