‘When Doves Cry’: How Prince unproduced a masterpiece
Prince’s artistry often consumed him entirely. He’d get an idea, head straight into the studio, and wouldn’t leave until it was recorded, at least as a thorough demo. That was how he liked to work. It didn’t matter if it took a few hours or stretched across days; he wouldn’t stop until the song was out of his head and onto tape.
There are also countless stories of those bursts of inspiration he’d get. ‘Purple Rain’ came to him so suddenly and vividly that it genuinely unsettled him. He would craft songs in a single evening, and they’d go on to become hits, especially during the period when making Purple Rain, the film, turned him into a man possessed.
It was a new way of working. The iconic 1984 release isn’t an album in the traditional sense; it’s a soundtrack, almost a musical score. The songs didn’t exist first, and many were written to fill specific gaps in the film. While making the semi-biopic, Prince and his team would spot a moment that needed something special, and he would disappear, returning shortly after with a brand new song like it was no effort at all.
‘When Doves Cry’ was one of those such instances. At one point during the making, director Albert Magnoli explained to Prince that one more song was needed to summarise the themes of the movie. The next day, the musician returned with a song that would become one of his most defining anthems.
That story alone is beautifully reflective of the kind of artist Prince was. But when you dive deeper into the stems, there’s another one, right where the bassline should be.
In addition to being a story of his tireless inspiration, ‘When Doves Cry’ is a story of Prince’s boldness and trust in his vision. During the making of the track, his engineer, Peggy ‘Mac’ McCreary, recalled him being absolutely exhausting as he frantically brought his idea to life. “I remember kind of shutting down on that song because it just seemed like a ‘wank’,” she said, “Just like, ‘oh my god, here we go’ – the raging guitar and the raging synths and everything. It seemed so overproduced to me.”
But Prince’s vision should never be doubted, and the people around him knew that. His collaborators knew to just let him cook and trust the process no matter how annoying it was. And it must have been annoying, as after the long session was done, after the song had been given to the movie and was now in its final, final stages of mixing, Prince said ‘wait’, went back in, and deleted the entire bass part.
It’s an incredibly bold and gutsy call late in the game, and it’s incredibly bold and gutsy to take a piece of work from a session and throw it in the bin. But that was Prince; bold and gutsy and utterly trusting of his musical ear.
“As the night went on, things started coming out… he kind of ‘unproduced it’, if you can possibly do that,” McCreary recalled as the artist started tearing his work apart in its final honours. It was exactly the kind of thrill he and his music thrived on as the engineer remembers him smiling like a kid, giddily boasting, “ain’t nobody gonna believe I’d do this” as he wiped the bass from the track.
