FEATURE:
Diamonds and Pearls
IN THIS PHOTO: Prince, Under The Cherry Moon, 1986/PHOTO CREDIT: AJ Pics/Alamy Stock Photo
Prince at Sixty-Five: Inside the Legendary ‘Vault’
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FOR a run of features…
IN THIS PHOTO: Inside of Prince’s famed Vault at his Paisley Park Studios home
I am going to mark what would have been Prince’s sixty-fifth birthday. We lost him in April 2016. As The Purple One would have been sixty-five on 7th June, I wanted to explore his amazing career and legacy from a number of different angles and perspectives. I have a couple of other features to go. For this one, I wanted to look to the past and the future. Most artists record everything that they can whilst they are alive. You will get posthumous material. In some cases, this can be controversial. The artists might not have wanted demos or non-album-quality material getting out there. Others might have been working on stuff before they died and it never saw the light of day. Estates have this choice whether to keep these things hidden or put it into the world. In a lot of cases, this material is not overly-strong. It might have been set aside for a reason - but I guess it is nice to still feel that this artist is with us. It is new material at the least. Prince had no idea when he would go. As he died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl, he might have been working on something in the days before his death. That drug is highly potent. Prince was unwell in the days leading up to his death. The fentanyl that led to his overdose was contained in counterfeit pills made to look like a generic version of the painkiller hydrocodone/paracetamol. It was a tragic accident that many feel could have been avoided (not because of Prince, but why he was prescribed it). Regardless of the circumstances and what-ifs, it was a monumental loss of a legend who was only fifty-seven! You sort of ask what could have been. Maybe Prince would never repeated his golden run of albums in the 1980s that started with Controversy in 1981 and ended (in terms of quality) with Lovesexy in 1988. He was a true genius, one of the all-time great guitar players, and such a prolific artist. It is that prolific nature that we can see in his Vault (I am putting a capital v in there because I see it as a place and historic site, rather than a mere vault). Most artists have an archive but, in the case of Prince, there is almost this entire career’s worth of stuff in there.
Aside from album reissues where we have had some rarities, there have been a few posthumous albums. Piano and a Microphone 1983 (2018), Originals (2019), and Welcome 2 America (2021) have reached us so far. I wanted to figure what else might be in the Vault, but I also wanted to introduce some features about this amazing treasure trove. There is one album definitely in there but has not seen the light of day. I am grabbing this information from Wikipedia:
“The album was originally recorded in 1986 under the pseudonym Camille, a feminine alter ego portrayed by Prince via pitch-shifting his vocals up to an androgynous register. Prince planned to release the album without any acknowledgement of his identity. The project was initially scrapped several weeks before its planned release, with rare early LP pressings eventually surfacing for auction in 2016; several tracks recorded for Camille were instead included on various other projects, most prominently Prince's 1987 double LP Sign o' the Times.
In March 2022, Third Man Records announced that they had received the rights to release the album, with Ben Blackwell (co-founder of the label) saying "Prince’s people agreed – almost too easy." While the label indicated plans to release Camille, no release date or method of release has been announced yet. There have been no updates on the release since July 2022”.
I am not sure when Camille will get to us, but it does seem like it will be the next posthumous release from the Prince Vault. I am excited by this because it is s shame it was not released in 1986 or 1987. There has been a lot of talk and focus on the album through the years. Maybe there will be an announcement to coincide with his sixty-fifth birthday next month? Although most of this material has been released in some form or other, the fact that we get this new persona is the most exciting aspect.
What about the legendary Vault? What is it? There is an invaluable Prince Vault website that gives you news, album details and information about the iconic artist. In terms of distributing the material in the Vault, because Prince left no will, I guess it is quite complex! Sorting through all of this music and deciding what should go out and when is something his estate are wrestling with. Consequence looked inside his Vault in 2018:
“Located in the basement of Prince’s Paisley Park estate is a bank vault full of unreleased music. As part of their investigation into the musician’s tragic death in 2016, the Carver Country Sheriff’s Office recently released a number of photographs from inside the vault, offering our first peek at the treasure trove of material amassed by Prince over the course of his 57-year life.
According to Prince’s former sound engineer, Susan Rodgers, the vault pre-dates the release of 1984’s Purple Rain and was already at capacity she left three years later. “When I left in 87, it was nearly full,” she explained in an interview with the Guardian. “Row after row of everything we’d done. I can’t imagine what they’ve done since then.”
As Prince’s death was unexpected and he left no will, his estate had no way of accessing the vault as only Prince knew the door’s key code. After drilling it open, the estate’s archivist discovered enough unreleased music to release a new album every year for the next century.
The first batch of this discovered material has begun to see release, including a reissue of Purple Rain, the 1999-era “Moonbeam Levels”, and the original version of “Nothing Compares 2 U”, which surfaced last week. The estate has also struck distribution deals with Warner Bros. Records and Universal Music with plans for more unreleased music to be unearthed in the months and years ahead. An early draft of Prince’s handwritten memoir is also on the way”.
Back in 2021, it was announced that Prince’s Vault – which must have been quite chaotic and disorganised when he died in 2016! – was getting updated and organised. Esquire highlighted a 60 Minute segment that dove into the Vault. This was ahead of the release of the acclaimed Welcome 2 America:
“Death is not an end, but a beginning. Prince Rogers Nelson believed that in his bones. So it was that the night Prince died, a new era, the era of the vault, began.
By the time Prince was 40, he had written and recorded more songs than any artist could possibly release in a lifetime. Material, it seems, is the musical genius’s burden. To house all of his unreleased recordings, Prince constructed a vault in the basement of his Paisley Park complex in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Legend has it that as many as 8,000 songs are stored in the vault. For diehard Prince fans, the vault has been like an insurance plan — a way of guaranteeing the artist’s eternity, despite his premature death. At the same time, the vault has been frustratingly impenetrable and almost impossible to make sense of, especially considering the legal battles that have enveloped it ever since Prince died without a will in 2016.
On Sunday night’s episode of “60 Minutes,” correspondent Jon Wortheim dug into the vault’s status with a brief segment tied to the upcoming release of Welcome 2 America — the first release of a standalone Prince album that is comprised of new and original material. Previously, Prince’s estate only put out deluxe versions of some of the artist’s biggest albums, like 1999 and Sign o’ the Times, or compilations like Originals which was made up of Prince’s recordings of hits that he wrote for other artists.
The segment revealed that in its current state, Prince’s vault is more of a minefield than a treasure chest. The challenge, Wortheim summarized, is “monetizing the catalogue while still trying to do right by Prince.” That enormous task has been left to Troy Carter, a former Spotify executive and Lady Gaga’s previous manager. Since joining Prince’s estate in 2018, Carter has overseen the relocation of the majority of the vault’s contents from Paisley Park to Iron Mountain, a climate-controlled storage facility in Los Angeles, and created a team of archivists whose job it is to propose new releases of vault material.
Carter joked with Wortheim about the pressure of the job. “I want to make sure that Prince isn’t somewhere in heaven giving me the side eye.” In that spirit, the upcoming release of Welcome 2 America is an important first test, and according to Carter, the judges will be the Prince fans who think they have heard everything.“Whenever we can find things that the fans haven’t heard, it’s like a victory,” explained Carter. With it’s 10 previously unreleased tracks, Carter is hoping Welcome 2 America is a win”.
It is lucky that there is access to the Vault. Obviously, because of the sudden nature of his death, details about the code or how to access the Vault died with Prince. He did not leave details of how to get into the locked safe-like unit. Prince hid the code, so when he died and people found the Vault locked, it created a headache! Dave McOmie, a professional safecracker based in Oregon, came into to the rescue and opened the safe. He knew the exact model of Prince's vault - a Mosler American Century - when Prince's estate contacted him. At six and a half feet tall, several feet wide and 6,000 pounds, it was a job getting in there! Prince was not messing around when he had that thing installed! Whereas many artists would prefer to keep unreleased material private in the event of their death – if they did not deem it good enough to be released commercially –, but that was not the case with Prince. Even if Paisley Park was his home studio, the music he recorded there was not for his mere pleasure – it was for the entire world! In 2021, Brianna Holt wrote for Rolling Stone about the almost holy Vault. She spoke with Prince’s younger sister, Tyka Nelson. Prince would have wanted all of this material out in the world. To honour her brother’s wishes, that is what she is going to do:
“Since Prince’s death in 2016, Tyka Nelson, the musician’s younger sister, has been tasked with helping preserve the Purple One’s legacy. She shares one-sixth of Prince’s estate, with thousands of unreleased songs reportedly stowed away in Prince’s vault. Fans have eagerly demanded a taste of what the artist never got the chance to release on his own. Tyka, along with others who Prince trusted with his most prized collection, has spent the last four years uncovering and preserving treasures that only an artist as transcending as Prince could create. For Tyka, it’s an opportunity to fulfill her brother’s wishes, which he shared with her three years before his passing: “I won’t get off this planet until he gets every single solitary thing he worked so hard for and preserved for all of the world to hear.”
This week, the estate announced the upcoming release of Welcome 2 America, an album Prince recorded in 2010 but never released. It’s just one example of how much of his music the world has still never heard. Prince was notably skeptical of the music industry’s benevolence and, in a prescient move, fought to wrestle back ownership of all of his masters. Now, as his legacy lives on, the careful work of preserving these creations unfolds.
With four albums under her belt and a chart-topping single (“Marc Anthony’s Tune” reached Number 33 on Billboard‘s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in July 1988), Tyka is no stranger to overcoming hurdles and obstacles in the music industry. The 60-year-old singer and songwriter spoke with Rolling Stone about how Prince’s legacy has been preserved since his passing. She discussed what he saw in the music industry at large and why he had the foresight to archive and document his entire collection.
It’s widely known that Prince taught himself to play instruments and that you guys grew up in a very musical family. At what moment did you realize Prince was becoming a star?
To me, for a long time, he wasn’t of the caliber of Michael Jackson and Madonna, but the world thought he was. Of course, I thought it was great, it was wonderful, but it was all surreal. Especially going to the Purple Rain movie premiere and seeing Eddie Murphy and all these stars sitting around and I’m still sitting there going, “Why did they show up? What are they doing here?” My brain really never caught up, and if I’m totally honest, I didn’t catch up until about four years before he passed. That’s when I realized my brother was actually a star. That man was cold-blooded.
How has Prince’s legacy been preserved and not preserved since his passing?
Fortunately, it’s one of those easy jobs with a legacy who’s already said, “This is what’s going to happen and this is what I’m doing about it.” He kind of pre-planned everything and I don’t know where it started or why he began to put all these tapes, and movies, and scripts, and music together and preserve it. After Paisley Park was purchased, I thought it was going to be a soundstage, but it ended up being kind of a rehearsal hall, soundstage, and party place. So then he started planning the museum for it. All of these things were already told to everybody, so they knew what to do. All we had to do is kind of pick it up, put it down, and release the vinyl or CD, or help get the picture a little better, or make the audio a little clearer. But Prince did the work for us, he preserved it himself. Prince was always preserving his own legacy.
IN THIS PHOTO: Prince's sister Tyka Nelson poses for photographers in front of Purple Rain era costumes at the My Name is Prince exhibition at the O2 Arena in London on Thursday, 26th October, 2017/PHOTO CREDIT: Frank Augstein/AP
Prince once told Michael Howe, a former record-label executive, “All these recordings in the vault at some point would see the light of day after I’m gone.” His archive is known to have “thousands and thousands” of unreleased recordings, should fans ever expect to hear more of them like ‘Piano & a Microphone’ in the near future?
Prince always wanted people to hear his music. How dare I not do what this man broke his back to do all his life? There would be no way that I let one note of his music not ever be heard. I would not allow that museum to never open and not let people see what he envisioned. That man put this mess in motion and I won’t get off this planet until he gets every single solitary thing he worked so hard for and preserved for all of the world to hear.
Unfinished work has been said to remain with the family, have you found any things in the vault to be super surprising or exciting to you on a personal level?
Definitely not surprised. Definitely amazed. I guess I’m just so happy that he put his life down like this. Cicely Tyson, I heard, wrote a 400-page book before she passed. And to me that’s exactly what Prince did through his music. This is his life. Prince had old reel-to-reel tapes documenting his life. There’s just so much wonderful stuff in there, and Michael’s been brilliant at going in there and grabbing it all. But you also find these pieces of music that are just the beginning of a song or a chorus and all of the sudden there’s no other half to the song and it’s like, “Oh man, you stopped singing.” So for me personally, as one of the heirs, I can’t speak for all of them, I don’t mind if people hear the small stuff — the little stuff where he’s just sitting there playing with the piano and how he put it together. That might teach some little boy that wants to learn how to put a song together. We never know. Anything and everything, get it out there. If I live 100, 200 years, I would definitely be there helping to oversee getting it out. But Prince’s music will outlive me for sure.
In a 2018 interview, Howe also mentioned that Prince was working right up until the time he passed away and that there are recordings in the vault that are about as close as you can get to the end of his life as possible. Did Prince ever have any plans to retire?
That is not a word in the Prince vocabulary. Not that he wouldn’t use it, but he would never describe himself that way. In his last concert, which was at Paisley Park, he told everybody to come out and announced he was going to stop playing the guitar because he wanted to get better at the piano. That to me is because Judith was kicking his butt on that piano and I think he thought if he didn’t hold his game on the piano — because he was too busy on his guitar — that he would lose it. He wanted to get better at the piano, he wasn’t thinking of stopping. Retirement for him — no way”.
There is going to be a lot of sadness and remembrance on 7th June. Prince would have celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday in style, I am sure! Maybe he would have spent some of the day in the studio, but then he would have tore it up! He missed his sixtieth birthday. It is especially sad when we know he is not around for these big, milestone birthdays. Regardless, we will also share memories and happiness at the phenomenal music he gave to us! In terms of the future, you know there are going to be books and articles written about him. I recently speculated whether we will ever see a biopic about him. Maybe a film that features his music via a coming-of-age-style film. Perhaps we will get a Moonage Daydream-like film about Prince? That 2022 Bowie film – directed by Brett Morgen – was a dazzling and mesmeric feast for the senses! I would like to think at least something filmic or televisual surfaces soon, as the man has been under-represented on the screen since his death! We are safe in the knowledge that we’ll get years’ worth of music from the Vault. I guess Camille will be the next album out but, as Tyka Nelson seems to be the one who will see what is released and when, it will be a steady stream of albums and songs. Maybe quite a bit of it is not up to the high benchmark Prince set at his career best - but the fact that he recorded so much music is to be applauded and appreciated. We give him our thanks for that magical Vault! We also offer him our thanks and love…
FOR everything he gave to the world.