Publication: VOX Magazine [UK]
Date: June 1993
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Title: "My Name Is God"
Interviewed By: Chrissy Iley

Jesus’ disciples had it easy compared to the chosen members of the New Power Generation, whose slavish devotion to their mentor knows no bounds. But can their blind faith restore the Purple Patriarch’s flagging fortunes in the USA? VOX seeks an exclusive backstage audience with He who must be obeyed.

Prince. He is invisible, yet He sees everything. That’s what they say when they talk about Him. And when they talk about ‘him’ they always mean Him. It’s easy to be spiritual, easy to be mystical when you’re backstage at San Francisco in the multi-coloured tented temple with Prince’s musical army. That’s how The New Power Generation sometimes think of themselves - spiritual soldiers.

"We go to boot camp, we are a team, we train, we plan, we pay attention. We will not lose this musical war. Anything might happen out there. We learn to move quickly, we don’t argue and it works well." So says Levi Seacer, guitarist and the longest-serving Prince soldier. He’s been with Him ten years. With Prince, love, war, sex and God all seem to be the same thing. If you can understand that, you must be telepathic and you must belong to Prince.

The particular battle in hand is a long-haul trek across America, Prince’s first in five years. And although it’s acknowledged that He is God, He is a God who’s been a little too invisible, just a little bit too culty, and oh-so-European; too chic, too ahead of his time. In America his time came and went with Purple Rain. He’s everywhere in small 3,000 seater venues, but nowhere in the charts.

While we in Britain keep the diminutive Purple Pop Prince close to our hearts and think he’s a superstar, in the rest of the world, the truth is somewhat different. In his homeland, Prince is without honour. His last album Symbol has sold half as many copies as the début release by the Spin Doctors, two million less than Kenny G’s latest offering, and even Sade’s Love Deluxe fared better in the Billboard Hot 200. Perhaps God can sometimes be misunderstood.

Michael Bland, big and loud and open-faced, is the drummer, and says bluntly: "This album is so good, but it’s time-capsule material. Maybe if we release it again in ten years’ time people in America will understand what we’re doing. It’s a shame they don’t get it right now. The English love Prince. This Western Hemisphere (sic) has lost it. They don’t have a clue anymore. Overseas people are so progressive. Look at Holland, he says, trying to be saucy.

"My biggest delight is to be part of this time when we are seeing the renaissance of the man who is the most prolific writer of our time," he continues "I am absolutely in awe of him. I couldn’t leave this gig, on ho. When I see other people play they are never as good as he is." Michael has a point. The rush, the adrenaline, the polish, the chaos, the intimacy, the energy, the spectacle, the crafting: all of that stuff you get at a Prince show may well be the nearest thing to heaven on earth - certainly it is for Michael Bland.

"I could never work for Michael Jackson or Madonna, after working for Prince. They don’t have that understanding of what it takes to make music." His eyes are spinning with enthusiasm, and he piles a second whole chicken and rice and some gungy looking pasta onto his plate. He is vast.

Prince doesn’t emerge backstage. Prince wouldn’t eat this food. In fact no-one has ever seen Prince eat. Still, "he must have adequate sustenance to be the performer he is," concludes Michael.

No one has ever seen Prince sleep. Partly because he doesn’t do much of it, and partly because he is invisible. "Yet he’s a visionary. He has a way of being in a place when people don’t know he’s there; he sends people in, he stays abreast, eyes and ears always open.

"You can’t find him. You can’t audition for Prince," says Michael, dismissing the thought with a chicken bone as he smacks his lips. "He has to seek you."

"We were all chosen," says the rather surly Tommy Barbarella, one of the keyboard players, He has rock-babe big hair, dark, and a skin so pale he looks like he’s been in a box for six years. "We’re not together because we want to be. We just got the tap from the man." They cackle and talk about a "babe fest" when a few things in Lycra limber over. Then they try to be a rock band. They try to remind you how they are the ordinary ones; being a member of The New Power Generation might just be as photofit as being a member of Spinal Tap.

Then the disciples spring to attention. They remember that you can do sex like an art form. Put the crudest of slithers on stage and it’s creative, but this kind of dirty talk, it’s destructive and not focused, and Michael adds: "We have to be focused, we have to be concentrated. You can’t do that if you’re cruising for babes."

They nod in unison, and all of the gathered beloved have a unified glint on their ring finger, or in Michael’s case, it’s a ring on a string around his neck. Prince is so giving that he has had all their names cast in gold, a few sparkly bits thrown in, and made into rings. "Prince thought they were stylish," says Maurice Hayes, the other keyboard player.

"He knows about all things, like fashion, and I want to step up to that level. Before I was in a bar band, and it was a different mental loop. Now it’s a concept attitude thing. This is bigger. This is imagination and I would change, no stretch any part of myself for that man. If he says there is any facet about myself that I should change, anything he wanted, I would do anything because he’s bound to be right."

They say Prince demands loyalty and telepathy. You could be fired for less than psychic intuition. No one knows exactly what going to happen on the stage until it happens. Michael Bland says: "It can be a look, or it could be something you listen for. Your attention span has to be wide. People in this organisation are removed, if the attention span is too short, before they are able to do any serious damage. You have to be fearless. He changes his mid so quickly. He makes so many elusive statements and I like that; to test all the time. He shows you; you show him you can keep up. We never know, for instance, if we are to do an aftershow gig at a club. He’ll have changed his mind four times before we get to hear of the decision."

Jimmy Johnson is the tour manager. He was once lighting director for Elvis and he cruised the ‘70s with the Eagles. He comes over to give the ‘in costume’ call. He’s never met Prince; "No need," he says. "I get my orders from the management." Prince, the unseen one, is about to be seen. It’s show time San Francisco.

For one who is so in exile, who can hardly speak for the music that pours out of his head (cut him and he’ll bleed it) Prince is incredibly intimate. He smiles and you think it’s at you. He puts those hooded eyes heavenward like an all-seeing, all-suffering Madonna, but like he knows you as well. The performance is full of those fawn-eyed stares that make you believe every syllable he speaks.

The other night at the Club USA after-gig gig in New York, someone tried to take His picture. Just a quick snapshot. An ordinary punter, But He doesn’t like his picture being taken and He who sees everything noticed the little boy with the camera. "Please don’t take my picture," he fluttered. "I’ll give you a thousand dollars." The boy stopped, mesmerised. He didn’t want a thousand dollars, he just wanted Prince to look at him. The moment was slashed: a couple of security men stepped in, plucked the film from the camera and the boy from the gig.

You don’t imaging that this frail, vibrant figure is capable of ordering such cruelty. But he’d probably have a line that said only those capable of the greatest cruelty can be capable of the most tenderness. Because he doesn’t speak much, everything he ever says tends to get repeated like a mantra, taking on an inflated significance. One thing he says a lot (he said it in interviews and he said it in the programme): "There are no such things as accidents, and if there are, it’s up to us to look at them as something else. Tears are more believable when you can’t hold them back. Here, music is made out of necessity, just like breathing. The voice inside tells you when there is a song to be born. All children are born beautiful …"

Written down it looks silly, but seeing him there on stage he’s totally believable. When he sings "Damn You" he gets into every crevice. It’s a shuddering intimacy. You feel he really is playing in your hair, giving you a hundred million little heart attacks; but at the same time he’s distant. Some curious voyeur to his own theatricality.

The tour differs from its predecessors in its voyeuristic quality. It’s like these are his players, his disciples, his army, and he puts them on show for us, he lets them take centre stage. Gone are the days of writhing around on a four poster bed with Cat. Sure there’s simulated fellation, but it’s other people doing it.

The show comes in two halves. The first is basically a recreation of the new album. He makes his entrance in royal purple with a mask that’s like a dangling beaded curtain. The rest of the ensemble are smoochy in satin smoking jackets. The microphone is a gun. Princess Mayte does a yashmak strip routine. There are mock TV reporters and Prince does big flounces and sweeps over the piano while Mayte writhes about a bit in her yashmak mode.

The second half is party party. ‘1999’ starts it off and he’s all streamers and guitar. He’s actually become very good at playing the guitar, he really pours himself into it. Then there’s lots of old favourite Prince songs that you wouldn’t want to miss. Apparently they’re different every night.

No-one knows yet if there is an after-show gig. During the interval the publicist, Karen Lee, said: "Yes, there is." Now, apparently, there is not. No one knows what he’s up to. But it won’t be sleeping. It’s the norm for them to do two shows a night and party ‘til dawn; it’s the norm to get 1.00am studio calls if Prince fancies showing you a track. And all the chosen ones feel that because they are chosen, they must forego sleep if required.

Tony Mosley feels it’s all part of the test, the paying of the dues. Mosley is Prince’s Number Two man, the rapper. He’s been in and out of the Prince organisation since the Purple Rain days, but was never taken on quite fully until the last tour. "Of course, it was frustrating not to be chosen to tour with Purple Rain," he says. "I know now everything happens in its right time. We were some angry young men. I speak for Damon and Kirk (the other dancers) as well as myself. We had to wait until we had learned other skills to bring to him. He wanted us to pay our dues. He had to."

Tony Mosley grew up in the same neighbourhood as Prince. "I knew him since he was 13. I watched as all that Minneapolis scene grew. I watched him with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. He was not an enigmatic figure then. He learnt because he watched and watched other people play. What he had was determination. By his very stature it meant that he often had to stand his ground and knuckle up. He was just another homie, but he stayed hard-headed. And if there is anything that this band has in common, it’s a band of winners. We are all hard-headed.

"He’s really put me in the spotlight, and I don’t think that was easy for him - to let the female leads go and have me. Former Prince protégé Maurice Day, from The Time, said: "what are you doing there with those big old tall basketball-playing brothers?" Prince said: "I like it that way".

Prince himself has been known to play basketball, incredible as it seems that he would compete with the long, luscious Tony. "He’s fast, incredibly fast, he has a good game." Sometimes Prince will hire out a theatre and the whole band and their friends will see whatever is the latest movie to be seen. But as Michael Bland says: "That’s about it for relaxation for Prince. You can’t shoot pool with a man who always has a song in his head. You can’t get much of a conversation when he’s always thinking about getting away - ‘Where is the quickest place I can go and write that down?’"

The mystery is that the greatest songs come from intense emotion - and one wonders when that emotional exchange can ever occur with Prince. His band talk about themselves as being family. They talk about family values. It’s all very ordered, the very opposite to the chaos of passion.

In ten years Levi hasn’t liked to trouble Prince with any emotional trauma he might have been going through. "Maybe two times he’s been there to listen. But I think he’s the leader. He’s got a lot of things on his mind. If I bring him something it must be very important."

Michael Bland, who’s pouring a mound of pepper into his tomato juice, explains: "Sure, Prince is my friend, but if we did have anything in common we’d never know it. His life is his work. We have a camaraderie. We are brought together by our love of music. We are one mind, one goal. And he is the vortex. Does that sound cultish? Someone on the radio said was it like working for David Koresh. I was deeply offended. I’m in awe of him, and he is my employer. He has made me more confident, more like him, more hard-headed. He has made it harder for me to deal with mere mortals.

"Fortunately I have a sweet woman who understands me and still wants to marry me. But all musicians are bigamists. While we all look for a soulmate, we must first find our soul."

If this is a family, Prince is indeed the Father. The giving, generous, patriarch, and also the stern despot. The other night Tony Mosley had a voice that was sore and he begged for one less number. Instead Prince added another two numbers. "By the end my voice was raw. He looked at me like: ‘I am going to work you tonight’. It was a test to see how much I love it, how much I was willing to work for it."

If Prince is God, then he’s a very Old Testament one. A genius, certainly, who manages to be on top of everything; but set apart, rewriting reality, plucking people so that they can become a new integral piece of the jigsaw of Prince; so he can look at them in wonderment as he often does, like they are his children.

Tony Mosley feels that there is a link. "Both Prince and I come from broken homes, were brought up by single parents. I was brought up by my mother, and Prince was brought up by his stepmother. Maybe that’s why there is a strong sense of recreating the family situation. But you would never be able to ask him about any of that. I don’t see Prince doing and interview. He’s gone beyond that. Why should he drop his life to anyone he meets? Anyway, he’s too busy writing so much. Ten songs a day."

Michael Bland can’t conceive of severing himself from the Prince family. "I can see I may have to work in another band if Prince tires of me, but spiritually, once He has touched me there is that connection, and what He has given me - my way of working, my work ethic, my way of seeing - will always be there. Spiritually I will always be with Him …"