Publication: Newsweek [US]
Date: May 4, 1987
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Title: "His Royal Badness, Inc."
Written By: Bill Barol

Prince rules over Paisley Park, a growing entertainment empire.

This is what Prince did in the first two weeks of April: Spent three days in the studio with Bonnie Raitt. Consulted with Dale Bozzio, Sheila E., Jill Jones and Tony LaMans about upcoming records on his label. Worked with Sheila E. on her new video. Watched his own new album, "Sign 'O' The Times," break onto the Billboard pop-album chart at No. 40 and climb to No. 12 in its second week, headed for the top (box). Kept an eye on morning rehearsals for Madhouse, his opening act, and worked with his own band in the afternoons. Oversaw finishing touches on Paisley Park, his new $ 10 million audio/video/film production facility in a Minneapolis suburb, right down to the logo on the business cards. Left for England to rehearse for a two-month European tour. "All he asks of you," says Harry Grossman, project coordinator for Paisley Park Studios, "is that you keep up." Grossman smiles thinly as he says this and sounds extremely tired.

Not quite 29, already known as a musical wizard, Prince is becoming something bigger: an entertainment conglomerate. His reach is spreading via the new album, a hit single, the European tour, an American tour probably starting in July. But it is the new studio complex, a 65,000-square-foot postmodern behemoth, that promises to have the greatest effect -- not just on Prince himself, who can at last bring all his activities together under one roof, but on the whole creative community of Minneapolis, his hometown. There is a Hollywood-size sound stage in the place, two recording studios and rehearsal space, all of which will be available to outside clients; plus office space for Prince's record label and his umbrella company, PRN Productions. The new complex is "probably the only facility of its kind between the coasts," says Alan Leeds, operations director of PRN. Says Grossman, "The concept is purely his. Prince wants this to be the best production facility in the world."

Well, nobody ever accused Prince of dreaming small. And why should he? In the nine years since his first album was released, bearing the soon-to-be-familiar label "Produced, arranged, composed and performed by Prince, " he has delivered on just about every brag. (OK, so the movie "Under the Cherry Moon" was a flop. But a bravura flop.) The sound track to "Purple Rain" sold 17 million copies worldwide. His subsequent albums have been less successful in the marketplace but no less ambitious. Minneapolis is to R&B in the 1980s what Detroit was in the '60s, the home of a discrete and dominant sound -- and Prince is its progenitor. Last week eight records on the Billboard Hot Black Singles chart bore his stamp, starting with his own "Sign 'O' The Times" at No. 1, down through productions by his proteges Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, Jesse Johnson and David Rivkin. Sheila E.'s "Hold Me" showed up recently on the soft-rock Adult Contemporary chart; under the pseudonym "Joey Coco" Prince has written for Kenny Rogers and country singer Deborah Allen. He's everywhere. "You can't underestimate his influence," says Eric Leeds, his saxophone player. "And as popular an artist as he is, his influence is thatdeeper among musicians. Prince is the one that other musicians all want to check out."

Hard, fast work: His record label, also called Paisley Park, has been the main vehicle for Prince's march across the charts. Prince has a hand in all the creative decisions at the label, and its philosophy, says Eric Leeds, is "very simple: alternative music. New artists, or maybe artists you know in a new context. Everything a little bit different." That would explain Prince's desire to work with Raitt, a terrific singer who has never had the chart success she deserves. "He works real hard, real fast, kicks your butt," Raitt said last week after three days in the basement studio at Prince's suburban Minneapolis home. The tracks, on which Raitt played lead guitar and Prince played almost everything else, should be red-hot. "He wants to broaden my audience," Raitt says. "He thinks I've got something that isn't being heard, and he knows how to get it out there."

Alan Leeds, for one, is hopeful that the corporate idea behind Paisley Park Records will trickle down to clients of Paisley Park Studios: "We hope the environment will encourage people who work there to do things against the grain." First things first, though. The immediate task is to get clients in the door. Paisley Park is a huge facility, two years on the drawing board: the sound stage alone measures 12,000 square feet; the larger of its two recording studios, scheduled to open June 1, is fitted out for every audio task up to film scoring. There is a rehearsal/dance hall with a sprung floor, underground parking for 15 cars, a humidity-controlled Mosler bank vault to store the 300-plus songs Prince has on tape, a backstage area big enough to back a semi into. It will take a lot of billing to make the place pay, and there is, no doubt, self-interest in the management's insistence that outsiders are welcome -- a new crack in the wall of mystery that has surrounded Prince up to now.

But there's also a genuine sense that Paisley Park will be good for Prince's hometown. A 1985 survey found that more than half the national TV ads billed in the Twin Cities were shot out of town. "Production dollars leave this city," Grossman says. " Prince wants to keep them here." A few weeks ago Kool & the Gang hired the sound stage for tour rehearsals. "The hotel, the caterer, the limousine company all made more money than we did," Grossman says. "We put together a 15-man crew. Clients are going to find that there's a Midwestern work ethic here -- if we hire people to work, they're going to come in and work. They're not going to tell you about this great song they just wrote."

Purple dormer: "Paisley Park is in your heart," Prince sang in 1985. Now Paisley Park is on the map, too, a huge white building with a purple dormer on the highway west of town. The people who work for Prince talk about the artists who will work there, the feature films that will be shot, the hit records that will be made -- maybe even a "Hollywood Palace"-style weekly variety show. Suddenly, in the cavernous sound stage, the PA system crackles on: "Attention K mart shoppers," a voice says soberly. "Our Blue Light Special today . . ." Grossman, in the midst of a serious business pitch, cracks up. "Well," he says, "it's rock and roll, too." Can it all work together? Who knows? Like everything Prince has ever done, the dream seems outsize and eccentric. But like everything Prince has ever done, it surely will be fun to watch.