Publication: St. Petersburg Times [US]
Date: November 18, 1990
Section: Floridian
Page Number(s): 1F
Length: 1204 Words
Title: "Prince No Longer Rules Wendy & Lisa"
Written By: Eric Snider

For Wendy & Lisa, the Revolution is finally over.

It required a lengthy battle to find their own identity apart from rock superstar Prince and his globally celebrated Revolution band. They had been his most high-profile backing musicians, but in 1986 he unceremoniously cut them loose. The shadow of their former mentor plagued Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman through two albums on CBS, but the duo's liberation has been sealed with the release of Eroica (Virgin).

Now fully at the helm of their muse, Wendy & Lisa have crafted an intoxicatingly diverse album that straddles established pop categories. Eroica incorporates dance-funk, psychedelia-tinged rock, edgy power-pop, rhythm-and-blues, acoustic-based sounds and more, but does not skew too heavily toward any style. Much of the music is dreamy and personal, but imbued with a spry rhythmic kick. Direct stylistic references to Prince can scarcely be found. "I think the history, and of course the comparisons, with Prince are still inevitable," Coleman said in a recent phone interview. "But now I think we don't care."

They used to. "Especially on our first album ('86's Wendy & Lisa), we would literally start playing something and say, "Oh s---, we can't do that, it's too much like Prince.' At the time, we felt people were unclear of what we were capable of. We were consumed with proving we had our own identity. It was such a drag to go through, but it was probably unavoidable."

Wendy & Lisa's first label, Columbia, only fueled their aesthetic angst. "They were looking at us like the Prince girls, wondering why we weren't being that, hoping we could bring something Prince-ish to their roster," Coleman says. "And that just added to the confusion and pressure."

With time and maturity and a change of record companies, Wendy & Lisa finally exorcised the purple demon, relaxed and let the music flow on Eroica. The results are exceptional. Unique. By commercial standards, perhaps too unique.

So far, the album has failed to break into Billboard magazine's charts. Radio play has been spotty. Although only out a matter of weeks, it looks as if the album is suffering from the fall-between-the-cracks syndrome that is often the fate handed to refreshingly different releases.

"That must mean we'll have to be the busiest touring band on earth," Coleman says. "I still have to believe it's a good time for our music. It's so encouraging to see our audiences, there's everybody from rap fans, blacks, whites, gays, real straight-looking people, hippies. We love that. That's what our band looks like. That's who we are." A fusion of sounds Eroica is a triumph of sound. Wendy & Lisa have proven masters at weaving strange and wonderful rhythm tracks, combining their talents on a variety of instruments with the work of a crack-shot band. Although the first single, Strung Out, is propelled by a booming drum machine groove, most of the rest is anchored by real drums and laced with exotic percussion. The shimmering jangle of acoustic guitars melds with the raw crunch of power chords or grungy fuzz or slithering funk lines or the deliciously warped wah-wah effects on Crack in the Pavement.

The tracks are fleshed out with beautiful details: an electric cello weaving through the ominous Why Wait For Heaven; the B-3 organ on the spritely Turn Me Inside Out; James Brown-styled giving Skeleton Key a kick; a lush string arrangement adding melancholy to Don't Try to Tell Me; plus a swirling hurdy-gurdy here, a crying harmonica there. Eroica's production is at turns busy and spacious, but never obvious.

Melvoin's pleasingly smooth pipes are less distinctive than rock's top lead singers, but the duo blends voices into warm, ethereal harmonies. The songs take some time to etch into the gray matter, but have real staying power.

"I like to think of us as a product of modern times," Coleman says. "In that we can literally turn on the TV and see satellite pictures from China, hear music from Tibet, whatever it is. Wendy and I have these really curious, open minds; we find things we love in almost anything. It just comes out in our music. We're fans of each other and our influences are slightly different. It's a fusion of all that." Blending and folding

Pianist Mike Melvoin and percussionist Gary Coleman are studio musicians and close friends. Their daughters began hanging out together while still in diapers and became "like sisters." Wendy and Lisa are, however, considerably different people. "When we were little kids, Wendy had a T-shirt that had Stevie Wonder on it," Coleman says. "She loved Stevie and Aretha and soul music. I was taking classical piano lessons; this serious kid, really dark. But we also had a lot in common with our love of jazz, Joni Mitchell and other stuff."

In the early '80s, the two friends suddenly found themselves in Prince's Revolution as the Minneapolis titan's career was beginning to soar. Wendy & Lisa became an integral part of Prince's genre-busting sound and his sexually charged shows. They were vampy, remote, their on-stage relationship vaguely lesbian.

"Wendy?" "Yes, Lisa?" "Is the water warm enough? "Yes Lisa." "Shall we begin?" "Yes Lisa." So began Prince's Computer Blue from the hugely successful Purple Rain album.

("It's not the way Wendy and I are sexually . . .," Coleman told the Chicago Sun Times. "Prince was creating theater, in a way.")

"Prince had this really good talent for recognizing uniqueness in people," Coleman says. "He just knew that I had something different to add to his music. He didn't tell me what to play; he just put it where he wanted.

"Having that band become the biggest thing of the '80s was an incredible experience for me. It showed that all of that seriousness when I was a kid, all of those days practicing piano, was for a good reason. All those kids who called me a geek were coming to see me in concert."

Prince suddenly broke up the Revolution in '86, casting Wendy & Lisa and most of the rest adrift. In the Oct. 18 issue off Rolling Stone, Prince mused, "I don't know what Wendy and Lisa are so hurt about. I wish I did, but I don't."

Coleman can't fathom why Prince fails to understand that it was painful to be summarily dismissed.

Prince's relationship with Wendy & Lisa is distant, strained, but not completely severed. He has called, offering tidbits of advice. He recommended that, for their first post-Revolution video, they use an eye-popping intro: "Do something like jumping off a speaker with smoke pouring out everywhere. Something," he told Rolling Stone.

"Where I think he's coming from is that he does still tend to feel a bit possessive about us," Coleman says. "He's called and said, "You guys should be doing this' or "Why aren't you doing that?' Naturally we don't say, "Gee, okay, we'll do that right now.' We're trying to do something on our own.