Publication: iMagazine [Internet]
Date: October 25, 1996
Section:
Page Number(s):
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Title: "The Evans Report on the Emancipation of Prince (Well Sort Of)"
Written By: Richard Evans

SO there I am at the Abbey Road Studio's and I'm telling Liam what I think of the new stuff he's working on...

...only half true I'm afraid, word has it that Abbey Road Studios is currently home to those Oasis boys, but although I'm pushing my way through the rabble of Oasis fans and curious Japanese it's not Oasis that I'm here to see...my appointment is with the new music from 'The Artist It's Impossible To Type Who For Arguments Sake I'll Call Prince'.

I trot up the steps to Abbey Road Studios and despite myself I'm impressed by the limo's full of top record company execs and smart people who are my co-invitees. Personally I'm wearing combat trousers, DMs and an L7 shirt and am comfortably the scruffiest person there...which is the way I like it to be. Apparently it's the way security like it to be too, because I was quickly asked to leave my jacket in the cloakroom, had my mobile phone taken into care (obviously darlings I felt naked...a music biz exec without a mobile phone??? no-one would take me seriously now...), and after being scanned with one of those bleepy machines that are supposed to track down dangerous weapons at airports but always get set off by your belt buckle I was allowed into the inner sanctum. After my belt buckle had activated a hundred alarm bells and caused a minor breach of security obviously, but I was in!

By this stage my attention was keen as I felt that such security precautions had to indicate that something quite significant was waiting for me. Perhaps the great man himself was going to have a bit of a chat with me before playing a couple of his new songs on the piano and then taking me for dinner and a couple of pints, and what was I going to call him? Would he hit me for calling him Prince, or would it be TAFKAP, or perhaps symbol, or should I just call him 'mate' like I always do when I can't remember someone's name???

But nope.

I was in a room with about twenty smart people, three television screens, some speakers that were bigger than my flat, and a table with a couple of glasses of white wine and some bottles of poncy lager (you know the sort...costs a fortune for each bottle because it's been brewed by overpaid Tibetan monks and Peter Saville designed the label). No peanuts. And the lager was warm.

So we shuffled a bit. Me in particular because I was the one with no suit. But all of us because we had no mobile phones and normally in such circumstances we would all have immediately pulled them out and tried to prove that we were all desperately important people who were constantly needed to prevent major multi-million pound deals sliding away. That's what we do in the media.

Then we shuffled a bit more and sort of nodded at each other in a gruff business-like way while we tried to work out who everyone else was and then how important they were in comparison to ourselves. I lost. I couldn't swear to it but I don't think the L7 'Hungry For Stink' shirt was projecting much of a high powered executive aura.

We all relaxed a bit then because everyone knew that they weren't the least important people there because I was there. But we didn't show that we were more relaxed, because that would be a sign of weakness. Instead we shuffled slightly until a smiley man with a big microphone stepped out of somewhere and welcomed us to Abbey Road and told us how important this project was to EMI (see, even he avoided using a name!), and then welcomed the complete big boss of EMI in America who was just a big voice on the big speakers live from Noo Yawk who told us that this project was very important to EMI and did we want to hear a bit of music.

We all nod gruffly. Me because I'm a bit disappointed that Prince isn't there and everyone else because they are hardened industry professionals and they are always gruff. So we hear some new songs. About six of 'em. they sound like Prince. We nod, and occasionally venture a smile of approval, but mostly we watch a video sequence of Prince being a bit pervy with loads of scantily dressed girls. The new single is the old Stylistics song 'Betcha By Golly Wow', and my favourite (because it sounds like Prince in the 80's when he was a top bloke and he was still called Prince) called 'My Computer', and we heard some others too but I can't remember what they were called but they were all about sex and love and were a bit saucy, especially with the video footage running.

And then we all got a chance to ask media questions to the man who is the complete big boss of EMI in Noo Yawk. What are we supposed to call the artist now? 'Well, I call him friend, but mostly we call him The Artist'. How much was the deal for? 'A lot. We need to sell loads and loads, and loads, and loads, and loads of records'. When is the baby due? 'Any day now'. What is the album called? Emancipation....

Then we all get given a gold folder with a symbol on it and a photocopy of the album artwork, and the album release date (November 19th), and we get our phones back. We immediately all call in 'for our messages' and scurry out as if deals are waiting and we haven't time to waste on this type of triviality.

And I still don't know why they had Fort Knox style security just to listen to six songs that we'll be given on tape is a week or so anyway. Rock'n'roll self importance gone mad. But at least I've now been to Abbey Road, and I was photographed leaving by some mad Japanese tourists who obviously thought I was one of Oasis, or one of The Beatles, or something. Because they all wear L7 shirts, of course. And I got to practise my shuffling and gruff nods."