"Kiss"

How good was Prince as a songwriter? So good that a song he dashed off as a demo for another band became his third #1 hiit.

Back in the 1980s, Prince worked with a number of spinoff bands—bands he styled, wrote music for, and produced—which included The Time, Sheila E., Vanity 6, and a 7-piece group from Minneapolis known as Mazarati.

While Prince was in the studio working on his album Parade, his proteges in Mazarati were in an adjacent studio putting together their debut. As they were wrapping up, they realized they needed one more song to fill out the record, and they asked Prince if he had anything to offer.

According to Paisley Park engineer Susan Rogers, “It took a few minutes to get the lyrics. He recorded the guitar on one track and the vocals on the other track. He then took out the cassette and said: 'Here, finish this off.'"

The members of Mazarati got to work on it though there wasn’t much to work with: just a rhythm guitar and a vocal. But they came up with the clever idea of using the rhythm of the high hat they laid down to punctuate the chords of the guitar.

“We played it for Prince,” recalled one of the musicians. “[He] went out to the basketball court playing it loud on the ghetto blaster.”

And then Prince took the tape into another studio and started making changes. He got rid of the bass line since the song didn’t need it. He add his own James Brown-style riffing on electric guitar. And then he recorded his own vocals in that distinctive falsetto.

What was he up to, the Mazarati’s engineer David Z. wanted to know. In a Mix magazine, David revealed that “[Prince] said to me, ‘This is too good for you guys. I'm taking it back.’”

Prince clearly knew a hit when he heard it. His record company at the time balked at the idea of putting out “Kiss” as a single. To their ears, without any bass and no reverb to fill out the sound, it was too stripped down. But Prince insisted they release it. And it became a #1 hit around the world.

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Don't miss our tribute to Prince on Saturday, February 10th at the Beverly Arts Center. Great stories. Incredible songs. "I think I wanna dance!"