"When Doves Cry"

It was the #1 song of 1984, sitting at the top of the charts for five weeks that summer.  It was so big, it kept Bruce Springsteen from making it to #1 with “Dancing in the Dark.”  And Prince’s achievement is even more remarkable when you learn that he performed everything on “When Doves Cry” by himself:  vocals, harmonies, guitar, keyboards, drum machines,…even the bass part that he eventually cut out.

Can you imagine?  An ‘80s dance groove without a bass holding down the bottom end?

“‘There’s nobody that’s going to have the guts to do this,’” he told his engineer at the session, Peggy McCreary.  “He knew he had a hit song,” was the way she summed up that moment for Billboard, “so he decided to do something really daring.”

The song itself was a last minute addition to the Purple Rain soundtrack.  The director realized that a pivotal scene needed music to accompany it, and the next morning, Prince showed up with two new songs, one of which was “When Doves Cry.”

"They were almost done editing the movie," Prince recalled for Bass Player magazine in November 1999, “[and] ‘When Doves Cry’ was the last song to be mixed, and it just wasn’t sounding right."

One of his singers, Jill Jones, found him dejectedly listening to a mix of the song and asked him what was wrong.  What troubled him was that it sounded just like every other song with drums and bass and keyboards.  And Prince was clear that he did not want to create anything that was conventional.

Prince recalled, “I said [to Jill], ‘If I could have it my way it would sound like this,’ and I pulled the bass out of the mix.  She said, ‘Why don’t you have it your way?’"

And that’s how the song got the stripped down arrangement that helped make it a hit.

But as Prince went on to explain, “‘When Doves Cry’ does have bass in it—the bass is in the kick drum.  Bass is a lot more than that instrument over there.  Bass to me means B-A-S-E.”

Which is a great analogy.  It IS the foundation that the rest of the musical structure rests on.

And just for emphasis, Prince added, “B-A-S-S is a fish."

. . . .

Great Moments in Vinyl pays tribute to Prince, Saturday, February 10th at the Beverly Arts Center!  "Dig, if you will, the picture."