"1999"

With the album 1999, Prince opened a new chapter in his career.  It was his first record that included contributions from his new band, The Revolution.  And in those dawning days of MTV, that record provided him with two videos that helped get the attention of a new audience.

Most of the album was completed in the spring of 1982.  But apparently something more was needed.  Two final songs were written and recorded that August:  “Little Red Corvette” and “1999.”

The possibility of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was a very real threat in that era, and it didn’t help that we had a president in the White House who had been recorded referring to that country as “the evil empire.”

What's more, Prince had just watched a documentary about Nostradamus’ predictions of a major world catastrophe that would occur in the year 1999.  As he was discussing what he’d seen with his bandmates, he found many of them were dreading what the future might hold.  Prince told Larry King that he felt inspired “to write something that gave hope.”  And as Lisa Coleman remembered, he showed up at the studio the next day handing out song lyrics, ready to work on a new song.

Talking with TheCurrrent.org, guitarist Dez Dickerson recalled the recording sessions fondly.  “Every once in a while, you'd get a take, and the energy and the feel of the take was so good that even though there might've been a mistake technically, you wanted to use the take.”

According to Dez, Prince had a solution for that.  “When there's something in the track that you want to keep but there's something in the track that you don't want in there, put an explosion over it."

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Don't miss this one when we pay tribute to Prince this Saturday night at the Beverly Arts Center.  With Eric Tre'von, Lauren Dukes, Clarence Williams, Greg Woods, Aaron Weistrop, Jonathan Reed, and William Lindsey Cochran.  Let's party!