http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTkprnw-IWY

The benefit concert that August was recorded. Three songs from the show (“I Would Die 4 U”, “Baby I’m A Star”, “Purple Rain”) would appear on the Purple Rain album – though not exactly in their original forms – as Prince carefully assembled the pieces of a soundtrack jigsaw.

Accustomed to long nights working alone in studios (playing every instrument himself), he opted instead for a 50-50 split between solo recordings and Revolution performances, using overdubs to blur the distinctions between live and studio material. One weekend he flew his engineer, David Leonard, from LA to Minneapolis so that he and The Revolution could record “Let’s Go Crazy” in the large rented warehouse where they’d been taking their acting lessons. Leonard had to build them a studio overnight.

“He spent months and months on Purple Rain,” Leonard recalls. “Most of his records, you were lucky if you were in the studio for two weeks. Sheila E’s The Glamorous Life [which Prince co-produced] was recorded in 11 days. Purple Rain took much longer because it was based around the filming. As things changed in the movie, things changed in the soundtrack.”

From new-wave rock to psych to balladry – with heavy metal-style guitar solos and every manner of vocal from a kitten falsetto to a growl – the music on Purple Rain would showcase Prince as an artist-composer who was not merely precocious, but a fully formed, multi-faceted wizard and true star.

“I really liked the direction his music took,” enthuses keyboard player Matt Fink, who’d joined his band in 1978. “If you were going to do a mainstream pop movie, the songs he was writing seemed right in line with it. I remember he took me for a ride in a car in LA – me and Bobby Z, the drummer – and played us ‘When Doves Cry’. He was really proud of it.” Like some kind of symphonic exultation from Stevie Wonder’s Songs In The Key Of Life rocketed into the ’80s synth age, “When Doves Cry” reassured producers Cavallo and Ruffalo that, at the very least, they would have a major hit single to promote their movie. Matt Fink, like most people, was spellbound by “When Doves Cry” but couldn’t help noticing something missing in the song. “There was no bass instrument. It was totally driven by the kick drum. My initial reaction was, ‘How come there’s no bass? You gonna be adding a bass?’ He said, ‘Nope. That’s it.’ I said, ‘Hmm… okay.’ It was only later that I realised what a brilliant production move it was.”

Not quite a live album, not quite a studio one, partly written to order, partly constructed from existing songs, Purple Rain remains a unique chapter in Prince’s career. A test pressing was made in November 1983, but it was some considerable time before the movie would be ready. Even to a man as impatient as Prince, releasing the soundtrack six months before the film did not seem a good idea.