Parade (Music From the Motion Picture Under the Cherry Moon) landed right smack dab in the middle of a peak dalliance the public at large had with Prince Rogers Nelson. Commercial success had arrived despite a three-year hiatus, from 1982 to 1985, doing interviews. And with it, his vibrant ’80s music vacuum of wide-stretching ideas went into overdrive. Creating numerous satellite groups, penning hits for the Bangles, Sinead O’Connor, and playing synths on “Stand Back” for Stevie Nicks. These moves in toll with his own personal career, created ginormous hits and little misses here and there. He maintained that non-stop pattern of writing and distributing songs to everybody until an ensuing contract dispute with Warner Brothers in 1993 cooled that momentum way off.
But in ’86, it made no difference: MTV, Ebony, Rolling Stone, Jet, SPIN, even the Village Voice referred to him as “every inch a King” while patient Black radio stations eagerly yearned for the danceable bits of this musical polymath’s work. Everybody wanted to be associated with Prince. That same artist who once dressed in women’s lingerie under a raincoat for the Dirty Mind rollout was now a certified pop music phenomenon. And instead of calling himself King, give Prince credit. At his most powerful in terms of manifesting whatever move he wanted as an artist, he gets entertainment companies to fund his films, blindly. Let others designate the nicknames.
After proving everyone wrong with the success of the Purple Rain flick grossing over $70 million, a project that most everyone who worked in corporate music jobs, not the music folks hustling on the street level, listening to DJs in the clubs, Black radio and homemade cassette tapes from terrestrial stations on the very far-left of the FM dial, initially laughed when Prince presented the film idea. In turn, said semi-biography earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Score and the record stayed at number one for 12 weeks, yielding five top-10 singles, selling 9 million albums in the United States by 1985, and leaving every teenager who attended the film hoarse from shouting, “Let’s Go Crazy, Let’s get nuts.”
So, less than six months after the end of the Purple Rain tour and the release of his Around the World in a Day album, Prince began filming Under the Cherry Moon on the French Riviera at the La Victorine Studios in Nice, serving as both star and director. Despite being shot by the skilled cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, the German ace best known for his collaborations with director Rainer Fassbinder, the phrase “Indulgent stinkeroo” is a term one critic tossed at the film like an uncooked egg. Unfortunately, their aim and verbiage were not wrong. Under the Cherry Moon was a critical and financial flop for Warner Bros. when it hit theaters in July 1986.
As the album and film turn 40 this year, many have tried to reconsider the film, and Mang, I love me some Prince, but it’s mighty difficult to reclaim that as cinema in its entirety.
But the album? Another reinvention.
On February 13, 1986, Prince shot the music video for his minor-sounding career-spanning hit “Kiss,” the lead song from his Parade album. Directed by Rebecca Blake, it was typical Prince, changing fashionable styles, hairdo, and most importantly, his sound. Parade did that alien thang. That Bowie thang. Reengaging in that Prince practice he’d been doing since he appeared at Warner Brothers at the age of 17, turning down producers and betting on himself.
Somehow, this mighty purple band leader, of mastermind proportions, released an album in the big ’80s that, along with his extensive catalogue of sounds and ideas, continued to expand what R&B could be. Parade‘s impact rides through to the 21st Century when the late D’Angelo speaks of how influential that soundtrack album was upon shaping his maturation and expansion of neo-soul. That’s what sounding like an alien amidst the top of the Billboard R&B charts in ’86 will get you: being dapped up by future geniuses.
Look at Janet Jackson’s album Control, produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, former Prince affiliates that he fired from The Time, Cameo’s “Word Up,” Ready For The World’s LinnDrum-polished, punchy assault of a debut album. The list just grows. Even Phil Collins’ blue-eyed synthy, high-energy bopper “Sussudio” had a melody reminiscent of a Pat Boone incarnation of “1999.” All of these artists are playing catch-up, attempting to reach the sound Prince sculpted and perfected in ’82 with his future looking 1999 double album, loaded to the gills with drum machines and sci-fi music instruments. After Purple Rain, Prince reduced the batter. Applies perfectly, addition by subtraction, going inward soundwise, and embracing Beatlesque, Sgt. Peppers-meets-Rubber Soul baroque-type pop, fused with elongated funk structures.
The very lithe “New Position” does indulge in its own ethos, “You’ve got to try my new funk,” the spirit animal of the project. Prince’s guitar solos are on vacation too, on the French Riviera, except for tracks designed for film exposition, such as “Christopher Tracey’s Parade,” “Venus de Milo,” and the maudlin ode to the lead character of the film Christopher Tracey who does in fact die, “Sometimes It Snows In April.”
Most of the songs, dipped in French accents, do groove, have attitude, and are designed for movement. Even down to the slo-mo funk of “I Wonder U,” with its orchestral arrangements, makes minimal ideas seem broadband. A performance piece in the film, “Girls & Boys” puts Prince’s new fascination with horn arrangements into the repertoire. He added Atlanta Bliss and Eric Leeds to his band and soon after would have the all-horn troupe Madhouse open his live shows with searing Charlie Parker tunes. (Who does that? Prince.)
There’s even a track for the Prince-heads, “Anotherloverholenyohead,” a preachy break-up funk-o-naught of a jam that foresees yet another “one for the Prince-heads” arrangement: “If I Was Your Girlfriend” on the upcoming Sign ‘O’ The Times.
These types of exhibitions, signature singing-to-the-choir arrangements, Prince’s black audience knew he had in the vault, and were fiending for them during the Purple Rain pop-a-palooza era. So when that version of Prince returned and pulled those joints off to great acclaim? He never abandoned that fanbase again.
“Kiss,” the first single from Parade and one of his biggest hits ever, was originally intended for his other band, Mazerati. Yes, he mixes out the bassline, a trick he perfected before with “When Doves Cry,” but here utilizes his angelic vocal register, and solidifies the low-end of the track with thump-vibration intensity by running the kick drum through a reverb, inserting that you-know-it-when-you-hear-it elite guitar picking and grinning technique over the top, sculpting this ginormous hit. Minimal architecture, which indeed gets its point across, cuts through all the New Jack swing R&B in 1986 got hypnotized with.
One listen to George Michael’s Faith in ’87? Yep. Prince began something, again, and the previous Wham star indeed had his ears on it. Warner Bros. was of the mindset that Prince’s pared-down single was not in step with what was contemporary at the time. Which supports his idea of a zag, amidst the zig. Eventually they released it, added it to the album, and the rest proved itself. What should have been addressed by Warner Bros. was Prince’s lack of film direction skills. All of those finite details found in the making of just one song could have been used, ad infintum in the production, script, and shooting of this reckless ego-dump of a picture. Every bad idea, every costume impulse (all of these ornate paisley costume patterns, and they chose to shoot this film in black and white, WTF), every bad kissing take, every inside joke Prince and Jerome Benton, who play roommates, decide to put on camera, should have been sketched out at a table reading on day one. Unfortunately, it is the last album where the Revolution band is listed in the title.
True, Wendy and Lisa did contribute some songs on Sign ‘O’ The Times from previously shelved ideas that were scraped together for what would be Prince’s most critically acclaimed album of his career. But you can hear it. They are the heart of this band. The beat and bleeding, his most trusted writing partners, who would speak up about what worked and what didn’t.
It’s not by mistake that after SOTT, his quality control, editing, and overall musical output are askew. Something is missing. Under the “very businesslike” New Power Generation, input seemed scarce from within the band. Which warrants Parade extra–special attention; it’s a marker in time where he was still taking notes from within that dynamic machine. A proven fact once you listen to the Batman soundtrack.
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