Book Review: Prince and Purple Rain: 40 Years by Andrea Swensson

Disclosure: I got a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion

When I was first getting into classic rock as a teenager, I had a really close friend who also loved classic rock. One day, she came over to my house and she brought a VHS tape of Purple Rain. She was a big fan of Prince and said I got to watch this movie. We watched it and I loved it, that was my intro to Prince’s music. My dad would frequently play “Let’s Go Crazy” in the car too and my brother would always imitate Prince’s “woo!” at the beginning of the song.

Prince passed away in 2016 and I remember exactly where I was when I found out. I was in the last semester of my undergrad and I was working on the school play, sitting in the lighting booth during a rehearsal. When the news got out that Prince died, we all mourned and played “Raspberry Beret” on the PA system in the theatre.

As well, I think Prince was a real style icon and one of a kind talent. I love all the purple and frilly shirts, as someone who has a lot of purple and frilly shirts in their wardrobe. I’ll always remember how the classic rock fandom on Tumblr raved about Prince’s epic “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” guitar solo. Talk about a “hold my beer” moment! He stole the show!

So when I got the chance to review a new coffee table book called Prince + Purple Rain by Andrea Swensson, I jumped on it! I love the storytelling of a coffee table book about music and I love seeing all the pictures and facts, so let’s dive into this one and see what it’s all about! Since today is the 8th anniversary of Prince’s passing, I thought it would be an appropriate day to post this book review and celebrate his life and his contributions to music and pop culture.

The thoughtfully written foreword was written by actress and daughter of musician Minnie Riperton, Maya Rudolph. It’s a nice story about her first time listening to Prince and how she was inspired by him to start a band called Princess as a kid.

Andrea Swensson interviewed musicians Prince had worked with over the years for this book and it’s safe to say she’s a Prince expert with her being the host of the Official Prince Podcast. She’s also a Minneapolis-based music journalist and has written a book about the rise of the Minneapolis Sound.

In the intro, Swensson admits that this is a book that Prince would side-eye if he were alive today, so it’s definitely a big undertaking, compiling a tribute to a legendary album by a true visionary who always looked to the future and never rested on his laurels as a musician. But to call Purple Rain an album is an understatement, it’s an experience. Time has flown by and the album is celebrating its 40th birthday this year.

Prince was a musician who could have easily had an Eras tour of sorts, like Taylor Swift. Like David Bowie and The Beatles, Prince had eras and his Purple Rain era is just one of them, easily one of the most memorable ones, and they’re all iconic.

The book starts with Prince’s beginnings in Minneapolis. Much like fellow Minnesota-born musician Bob Dylan, he hid his origins at the beginning of his career, crafting a myth and creating some fictional lore. Like a lot of other black musicians born in the north, his ancestors were originally from the south, with both of his parents having roots in Louisiana and their families moving up north during the Great Migration. Like a lot of black American musicians, he grew up in a religious family. He got his impeccable dress sense from his parents, whom he described as “like the Kennedys, but black”.

Prince’s earliest influences were R&B and rock musicians like Ray Charles, James Brown, Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Santana, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly and The Family Stone. By the end of the 1977 Prince recorded his first demos and soon after got a record deal with Warner Brothers Records at just 19 years old.

From there, the book goes into an overview of Prince’s first five albums: For You, Prince, Dirty Mind, Controversy, and 1999 talking a bit about the recording process and the highlights of each other albums. What’s amazing about Prince’s discography in the 80s is how it kept pushing the envelope during the conservative Reagan years, very punk rock of him. A musical middle finger to traditionalists. But don’t be fooled by the sexual innuendos, these songs aren’t shallow songs about sex, they’re about the human experience and sexuality is part of that. Not only did he have a prolific output as a musician, he mentored other groups like The Time and Vanity 6 and produced their albums under a pseudonym. What a work ethic he had!

Prince also made it a point not to just break down barriers by himself, but with the musicians he worked with by forming a multiracial band that reflected the diversity of his audience and included both men and women, echoing his idols Sly & The Family Stone. Inside the book you can read profiles of all the members of The Revolution: Bobby Z, Dr Fink, Lisa Coleman, Mark Brown, and Wendy Melvin.

However, as genius as Prince was, he had his weaknesses like erratic behaviour and he could be very controlling and had very high expectations of musicians whom he worked with. 

Chapters 3 and 4 examine each side of Purple Rain, with a breakdown and information about all the songs from the epic opening track “Let’s Go Crazy” with its “dearly beloved” opening lyric to the Joni Mitchell inspired closing title track, with pictures of Prince performing live peppered throughout and some sidebar segments about topics related to the creation of the album like Prince’s pioneering use of the Linn LM-1 drum machine and various synthesisers such as the Oberheim OB-8 synthesiser.

Chapter 5 talks about the film adaptation of Purple Rain, a dream come true for Prince, to write songs to life on the silver screen. In this chapter, you’ll find out about the conception of the film, making the film, the film’s worldwide success, and profiles of the other musicians featured in the film like The Time and Apollonia 6.

Chapter 6 talks about the reception of the film, the premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, its accolades, the making of the music videos, and the Purple Rain tour. Not only was Prince a visionary musician, he was also very hands on with the music videos. One of the coolest moments I read about in this chapter was the time that Prince brought Bruce Springsteen and Madonna on stage for “Baby I’m a Star”: imagine that – three of the biggest names in mid 1980s pop music on the stage at the same time! There was even a live concert film recorded during that tour at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, New York. 

Chapter 7 is about the b-sides, vault tracks, and other songs in the movie. We all know how prolific Prince was as a musician. Being a musician is not a 9-5 job, there’s no clocking in or clocking out and Prince was no exception. He’d be in the studio for 12-18 hours and crank out track after track after track. His vault had over 1,000 tracks in it! Simply put, he created a lot of works of art that will live forever and that’s where the epilogue goes, talking about the album’s legacy and remembering Prince. Minneapolis was lit up purple in honour of him.

Overall, I think this book is a well organised, well laid out informative read about Prince and his career, with a heavy focus on Purple Rain. If you enjoyed the album, you’ll like this book.

Takeaways from Prince and Purple Rain: In Quotes

Throughout the book there are lots of great quotes from Prince and other musicians, here are some of my favourites:

“More than my songs have to do with sex, they have to do with one human’s love for another.” – Prince

“My goal is to excite and provoke on every level.” – Prince

“I’m as much a part of the city where I grew up as I am anything. I was very lucky to be born here because I saw both sides of the racial issue, the oppression and the equality… I used to be part of a busing programme that took me through Kenwood every day to John Hay Elementary School.” – Prince

“I was brought up in a black and white world. I dig black and white; night and day, rich and poor, man and woman. I listen to all kinds of music and I want to be judged on the quality of my work, not on what I say, nor on what people claim I am, nor on the colour of my skin.” – Prince

“It wasn’t about neglecting or devaluing our existing fan base. It was about never wanting to be limited. We didn’t want to be marginalised. We wanted our audience to look like the western world.” – Guitarist Dez Dickerson on Prince’s audience becoming more racially diverse during the 1999 tour

“That guitar part, in the entire Prince repertoire that I played over those years, was the hardest thing for me to master. Because his hands just were shaped to do that lick, and my hands were not. It was like trying to make a left-handed person write with their right hand. It was very hard to master that.” – Wendy Melvoin, guitarist in The Revolution

“You can’t push the envelope any further than I pushed it. So stop! What’s the point?” – Prince

“I always thought he missed his calling as a comedic actor. I thought he should’ve teamed up with Eddie Murphy or people like that and done some more films and done some comedy, because he certainly had the talent for it and the sense of humour.” – Dr Fink, keyboardist of The Revolution

“Long after this summer’s hits are forgotten, Purple Rain will still be remembered, and played, as an enduring rock classic.” – New York Times critic Robert Palmer

“I really couldn’t liken it to maybe anything other than The Beatles, and not to compare the two because they obviously were much different phenomenons [sic], but nothing in my experience, not even James Brown at his peak could rival the kind of public clamour that was going on.” – Prince tour manager Alan Leeds

“To create something from nothing is one of the greatest feelings. I wish it upon everybody. It’s heaven.” – Prince

“The Prince catalogue… that’s Americana now” – Prince

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