Visiting Paisley Park and Revisiting Purple Rain

40 years ago we learned what it sounded like when doves cry

Maybe it’s because I was a teenager, I’m not sure, but it sure seems like the pop stars of the 80s were bigger than the ones we have today. With each year that passes I recognize fewer and fewer names on those end of the year “best of” music lists. Back in the 80s, I knew every song and every musician on those lists. And it wasn’t just me; my parents, who rarely listened to the radio and never listen to my stations, knew a lot of them, too. They knew who Michael Jackson was, and Madonna, and they most definitely knew who Prince was.

If someone had asked me back then if I were a Prince fan, I’m not sure how I would have answered. I never had a Prince poster on my wall or pins on my jean jacket, but I owned a few of his albums, and knew the words to all his hits. Everybody did. In sixth grade our music teacher would occasionally let us bring tapes and records from home to sing along to in class and I remember our entire class, including our teacher, singing along to “Let’s Go Crazy.” All of us knew the words.

40 years ago this week, Purple Rain was the number one album on the Billboard 200. It held the slot for 24 weeks in a row — nearly half a year. 22 of those weeks were in 1984, the year the album was released, and the final two were the first two weeks of 1985. It took Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA to finally knock it from the number one position. Purple Rain has been certified 13x platinum thanks to songs like “Let’s Go Crazy”, “When Doves Cry”, “I Would Die 4 U”, “Baby I’m a Star”, and of course, “Purple Rain”.

It was the success of Purple Rain that afforded Prince the opportunity to build Paisley Park — his home, his studio, his creative compound. It was his safe space. He created there, he entertained there, and tragically, he died there.

Last year while vacationing in Minnesota, my wife was able to procure two tickets to visit Paisley Park. It’s a mysterious place, becoming of the man who built it. There are fences, and guards, and gates, and security cameras. The tour begins with the submission of everyone’s cellphones. Even in death, Prince controls the narrative.

There are many things to see in Paisley Park, from Prince’s guitars to his large collection of shoes (around 300 pairs are on display, approximately 1/3 of his collection), but the room that affected me the most was the “Purple Rain” room. The room contains memorabilia from the movie Purple Rain, including Prince’s motorcycle, but the real treasure in the room were Prince’s keyboards. As our small tour group gathered around, isolated keyboard tracks from Purple Rain echoed through the room. Standing in front of the keyboard Prince used to compose and perform those classic hits sent chills down my back. The memory of it still does.

In another part of the tour, we got to see Prince’s recording studios. There were two recording spaces, ready to go at all times. On many occasions, Prince would wake up in the middle of the night, go directly to the studio, and put his ideas down on tape. When not in town, Prince leased the Paisley Park studios to labelmates and friends. R.E.M., Madonna, Stevie Wonder, and hundreds of others recorded there. According to the Washington Post, in the summer of 1990 four out of ten songs on the Billboard top 10 were either recorded or produced at Paisley Park. According to our tour guide, no one used the studio more than Prince. In the on-site archives there are apparently thousands of recordings that have never been heard by the public.

Prince had the kind of fame that traps people. Paisley Park was both a creative playground and, in some ways, a prison. Prince couldn’t go hang out in clubs; instead, he built his own. There are two performance areas in the park, one large one and a smaller, club-like one. Prince was known to randomly open the club to locals, closing the doors when it his capacity. Sometimes DJs would play tunes and sometimes Prince would make an appearance and perform songs — sometimes one or two, and sometimes for several hours.

I don’t listen to FM radio as much as I used to, but last weekend while in the car and scanning the dial, I landed on a station playing “Let’s Go Crazy” — and crazy it is that 40 years after its release, people are still listening to and enjoying that album.