Prince and the Parade/Sign O’ The Times Era Studio Sessions: 1985-1986 picks up where Duane Tudahl’s first book
Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions: 1983-1984 left off, with Prince at the peak of his popularity in the midst of the
Purple Rain tour. This second book in the award-winning studio session series digs even deeper into his musical catalog, revealing how Prince, the biggest rock star on the planet at the time, risked everything to create some of the most introspective music of his four-decade career.
The captivating story unfolds through unprecedented access to over four dozen musicians, singers, studio engineers, and others who worked with him and knew him best (including members of the Revolution, the Time, the Family and Apollonia 6). Hundreds of daily session notes from multiple studios including Sunset Sound in Los Angeles and his home studio in Minneapolis provide never-before-published details allowing rare insight into how his art reflected his life, with his songs serving as his diary.
A definitive chronicle of Prince’s awe-inspiring brilliance during the post Purple Rain period, this book covers his work on over a dozen albums, two tours, a movie, the breakup of his band, the Revolution, and countless unreleased songs that illuminate the private genius behind the music. It is an emotional and intimate story of love, loss, rivalry, and renewal which not only shaped his career during this era, but changed the landscape of music forever.
With the meteoric success of Purple Rain, Prince was no longer the young rebel who shocked and offended the world. With a fly-on-the-wall perspective, Tudahl invites you into the room as Prince struggles with his success, the commercial and critical failure of Under The Cherry Moon, the breakup of bands and relationships that had buoyed him for years. Having cast off what was familiar, he went about creating the soundtrack of a new revolution, with Prince, as always, at the forefront. Ultimately Prince rebounded with a growing maturity that found him writing such masterpieces as “Forever In My Life,” “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” and the timeless social commentary of “Sign O’ The Times.”
Although the book is a sequel, Prince and the Parade/Sign O’ The Times Era Studio Sessions: 1985-1986 stands on its own as both a highly entertaining human story as well as a scholarly work which should be the ‘go to’ book for decades to come for those wishing to gain insight into the creative process of arguably the greatest musical genius of the late twentieth century.