Prince's Music Vault

thanks alchemy, that makes a lot of sense. I appreciate you and Chris Devoe taking the time to reply.

 

Susan apparently started the Vault, but left in '87, and stated the Vault was near full even then. However, she might be a great curator.

Due to Prince's nonstop recording schedule, he burned thru recording engineers.

 

While I think that might have been true in the past, perhaps when these things were being recorded, it seems to be a different story now. Just take a look at the last Dylan bootleg series release. 18cd box set of every note played in the studio over 3 albums. And they sold, what, 5000 copies at what, $700? I don't think Prince has the same level of fandom that would sell something like this, but as things move away from physical products to streaming you'll see more and more labels releasing giant sets likes these to cash in.

 

From an unpublished Jan. 2014 Rolling Stone interview due out next month...

On his unreleased music:
I've never said this before, but I didn't always give the record companies the best song. There are songs in the vault that no one's ever heard. There are several vaults; it's not just one vault.

Are there full unreleased albums?
Yeah, I like time capsule stuff. I have a couple Revolution albums in the vault and two Time albums, one Vanity 6 album … and tons of stuff recorded in different periods. But so much gets recorded that you don't have time to compile everything. In the future you could put all the best stuff from one particular time period together and then you can release it. It'd just be like if we found a Sly and the Family Stone album and they saved their best stuff. If that's even possible!

Do you want this to happen when you're gone?
No, I don't think about gone. I just think about in the future when I don't want to speak in real time.


http://www.rollingstone.c...e-20160422

 

Well in 2012 Warner Europe tried a re-issue, a few escaped to Australia... Grabbed this from Amazon before the lawyers caught wind
Would love to see some DE's with respectable mastering

 

Also, once something is posted anywhere, it will forever be available everywhere. So making some rare thing available is a massive risk.

One of Prince's former engineers shared the demo version of one of the two songs Prince and Kate Bush worked on. I saw it, and shared it on YouTube.



From what he wrote at the time, I got the impression he knew he would never work with Prince again, and was content to burn that bridge.

 

And how long did it take to release those Bootleg Series releases?

Also we are coming up to 50 years and that copyright extension act.

 

I got that when I lived in Switzerland, think I paid about €15 for it too.

 

There were theories that his Hit N Run series, of which we got to phase 2, was going to be a vault clearing exercise. The material on phase 2 was from 2011-2012, and some artwork was released which suggested that Phases 3-5 could have been focussed on The Lovesexy, Purple Rain and Controversy eras. I expect this tragic turn of events might impact on any re-release plans somewhat.

 

I mentioned this in another thread, I know someone who works for a distributor and he put orders in for stock the minute he found out. It's what he does every time a musician passes away. The demand will go up and he'll need the supply to meet that demand.

 

Let's not forget the "Crystal Ball" 3-CD set from 1998, though. Those weren't just throwaway tracks (for the most part), which was a conscious effort by Prince to clear some archives. It only made a small dent, but for those of us who consumed Prince bootlegs at the time, there were some songs that none of us even knew of.

And then there was this Revolution song - out of the blue - that further spread the news that his vault had some real good stuff locked away from the past:

 

Anyone know why they pulled the 24/192 hi-res at HDTracks?

 

I wonder if Jason Malachi can do a Prince impression...

 

Wow! This is really good! That orchestration (by Claire Fischer?) really adds an extra dimension and elegance to this song. Would have fit right in on Parade.

 

"Crystal Ball" and "Emancipation" are fantastic albums. Love to hear the outtakes from those sessions.

 

My theory was that when he (supposedly) opened up the archives for that nightclub he owned to play, people there found a way to grab stuff without anyone knowing and they leaked it. Lotsa people with access means impossible to trace.

 

There's a LOT of boots out there of various quality. (Both sound wise and song wise). I've got 20 or so CDs of boots

 

So many Prince boots being listed on eBay at ridiculous prices. I thought I could fill in some of the holes in my Moonraker collection but people are asking for 100s of dollars for multi disc sets. Crazy.

 

yea, I believe you. I had to cut it off, it was getting ridiculous. Boiled it down to maybe 4 cdrs of stuff I can't live without

 

Probably the same reason other things get pulled: licensing. They probably have a contract that says they can sell so many or for so long.

 

There was a great silver disc of Emancipation outtakes floating around. Perfect SQ. I'll have to dig through my CDs in storage. It had about 6 or so tracks that didn't make the album. All were fantastic!

 

Quoting myself, here's what the engineer on that project said about it. I've removed his name as this forum is very well indexed and I don't want him to get any grief.

He was asked if he had talked with Kate:

I did, but only for a short moment. I was at home and the phone rang. I didn't always answer the phone in those days, because I was severely overworked. So my answering machine picked it up and I heard Julie, from Paisley Park, saying "****, I got Kate Bush on the phone and she has some questions about what format they should send things over on, and I thought it would be best if she talked to you. I, being an admitted Kate Bush fan, freaked, but picked up the phone and talked to Julie. She says, Kate, I have Prince's engineer ******* ***** on the phone and he can answer your questions. Meanwhile, my answering machine is still recording it all, and blaring loudly. I tell my then girlfriend to shut if off just as Kate comes on and says Hello *********? (so to this day, if I could find it, i have a tape of Kate saying hello to me...). The conversation consisted only of her asking me if they could send 24-track tapes and what series SSL computer disks. I also asked her if she was going to come to Minneapolis, and she said I don't think I'm wanted out there right now. Then we basically said good-bye and hung up.


It's funny because Prince knew I was a huge KB fan. He was too, but not like me. The first time I asked him if he liked Kate Bush he said, she's my favorite woman. I also made him a tape of all the KB b-sides, which f**king rule. When The Sensual World came out he had someone go get it and we listened to it in the studio. He didn't dig it that much, but I knew you can't always tell right away with a Kate album. TSW grew on me, but it is still not her best effort. This Woman's Work is a masterpiece, though, and makes the whole album worth it. But I digress. Prince is weird, and a couple stories in this post prove it. I may be tooting my own horn here, but Prince has a weird ego. I think *part* of his motivation to work with Kate was the fact that I worshiped her, and he knew it would impress me that he could call her on the phone and work on her music and s**t.


ANYWAY, what led up to the phone conversation above: one day Prince's assistant, Therese, told me as we were talking on the phone that Kate Bush had called. Therese also knew I was a big Kate fan. Then, in the studio that day, Prince said, guess who I talked to today. Me, being stupid and unable to keep my mouth shut, said, Kate Bush? Prince got a little miffed, and said How did you know that? And I said Therese told me, and he said, hmm, I should dock her for that. At that point I knew I f***ed up and tried to say, no, she just knew I'm a big fan. As a side note, I told Therese that Prince was a little pissed that she had told me that, and she apologized to him. Therese is a really cool person. So, Prince tells me that he and Kate are going to work on a tune together. He also told me that while they were talking he told her that his engineer would rather work with her than him. (I thought, wow, Prince and Kate Bush talking about me!).


ANYWAY, Eventually the phone call above occurred and the tapes arrived and I put them up and got a rough mix up. I still have a cassette of it. It f***ing rules. It is 1 million times better than the lame disco Prince put on it. There was, of course, no disco on it before Prince got his hands on it. So Prince comes in and listens to it. And the brutality began. First we sampled the drum thing and synced it up to my Powerbook so we could do MIDI. At that point, we essentially created a new song on a new piece of tape and then flew all of Kate's tracks back on top of it. So now we could run the sequencer and add all the keyboards that Prince put on. So Prince stacked a bunch of keys, guitars, basses, etc, on it and then went to sing background vocals.


When Prince does vocals, he sits right at the recording console with a microphone hanging over it and does his own punching in and out. So he kicks everyone out of the room when he sings. It took him a few hours and then he called me back in and played me the thick, multi-tracked background vocals he had put on. Now, as we all know, the song in question goes "Of all the people in the world why should i love you". When Prince called me back in and played me what he had done, he had sung "All of the people in the world", instead of Of All. I said, isn't it OF all the people in the world? Not ALL of? He said, no, we had a little talk about that, in his cocky way, as if to say he had talked with Kate about changing the words to "all of" instead of "of all".


The next day, I was waiting at my hotel room for the call to go to the studio when the assistant engineer, Sylvia Massy, called and said Prince was in the studio doing vocals. I was surprised; i was always called well in advance of Prince going into the studio. When I got there he was changing all the vocals to "Of All", and was sampling them in himself, which is something he would normally never do himself. My interpretation? He made a mistake, as humans do, and didn't have the guts to admit it. That's weird. So I sorta poked my head in at one point and asked him if he needed any help, and we went on with the day. Eventually he had me do a rough mix, and when he had approved it, we sent it to Kate.


I got a call from Therese a few days (or weeks, I forget) later. She said, Kate Bush said to destroy all copies of that mix. I said, huh? Did she not like it or something? (my heart rejoiced, because I hated what Prince did to it) She said, I don't know, she just said to destroy them. Later on Prince told me, Kate Bush liked what we did. She said it sounded very American. So at that point I wasn't sure if she was even going to use it. We sent the tapes back and she sort of split the difference with what he sent and what's on the record. Kate, if you read this, stick the pre-Prince version of Why Should I Love You out on something. And let me do a remix of Not This Time.

 

This Wikipedia page is tantalising:

Unreleased Prince projects - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia »

 

That's weird, he also just was either working on, or had finished, his memoirs.

I heard they may be published by this fall.

 

great story, thanks!