Prince's Music Vault

I volunteer to spend the rest of my life curating Prince's catalog.

 

This is one of those cases where the artist wasn't really the best at managing their own music. There's definitely a middle ground, between taking advantage of both an artists' vault and the fans' willingness to buy potentially second-rate material, and the Prince route of basically releasing nothing (or releasing very few things in so strange, impractical ways).

Probably 90% of what's in the vault isn't really that great, or wasn't finished to the point of being in releasable form, but that vault is so huge, that if even 10% is pretty great, that's still going to be a lot of music that Prince himself would've never put out, for reasons that only made sense to Prince.

I wouldn't have banked on Prince having the sort of late-period acceptance of his past that Dylan and Springsteen have had in regards to their vault releases over the last 10-15 years. (Also, Bruce and Bob have known confidants and good label relationships, who probably do a lot of the heavy lifting to facilitate those releases. Prince never seemed to work with anyone very long; presumably he had his own Dick Latvala to organize stuff, but who knows if that person was much more than an intern)

 

There are things that are traded among people who know each other, with the provision that they never share it.

I have some Kate Bush stuff like that, and it's a huge pain. I want to make everything available to everyone, but if it did, it would be obvious to the source, and quite possibly Kate herself. So it sits on tapes, on a shelf, getting played occasionally for visiting fans. Even worse, if some of this stuff leaked out, sleezeballs would make bootlegs and sell them (I stopped going to record conventions when I saw a Kate video collection I edited for free distribution being sold at $50 a VHS tape.)

 

Heard that as well, and I think with a musician like prince the hearing of these will be a fabulous look into his creative processes - there won't be anything boring, simply because it's Prince!

 

Paisley Park will become his Graceland.

 

Interesting. I can see it being frustrating if you have something really great that all Kate Bush fans (for example) would love, but you have to keep quiet about. Thanks for the reply!

 

Interesting clarification from the same article:

He would eventually make peace with Warner Music in 2014, as the copyrights on some of his early albums were set to revert to Prince’s control. The label got to extend its copyrights overseas but Prince got ownership in the U.S.—a symbolic victory since he agreed to license the U.S. copyrights back to Warner Music in perpetuity.

 

Some interesting speculation about live recordings in the vault here:

Author Matt Thorne discusses Prince | superdeluxeedition »

SDE:Not only does Prince not reissue his old studio material, but he has only ever released a few live sets. Given the amount of touring he does, why do you think that is?

MT: He used to feel that by releasing live material he would set a song in stone, in terms of the live version of it. There is a sense that he likes fluidity in his life, he likes constantly to be able to reinvent himself and do different things to the songs. But I would love to see a live series. It’s claimed that he’s recorded everything, but he probably listens to it and hears the flaws. The people who do that really well, someone like The Grateful Dead, normally bring in someone from outside or someone who’s not in the band to listen to the material and decide to release it or not. Prince would probably never do that, because he’s so private, but that’s what he needs, someone to work through all the concert tapes.

h/t to @JayB

 

I'll make the coffee!!

 

I would assume an attractive royalty and or license fee was negotiated.

 

So be it. The music should eventually come out and I hope it sells well. There is already a pipeline for the WB reissues and I hope his thousands of others unreleased songs trickle out over the years.

 

I would assume.

 

Well, we shall see soon enough the details of what may be to come, I would imagine.

If WB CAN reissue his older albums now would obviously be the time to get started on it. That not even Purple Rain has ever been remastered/repackaged since its initial release indicates to me that WB must have been prevented from doing so for one reason or another all these years.

 

Re - a curator: As someone else said here, Questlove might be the man for the job. The guy has actually run university courses on Prince! He would have been my first choice if Prince decided to do more work with outside producers during his lifetime.

It's also been floated that perhaps Prince's former bandmates could help 'finish' some unreleased songs for release. This I think was his engineer, Susan Rogers, thinking aloud.

 

A deluxe Purple Rain was announced in 2014 when this deal happened! Obviously, something went wrong.
“Purple Rain” deluxe due as Prince and Warners sign new agreement | superdeluxeedition »

 

No way would Prince of ever released any of his vault recordings while he was alive. He was a forward thinking artist, and just kept going. Not forgetting of course that due to his new found faith, he disowned most of his more risqué songs and never performed them again.

There was a radio show on the BBC a couple of years back about Prince's Vault, if memory serves me correctly he has someone full-time managing it. I could be mistaken but I also think Susan Rogers (his engineer) is also some sort of custodian to it.

 

Yes, I remember that announcement at the time.

That 'something went wrong' seems obvious. My understanding is that nothing ever happened with the catalog prior to 2014 because neither Prince nor WB could do anything with it without the consent of the other. So nothing happened.

Seems little changed in that regard after the new agreement as well....

 

Maybe they could hire Neil Young's archive guy to go through it. He's pretty fast...lol

Paul

 

Neil's Archive folks like Joel Bernstein are pretty fast. It's Neil who slows things down.

 

That was one of the first questions my nine year old asked me: Are they going to turn his house into a museum?

 

People who really don't want material released would probably destroy that material. Prince has always been fastidious about maintenance of his vault. Susan Rogers indicates that the vault was started for archival purposes, though if course Prince changed his mind a dozen times.

I share other peoples' concerns about the bottom of the barrel. But it's a pretty deep barrel; even if you just started with full length, fully mastered material just sitting there, there's plenty. It's tough to imagine Prince falling victim to shoddy Michael-style (or 2Pac-style) exploitation, but as those were borne out of demand outstripping supply, hopefully that won't happen now.

It would be wonderful to see Prince's legacy well curated. And not just the WB years either; it's sad how unwilling Prince was to provide any kind of overview of the post-WB years that would have combatted this notion that he was finished artistically by "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World".

 

Generally they are people with deep connections and are masters of the secret handshakes. One very simple examples. You work for Prince, or a company helping him on tour or you work at the venue where he is playing. So through these connections, you may make or obtain a soundboard of the show. Because it is Prince or another artist you were not suppose to record or more importantly share what you have. So those people are very tight and controlling who they share it with. Many times it is a very tight group and they keep tight controls over shared access.

I have also found those who work in the music business are around this stuff all the time, so they are almost jaded.
To us fans, we want the outtakes, the chatter between takes. The artist and record company they want the finished product, the outtakes they are doe hearing the clams, muffed notes or lyrics. How many of us want to share what we consider a bad photo of us on a bad hair day.

How many times you hear of work tapes or acetates found in the trash? They were consider work product not the final product. To the artisit they are like someone finding your term paper rough drafts in the trash.

There are many ways for this stuff to sneak out, and if you want to keep receiving you do not go large with sharing it.

John Barrett had access to The Beatle Archives, he made his own recordings from it. It was only after he passed, that they got shared with the works at large.

Now that Prince has passed that I will not be surprised when a lot of collector stuff, tightly held, will start being shared.

 

Bring on the Makaveli-style releases!