How Purple Rain Cemented Prince’s Path to Immortality
Looking back on 40 years of the soundtrack to the Purple One’s cinematic breakthrough
The biggest album of Prince’s career happened because he wanted to be a movie star.
It wasn’t because the man was desperate for success. 1982’s 1999 had gone platinum, due in no small part to hit singles in “Little Red Corvette,” “Delirious” and the title track.
Warner Brothers wanted to re-sign him, but Prince threw a condition they weren’t expecting into the deal. He wanted to star in a movie, to be funded by a major studio.
Just as a teenage Prince got the control he wanted with his first deal (no outside producers), the man got his deal. Thanks to “Little Red Corvette” in particular, he was drawing crossover audiences that helped force MTV’s hand to play more music by Black artists. The label didn’t want to lose a talent on the verge of a wider audience.
Ah, but what movie? A talented musician, Prince wasn’t a theater kid. He had no training in the film business. He came up with a list of plot points and beats, but there was no full script.
There wasn’t even a movie to be made, as Prince’s management couldn’t get someone to produce it. Considering they’d been threatened with being released as managers, his team felt the pressure to come up with something. Eventually, his management did it.
Warner Brothers put up a small budget of seven million dollars, with the label’s Mo Ostin putting up a substantial chunk of his own salary (as much as four million) in the event the movie failed.
Prince’s ideas for the movie, under the working title Dreams, contained elements of what filmgoers would eventually see, but the whole thing was much darker. The Kid’s abusive father would be murdered by the mother, who’d kill herself. Instead of the theatrical ending, which featured a triumphant club performance punctuated by an, ahem, ejaculating guitar, the Kid is seen contemplating taking his own life.
William Blinn, who’d won Emmys for writing Brian’s Song and co-writing Roots and working on the Fame TV series at the time, was drafted to write the script. He stuck to Prince’s vision, which proved to be a mistake.
James Foley, who’d only directed Reckless at that point (he’d later helm At Close Range and Glengarry Glen Ross) turned down the offer to direct. Foley’s editor, Albert Magnoli, was interested, but only if he could change the script. His counter was that he’d do it if he got to change the script (with ideas like putting in the dynamics of The Kid not welcoming his band’s contributions, putting the love triangle with Morris Day’s character in and making the parents an interracial couple).
The result was fiction as biopic, with the cast being Prince and affiliated musicians — his band (newly christened The Revolution), Morris Day and the Time and Apollonia (replacing Vanity, who left for bigger money and a starring role in The Last Dragon) playing versions of themselves. Actual actors rounded out the cast, notably Clarence Williams III, known as Linc from Mod Squad, playing the father.
Purple Rain would be filmed over six weeks in the last two months of 1983, mostly in and around Minneapolis (producers paid First Avenue a fee to keep the venue closed for almost a month).
Things mostly went smoothly, although Apollonia went into hypothermia filming the “Lake Minnetonka” scene in an icy Minnesota River. Day, who felt The Time was his band more than Prince’s, developed a knack for showing up late or not at all, eventually getting into a quickly broken-up fight with the star.
But before shooting, they were ready to make the movie, but they needed the soundtrack, because Dreams was a musical as much as a drama (yet another critical aspect Magnoli pushed for).
As you noticed from the beginning, if you didn’t know from history, this isn’t about an album and a movie called Dreams. To know where the movie got its title, we need to go to First Avenue, the Minneapolis club that’s still there, on the night of August 3, 1983.
It’s the live debut for this version of Prince’s band, with 19-year-old guitarist Wendy Melvoin, who’d replaced Dez Dickerson.
The show was a benefit for the Minnesota Dance Theatre. The 12-song set was a mix of prior material like “Little Red Corvette” and “When You Were Mine,” a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” and six new songs, five of which would make the soundtrack.
Magnoli was part of the possibly fire code-violating audience of over 1,500 at the club that night. Knowing he needed something big for the emotional climax in the final act, he was at a loss. Prince had given him tapes of what he’d been working on, but nothing jumped out.
As the show neared its end, the opening strummed chords audiences worldwide would become familiar with were heard for the first time. What followed was an emotional version of “Purple Rain,” with more lyrics and a longer outro.
VIDEO: Prince and the Revolution perform “Purple Rain” in Syracuse, NY, 1985
The crowd had no idea they were hearing what would be one of Prince’s defining songs, but the light bulb was going off over Magnoli’s head.
After the show, the soon-to-be director approached Prince with his idea that “Purple Rain” was the song they needed for the movie.
At first, the star demurred, insisting the song wasn’t finished, but the idea clearly clicked, as he suggested that if it was going to be the emotional end point, then perhaps it should be the movie’s title.
What wasn’t planned was the First Avenue performance being on the album. But when Prince heard the tapes from the show, he knew he had something. If you watch the live performance now, you can hear all the recognizable elements, just not edited and spiffed up.
The song could have taken a different turn.
Stevie Nicks, hearing “Little Red Corvette” in her car one day, pulled over and wrote lyrics to the melody. She called Prince and invited him to play on the song, “Stand Back.” He did (uncredited synthesizer) and got half the royalties.
Nicks asked Prince if they could write a song together. Some point later, a cassette tape arrived from him, containing a long instrumental track that sounded more countryish. Nicks, asked to write lyrics for it.
“It was so overwhelming, that 10-minute track, that I listened to it and I just got scared,” Nicks told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2011. “I called him back and said, ‘I can’t do it. I wish I could. It’s too much for me.’ I’m so glad that I didn’t, because he wrote it, and it became ‘Purple Rain.'”
Prince wrung every bit out of the emotional ballad, a love song with a taste of the apocalyptic imagery on “1999.” As he put it later: “When there’s blood in the sky – red and blue = purple.. purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/god guide you through the purple rain.”
Where the song soared into greatness was in the extended outro, which takes up over half the song. Anyone who watched him years later uncork that solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies and was surprised that he could play guitar that well clearly wasn’t familiar with his work and definitely hadn’t heard his solo on “Purple Rain,” which was followed by his wordless falsetto, causing chills.
Full-length, it made for a perfect finish to the album it gave its name to. Edited, it almost became Prince’s third No. 1 single in a row, blocked by Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” that fall.
VIDEO: Prince and the Revolution “I Would Die 4 U”
Prince decided to use two more songs making their live debut from that night — “I Would Die 4 U” and “Baby I’m a Star.”
The former could be read as a love song, especially in context of the movie, but the moment you paid attention to the lyrics, it was clearly about Jesus and/or God (“I’m not a human, I’m a dove/I’m your conscience, I am love,” “No need to worry, no need to cry/I’m your Messiah, and you’re the reason why,” etc.).
It’s an uptempo number, energetically driven by percussion and keyboard flourishes, becoming the fourth straight Top 10 single from the album.
If the power of Christ compelled him in “I Would Die For U,” the spirit of James Brown inhabited him in “Baby I’m a Star,” which immediately followed it.
It’s not on-the-one, but it is funky nonetheless. The fast, danceable workout full of cockiness (“Take a picture, sweetie, I ain’t got time to wait!”) is a reminder that for all of his incorporation of rock and pop on the album, he wasn’t about to abandon R&B.
Prince could be somewhat insular when it came to making music, an occupational hazard for someone who could play all the instruments and knew the song ideas in his head. But during this period,he was nominally more open to his band’s musical ideas, even if he remained a benevolent dictator (until he basically broke up the Revolution two years later). The chemistry, then still intact, is evident throughout on the songs where the full band — Bobby Z, Brown Mark, Lisa Coleman, Matt Fink and Melvoin — was used.
There were initial plans to make the album a full-on soundtrack with other acts from the movie, but Prince decided it needed to be him and the Revolution alone. The Time’s “Jungle Love” and “The Bird,” produced, arranged and co-written by Prince, became hits later in the year after the release off the band’s Ice Cream Castle album.
It appeared the album was done, but Magnoli told Prince he needed one more song. The montage of the Kid being emotional, reflecting on what’s happened in the film to that point, needed something to fit the mood.
Prince went to Sunset Sound Studios in L.A. spending several hours with just himself and engineer Peggy McCreary there. He had lyrical ideas, inspired by a relationship. He recorded all the parts himself, slowing down the tape speed to get the synthesizer solo he wanted. By the following morning, he had the song ready to go. Almost.
After getting some sleep, he returned to Sunset Sound to do the mixing. At some point, a fit of inspiration struck him and he took the bass out of the mix entirely.
That move turned what would have likely been a hit into one of the standards in his catalog — “When Doves Cry.”
The absence of bass brought the other elements to the fore — the rhythm of the programmed drums, bursts of guitar, Prince’s dramatically sensual vocals, the synths punctuating the verses and their classic notes. It was the kind of combination only Prince could have turned into a classic.
Wisely replacing instrumental mood piece “Father’s Song,” it became the lead single and first of five No. 1 hits Prince would have in the U.S., also topping the charts.
VIDEO: Prince and the Revolution “When Doves Cry”
Prince stepped back to the pulpit for the rocker “Let’s Go Crazy,” as he started a sermon (“Dearly beloved/We are gathered here today/To get through this thing called ‘life'”) over a woozy organ. He turns church into a party anthem about avoiding Satan (the “de-elevator”), exhorting the listener to enjoy this life and not just sit around waiting for Heaven.
It has one of his most undeniably catchy choruses, albeit rather silly (“Let’s go crazy/Let’s get nuts/Look for the purple banana/Until they put us in the truck, let’s go”). Toss in a pair of blistering solos and the result was his second chart-topping single in a row.
VIDEO: Prince and the Revolution “Let’s Go Crazy”
The fifth and final single was “Take Me With U,” originally planned as a duet with Vanity, then with Apollonia to be featured on Apollonia 6’s album. Ultimately, Prince opted to keep it on Purple Rain, making some cuts in the length of “Computer Blue” to have everything fit.
The breezy charmer pointed in the direction Prince would be heading on his next album with its psychedelic sunshine pop feel. Indeed, “Raspberry Beret,” the lead single off that record released two months later, covered similar musical terrain to greater chart success.
Prince was always an artist who explored the spiritual as well as the sexual. After he became a Jehovah’s Witness (yes, there is a chance someone reading this pretended not to be home when the man himself knocked on the door), there was less of the profane.
But he had no problems with it in the ’80s. “Darling Nikki” was salacious enough to draw the attention of the schoolmarmish Tipper Gore, who formed the Parents Music Resource Center, which put the song on its “Filthy Fifteen” in an effort to get warning labels on “objectionable material.”
The labels gave in, resulting in some cases of albums with the warning label getting more attention than they would have otherwise. In some parts of the country, it became difficult for adults to get the proper albums because certain retailers decided to “protect” them by only stocking copies with sometimes ludicrous “clean” edits.
Make no mistake, there’s nothing ambiguous about “Darling Nikki,” a spare (at first) “Norwegian Wood” if the one-night stand were very sexually open, from pleasuring herself with a magazine in a hotel lobby to the wide variety of, shall we say, “adult novelties” that even gave a loverman like Prince pause.
If Tipper had looked past the salaciousness, she’d have noticed one of the album’s most inventive songs underneath the bodily fluids, especially in its explosive finish of wild guitar, Prince’s full-bore screaming and jazzy keyboards and frantic speed metal drums do battle.
And lest anyone didn’t think Prince didn’t have a sense of humor, he ends the R-rated track with backwards-masked vocals singing “Hello, how are you?/Fine, fine, ’cause I know that the Lord is coming soon/Coming, coming soon.”
“Computer Blue” was the product of Prince jamming with the Revolution, the only song to get co-writing credits (Coleman, Fink, Melvoin and Prince’s father John).
It opens with dialogue from Wendy & Lisa that could be sex, sci-fi or sci-fi sex (“Wendy?” “Yes, Lisa” “Is the water warm enough?” “Yes, Lisa” “Shall we begin?” “Yes, Lisa”).
In its original form, it was an extended suite running 14 minutes with an extended spoken-word passage at the end. But by the time the album was being put together, it was cut to four minutes with only one verse. What remained was guitar-driven Twin Cities funk, giving way to a solo-led instrumental passage before the riff returns and the whole thing dissolves into “Darling Nikki.”
“Beautiful Ones” is the love triangle from The Kid’s view, at first plaintively wanting to be the one, before Prince busts out a scream at the end, yelling lines like “Do you want him? Or do you want me? Cause I want you!” It sounds like he could either curl up in the fetal position or put his hand to her face and shove her to the ground (which the Kid does in the movie).
The movie, which Warner Brothers initially didn’t want to release, was a hit when it came out a month later, topped only by Gremlins and Police Academy among the studio’s releases that year.
The album exploded, easily becoming the biggest hit of his career. It topped the U.S. album charts for 24 weeks, eventually selling around 25 million copies worldwide.
For a driven artist who got the crossover success he sought, it didn’t take long for Prince to recoil at the goal he achieved. He suddenly found himself playing to audiences who wanted to hear the album, which he tired of playing.
The Purple Rain tour setlists wound up being too frontloaded and backloaded. Prince’s artistic impulses and private nature left him unable to enjoy the warm reception.
Years later, he referred to the album as “my albatross — it’ll be hanging around my neck as long as I’m making music.”
Work had begun on what would become the follow-up before Purple Rain was finished, a release that Prince wanted to be the anti-Purple Rain. By year’s end, recording ended on what would become the uneven, psychedelically-tinged Around the World in a Day.
Ever busy, Prince would release an album every year until 1993, with 1987’s genre-spanning double album Sign O’ The Times ranking with Purple Rain as a career masterpiece.
While the explosive success of Purple Rain felt like a burden to Prince, the movie’s status became a burden to his fans.
Prince fancied himself a moviemaker and movie star, before box office returns disabused him of that notion.
Just over two weeks into filming 1986’s Under the Cherry Moon, he replaced director Mary Lambert. The result was a period romantic dramedy that made 1/7th the money that Purple Rain did and tied with Howard the Duck for worst picture at the Razzies. It flopped despite the accompanying album Parade, which included the underrated “Mountains,” the beautifully haunting “Sometimes It Snows In April” and one of his best singles in “Kiss.”
Undeterred, Prince wrote and directed Graffiti Bridge, a 1990 sequel to Purple Rain. It also bombed critically and commercially, failing to make back its $7 million budget despite a solid soundtrack.
“(It was) one of the purest, most spiritual, uplifting things I’ve ever done. It was non-violent, positive and had no blatant sex scenes. Maybe it will take people 30 years to get it. They trashed ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at first, too,” he told USA Today in 1991, an assessment that did not prove to be the case.
Prince’s film career was over, but his music career and influence would continue, bolstered by the power and reach of his one box office success and the album that came with it.
Prince may have felt pigeonholed by Purple Rain, but his creative impulses never kept him boxed in. If they had, he wouldn’t have made it in the first place, sticking to remaining the often sex-obsessed R&B standout of his earlier work. Nor would he have made the albums that followed.
One can only hope that the distance of time allowed him to appreciate what he and the band accomplished on the album, that its success was utterly earned.
“Listening to Purple Rain now, it’s kind of like a Beatles album,” keyboardist Fink told Rolling Stone in 2016. “Every song is just so brilliant in its own way — all so unique and different. Prince’s earlier work led up to that whole style, but it was more technically advanced than where he was before. It reached a new peak.”
Prince had pop and rock elements in his music before. “When You Were Mine” still sounds like a lost new wave hit, for one.
But Purple Rain was where he explored it fully, achieving crossover without compromise. It sounds wholly of a piece with his first five albums, yet utterly new territory mapped out by the only man who could make anything like it.
Now, 40 years later, it sounds nothing like an albatross, but rather like what it is — a major artistic achievement, one of the best albums of its decade and of all-time.
- Tomorrow Never Knows: The Beatles’ Revolver Turns 60 - July 20, 2026
- Here Today: The Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ at 60 - May 16, 2026
- Manifest Density: Local H’s ‘As Good As Dead’ Turns 30 - April 30, 2026
You May Also Like
-
June 8, 2018 -
October 16, 2018 -
April 21, 2021
