Prince: The Story of Sign O' The Times is an audio documentary series brought to you by The Current in collaboration with the Prince Estate, Paisley Park, and Warner Records. Listen Thursdays at 8 p.m. Central, and read a written version below. The series is also available as a podcast on multiple platforms. (Missed Episode 1? Find it here.)

VO: Do you ever just need to get out of the house, and go for a drive? Do you ever wonder what Prince would have written about quarantine? So I'm out in Chanhassen, Minnesota, I am outside of Paisley Park at the moment, and I'm not going to go in Paisley Park today, but I decided to drive over here first, because I am on my way to Galpin Boulevard in Chanhassen, and this is where Prince lived starting in the winter of the end of 1985, and he had a home studio there, and that is where he recorded many of the songs that are on Sign O' The Times.

Audio: "Sign O' The Times"

VO: I'm Andrea Swensson and This is Prince: The Story of Sign O' The Times, brought to you by The Current in collaboration with the Prince Estate, Paisley Park, and Warner Records.

I'm parked on Paisley Path between Rogers Court and Paisley Court. This is a brand-new street that I'm parked on at the moment; it did not exist a year ago. This whole property is currently under construction and becoming a big subdivision out in Chanhassen. And this used to all be Prince's.

Prince moved into this property in the end of 1985 and started recording there in early, early 1986,: "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" was the first thing he recorded in his Galpin Boulevard home. "Forever In My Life." "Starfish and Coffee." And it wasn't just a creative space for him. The Galpin Boulevard home was his first home that he wanted to build a life in with a romantic partner. At the time he had just gotten engaged to Susannah Melvoin, and this is where they decided to move into, to start to build their life together.

The house that Prince lived in here is long gone, but Susannah describes it as a very '80s mansion-y type house, and the rest of the property was just empty, open, beautiful, rolling hills. Now it's under construction, and pretty soon, there's going to be dozens of families living here where Prince and Susannah once were.

Audio: "Forever In My Life"

Susannah Melvoin: My job was to create a home for us while he was away, and it's what I did happily. I was very happy to do so.

VO: This is Susannah — twin sister of The Revolution's Wendy Melvoin, lead singer of Prince's side project The Family, and the first resident and decorator of the Galpin house, a task she worked on while Prince was in the south of France filming Under the Cherry Moon in late 1985.

Susannah Melvoin: …And so I kept the fires stoked at home. I had the pleasure of working with an interior designer, and she helped a lot to facilitate what I was looking for and what I knew he would love and, at the time I mean it was '85, '86, and it was like &mash; you know — lots of pastels, let's put it that way. That's not where I'd be going now with it but at the time it was gorgeous! Great old antique lamps and beautiful chandeliers and very romantic and lots of hanging things off the ceilings, and it was just beautiful. And getting the studio together.

VO: Prince came home from filming Under The Cherry Moon in time for Thanksgiving, and on November 26, 1985, he got to see his new house on Galpin Boulevard for the first time.

Susannah Melvoin: I picked him up at the airport, and he was so excited to see what the house looked like, and when we drove up — it was a circular drive — and the first thing you'd see — I don't know if it was there at the end; I have no idea. And again, this is all so 1986. But it had this extraordinarily beautiful, enormous teardrop chandelier. And it was one of the things he was like, "Get the best chandelier you can find," and walking in and that's the first thing he sees when he looks up and he just — his eyes — you know, those big doe-y-eyed beautiful eyes just got greener and happier. And he was just — it was glorious. It was really sweet and wonderful.

And the studio had not been totally hooked up yet, but all the gear was being put in, and monitors were being set up. So that was the first thing I did was take him down: "You've gotta see the studio." I had designed some lovely stained-glass panels that would get that afternoon sun from the land he had. It just kills me to know that that land was sold. But you'd look out the back windows and it was just expanse, and it's beautiful. And that's what he wanted, his beloved Minnesota in his — you know — in his eyesight.

VO: When Susannah said this, it reminded me of something Prince said in an interview he gave for MTV in late 1985, just a few weeks before returning home to see his house for the first time.

Prince on MTV: "One thing I'd like to say is that, I don't live in a prison, and I'm not afraid of anything. I haven't built any walls around myself. I am just like anyone else. I need love and water. And I don't really consider myself a superstar. I live in a small town, and I always will, because I can walk around and be me."

Audio: "Dream Factory"

VO: Just four days after touring his new home with Susannah, Prince would record the song "Dream Factory" at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. The song was written as a reaction to Susannah's bandmate, St. Paul Peterson, leaving the Family, effectively disbanding that project, and it marked the beginning of a new era of creativity for Prince that would center on his Galpin Boulevard home.

Susan Rogers: Hi. My name is Susan Rogers, and I was Prince's engineer from 1983 to '87.

VO: In addition to Susannah, the other constant presence in the Galpin house was Susan Rogers, who was there to oversee the installation of the new home studio.

Susan Rogers: He had had a home studio in a small bedroom just off the hallway in the Kiowa Trail house where he lived in Chanhassen. So this time now, he wanted a real professional studio within the confines of the space. So it was downstairs in the rec room and you'd go — you started at the landing. The landing was just above where the kitchen meets the dining room, and you'd walk downstairs. If you turned to the left, you would be in a rec room. You'd be in a rec room where he had a pool table, and there was a bathroom in there. But if you turned to the right, you'd go in through a glass door — a heavy, glass, soundproof door — you'd go in, you're in a sound lock. You go in through a second glass door, and now you're in the control room. The control room was absolutely gorgeous: dark royal purple carpeting, kind of shag carpeting with an area for parquet floor, and then there was this pale — it was kind of an oak wood-colored — the wood was kind of a pale, pale ashen shade, which complemented that gorgeous, dark-purple carpeting beautifully. The rear windows of the room were stained glass. Susannah loved stained glass and she custom ordered these stained-glass windows, and there was a door there that went out because the house was built on a hill. So it was a big step up from his prior home studio, and it served us really well at that time.

VO: The home studio was outfitted with a custom DeMedio board, which was modeled after the board Prince liked to use at Sunset Sound.

Susan Rogers: It finally came online — it came online in late winter. In fact, I remember Frank DeMedio was in town; he's the man who designed the custom console that was in that room. Frank came into town to do that last of the wiring, and we watched on the TV monitor up above, we watched the Challenger explosion which was January of 1986. So I remember: we're hooking up the last wires in the wintertime, and that's the first song we did at that home studio, was "Ballad of Dorothy Parker."

Audio: "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker"

Susan Rogers: He was so eager for this damned console to be installed. One of the main things to know about Prince is how on fire his creativity was, and it's coming and coming and coming, and he's not going to sit in his room with a little four-track recorder and demo things. If he's going to be playing and singing, it's going to go to tape, and it's going to be the canonical version as far as he is concerned. He didn't demo things. So he could not wait for this console to be finished.

We're trying as best we can, but there are things that need to be fixed and a lot of testing that needs to be done. So he — he was asleep one night and he had a dream, and he woke up and he called me and he said, "We're recording whether you like it or not. We're going on." So I came down to the studio as fast as I could, and at this point Frank had already gone home. So I came down to the home studio and put up the tape and — Bam! Bam! Bam! — he starts recording, starting with drum machine and the keyboard part and the bass part and &mdashl; bam! — one instrument after another, and it is awesome! And it is also deeply flawed, because the sound of it — I'm thinking, "Oh no, something is definitely wrong." I had seen for myself that this console, its frequency response was flat from DC — direct current — out to 70 kHz, which is nearly four times higher than the range of human hearing. This thing had high-end response. But not what we were hearing, because what we were hearing, [puts hands over mouth to muffle voice] it sounded like this. It sounded like there was just a blanket over everything. And I'm thinking, "What's he doing?'. Does he not hear this? Why won't he stop?" And when he does stop, with each instrument we're adding, my death will be more and more profound. I'm going to be more and more in trouble, because it's not just ruining the drums; it's ruining the drums and the bass and the keyboards and the vocals. But then I thought, "Good for me." I knew him pretty well at this point. Don't stop him. Don't stop him. He's on a roll, he's happy. Let him go and fix it later.

So anyway, we spent — it was a good long day; well into the night. We finally finish. He's happy. And then he says, "I like this console, but it's kind og dull." It was so funny, because he leaves the room and I'm thinking, "Well, I'm going to live — this time." But of course he heard it. Of course, he heard it. He didn't care. It was one of those happy accidents where the lack of high end, the dullness, made it sound underwater. He used that dull response to make art.

Andrea Swensson: That's so amazing. I love, too, that there's a part where the character of the song is overhearing Joni Mitchell on the radio, and because it's a little muffled, it just adds to that just surreal experience of listening to it.

Susan Rogers: Yes. He was so good at turning life into music. He was so good at it! Rather than trying to reshape life so that it would serve his music; he wasn't that type. He made music out of the life he was living.

Audio: "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" (with horns)

VO: One intriguing track that's being pulled out of the vault and included on the super deluxe reissue of Sign O' The Times is an alternate version of "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker," also completed at the Galpin home studio. It features additional horn parts by Eric Leeds and Atlanta Bliss.
Eric Leeds: Oh, they're putting that on there?

VO: This is Eric Leeds.

Eric Leeds: Holy cow! That is one thing I don't have a copy of. I'm interested in listening. Prince came to me one day and asked me to just put a horn arrangement on it, and I was surprised because that — we all just considered that to be a gem, to just be a perfect little boutique kind of song, and my brother came up with the characterization of certain kind of Prince songs that were referred to as boutique songs — things that are just really just so distinctively Prince, but otherwise not really easily categorized. And I think that's kind of the quintessential boutique Prince song from my perspective. I didn't think it needed anything. But if Prince is asking me to do that, it's a compliment to the fact that he even considers that there might be something I could add to it that could have value. When he did not use the version with the horns, I was not surprised.

Audio: "Witness 4 The Prosecution (Take 1)"

VO: It's remarkable to think about all of the music that, as Susan Rogers put it, Prince made out of the life he was living in the beginning of 1986. In March and April of that year, as his album Parade was released and the single "Kiss" climbed to No. 1 on the pop charts, Prince would churn through dozens of songs in his new home studio, including several that would end up on Sign O' The Times. Occasionally Eric Leeds and Atlanta Bliss would stop by to record horn parts, or other members of The Revolution would stop in to visit or jam. This version of "Witness for the Prosecution" was initially recorded by Prince alone at the Galpin home studio in March 1986, and the horns and additional parts by Wendy, Lisa, and Susannah would be added to it a few weeks later.

Eric Leeds:I can tell you the date that I put the horns on: April 15, 1986. It's kind of funny because, I mean, we spent a lot of time there, and it was just like the front door was always open because basically — you know — I mean there was a gate out front, so I mean, it wasn't like anyone was gonna — but I mean it was like, get through the gate, park the car in front and just walk in and head down to the studio.

Atlanta Bliss: Prince would call Eric and I up, and it might be one or two in the morning, and say, "Hey come on over; I wanna record."

VO: This is Matt Blistan, who Prince renamed Atlanta Bliss.

Atlanta Bliss: So it'd just be him, and he would be singing us the parts. We didn't have anything written, but he would sing us the parts, and he would go [sings parts] — "OK, you guys ready?" He's ready to hit the red button to record that. I'd say, "Wait a second. I'm still scratching some things down." It wasn't like, "Take it home and practice it." It was like, "It's coming out of my guitar that fast; I expect it to come out of you that fast."

Eric Leeds: Depending on what the song was, sometimes Prince would have the horns in on the day that he was doing the rhythm track. Other times, the rhythm track — everything that he'd done may be around for weeks, sometimes months before he might decide whether to add anything to it or not.

Andrea Swensson: It's pretty mind-boggling to think about just — well how much music was constantly coursing through his brain, but also to have the organization mentally to say, "Oh, you know, that song that I wrote 30 songs ago? I'm going to pull that one back out now."

Eric Leeds: Yeah. I counted up — curiously, once years ago, somebody had asked me how many recording sessions I might've done with Prince over those years. With no real basis I just said, "It might've been 50, 75, somewhere around there." And then I got curious, and I looked through my journals, and all the records that I have of pretty much all the sessions that I did with him, and I lost track over about 150, 160. And I would say that probably 80% of the stuff that I recorded for Prince is yet to be released.

Susan Rogers: I loved "Witness for the Prosecution"!

VO: That's Susan Rogers again.

Susan Rogers: That floor-stomping soul — you know — those background vocals just singing, "Witness!"

Audio: "Witness 4 The Prosecution (Take 1)"

It's that soul, it's that B3 organ, it's that church. He hadn't been doing too much of that. Now when The Revolution disbanded, of course, he's losing key members of his band that bring important flavors to it. Wendy and Lisa in particular — what they brought in terms of their knowledge of chord changes and harmony and things like that. Once it goes, it's gone. Sheila E and her magnificent band from Oakland brought a whole new flavor to Prince's style. But he lost something in the process, and I loved that "Witness for the Prosecution" was neither the sound of Oakland nor was it the sound of The Revolution. That was pure early Prince and his — not early Prince in terms of the pop-punk, new-wave movement that he had going on in the late '70s — but early Prince in that that was totally the street he lived on. That's his soul.

VO: As Susan pointed out, although The Revolution wouldn't disband until the fall of 1986, Prince was clearly already transitioning into a new creative space that spring and summer. Once his home studio was up and running, Prince spent day after day holed up in that basement, dreaming up new styles and sounds. And Susannah was there for all of it.

Susannah: It was beautiful to watch, actually. He was completely self-contained and wanted it that way. I mean, he was in his element, and that element is so much of where his brain was. It's like, so much was going on his brain to facilitate the creative work that if anybody else became involved in it, it was just a distraction for him, right? And you had to figure out a way to become part of that machine in his mind, in his creative mind, so that you didn't get in the way. And some of us did. There were — you know — there was a good handful of us that knew how to stay out of the way and also be supportive and also be creative with him, and I think that's one of the reasons why he kept those kinds of people around.

Andrea Swensson: I would love to hear more about just the day-to-day rhythm that you fell into in that time — you know — I'm so interested in how you described being supportive but also not getting in the way. That's a very fine line and like a dance that you were doing creatively to be there together and know that sometimes he would need to just work and sometimes it was together and sometimes it was apart.

Susannah Melvoin: Well, that's it. There's a psychology to that, and I suppose that that has something to do with being a twin. I'm not easily intimidated by people's creative work ethic, nor am I intimidated by people's quirks. I don't react in any way. I just see people as whatever they are, and I think that had to do with being a twin. Wendy and I could mirror to each other the world in a way that helped us both be stable in our character.

So my day-to-day was never about my worry about what he thought or whether he loved me or not. that didn't lead the way. What led was, if he was working, I just did something else. There was no talking about it. Like if he had to explain to you, "I'm in the middle of something — go find something to do," that was a distraction. He'd get up, take a shower, clean up usually very late in the day if we'd had a very late night, he'd be in the studio. I could get a call and say, "Do you mind making me a cup of tea?" and I'd go make him a cup of tea, bring him something downstairs and say, "I'm gonna go somewhere," and I would go do that. Or I would go back upstairs and just do what I was doing. It was almost incredibly normal; very normal. So the day-to-day had a stability to it. I didn't need anything. And he certainly didn't need anything from me.

Audio: "Eggplant"

Andrea Swensson: Can you talk a little bit about how you painted the mural outside of the studio?

Susannah Melvoin: I've always been a wannabe artist. Anyway, when I first met Prince, and I was at the studio a lot during the Purple Rain recordings — it was the sequencing of Purple Rain — and I was in the studio, and I had all my art supplies with me — why? I don't know. Not sure. But the box that the master was sitting in, I took and put it in my lap and it's so funny — I think it's in the vault. I drew all over it. I drew all these weird, cool things on it, then he started drawing on it. But it's sort of my art style. And so, he'd seen some of my work. And so, off the studio was a small room. We called it "the game room" and also kind of a workout room. It just had one bench and had a pool table in it. It had Galaga and Pac Man, Defender — his favorite, my favorite — to play Defender. I spent a lot of time in there. And I just brought down all my art supplies, and I started to draw. It was this just an expansive wall that just splayed out from one side of the room to the other, and I was like, "What's this huge empty space?" Like, we've got to do, you know — we didn't have any artwork on it. There was nothing there so I was just like okay, okay I'm gonna go for it. I wanted it to have jewels on it. I wanted it to sparkle. I wanted it to be, you know — this magical mural that you could actually feel and touch on it as well as the flatness of the drawing. But, you know — he wrote "Crystal Ball" because of what I was doing in this mural.

Audio: "Crystal Ball" 7-inch mix "my baby draws pictures of sex all over the wall"

Susannah Melvoin: …I can't stress enough what it's like for two people to experience each other this way. My experience of him, his experience of me was two people — and again, this is my twinning thing, I know how to be with another human being without being in the way. So that in itself is an inspiration for him. He didn't have to think about what he was doing. And so I inspired something. I pulled something out of him and that was "Crystal Ball."

Audio: "Crystal Ball" beginning of song

VO: "Crystal Ball" has such an intriguing backstory. It was initially intended for the album Dream Factory, and then became the title track to the triple album Crystal Ball that Prince would turn in to Warner Brothers at the end of 1986, but would be discarded when he whittled that track list down to the 16 songs that would make up Sign O' The Times. When some of the unreleased material from this prolific era was released on the 1998 triple-disc compilation Crystal Ball — which is different from that album that Prince turned in to the label in '86 — Prince would reflect back on this period, writing that: "The song 'Crystal Ball' was written in a deepbluefunk depression" as Prince pondered his future in a music business that had become more business than music. His only solace during this time, as Prince wrote, was his continuing "search 4 a soul mate. All that matters is the love we make 2night. The notion of making love during the apocalypse was an interesting notion 2 us at the time."

Audio: "Crystal Ball" 7-inch mix

Susannah Melvoin: "Crystal Ball" itself went through many incarnations. It took a long time. And I remember him tracking and then changing things up and then doing the vocal, having me go in, do the vocal, having us both behind the mic doing the vocal. And during that time while it was taking this time, I was still doing the mural. This whole time period was making music, making art, loving each other, feeding each other, sleeping with each other, you know — like just life in this sort of all-encompassing way. It was the longest period of recording I'd seen him do on one song and not be frustrated by it. And when it was finally finished, I remember him coming upstairs with the cassette — "Let's get in the car and go listen to it!" Which we always did — that was the place to go listen to the finish: If it sounded great in the car, we had the mix.

Audio: "Starfish and Coffee" - intro

VO: Another one of Prince and Susannah's most personal collaborations was the song "Starfish and Coffee," which was co-written by Susannah.

Susannah Melvoin: That song was created from stories I would tell Prince about someone I went to school — Wendy and I went to school with. So we had this one young girl who I am still very close with, Cynthia Rose. She's an extraordinary woman who's exactly the same as she was when she was 11; exactly the same. She just has more references to be funny with, but she's an autistic savant, and no one knew at the time that was as special as she was, but I knew that she was the most glorious kook I'd ever met. Sixth grade was my last year with her; I took her with me always.

So one day at the house on Galpin the studio was up and running. He called Susan. "Susan, roll tape; we're gonna record today." He comes up into the kitchen table and sits down and he said, "Do me a favor. Would you write down the story of Cynthia Rose? Write it all down for me." Sure. And he was like, "The whole thing — just all of it."

I gave him the paper, and he grabs it out of my hand and goes downstairs. Couple minutes later, he comes back up, and he points to the page. He said, "Do you mind if I change that to 'coffee'?" And it was "starfish and peepee," because that's what Cynthia would say: "I want my starfish and peepee! You know what I had for breakfast?"

I'd say, "What'd you have, Cynthia?"

"Starfish and peepee!"

So it was like, "Of course you can't sing 'peepee'!" And then, you know — end of day, he comes up, you know — he's got his shirt off, he's kind of sweaty. He said come on down. He stands at the board and he presses "play" and there it is.

Audio: "Starfish and Coffee"

Susannah Melvoin: …Again, I mean what a beautiful time to have experienced. What a beautiful time.

Andrea Swensson: So has Cynthia Rose — I imagine has heard "Starfish and Coffee." What does she think?

Susannah Melvoin: She has! She has. One of her caretakers had heard that record and they knew right away; they knew right away. And so when I talked to Cynthia about it, she was like, "You know, I still love — I still love my starfish!: I was like, "Why?" She goes, "Because they're transformative." And of course, she had my heart. Her brain — you talk about a brain that lives in the unconscious, that mind is so — she's such a fascinating mind. And I think that Prince had that same ability to tap into that unconscious mind to be creative. Like I think he — he lived in that place.

VO: As so many of his collaborators have remarked, Prince wasn't one to go into a lot of detail about his thoughts or pour his heart out to the people around him. But as Susannah learned time and time again, when he had something to say to her, he often said it to her through his music. Sometimes, it was something so pure and happy…

Audio: "Forever In My Life"

Susannah Melvoin: He woke me up in the morning, told me to come downstairs and listen, and it was "Forever in my Life." You know, he just sorta looked — looked at me; gave me a look. I said, "Who's it for? Did you write this for somebody?" He was like, "No, I'm keeping it for myself." I was like, "It's beautiful." I knew what it was. I knew what it was saying.

Andrea Swensson: Yeah. As you said, he doesn't really over-explain anything.

Susannah Melvoin: No, he didn't use that — language wasn't used for that. Music was. Music was his language.

VO: Sometimes, he used his songs to express something darker.

Andrea Swensson: Are there other songs that come to mind where you felt maybe he was using the music to tell you something?

Susannah Melvoin: "If I Was Your Girlfriend."

Audio: "If I Was Your Girlfriend"

Susannah Melvoin: Yeah, that's one. I knew what that was. I knew he wanted to twin off with me because he had hard time that I was so close to Wendy. That was hard for him. That was hard. I think that was the thing that broke us up, was that I couldn't be that fantasy for him. There was just no way. I was too human, and I had my own needs and they were real. And my relationships were solid and deep and thoughtful with my family, particularly my twin sister. And so, "If I Was Your Girlfriend" was a direct hit. I knew what that was about. It was like,"Whoa, huh, mm, ow."

Andrea Swensson: I found it challenging to listen to the lyrics of "Big Tall Wall."

Audio: "Big Tall Wall"

Susannah Melvoin: Oh yeah. There's another example of needing me to be his and his only, you know — I was kind of the bird in the gilded cage a little bit. A little bit? A lot, I think. He may have felt that way with everybody he was with. I don't think he liked sharing his secret, his vulnerabilities with anybody. He hid that. There was plenty of times when it was very dark and complicated. But if I were to tell you in my life to know that I was part of these creative moments in such a profound human being as he was — we talk about the inner work and creative part of himself and that unconscious imaginative self, this part that led the way for him. And I was there with him. Because I relate that way, and I create that way, I was the perfect piece in that puzzle during that time. And for me? You know — when I write down my life story, I say I got to be on some of the greatest work I could have ever dreamt up, not just for myself, but to be with somebody as, you know, touched as he was — really touched and I was, you know — in awe of it. There was painting and art and love and music and writing and living. I mean, it was just an all-encompassing experience — emotional, physical, spiritual, a soul experience. How lucky am I to have had that as a memory?

Audio: "Adore"

VO: Coming up next on Prince: The Story of Sign O' The Times, you're going to hear the incredible story of how the song "Sign O' The Times" came to be — and all of the real-world events that inspired it.

Duane Tudahl: All of a sudden it became a social commentary. It was his Marvin Gaye. It was his "What's Going On."

VO: And we'll dig through more of these unreleased vault tracks with Duane Tudahl, author and senior researcher for the Prince Estate Archives.

Audio: "Blanche"

Duane Tudahl: That's one of the reasons I enjoy this collection, is because you get the wide range. You get everything he was going through: "Here's the good, here's my sad, here's my goofy song, here's a song called 'Blanche'; it's got a great riff or it's just a bunch of rhymes I'm doing." When he was recording, he could record two or three songs in a day, and he did.

Credits

Prince: The Story of Sign O' The Times is produced by The Current, supported by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment's Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, and created in collaboration with The Prince Estate and Warner Records and with their support. This story was written by Andrea Swensson; Anna Weggel is our producer. Thanks to Technical Director Corey Schreppel, Digital Producer Jay Gabler, Radio Production Director Derrick Stevens and Managing Director David Safar.

Thanks also to Trevor Guy, Giancarlo Sciama, Michael Howe and Duane Tudahl. To learn more about The Current, visit thecurrent.org. If you haven't subscribed yet, search for Prince: The Story of Sign O' The Times on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, to learn more about Prince, visit Prince.com.