Track Two - Let's Go Crazy

I won't dwell on this track, because I've already written about Prince. Previously I said:



I think what we’re really supposed to take from the song is this: let's have a party.


And then there’s the end of the song. The end fits with the beginning. We have had the stately start, been lifted up by the song sermon, and now we get the big finale (as in a black gospel church finale, not a hand-around-the-tea-and-scones white-church finale). When that guitar lifts out of all the synthesized pomposity and scorches alone, slightly breaking up – oh, man! It had more impact for me back in 1984 because playing guitar that fast seemed impossible, like we had entered another realm, like Prince had really leaped beyond the song and gone to, well, the afterworld.


Later on, sitting in various bedrooms around my crummy hometown with heavy metal albums and guys with guitars replaying solos note perfectly, I realised that even though it seems like you want more of that kind of Let’s Go Crazy guitar solo you don’t… less really is more.



I bought a lot of Prince albums. I even had his first two albums which were pretty poor (although the original Nothing Compares 2 U is on the second album I think). I still have 1999, Sign O' the Times, Under the Cherry Moon and Around the World. He really was amazingly good in the 80's. It still sort of amazes me that Madonna is the one who has survived - I would have backed Prince first, and Michael Jackson second.

What really attracted me to Prince (and the next "artist" on the mix tape) was his flamboyance, his ability to create a total fantasy world that included music, and clothes, and dancing and a persona. When I entered the album Purple Rain I wasn't just listening to music I was doing that magical thing called ESCAPE.