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STEVE SUTHERLAND
Vinyl Release Steve edited NME from 1992-2000, the Britpop
years, launching NME.com and reviving the
NME Awards. Previously he was Assistant
Editor on Melody Maker. Among his many
adventures he has been physically threatened
BEHIND THE MUSIC WITH HI-FI NEWS & RECORD REVIEW by Axl Rose, hung out awhile with Jerry Garcia
and had a drink or two with Keith Richards...
Prince

Sign O’ The Times

As this 1987 LP appears on 180g vinyl Steve Sutherland
recalls his interview with Prince back in 1981. Did their

meeting influence the singer’s signature behaviour?
aybe I should shoulder some party for something to do with Steve but, Lord knows, I didn’t feel embarrassed
of the blame. It was me, after Strange and Visage. After our interview, it while I was doing it to her.”’
all, who declared in a Melody became apparent Prince had nothing to do This was around the release of his third
MMaker review of his previous that evening and knew no-one in town. LP, Dirty Mind, and Prince was over here
album, Parade, that Prince was God’s gift So I hailed a cab and took him along in London from Minneapolis for a one-off
to music or some such nonsense. to the do where he spent the whole night show at the Lyceum, which he performed
Prince then appeared to have taken standing in the corner, talking to no-one, wearing a studded leather coat, Y-Fronts
my praise – and many, many, many others’ refusing my offers of drinks and generally and black thigh-length tights…
– at face value and begun to behave looking shy and lost. Eventually he left
accordingly. ‘If the Creator took a mere me to hobnob with the Spandaus and A LOTTA TROUBLE
seven days to put the world together,’ his their primped-up like. Later, when Prince ‘To me it’s not outrageous, it’s comfortable.
thought process seemed to be, ‘then the became the sartorial peacock we all I’ve always dressed the way I’ve wanted
very least I can do is bash out an album in a swooned over, I used to joke that it was to and if it goes with the music, it’s only

week – maybe every week.’ me that first turned him on because the music is part
to the New Romantic style. ‘Then alarm of me and so is the way
FACE TO FACE But, anyway, back to my I dress. I don’t try to do
However, let’s not jump the gun into article which, incidentally, bells started to anything to shock or to
that full-blown megalomania just yet… began: ‘The quiet little man make money – that would
Pray allow me to reel you back through with bovine, brown eyes ring at Warner make me a hooker…
the years a little. I was one of the fi rst UK and a whisper of a ’tache ‘I saw an analyst once
journos to spot Prince’s talent and, as such, stares absent-mindedly out Brothers HQ’ because I was wondering
one of the few to be granted a face-to- of the hotel window across why it was that I was so
face interview. This London’s rainswept rooftops. “Actually,” sexual-minded and why I wanted to go
was in 1981, and he decides finally with pronounced against the grain so much because it got

at the London hesitation, “I think it’s much more me into a lotta trouble a lotta times. He
Embassy Club embarrassing talking about these things asked me to talk about my childhood –

where I had than doing them. I mean, I find it a lot y’know, when you first experienced this

taken Prince, easier to sing swear words than to say and first experienced that, sort of thing.
as my guest, them and when I first had a girl, I found it ‘More than my songs have to do with

to an early really hard to tell sex, they have to do with one human’s
evening launch my mother love for another which goes deeper than
anything political that anybody could
possibly write about. The need for love,
the need for sexuality, basic freedom,
equality – I’m afraid these things
don’t necessarily come out. I think
my problem is that my attitude’s so
sexual it overshadows anything else,
that I might not be mature enough
as a writer to bring it all out yet.’
As the interview wound down, he
THE PRINCE ESTATE / JEFF KATZ I wanna be there when it does, I don’t
unleashed this whopper: ‘I’m gonna
stop this soon. I don’t expect to make
many more records, for the simple
reason that I wanna see my life change.

wanna be doing what’s expected of me’.
In actuality, Prince made 28 more
Prince photographed in 1987 (left) during a shoot at Paisley Park, his home and albums after Dirty Mind, a good 20
ìstudio in Minnesota, and (right) label for Side 1 of the original 2LP album release of which I’ll warrant very few people

82 | www.hifi news.co.uk | DECEMBER 2020