JUNE 1993 ...Prince changes his name to
JUNE 7
Just eight months earlier he’d declared on 45, “My name is Prince and I am funky.” A Number 7 hit, it came from an LP that went straight into the UK charts at Number 1. Curiously, no one knew quite how to name it, its title being an unpronounceable symbol featuring the male and female signs combined, seemingly enhanced with a trumpet.
The symbol also, it was said, echoed the alchemical sign for soapstone. There was transformation in the air. MTV had reported Prince was to release a new EP called Papa on his 35th birthday this June 7. Instead he announced that he would no longer go by his long-standing name. From now on he was . A floppy disc was duly mailed out from his Paisley Park headquarters in Minneapolis so designers could have access to this unique graphic.
It wasn’t the first time this year that Prince had messed with his public’s heads. In April a statement was released announcing, “Prince to retire from studio recording.” It added that he would honour his deal with his label Warner Bros using archival recordings, and would work in theatre, film, clubs and “interactive media.” Billboard reported the name-change news on page 18 of their June 19 issue, and wondered if Prince’s behaviour was making Michael Jackson look normal.
He had hit upon the plan in Puerto Rico, it seemed. “I acted on the advice of my spirit,” he told Q in 1994, “it’s very significant.” Even those who worked with the artist were nonplussed: employees at Paisley Park settled on ‘Boss’. Speaking to Vox, drummer Michael Bland had complete faith in the Boss’s wisdom, however. “I am in awe of him,” he said. “He has made it harder for me to deal with mere mortals.”
The true believers – some of whom were positing that their idol was about to change his name again, to Victor – nodded approvingly, but the frustration in Warner Bros’s marketing department can be imagined. A conflict was building. Though he had signed a deal for a reputed $100 million in September ’92, the ever-prolific was frustrated that Warners were unwilling to release an album every six months, like James Brown used to do, and believed they had failed to market the ‘Love Symbol’ LP properly. As recounted in Ronin Ro’s 2011 book Prince: The Music And The Masks, at one point he offered to leave the label, and was shaken when “sternly” told by a Warners executive that he simply could not.
To add to the bad blood, Prince’s major-backed boutique label Paisley Park was underperforming: an album produced for singer Carmen Electra had tanked, and Warners turned down Goldnigga by his band the New Power Generation. So there was a logic, of sorts, at work: if could say that Warners had signed Prince but not , how could they demand he record their way?
This was the new reality, but life went on. On June 14 at Paisley Park, Prince filmed The Undertaker, a live power trio project where he covered Honky Tonk Woman. On 18 June he played a warm-up date for his upcoming Act II
“I want people to think I’m insane.” PRINCE
tour at Paisley Park. Other projects of the moment included Glam Slam Ulysses, an erotic stage show loosely based on The Odyssey by Homer, which premiered at his LA club in August. In 2016, Matt Thorne’s Prince: The Man And His Music quoted tour manager Alan Leeds saying suggested his wife Gwen should be the face of a new TV-advertised mail order service for his music. Inevitably, he also worked on new recordings.
But a new LP – Come – would not follow until 1994. Instead, over summer, Warners and their errant signing compiled The Hits/
The B Sides, with four unreleased songs. In time people were calling him, ‘The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.’ On the Act II tour, which began in Birmingham in July, dancer Mayte Garcia portrayed a masked as he sang My Name Is Prince off-stage. At times he called for the crowd to record his live sets if they wanted to keep up with him.
“If people think I’m insane, fine,” told NME in February 1995, shortly before appearing at the Brit awards with ‘SLAVE’ written on his left cheek. “I want people to think I’m insane… I got a whole new mindset when I became symbol. I can’t explain how I feel now compared to then.”
In 1996 he released the poorly performing Chaos And Disorder, fulfilling his Warners contract. In May 2000, he announced that the expiry of his publishing contract with Warner-Chappell Music was another important milestone. “I will now go back to using my name,” he wrote, “instead of the symbol I adopted to free myself from all undesirable relationships.”
Ian Harrison