Music graveyard has signs of life
New musical releases from Prince and Tom Petty show that fandom remains strong, even in death
New releases from Prince and Tom Petty, including “4U: A Symphonic Celebration of Prince,” which hits Sugar Land this week, show that fandom remains strong, even in death.
What do you do with the dead? I don’t profess to have the answers, other than the logistical stuff defined by law that results in burial or cremation. But when the dead are artists, what becomes of their art?
After a 2016 and 2017 that proved ghastly for prominent musicians punching out, I can say there’s greenery in the graveyard. Or at least it appears that way to me, as a listener.
Prince, David Bowie and Tom Petty represent some sort of trinity of holy rock ’n’ rollers who passed during those two years. And while there will always be lingering questions about the wishes of the deceased as pertaining to matters of legacy, this year has been a good one for fans of Prince and Petty.
4U: A Symphonic Celebration of Prince arrives at the Smart Financial Centre next Thursday. The show, which is part of a tour approved by Prince’s estate, is the second touring Prince event to come to town since he died on April 21, 2016.
Upon Prince’s death at age 57, that estate looked poised for years of idleness created by legal bickering because Prince left no will and, well, people like money. To the credit of the heirs, they defined the members of the estate quickly and clearly. They then turned his home studio into a museum, issued a deluxe version of his landmark “Purple Rain” album and just a few weeks ago put out “Piano and a Microphone 1983,” a spare but entrancing collection of the most
MUSIC unadorned music ever issued under Prince’s name.
Such careful tending to legacy should be rewarded because the alternative is to fill these voids with material cobbled together by opportunists. Within days of Prince’s death, all manner of bootleg recordings found their way into record stores. I know, because I bought as many as I could. There was a love-symbol shaped hole in my heart and I was trying to plug it any way I could. Most of those concert recordings sounded bad, though — audience or radio recordings that had undergone no mixing.
“Piano and a Microphone,” on the other hand, approximates being blindfolded in a room during a sound check. Some insight is granted into an elusive artist’s process. Though the music doesn’t feel incomplete — just unadorned.
The 4U concert will mix a live band with a full symphony orchestra, which has the potential to be top-heavy. But the event has been curated by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, drummer in the hip-hop band The Roots, who doubles as Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” band. His affinity for Prince’s music runs deep, as has been well documented.
With the impending arrival of this show, I’m reminded of the cathartic and joyful experience of watching Prince’s old band, The Revolution, who played his music in Houston in June 2017.
Drummer Robert Rivkin (aka Bobby Z) told the Chronicle before the show, “It’s given us a second chance to share this music with fans who, right now, desperately need it. And we need to play it. At times it feels like a higher purpose in a way. It has that element to it. We’re not dragging around to promote a record. We’re promoting a legacy, and this music in the best way possible.”
Tom Petty’s estate similarly has juggled the unenviable task of promoting a legacy in a manner both generous and cautious. “An American Treasure” came out earlier this month, comprising four discs worth of mostly unreleased music.
I can’t decide if death alters my critical parameters or not. Petty’s isn’t the first multidisc collection of odds and ends I’ve owned, and more often than not, I don’t return to such collections.
But this one has enveloped me for more than a week, with several songs of his I’d never heard before as well as live and alternate takes of familiar songs that felt renewed. The quantity of music is daunting, but the hunger for something that tiptoes the line between familiar (Petty’s conversational voice) and unfamiliar (that voice singing songs I’d never heard) has proven persistent.
My one quibble with the set is hardly a quibble at all. My favorite Petty era runs from “Wildflowers” in 1994 through “Echo” in 1999. This period is not terribly well-represented on “An American Treasure,” though my suspicion is a subsequent collection of music will fill that void next year or soon after that.
Questions will linger about the artists’ intentions. Prince undoubtedly would have had reservations about emptying the vaults. But he’s gone, and the terms of the contract between artist and fan change at that point.
Perhaps at some point, I’ll reach a point of contentment. But it hasn’t been that long since they’ve stopped creating new songs. I’ll take the moments of magic where I can find them.