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Prince · S2 E2
For You
Twenty-seven instruments, all played by one person. A debut album made in obsessive isolation that goes over budget five times
Record Plant Studios, Sausalito, California, 1977. A nineteen-year-old walks into one of the most expensive recording studios on the West Coast with twenty-seven instruments and no intention of letting anyone else play a single one.
"Kiss" (Prince and the Revolution, 1986). A guitar, a drum machine, a falsetto, and almost nothing else. Eight years after For You, Prince is still the one in the room doing everything himself, still proving that less is more when you're the one deciding what stays.
Kiss, Prince and the Revolution (1986)
"Kiss" started as a demo Prince gave to the group Mazarati. When he heard what they did with it, he took the song back and stripped it to almost nothing: a Telecaster, a drum machine, and backing vocals from Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman. The production is so minimal it feels like a dare, more silence than sound. That confidence to leave space started during the For You sessions, where the person playing every instrument also learned what to leave out.
Sources
Thorne, Matt. "Prince: The Man and His Music." Faber & Faber, 2012.
Hahn, Alex. "Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince." Billboard Books, 2003.
Total Isolation
Prince arrives at Record Plant with a Warner Bros advance and no band. He plays every guitar, every keyboard, every bass line, every drum part, and sings every vocal himself. The sessions stretch for months, and the costs spiral so far beyond the original budget that Warner Bros starts sending people to Sausalito to check on what exactly this teenager is doing with their money.
Sources
Hahn, Alex. "Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince." Billboard Books, 2003.
Nilsen, Per. "DanceMusicSexRomance: Prince, the First Decade." Firefly Publishing, 1999.
TAP TO REVEAL: How many vocal overdubs are in the opening of the title track?
Record Plant Studios
The Sausalito recording studio where Prince made For You, playing all twenty-seven instruments himself. The same rooms had hosted Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Sly Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On just years earlier.
For You: The File
For You, Prince (1978)
The title track of Prince's debut album. The first sound you hear is a single voice, then another, then another, until forty-six individual recordings of Prince's voice build into what sounds like a full choir. This is the opening statement of an entire career: one person is enough.
For You, Prince (1978)
The words are a simple love song, almost naively romantic, but the delivery is anything but simple. Forty-six vocal layers transform three words into an orchestral declaration. Follow along and count how many times you hear a new voice enter.
What did the liner notes of For You credit to Prince?
The album is finished, but Warner Bros needs a single. Prince writes a song with a title so suggestive that radio programmers will have to decide whether they're brave enough to play it. Next: "Soft and Wet," and the moment Prince introduces himself to the world.
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