On 3 August 1983 a charity concert took place at Minneapolis's First Avenue club. Prince and The Revolution were playing new material. The mics and the multitrack were rolling - the band was recording the night for themselves. In the set they played a song that had never been in public rotation. It was called “Purple Rain”. This 3 August 1983 recording, with light studio doctoring - is what would come out on the 1984 album and become one of the decade's best-selling songs.
How Prince wrote “Purple Rain”
In a 1985 MTV interview Prince described the process: “I was writing it as a duet with Stevie Nicks. I heard „Edge of Seventeen" (1982) and thought I could write something better for her. I called Stevie, she said, „I can't, I'm on tour". So I wrote it myself”.
The real story is messier. In late 1982 Prince was listening to a lot of country-rock - Don Henley's “Dirty Laundry”, Eagles' “Hotel California”. He was struck by the structure: slow verse, rising emotional chorus, long guitar coda. He decided to write a song in that key, but through a purple prism - the word “purple” had been his obsession since 1981. “Purple for me is the sky before the end of the world. And the rain that falls from that sky isn't ordinary rain”, he said in an interview.
The first sketch was cut at Prince's home studio, Kiowa Trail Home Studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota. He cut demos with an acoustic guitar and an Oberheim OB-Xa synth. The harmony stack he sang himself in multiple overdubs - the “choir” on the record is officially a choir, but on the demo all the voices are Prince.
The 3 August 1983 concert: cutting the live take
By August 1983 Prince already knew he was making a film. The Purple Rain script had been ready since June. Director Albert Magnoli and Prince decided: they had to cut a live version in a real concert space so the film could use a genuine show rather than a studio fake.
On 3 August 1983 First Avenue in Minneapolis (capacity 1,500) hosted a Prince and The Revolution charity show for the Minnesota Dance Theatre. The setup included a 24-track Ampex MM-1200 with engineer David Rivkin. The set had nine new songs, “Purple Rain” among them. Live version length: 13 minutes 45 seconds.
That concert recording became the basis of the album “Purple Rain”. At Sunset Sound in Los Angeles in October 1983 Prince added orchestral strings (arranged by Clare Fischer, 24 musicians), lightly doctored the vocal, and trimmed the song to 8 minutes 41 seconds. The original live drums, bass, and Prince's guitar remained untouched. What a listener hears on the record is the 3 August 1983 live concert with overdubbed strings.
“I wanted the record to sound like a real room. I wanted the listener to feel like they were there.”
- Prince, Rolling Stone, December 1984
Anatomy
- Key: B-flat major, with a tonal centre floating between I-IV-V
- BPM: 61 - one of the slowest pop songs ever to reach top-10
- Length: 8:41 (album), 4:05 (single edit)
- Lead guitar: Hohner MadCat with P-90 bridge through a Mesa/Boogie amp
- Synths: Oberheim OB-Xa (main pad) + Yamaha DX7
- Drums: Bobby Z on a Ludwig Black Beauty snare, Zildjian K cymbals
- Bass: BrownMark on a Rickenbacker 4001
- Strings: 24 musicians from the Clare Fischer Orchestra, cut at Sunset Sound
- Producer: Prince
- Album: Purple Rain (25 June 1984, Warner Bros.)
The film and its effect on the song
Purple Rain - directed by Albert Magnoli - opened on 27 July 1984. The story is semi-autobiographical: Prince plays The Kid, a young musician breaking out of the Minneapolis scene. Budget $7 million; US box office $72 million. The film won the 1985 Oscar for Best Original Song Score (an award no longer given).
The film's key scene is the First Avenue concert where The Kid plays “Purple Rain” as the finale. Magnoli cut that scene from real 3 August 1983 concert footage - the same show that produced the live audio. The audience, lights, and crowd are all real.
Effect on the song: after the film's release “Purple Rain” hit heavy rotation on MTV and radio. By October 1984 the single peaked at #2 Billboard Hot 100 (blocked from #1 by Billy Ocean's “Caribbean Queen”).
Cultural role in Minneapolis
First Avenue - until 1983 a mid-tier local venue in Minneapolis - became a cultural landmark after “Purple Rain”. The club still operates today, and its exterior is painted with white stars bearing the names of artists who performed there. In 2016, after Prince's death, First Avenue's facade was repainted purple. Prince's star on the wall became a pilgrimage site - flowers, notes, and cassettes sit by it year-round.
In 2020 Minneapolis renamed part of the street in front of the club Prince Rogers Nelson Boulevard. First Avenue hosts an annual Prince memorial concert with The Revolution - Wendy Melvoin, Lisa Coleman, BrownMark, Bobby Z.
The guitar solo and the last four minutes
At 4:25 the song rolls into a long guitar solo. One of the most famous guitar solos of the 1980s - cut live on 3 August 1983, no studio doctoring. Prince plays the Hohner MadCat through a Mesa/Boogie Mark IIC+ with plenty of overdrive. The solo is built on B-flat minor pentatonic with B-flat mixolydian colourings.
Rolling Stone in 2011 placed the Prince “Purple Rain” solo at #2 on its list of “100 Greatest Guitar Solos” (#1: Jimmy Page on “Stairway to Heaven”). Keith Richards in a 2013 interview said: “I don't love Prince as a person, but that solo is one of the best in electric guitar history. He plays like B.B. King would if B.B. were funky”.
Sales and legacy
The “Purple Rain” single sold 3 million US copies, the album 13 million US and 25+ million worldwide. Purple Rain sat at #1 Billboard 200 for 24 consecutive weeks - the longest single-artist run of the 1980s.
After Prince's death on 21 April 2016 “Purple Rain” became a memorial anthem. At Super Bowl XLI (2007) Prince himself had performed it under actual rain in Miami - widely regarded as one of the best live performances in pop history. At his 23 April 2016 funeral the song played as the casket was carried out.
What to listen to next
For the full Minneapolis Sound - Prince's soundtrack and the related 1980s artists - play Prince “Purple Rain” → Morris Day and The Time “Jungle Love” (1984, from the same film) → Janet Jackson “Nasty” (1986, produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis - former members of Prince's The Time). Same Yamaha DX7 sound, same synth pads.
For a counterpoint - Madonna's “Like a Prayer” (1989). Two pop songs from the same era working with the same toolkit (gospel choir, rock guitar, organ, long structure), from very different stances: Prince is a man in purple, Madonna is a woman in red.