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Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to talk about the making of Purple Rain: the album, the film, the song, and how it all came together.
After scoring a Top 10 hit record with 1999, tapping into rock audiences with “Little Red Corvette”, and becoming one of the first Black artists to be featured on MTV, Prince was riding pretty high in 1983. But The Purple One always had his eyes on the next prize, and he had his sights set on the silver screen. As the story goes, he gave his manager the choice between landing him a starring role and finding a new job, and after some negotiation, Warner Brothers agreed to back the project.
At the same time, Prince’s band was undergoing a transformation. While he had informally called them “The Revolution” in the past, it didn’t become official until the lead-up to Purple Rain. Part of that transformation involved bringing in new talent like guitarist Wendy Melvoin, a childhood friend of keyboardist Lisa Coleman, who had contributed backup vocals on 1999. The 19-year-old virtuoso brought a distinct new element to the band’s sound (including major contributions like the opening chords to “Purple Rain”), and the duo of Wendy and Lisa ended up playing a major role in the film as Prince’s character grappled with sharing creative control.
While the Hollywood execs began revising the script, negotiating with directors, and casting actors (Warner Brothers allegedly floated John Travolta as the male lead), Prince holed up in the studio to do what he did best: make music.
Prince was constantly writing and recording, so some of the musical ideas on Purple Rain started life years earlier, but most of the material began taking shape between May and August 1983. According to most accounts, the earliest sessions for the album occurred at the artist’s home studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota (before Paisley Park was built, of course).
Located on the bottom floor of his split-level home, the studio was equipped with a Soundcraft 3B console and a 16-track Ampex MM-1200 tape machine. There, Prince and his engineer at the time, Don Batts, recorded early versions of “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Darling Nikki.” Meanwhile, at a rented warehouse space in St. Louis Park, Prince and the new lineup of The Revolution furiously rehearsed for a show that would end up in the annals of music history…
On August 3rd, 1983, Prince and The Revolution played a benefit concert for the Minnesota Dance Theater at the now-legendary Minneapolis venue First Avenue (which also happened to be Melvoin’s live debut with Prince). The Record Plant’s mobile studio was hired to record the show, with engineers David Z (brother of drummer Bobby Z), Dave Hewitt, and Kooster McAllister crammed inside, manning a custom 44-input API console and a pair of Ampex MM-1200 24-track tape machines.
Those recordings ended up forming the basic tracks for three key songs: “Purple Rain,” “I Would Die 4 U,” and “Baby I’m a Star.” The full live version of “Purple Rain” was reportedly more than eleven minutes long, but it was cut down for the album by removing a solo and a verse about money that Prince deemed unnecessary. Other edits and overdubs were done later, but the raw energy of Prince and his tightly rehearsed band provided the foundation of the record.
Sometime before the First Avenue show, Prince hired Susan Rogers to be his new in-house engineer, but she didn’t arrive in Minnesota until later in August. According to Rogers, one of her first tasks was to repair the Ampex machine, but it was soon replaced with an MCI 24-track that offered more tracks and was easier for Rogers to service on-site without bringing in technicians.
She was also tasked with installing a new console in the warehouse rehearsal studio: a custom desk commissioned by Prince to match the one in Studio 3 at Sunset Sound, where he had recorded his previous two albums. Built from API modules with modifications by Frank DeMedio, this console (and its sibling at Sunset Sound) is a major factor in the sound of Purple Rain.
The famous midrange punch of the API desk paired perfectly with Prince’s Linn LM-1 drum machine and the crisp sound of digital synths like the Oberheim OB-SX and Yamaha DX7, and API’s signature stepped controls made it easier for Rogers to recall settings when her boss inevitably jumped between several songs in the same session.
With that setup, Prince and the band continued work on “Let’s Go Crazy” and laid down the basis of “Computer Blue,” featuring a strange intro with Wendy and Lisa followed by some of Melvoin’s most technical shredding. Between the home studio tracks, the First Avenue live recordings, and the sessions at the warehouse, about half the album was recorded by late summer 1983.
Always in motion, Prince began booking sessions at Sunset Sound in late August to work on the album while hopping back to Minnesota for more rehearsals, writing, and recording. Most of the Sunset Sound sessions happened in Studio 3 (Prince’s preferred room with the original API/DeMedio console), with Rogers, Peggy McCreary, and David Leonard engineering.
While Purple Rain Director Albert Magnoli was in Minneapolis assembling a film crew for the upcoming production, Prince and co. recorded overdubs on the First Avenue tracks (including the string parts on “Purple Rain” arranged by Lisa Coleman) as well as “Darling Nikki.” New material was also coming along, and this phase wrapped up with Prince and McCreary recording “The Beautiful Ones” over a 17-hour all-night session on September 20-21.
After the stint at Sunset Sound, Prince flew back to Minnesota to focus on the Purple Rain film. On October 4th, his on-screen rivals and real-life collaborators Morris Day and The Time recorded “The Bird” during a concert at First Avenue, which was used in the film. Later in October, Prince recorded two songs which didn’t end up making the album: “Wednesday” (which was cut from the album and the film) and “Father’s Song” (which was included as a short instrumental in the film).
Principal photography ran from November through December at a variety of locations in Minneapolis and the surrounding area. Only a few scenes were filmed on Hollywood sound stages, and only because they would have been impractical in the middle of a Minnesota winter. For the performance scenes, Prince’s team reportedly paid $100,000 to book First Avenue for nearly a month. This footage was synced to the live recordings from August, creating memorable scenes like the debut of “Purple Rain” (including a shoutout to Wendy and Lisa, whose real-life contributions had a huge impact on the song).
Studio work resumed in January 1984, when Prince headed back to Sunset Sound to record “Take Me With U” for a scene where his character takes co-star Apollonia on a motorcycle ride. The song was originally intended for the singer Vanity (of the Vanity 6), but she quit shortly before production and was replaced by Apollonia, and the group was renamed the Apollonia 6. Throughout February, Prince worked on more music for the film (including “God (Love Theme from Purple Rain)”) while simultaneously producing the Apollonia 6 album. Apparently, these sessions included a demo of “Manic Monday,” which later ended up being recorded by The Bangles.
Prince continued writing new material right up until the final stages of Purple Rain. In fact, one of the best-known pieces of Prince lore is the marathon session that produced one of his biggest hits, “When Doves Cry.” According to the special features on the Purple Rain DVD, Director Albert Magnoli asked for a piece of music that evoked two of the film’s main themes: Prince’s character’s (highly autobiographical) troubled relationship with his parents and his love affair with Apollonia (inspired by his real-life relationship with Apollonia 6 member Susan Moonsie).
According to session logs, Prince entered the studio at 3:30 pm on March 2nd and left with a mixdown of “When Doves Cry” at 7:30 the next morning. As McCreary recalls, “He started the way he always did, with the drum machine, then the bass, then the piano, then this and that, and all of a sudden, he knew he had a hit, and he got real excited." So excited was The Purple One that he drove over to Wendy and Lisa’s house with a rough mix on a cassette, waking them up at four in the morning to hear it before heading back to the studio.
During a mix session the next day, Prince suddenly decided to mute the bass track, leaving just the Linn kick and tom samples to carry the low-end. In an interview with Bass Player magazine, he recalled his thinking behind the decision: “Sometimes [...] your ego tells you one thing, and the rest of you says something else. You have to go with what you know is right.” His bass player, Mark Brown (Brownmark), later recalled, “He let me hear it because he and I had been bumping heads, and he didn't want me to think he took the bass out as an insult. He explained that when he was writing it, he put a bass line on, but then took it out and liked the feel. I thought it was phenomenal.”
From March to April 1984, Prince oversaw the final editing and mixing of Purple Rain. While the liner notes don’t mention a dedicated mixing engineer, it’s widely known that Susan Rogers had her hands on the faders while her boss called the creative shots (the only exception is “When Doves Cry,” which Prince mixed with David Leonard and Peggy McCreary).
The sound of Purple Rain is full of contrast. The loose, emotive feel of the live tracks is opposed by starker studio productions like “When Doves Cry." Dry and rigid drum machine patterns complement dynamic live drums infused with Sunset Sound’s legendary acoustics, guitars alternate between chorus-soaked clean tones and heavy overdrive, and Prince’s vocals range from tender and soft to almost screaming, often within the same song.
But despite the contrast, the album has an incredibly cohesive sound. Part of that comes from mixing it through the same console it was recorded on, doubling up on the authoritative character of the API desk to give every track a little extra edge without losing any of the transient detail that makes the percussion slap. Overhead drum mics from the live tracks were gated to reduce bleed, and the snare was also gated to give it a tighter sound. Studio 3’s LA-2A and 1176 compressors undoubtedly helped smooth things out for a little extra consistency.
Thoughtful use of delay and reverb was another key to blending those contrasting elements. One of Prince’s favorite delays, the Lexicon Prime Time Model 93, is used all over the album, in addition to the Lexicon Delta T. Multiple types of reverb were used, including EMT 250, Lexicon 224, and AMS RMX16 digital reverbs alongside Sunset Sound’s famous Number 2 echo chamber and the classic EMT 140 plate. Eventide harmonizers (likely the H949) provided additional modulation effects.
Editing and sequencing the album was the final piece of the puzzle, and Prince put just as much focus on these steps as anything else he did. The album had evolved significantly since the first test pressing was made in November 1983, and the tracks “Wednesday” and “Father’s Song” were dropped to make room for "Take Me with U" and "When Doves Cry."
“Let’s Go Crazy” was always intended to be the opening track, but it had to be shortened so that "Take Me with U" could follow. “Computer Blue” had to be significantly shortened as well, from its full 14-minute runtime down to an LP-friendly four minutes. But even during the final assembly, Prince wasn’t done. According to Chris James, who had access to the original tapes for the 2024 Dolby Atmos remix, “I had a conversation with Bobby Z once, and he told me that they were overdubbing toms at Bernie Grundman’s mastering studio one day, which in effect, means it only exists on the stereo master.”
Purple Rain was finally completed in April 1984. “When Doves Cry” was released as the lead single in May, and on June 25th, the world finally got to hear Purple Rain in full. The film premiered on July 26 at the iconic Chinese Theater in Hollywood before releasing to the public the next day. It was met with critical acclaim and sales to match, with a box office gross totalling $70 million (ten times the budget of $7 million) and Roger Ebert calling it “one of the greatest rock movies of all time.” And the album? Well, we wouldn’t be here discussing it if it weren’t one of the greatest of all time.
