PRE-PRAIRIE PREMONITIONS:

The sessions at Paisley Park in 1990 were weird & great.

I met a lot of generous & extremely talented musicians who

were patient & professional & always treated me like one of

their own. Had it not been for them & the studio staff who

pretty much adopted me, it would have been a painful time

of flux & dark uncertainty. Paisley Park is one of the most

beautiful Studio complexes I’ve had the privilege to work in.

Everything about it, from the staff, to Princes’ Purple Cops

& the huge film stage out back set it apart from all other

studios.

Looking down at the Earth as we came in to land that February

at Minneapolis international I couldn’t understand what the hell

I was seeing nor could I get any sense of scale. The ground below

looked like a war zone, a world peppered with enormous holes as

far as the horizon, bomb craters, gaping mouths with salty lips

howling at the sky, white powder blown into the contours of the

Earth like an old sea dog’s leather face, dirt as black a peat.

We stayed outside the city at Canhassen, in a brand new ship-lap

hotel with a high canopied porch in the Greco-Roman style. It was

run by an ex-U.S.-submarine captain who, though friendly to everyone,

gave special attention to anyone on an extended mission a long way

from home. Though it was walking distance, we usually drove the

white Ford Probe to work every day, but then, as the sessions began

to start progressively later, Andrew & I would get up early, breakfast

with the local Law Enforcement & take off for hours, driving across

the Prairies.

There were a lot’ve ex-Northern European tribes out there, towns

with German street names, Flaxen haired people with Scandinavian

features & dart boards in the bars. We bought maps to follow the

sinuous curves of the Mississippi, pinpointing places that looked

weird, observing Winter turn into Spring as Skidoo runs melted making

way for the gentle rhythm of breeze-blown Prairie grasses. Trucks that

had been parked all winter on feet-thick lake-Ice where moved,

Fisherman’s huts hauled away for another year as Ice-holes melted

so that speedboats & sleek white cruisers could ferry bar-b-que-ing

families to distant foreshores. Terrapins perched on logs, moved

faster than startled dogs at the sound of approaching footsteps &

blizzards subsided into midnight heat inspiring bullfrogs to sing

in shallow ponds accompanying the clank of railway crossing bells

as long trains rattled over points, slipping through town as everyone

slept.

(K)