“When I talked to the Warner A&R guy he said, ‘Oh man, Prince really screwed up. It sucks’”: The story of the Prince’s underrated 1986 classic – and the lip-smacking hit single that scared his record label

Parade began with a bruised ego. Two years earlier, in 1984, the 25-million-selling Purple Rain had set a sky-high bar. Now, the critical consensus was that Prince had fumbled the follow-up with Around the World in a Day.

“A not very convincing approximation of McCartney-esque Beatles innocence,” sniffed John Rockwell of The New York Times, “clashing egregiously with his own image of defensive arrogance…”

While a lesser artist would retreat to lick their wounds, the Minneapolis peacock was so headspinningly prolific in that period – he fired out albums at one-year intervals all through the ’80s – that Parade arrived almost immediately to course-correct his career.

In fact, flanked by his band of the era, the Revolution, Prince was spilling over with ideas to the extent that he reportedly sketched Parade’s four opening tracks – Christopher Tracy’s Parade, New Position, I Wonder U and Under the Cherry Moon – in a single session.

The received wisdom is that Prince stepped away from the guitars on Parade. True, there is no skyscraping outro solo to match Purple Rain. But there are myriad flashes of quirky brilliance, all smaller but still potent. Try the squelchy, highly processed lines in Girls & Boys, evoking something Robert Fripp might have played on Bowie’s Fashion. Try the indecently funky hits that underpin Mountains.

“I’m sorry,” Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin told Rolling Stone in 1986 of the telepathic jams between herself, Prince and keys player Lisa Coleman, “but no one can come close to what the three of us have together when we’re playing in the studio. Nobody!”

Meanwhile, just as he had on Purple Rain’s Computer Blue, the bandleader invited his female protégés to co-write several Parade standouts, including Sometimes It Snows in April, decorated by Melvoin’s ringing acoustic fingerstyle. The guitarist was more prominent still in the video for flagship track Kiss, perched on a stool with a Gibson Byrdland as her boss cavorts shirtless.

In fact, during that period, Melvoin was more closely associated with a Rickenbacker 330, but as she told Guitar.com in 2022, spec was less important than spirit.

“Prince was much more concerned with your performance rather than the actual sound of the guitar. He wasn’t really one of those guys that dictated the tone. I learned early on in a band situation that as a rhythm guitarist you shouldn’t make your distortion as loud as the lead guitarist because they’ll kill you! I had to kind of sit right underneath him, so he could be the main attraction.”

According to the Parade album credits, for the studio take of Kiss, Prince played all the guitar parts. But it’s surprising to learn, through an interview with original producer David Z for Sound On Sound, that the global smash that went on to top the Billboard chart in February 1986 almost didn’t make the cut.

“Kiss was so different to everything else out there that the Warner Brothers executives freaked out when they first heard it. When I talked to the Warner A&R guy he said, ‘Oh man, Prince really screwed up. It sucks.’ At that time, however, Prince had enough power to go, ‘That’s the single and you’re not getting another one until you put it out.’”

The less said about the movie that was soundtracked by these songs, the better (Under the Cherry Moon, wrote Kevin Lally in The Courier-News of Prince’s directorial debut, “is the kind of embarrassment that makes your mouth gape”). But while Parade went on to sell a speck of Purple Rain’s numbers, this underrated corner of the catalog saw the Purple One’s reputation restored among critics.

“It’s the sound of Prince at his most effortless and assured,” wrote The Guardian’s Simon Price. “Cohesive and ice cream-cool, nobody would guess it was a soundtrack for a (sub-par) film. And it has Kiss on it…”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.