Released in 1985, Prince’s Around The World In A Day is often considered his most psychedelic album - a conscious rejection of the pop stardom that had come from the success of the Purple Rain movie and soundtrack, released the year before.
But while this flower powered pivot was very much Prince’s idea, there were external factors at play, and in a new interview with Mojo to mark Around the World’s 40th anniversary (a Deluxe Edition will be released on 21 November), his former collaborators have been discussing how it came about and the key influences on Prince’s unlikely new direction.
Although Around The World In A Day ended up with a distinctly Sgt Pepper-esque sleeve, drummer Bobby Z - part of The Revolution, Prince’s band on the record - says that it took a while for Prince to fully appreciate The Fab Four’s genius.
“I started with Sgt Pepper’s, and it really didn’t connect,” he says of his earlier attempts to turn Prince into a Beatles fan. In fact, according to engineer Susan Rogers, it took Susannah Melvoin - twin sister of Revolution guitarist Wendy and Prince’s girlfriend at the time - to change that.
Susannah, she says, was “turning Prince on to music he’d not listened to in his youth, like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles.”
At around the same time, Revolution keyboard player Lisa Coleman played Prince a cassette of her brother David’s Middle Eastern-influenced music. Composed on instruments such as the oud and the darbuka and using non-Western scales, this featured Jonathan Melvoin - Wendy’s brother - on percussion.
“Prince lost his mind,” says Wendy. “You could see in his eyes: he’d found a new direction.”
And so the wheels had been set in motion: although Around The World In A Day does contain a couple of superb pop songs - Raspberry Beret and Pop Life - it was never going to be the commercial behemoth of its predecessor.
There was no lack of great songwriting on display, though - in fact, Around The World Day contains one of Prince’s most beautiful but often overlooked ballads, Condition Of The Heart. And, although much of the album was recorded with his band and collaborators (as well as The Revolution, David Coleman, Jonathan Melvoin and Susannah Melvoin all feature at various points), this was Prince in his one-man-band mode.
“On Sundays we didn’t have band rehearsals, so it was usually just the two of us,” Susan Rogers tells Mojo. “Condition Of The Heart was a Sunday song. He moved from instrument to instrument as quietly as possible and blew my mind with his vocal performance and the beauty of that piece.”
Not only beautiful, but fragile, to the extent that Rogers wondered if Prince would actually be brave enough to put it on the record.
“He could be so vulnerable, but typically the vulnerable tracks - like Moonbeam Levels or Another Lonely Christmas - wouldn’t make it to the album,” she says. “On Condition Of The Heart, he’s really putting it all out there. I’m glad he didn’t yank it.”
Bobby Z was brought to tears when he heard the song the next day, and suggests that this was the moment that the Beatles influence had finally landed.
“Prince’s previous ballads had always had a sexual element, but this was another level, telling stories with such articulation and emotion, like Eleanor Rigby or She’s Leaving Home,” he says. “He’d moved past the pop simplicity of Purple Rain - this was Gershwin-esque. To be involved so intimately in his life and witness him reaching such heights was humbling. I was like watching Michelangelo paint a ceiling.”
Prince would later claim that Around The World In A Day wasn’t influenced by The Beatles, and that the cover art only came about because he thought fans were tired of looking at photos of him, but it seems that others disagree. And, despite selling only a fraction of what Purple Rain managed and receiving a mixed critical reception, the album is now considered to be a crucial next step on the way to Prince’s next (and arguably last) masterpiece, 1987’s Sign o’ The Times.
