https://www.startribune.com/prince-timeless-charles-spicer-londell-mcmillan-greg-boyer-adrian-crutchfield-michael-nelson/601885956
https://archive.is/hnfIg
Prince fans are furious once again with his Estate, this time for misleading them
about the recording of the new retrospective album, “Timeless.”
The Prince Estate claimed these 10 tracks were original recordings, spanning 1977 to
- However, trombonist Greg Boyer posted on Facebook that he added his part
this year to “Calabama,” a heretofore hornless track from 2003. That revelation
prompted Charles Spicer Jr., coprincipal of Prince Legacy LLC, to apologize.
“I want to correct something I stated earlier,” Spicer posted Tuesday on X. “I stated
that nothing had been edited or added to ‘Calabama.’ I’ve since confirmed that the
released version includes additional horns, so that statement was not accurate, and I
will take responsibility for what I stated.”
Fans are in an uproar over this deception.
“I am, as many of my fellow fans online, absolutely appalled and heartbroken to
learn that contrary to the official communiqué, possibly all the tracks on ‘Timeless’
were altered in one way or another — and this, coupled with a total lack of
transparency, is something that will not ever be tolerated by many of us,” said Kares
Balogh, a Prince fan in Hungary who has started a petition this week calling for
Spicer and Londell McMillan to step down from the Prince Estate.
Spicer did not return a call seeking comment.
“This is unforgivable,” Balogh said via email. “It is by now a widely shared notion
amongst us fans about McMillan that he doesn’t truly respect Prince and his legacy,
he lacks the skillset and creativity (or the motivation) to come up with a concept for
the legacy, therefore he should be gone.”
Balogh’s petition has garnered more than 250 signatures.
“[Prince] created the music, we should be able to hear what was left for us and not
tampered, altered, changed, mishandled,” a signer named Nichole commented on
the petition on change.org. “Who would you paint over the Mona Lisa?!”
McMillan could not be reached for comment but late on Thursday, the management
team posted on Prince’s Instagram:
“At the bridge of ‘Calabama,’ Prince’s vocal calls out twice for ‘horns,’ but the
archived multitrack featured a synthesizer filling that space, which horn players
(who played with Prince) later dubbed... This version was released on ‘Timeless.’”
‘Upset for right reasons’
Chris James, an engineer and producer who worked with Prince late in his career,
was enlisted to produce “Timeless.”
He called different musicians, including Adrian Crutchfield and Michael B. Nelson, to
recently add overdubs to old Prince recordings.
Trombonist Nelson declined the invitation. He did perform on “Bestest Friend,” a
song on “Timeless,” in 2012, he confirmed to the Star Tribune.
Saxophonist Crutchfield said in an interview that he has been contacted by James
and Spicer in the past couple of years to add to previous recordings.
He hasn’t listened to “Timeless” so he doesn’t know if his saxophone appears on
“Calabama,” a 2003 song on which he is credited in the liner notes. He didn’t join
Prince’s New Power Generation until 2012.
Crutchfield understands the concern in the Prince world.
“People are upset for the right reasons,” he said Thursday. “It’s one thing to add
these boosts. But it’s another thing to be saying ‘it’s all original.’ You can’t say that.”
Donny English, a Baltimore lawyer who visits Minneapolis regularly, has been
outspoken about the Estate on social media.
“They breached this trust with fans,” he said in an interview Thursday. “I don’t know
how they recover.”
Saying fans are “the greatest promoters of Prince and want [the Prince Estate] to be
successful,” English talked about the disappointment over the quality of “Timeless.”.
“It’s the first [Prince] album I haven’t bought since 1978,” he said. “It’s not a
reflection of his artistry. ‘Timeless’ is a debacle.”
He pointed out that this is one of a series of “debacles” since Prince Legacy LLC took
over co-management of the Prince Estate with Primary Wave four years ago.
English pointed to the failure of the $26.5 million “Purple Rain” musical in
Minneapolis that is being revamped by a new creative team for a spring opening on
Broadway. He mentioned the Estate putting the kibosh on an Ezra Edelman-directed
Netflix documentary and failing to deliver its own promised documentary.
The new album has been savaged by critics.
“There’s almost no dynamism or flair in ‘Timeless,’ a new collection of old outtakes
that plays like it was slapped together in about 15 minutes,” wrote St. Paul-based
Michaelangelo Matos in Rolling Stone. “It is simply flat, like a club soda left out in the
sun.”
Writing that the album “isn’t even interesting as a collection of outtakes,” he
concluded: “If somebody were to tell you who he was, and then played ‘Timeless’
for you as proof, you’d never listen to Prince — or that person — again.”
Andrea Swensson, who previously hosted the official Prince podcast tied to his
posthumous releases, reviewed “Timeless” for the Current radio station.
“At the risk of sounding like one of those spoiled Prince fans — who the current
management of his estate seems to resent — when the album ended,” she wrote, “I
couldn’t help but think, ‘Is that all there is?’”
In his So It Goes column on Substack, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, longtime editor at
allmusic.com, thought the unthinkable.
“With this compilation by committee, scrubbed of the eccentricities that gave even
his half-hearted latter-day efforts personality, the Prince estate has achieved the
impossible: They’ve made Prince seem boring.”
