THE RITUALISTIC LIFE and MURDER OF PRINCE: PT. 4 SEGMENT 7: "1999 and The Triple Threat Tour"

As Prince’s song writing motivation is coming from a “new” place, he begins to become obsessed with “Purple” and the color finds its way into much of the music of this era.  Prince has “dreamed up” the double album “1999” and managers Cavallo and Fargnoli have to get Warner Brothers to OK a double album. 

“1999” will be released as Prince’s 5^th album in October of 1982, and we will dive into the album’s gematria coding and reveal many of the early Prince murder code numbers. We will see in the gematria coding that, the new proteges, and band members are encoded into the new music. 

Prince, The Time, and Vanity 6 embark upon the “1999” tour aka the ”Triple Threat” tour, and of course we decode it. 

It was also around this time that the music press began to realize that the producer of both of “The Time’s” albums and of Prince’s “Dirty Mind” album, Jamie Starr was in fact…Prince. 

Remember, that back when Prince first formed The Time, the deal was that Prince would present the group with completed albums, that they would re-record as per Prince’s direction.  They would also be given the song writing credits for the songs that were written by Prince.  But as people began to learn the truth of The Time, and the huge role that Prince played, some fans began to lose respect for the band.  This was also true of Vanity 6, but to a lesser degree.

At the end of 1982, Prince reached some historic career milestones.  As the video for “1999” became one of the first videos by a black artist to be played on MTV (after Michael Jackson that is), and in February 1983, “Little Red Corvette” became another hit and Prince’s first true cross-over hit. This showed in the ticket sales of the “1999” tour, with Prince playing larger stadiums to audiences that were over 60% white.

The managers begin to isolate Prince from the rest of the group, and Prince’s band begins to get resentful of Steve Fargnoli’s influence over Prince.  Dez Dickerson begins to feel anxious again about the sexy stage show and Prince’s onstage antics.  Remember back to SEGMENT 3 and 4, when we discussed how Dez became a born again Christian during the “Dirty Mind” tour and began talking to Prince about how he felt playing the racier music.  Well, these feelings resurfaced again for Dez, and he began skipping rehearsals.

But, Dez’s replacement, “19” year old Wendy Melvoin was riding right along with the band on tour.  Remember from earlier episodes that Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman grew up together. Since their fathers worked together as part of the fabled “Wrecking Crew” band of L..A. studio musicians.  So of course, Wendy would be the logical replacement for Dez Dickerson. And its all in line with “the ritual of 19”. 

The woman drama amps up on the tour between Prince and his 3 girlfriends riding along on the tour, “moonlighting” and working on other projects gets Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis fired from “The Time”, and Prince hires James Brown’s former tour manager Alan Leeds. 

Lastly, after the tour, Cavallo, Ruffalo, and Fargnoli’s contract with Prince is about to expire.  Prince tells the managers that if they want to resign him, they have to get him a movie deal with a major movie studio. 

-6 Unreleased Prince tracks from the episode posted for Patrons of the “Lovesexy” Tier and higher.