I can’t find a link for it, but for you guitar people is it really good guitar work,showing off, not that special, bad, amazing? Just generally thoughts on it, because I heard it today and I thought (as a non-guitarist) that realized how much I love it, which is fine that means it works. ut from a guitar-player’s perspective what are your thoughts.
I think Prince is an exceptional guitar player, and that solo you’re referring to is balls-out cool.
Prince plays guitar like you or I would put on and take off a hat. In fact, Prince plays guitar probably more effortlessly and more smoothly than you and I would put on and take off a hat. Prince plays guitar like most people breathe.
Proficiency on an instrument isn’t to be measured simply by the complexity of the pieces chosen for performance. You don’t need to know if it’s a “hard” guitar part to judge Prince’s playing, he plays in a way that the music flows from within his body and sounds out through the instrument with a fluidity and ease such that he can express himself through the instrument as if the instrument were an extension of himself rather than a tool that exists in a place between the artist’s intent and the artist’s product.
That’s a good question; as a non-guitar player, I think Prince is a very good guitarist, but that isn’t his best work. Now I’m listening to my Prince playlist to try to figure out which songs have better guitarwork in them. 
By the way, I think he’s an excellent vocalist, pianist, and drummer, too.
ETA: What bienville said. We had the opportunity to see Prince live recently, and it was exactly like that. It looks like the guitar is part of his body while he’s playing.
I’d love to link to his songs, but as you may know, Prince does not allow his work to stay on Youtube for very long. I’m afraid I have to send you to iTunes to take a listen.
“Colonized Mind” from LOtUSFLOW3R (one of my favourite songs of his) has some nice guitar work in it.
Beautifully put.
Cracked wrote a great article that does an excellent job explaining to non-guitarists why Prince is held in such high esteem: 5 Rock Stars You Won’t Believe Are Secretly Musical Geniuses.
ETA: Well, it’d be better if the video links in the article still worked. Hrmph.
Fascinating article - I’ll have to go hunting for the video links when I have time.
“Strollin’” from Diamonds and Pearls is a nice example of Prince’s better work.
I grew up in the Minneapolis area and saw Prince at Sam’s (First Avenue) just as he was starting to get *serious *national attention. Some of his earlier stuff didn’t have the sexually explicit overtones of his later works, but even back then you knew the guy was a musical genius. Not only is he an exceptional guitar player, IIRC he can play pretty much every instrument. And he gets bonus points for performing my second-favorite Super Bowl halftime show ever.
if you get a chance to see one of his live shows - do it, screw the cost. He’s one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen. You will come out of the show absolutely -exhausted- from dancing.
AND he’s a damn good bass player.
On his DVD Rave Unto the Year 2000, he gets into a bass duel with Larry Graham, the man who literally invented pop/slap funk bass. Prince totally held his own and he and Larry treated each other with great respect.
He is a truly exceptional guitar player - one of my top faves. His infamous solo at George Harrison’s posthumous RRHoF induction on While My Guitar Gently Weeps is one of the best I’ve seen - Clapton’s original is more iconic, but doesn’t come remotely close.
Let’s Go Crazy’s work is worthy of the respect given it by the posts above. I really struggle with the tone, though. It’s a…hmm, what is it? It’s a tone with a lot of screechy, almost digital-sounding distortion on it. The pinched-harmonic squeals he gets while he is playing his lead sound really ice-picky and harsh. He used this tone a lot so it is clearly a choice - he likes that jagged, clashy distortion for where it sits in the mix. It is just harsh.
You might even say he plays just like a-ringin’ a bell.
And he’s a complete and utter douchebag about it as well.
As some may know, I have a (very) small business shooting concerts. I bring a backpack full of equipment to a venue, and do a one-man video shoot from seven different angles (I joke that I’ve developed a business model for ADHD). My biggest customers are various locations of the School of Rock. The kids of each School perform a dozen or so shows each year devoted to a particular artist, band, genre or event. As they are covering songs, it is a technical violation of the copyright, although the School has paid for sync rights for the music, their own ASCAP and BMI fees for performance, and the venue pays those fees as well.
There are three levels of copyright violation on YouTube.
“You don’t own the rights to this song…
[ol]
[li]…but that’s cool. We’re just going to put ads for the original next to your video.”[/li][li]…no, nobody can cover this song. We’re going to mute the audio so nobody can hear your rendition.“[/li][li]…and we’re issuing an Official DMCA Takedown notice against you! Three of these things and you lose your entire account!”[/li][/ol]
99.99% of all music owners have chosen option #1. It works for them, and they get ads to sell their recording right before someone who has just searched for and listened to a cover of that music. Everybody wins.
.01% of music owners have chosen option #2. The only one I have encountered in that space is Led Zeppelin. Apparently, they have a blanket policy that nobody gets to link Stairway to Heaven to visuals. OK, fine. A little disappointing when the kids have done a really good job, but fine.
Prince is, in my experience, the entirety of option #3. I woke up one morning to find that “Controversy Music” had issued DMCA Takedown Notices against two of my videos. Only by swiftly deleting the other two Prince videos I had on my channel did I avoid losing every single video I have on my channel.
All of which is my own videography.
All of which is by performers that I had permission to shoot.
In a venue where I had permission to shoot.
The only party in this who objected to this was Mr. Pissy Pants. Options #1 and #2 were not good enough for this nasty little piece of shit.
And you know what? The performances by the kids were amazing! One of them was of an unreleased track called The Undertaker and had over 10,000 views. An…unreleased…fucking…track. What possible harm could be done to the market for Prince’s music for someone to cover an unreleased track?!?
I will never see him in concert again, and have no further desire to hear any of his music. He’s burned all his bridges with me.
ETA: I really should make a “Hitler gets a DMCA notice for his cover of Purple Rain from Prince” video.
I wish I could say I was surprised, gaffa, but I’m not. Prince is the stereotypical complete asshole genius, from everything I’ve heard.
Prince plays “Whole Lotta Love” live. Watch it quick before it disappears!
Thank you, but no. He’s dead to me.
When my Google Fiber is connected, I’m going to create a YouTube channel called “PrinceIsaPrick” and upload those missing videos every day, and he can just keep deleting them. The annoying thing is that I also lost all the comments from professional musicians praising the performances by the kids. The best one was by an old Motown bass player who thought the 11 year old playing bass had it going on, saying: “Little man, you got it in the pocket!”
ETA: I wish I could find the interview where Todd Rundgren’s girlfriend at the time encountered a skinny, short black kid at a Todd show who really wanted to meet Todd. He explained “…and I play all the instruments and everything like Todd!” Todd, for all his legendarily poor decision-making in terms of building a career, has never been a prick about his music being covered.
That Zep cover did a hell of a lot more for me than the so-called, “greatest guitar solo ever” did - or at least it did until it turned into self-indulgent crap halfway through. Then again, Jimmy Page went pretty far afield in his live performances as well. I watched the “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” cover a few times awhile back, and never came away feeling like it was anything more than moderately cool. “Hey, Prince did a pretty nice job there, and wasn’t hogging the limelight or going too over-the top. Pretty classy and tasteful.”
Hey GAFFA, how did the kids KNOW Prince’s unreleased song, since it was unreleased?
FLIB - Okay, you don’t like the RRHoF solo - okay, YMMV. I would argue that the song was designed to have a long, wailing outro solo in a live performance, and Prince, performing with George’s best friends and son, built on that outro to make it a glorious tribute to Harrison with his friends and family right there.
And, regardless of whether a person likes or dislikes that solo, it certainly showcases his incredible guitar playing.
Though for me it works well in the context of the album, which is pervaded by a constant sense of unhappiness and desperation.
The whole album is balls-out cool. Purple Rain, Let’s go Crazy, When Doves Cry.
Enjoyed the cover of Whole Lotta Love. Douchebag or not, he’s got talent.
(Compare w/ Michael Jackson, talented weirdo.)
I’d agree, It is in my top five albums of all time. It may suffer from being made slap-bang in the middle of the eighties cheesy-rock period but heck, it is so much more than that. Not a weak track on there.
Have to give shout out to my favourite Prince guitar work on " I could never take the place of your man" How does he get so much out of a simple two or three note riff? You know the bit I mean.