INSIDE THE VAULT
FROM his earliest releases in the late 1970s until his untimely death in 2016, Prince was obsessed with recording. On tour he recorded every show; at home he was in Paisley Park Studio A as much as possible. He might be trying to assemble his next album or he might be taking notes, writing songs, goofing off, or practising his own purple brand of mad science. That work ethic means he left behind a legendarily massive vault crammed full of alternate takes, false starts, cul-de-sac jams and more than a few “lost” records.
Because he thought one and sometimes two albums ahead, he might abandon a project on a whim – no matter how far along he was in the process.
His motives for scrapping an album were often never known or now forgotten, but in most cases Prince simply moved on to the next big idea. He created albums faster than he could release them. But those lost albums continue to provoke endless what-ifs and conjure countless alternate timelines. Here are some of his most notorious albums that never made it out of Paisley Park…
THE SECOND COMING (1982)
PRINCE filmed every show on the tour in 1981 and 1982, usually on a fairly primitive VHS camera set up next to the soundboard. “We would watch the tape every night on the bus,” recalls keyboard player Matt Fink. “He would point out mistakes or things we did well. That’s how we learned and improved the shows.” Their stop at the Met Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, stands out because, unexpectedly, there were real cameras there and a professional film crew to capture their performance. It transpires they were recording a live
