Dig If U Will the Picture / Comic-Con Panel Video
I tried a new pizza recipe this week from the book by Chris Bianco, who I mentioned in the last issue. Afterward, I thought I'd look back to see the very first picture I took of a pizza I made from scratch. I took this picture exactly four years ago this week:
I jumped ahead to look at the next year, same day:
Year three, same general time:
And finally, the pies I made this week...
I've made some decent pizzas over the past few years but these are finally starting to look like what I had in mind when I started four years ago. It took a lot of time and effort and failure to get even this far.
When I was a kid I was a terrible student in most subjects. As an adult, I'm really bad at doing the most basic adult activities. But when I'm engaged in the pursuit of the things I love, like telling stories or making pizzas, I'm constantly asking myself, "How can this be better?"
I get restless if I think there's room for improvement, better materials or ingredients, or a more refined process. That's why this newsletter is called the R&D Report. It's a commitment research and development.
It's about seeking excellence, not comfort.
It's about resisting stasis and contraction.
It's about trying and failing and trying again.
I hope it helps you in your own pursuit in some small way.
This week I'm sharing some lessons from Prince and a link to the video of the TV writing panel I was on at Comic-Con.
Also, this newsletter is free but you're always welcome to "buy me a coffee" via the Ko-Fi link at the very bottom of this issue.
I hope you dig it, have a great weekend!
Dig If U Will the Picture
Like a lot of people my age, PURPLE RAIN was the thing that made me a Prince fan for life. That was actually a calculated move on Prince’s part. Black audiences knew him well but he still hadn’t conquered white audiences the way that Michael Jackson had with THRILLER. So he pushed his sound in a new direction, putting the guitar front and center and giving it a much harder rock edge, the kind of sound that would rumble a stadium. You can hear it in the arena-ready “Let’s Go Crazy,” and the Neal Schon-like solo in the title track.
You can definitely hear it in the opening riff of “When Doves Cry,” which has one of my favorite opening lines, “Dig, if u will, the picture of U and I engaged in a kiss.” I have heard that song thousands of times over the course of my life but I never knew the backstory and the creative leap that gave it such an impact until I read Duane Tudahl’s book, Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions: 1983 and 1984.
PURPLE RAIN director Albert Magnoli realized he needed a new song to cover a montage in the film. Prince went to Sunset Sound here in LA that night and started recording. The way his engineer at the time, Peggy McCreary (aka “Peggy Mac”) tells it, it got really big, with multiple layered synths, guitar, bass, drum track, and layered vocals. It was so much stimuli that eventually she kind of checked out. It was just way overproduced.
But as the session went on, an interesting thing happened. He started to pull stuff out, simplifying and honing in on the distinctive sound that we all know by heart. Hours later her still wasn’t satisfied, feeling that the arrangement was too conventional. At some point, he played it for the singer, Jill Jones, saying, “If I had it my way this is what it would sound like,” and he pulled out the entire bass track.
Jill Jones said, “Why don’t you have it your way?”
There’s a great article about this on Diffuser (linked below) where they talk about this moment as, “Addition by subtraction.” It’s not like having the bass line would have made it a bad song. It would still be a great song. But would it have had the same impact? Would it make you feel like you were listening to music that landed from another planet?
Here’s a quote from his other long time engineer, Susan Rogers:
"It's interesting listening to this record again, and being reminded of how real genius knows when to show it off and when to just be simple. ... You don't have to show off everything. Keep it all really simple and have one magic ingredient, maybe two. It was smart record-making. I don't know how he knew how to do that, but he knew what he was doing."
When he finally took that leap and pulled out the bass line he told Susan, “Nobody would have the balls to do this. You just wait — they’ll be freaking.”
I was thinking about this a lot this week as I was processing the end of BETTER CALL SAUL, which is also, in a way, the final chapter of BREAKING BAD. I’ve had enough time and distance to say, without hyperbole, that the overarching story across two series and one movie (EL CAMINO) is my very favorite thing I’ve ever seen play out in real time on television. Without getting into spoilers, one of the things I loved about the way it ended was that they just kept boiling things down to the simple emotional story.
For me, the temptation to go big, to really give it the grand finale of a Macy’s 4th of July fireworks spectacular, would have been ever present. It would take a lot of discipline and confidence to step back and say, “Wait, let’s pare it down. Simple and emotional.”
Which brings me back to the song. It wasn’t just pulling out the bass line that gave “When Doves Cry” its punch. That opening lyric, “Dig, if you will, the picture of you and I engaged in a kiss. The sweat of your body covers me. Can you, my darling, can you picture this,” is him pleading with his lover to remember the good times while they’re in the middle of a fight. The chorus is deeply personal. “Maybe I’m just like my father, too bold. Maybe you’re just like my mother. She’s never satisfied. Why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like when doves cry.”
The stripped down, innovative arrangement, the raw emotional honesty of the lyrics, all of it came together and became more than the sum of its parts. “When Doves Cry” was Prince’s first #1 hit on the Billboard charts. It was a big part of the breakthrough moment when PURPLE RAIN became a purple monsoon and swept the mainstream. He conquered everybody.
It reminds me of Joni Mitchell, who I talked about a few weeks ago. Blue was a breakthrough moment for her, and it came from experimentation and innovation plus emotional honesty.
Or Stephen Sondheim pushing out of his comfort zone with James Lapine on SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. Experimentation and innovation plus emotional honesty (like the somewhat autobiographical “Finishing the Hat”) led to a Pulitzer Prize.
Here are three lessons I took from reading up on “When Doves Cry” again this week.
“Addition by subtraction.” Think about how you can do more with less. Experiment with pulling out pieces of your own creative "arrangement." Does it gain power? Become more than the sum of its parts? Does it make the reader/listener/viewer lean forward?
If you find yourself saying, “If I had it my way,” that’s your intuition talking. Have it your way, especially if you’re doing something on spec and don’t have anybody else to answer to. Serve your instincts, not conventionality.
Per Susan Rogers, keep it simple, but “Have one magic ingredient, maybe two.” From my experience, by simplifying you’re actually making space for that magic thing to appear and maximizing its impact when it does.
By the way, my all-time favorite opening lyric is from "1999."
"I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray."
Basically, "I'm an unreliable narrator and I'm about to tell you some crazy shit." This, along with "Silent Running" by Mike and the Mechanics and "Mr. Robot" by Styx were early introductions to post-apocalyptic or Dystopian futures that captured my imagination.
Bonus for the new folks, longtime readers have heard this before:
One of the other pieces of advice I learned from Prince was something he told The Revolution just before they were going on stage at First Avenue to play the show that would form much of the basis for the PURPLE RAIN soundtrack. He told them, "When you feel your nerves and adrenaline kick in, cut your body time in half and you'll be playing at the right speed." I remind myself of that a few moments before every pitch and it always forces me to slow down.
YouTube video of the Comic-Con panel!
This was a super fun panel, arranged and moderated by Spiro Skentzos. I had a blast and I think there's a ton of useful information here for aspiring TV writers. I'm so glad he posted this link:
Relevant Prince Links
Prince's Sound Engineer On 'Purple Rain' Reveals Why 'When Doves Cry' Doesn't Have A Bass Line | Digg — digg.com Peggy McCreary, an audio engineer at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, reveals what it was like to be the only other person in the studio with Prince.
Prince Practices Addition by Subtraction With 'When Doves Cry': 365 Prince Songs in a Year — diffuser.fm When Prince released When Doves Cry, pretty much the whole music world rejoiced. Except maybe one person.
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