Prince "Timeless" : A Quinn Martin Epilogue

From The Second Disc Newsletter:

 

Until yesterday, this was going to be a pretty standard review of Timeless (NPG/Paisley Park 19958 44929-2), the newest posthumous Prince project, arriving just over a decade after his tragic passing. You would read about how unusual it is at this juncture to release a short compilation of unrelated outtakes from the Minneapolis icon’s storied vault, one not curated by him or guided by his examples, one that reminds you of projects we’d love to have on our shelves – a pre-1999 deep dive, a complete presentation of his final concerts (or any of the many, many tours not represented on record).

And then the horns blew.

As I broke down in a report for Ultimate Classic Rock, horn player Greg Boyer, who performed with Prince’s touring band The New Power Generation during the 2000s, let slip on Facebook that his contributions to one of Timeless‘ tracks, a funk number called “Calabama” that dated to 2003, were in fact recorded “several months ago,” a fact not noted in the package’s liner notes. (The other two brass players, Adrian Crutchfield and Lynn Grissett, didn’t take up with The NPG until the last few years of Prince’s life, the first sign of a fudge in the timeline.) Charles F. Spicer, Jr., one of the co-chairs of The Artist’s estate management company Prince Legacy, took to X to corroborate Boyer’s claim. “I stated that nothing had been edited or added to ‘Calabama,'” his statement read. “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.”

The already uneven presentation of Timeless – succinctly eviscerated for its haphazard sequencing, slight portions, and middling repertoire in Rolling Stone, Minneapolis public radio station The Current, and by former Allmusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine – suddenly seems like less of an affront to Prince’s output and legacy than the wanton shattering of one of his guiding principles: a centering of his artistic vision, uncompromised by outside ideas. This may sound dramatic, but it’s true. Posthumous knob-twiddling is nothing new, and many Prince outtakes – including all the ones on Timeless – are often newly mixed. But this lack of transparency casts a dark shadow over the current estate administration’s already-questioned ability to tell a story through Prince’s music.

The releases that predate Prince Legacy’s involvement in the estate – titles like Piano & A Microphone 1983 and Originals as well as deluxe editions of 1999, Purple Rain and Sign O’ the Times – were touted as accurate representations of Prince’s theoretical output. There were shaky moments, sure – reportedly, the fan-favorite 1999 outtake “Extraloveable,” later re-recorded for Prince’s final album HITnRUN volume two, was allegedly barred from inclusion on the box due to objectionable lyrics – but there never felt like any doubt that what you were hearing was tracks that Prince himself put together. The misrepresentation of posthumous overdubs – even ones done in ways or with musicians he easily would’ve called to contribute – calls that veracity into question forever. Fans deserve better, and so do we. With the current leadership of the estate at the helm, The Second Disc does not expect to cover future titles pertaining to Prince’s catalogue, unless actual honesty and integrity can mark its every project.

This will no doubt be a challenging bar to clear. The estate’s other co-chair, L. Londell McMillan (the typical “bad cop” in the estate’s external presentation, responsible for much of the pomp around their often headache-inducing decisions), recently gave an interview to Rolling Stone to coincide with this album’s release covering a wide range of topics (including the bizarre challenge that most fans are so disinterested in listening to archival Prince box sets, instead just buying them and never even opening them). When asked about what the Prince estate can learn from recent financial successes from the Michael Jackson estate (including a woefully error-ridden but financially successful biopic), McMillan’s meandering answer suggested that Jackson’s remaining executor could learn from them. Considering Jackson’s team courted controversy over the veracity of songs on the first full posthumous album, perhaps we can call this one a draw.