How Prince’s Rivalry With Michael Jackson Helped Inspire ‘Purple Rain’

On the evening of Feb. 28, 1984, Prince was at home, watching Michael Jackson become the first artist to win eight Grammys in a single night, including Album of the Year for Thriller. When the broadcast was over, Prince turned to Bobby Z, his longtime friend and drummer for the Revolution, and told him, “Next year, that’s gonna be us.”

As both an album and a movie, Purple Rain was still unfinished at that point, but Prince had a good idea of what he had. The very idea of making a movie was inspired, at least in part, by the massive success of the “Thriller” video, according to Bobby Z. “‘Thriller’ lights the world on fire,” he says. “It’s not a video. It’s a mini-movie — throw that gas on Prince’s fire. ‘A mini-movie? MTV? This is mine. I’m taking this now. That’s not acceptable that someone else has it. I’m going to make the full movie. It’s got to be a motion picture.'”

But Prince wasn’t only thinking about Jackson, Bobby Z adds: “Was it all to compete? It wasn’t just Michael. It was absolutely everyone. And [Prince] did it. He’s starring in this movie. He’s got the Number One album. He’s got the Number One song.” (He did win Grammys for Purple Rain, too, albeit only three of them.)

To honor the recent 40th anniversaries of Purple Rain as both a movie and an album, Bobby Z. (who played with Prince from 1978 to 1986) joins host Brian Hiatt on the latest episode of Rolling Stone Music Now. The conversation dives deep on the making of the project — and the long road that led to it. To hear the whole episode, go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play above. A few more highlights follow.

Prince watched Quadrophenia — the 1979 movie based on the Who’s concept album, starring Sting — “all the time” while he conceptualized Purple Rain. “That was another heavy influence,” Bobby Z. says. “These real-life scenarios of mods and rockers — it’s easy to kind of West Side Story that thing into the Revolution and the Time.” Plus, he acknowledges that Prince may have borrowed the design for his Purple Rain motorcycle from the look of the Sixties scooters in Quadrophenia.

For the Revolution, the Purple Rain tour felt like Beatlemania. “The crowd overpowered the the first half of ‘Let’s Go Crazy,'” Bobby Z. says. “By the time you got to [the lyric] ‘Dr. Everything Will Be All Right,’ you couldn’t hear the music.” To counteract that roar, Prince would turn the onstage monitor speakers all the way up: “Sometimes I still hear it in my head when I put my head on the pillow,” the drummer adds.

Bobby Z. believes the top archive priority for Prince’s estate should be releasing the artist’s legendary Aug. 3, 1983, concert with the Revolution at Minneapolis’ First Avenue club. Prince used the performances of several songs there as basic tracks on Purple Rain, but audio and video of the full show has yet to be made officially available. “It’s a holy grail,” Bobby Z. says. “It shows you the the transition from 1999 to the Purple Rain era.”

Prince learned a lot from his experience as a poorly-received opening act for the Rolling Stones in 1981. “It just didn’t go well,” Bobby Z. recalls. “He was a confusing kind of guy for people who had been drinking beer since 6 a.m. He never took rejection as anything but ‘work harder.’ And he goes, ‘I get it. I’ll give the R&B crowd ‘1999’ and then I’ll give the rockers ‘Little Red Corvette.'”

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