Besides the new album and your film and television scoring career, most people know you from your work with Prince and the Revolution. The last time we spoke, you talked about how the analogue synths you used during that time had a soul all their own. Are there synths that stick out in your mind from that era?
“Definitely. Oberheims were a huge part of our sound. And the presets were so great and big and fat!
“Prince was incredibly bold in the way he would just use a preset and then brighten the fuck out of it! He would turn the filter way up so the sound would cut through the mix. I still have the OB-SX from those days. It’s one of the most simple Oberheims - there are just a few knobs on it, but that was the most quintessential keyboard from that era.
“There’s the organ sound from "When You Were Mine" or "The Beautiful Ones". If you play that organ sound with a delay pedal, there you go! And the horn punches? Play [preset] C1. That’s the sound!
“The only other thing that really sticks out would be the ARP Omni. It had a kind of funny, nasal quality to it. But that’s the "Dirty Mind" sound. That one was written on the ARP Omni, and played by [Dr] Matt Fink. If you play those chords on that keyboard, you’ll swear you just put the album on. Those were very simple things. There wasn’t a lot of editing going on.”
It was the attitude of how they were played, not the fact that they were presets.
“Exactly.”
How much did Prince dictate what you had to play and how much freedom you had to express yourself?
“It just depended on the song. He was so prolific. One day he would come in and have a whole song written. He would pass out the parts at rehearsal and say, ‘Why don’t you check out this organ part?’ And then he’d go over to Matt’s station and say, ‘Check out this string part.’ But then on other days he’d just come in and say, ‘groove in E!’ He’d ask each one of us, ‘What you got?’
“So, it was a real balance, and I have to say that, back then, The Revolution was one of the only times he opened himself up and really drew from other people’s sound. Wendy [Melvoin]’s sound on the guitar, Matt’s style on the synthesizer, etc. And that’s what made Prince and the Revolution what it was.”