Author and historian Duane Tudahl joins Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelley to discuss his groundbreaking book Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions: 1983–1984.

In this in-depth conversation, Duane shares how he spent over two decades researching Prince’s most iconic period—interviewing members of The Revolution, The Time, engineers, and key collaborators to uncover the full story behind the music .

He reveals:

• How Prince recorded and created during the Purple Rain era
• The stories behind legendary songs like “When Doves Cry” and “The Beautiful Ones”
• The intensity of Prince’s studio work ethic and nonstop creativity
• Behind-the-scenes dynamics with The Time, Vanity 6, and Apollonia 6
• What the studio session logs reveal about Prince’s daily life and recording process

This episode is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand not just the music—but the genius and discipline behind one of the greatest artists of all time.

About Musicians Reveal with Joe Kelley:

A long-running interview platform (est. 1982) featuring legendary and emerging artists from funk, R&B, soul, and beyond. The show was spotlighted by Prince in 2004.

This is the Upper Room with Joe Kelly here on 88.5 FM, WVOF in Fairfield, Connecticut, here on a beautiful Monday night.

He's a writer, director, producer, and he put all this hard work into this book.

And we want to welcome a longtime friend, Mr. Duane Tootall.

How you doing, Dwayne?

I'm doing great, Joe.

I'm so excited to be here.

This is fantastic.

Yeah, I know.

I mean, you've been working on this for a long, long time.

It's, you know.

How many pages does it clock in on the official version?

The official version is I think it's 550something.

And some of that is citations and thanks and things like that and an index.

But yeah, it's about twice as big as your normal book you're going to get.

It's close to 180,000 words.

And these kind of books generally have about 120,000.

So it's a bit bigger than usual, but it's filled with there's stuff I wanted to put in more.

And the publisher said, look, you've given us 200,000 words.

You've got to cut it back a little bit.

Pal had to do a little editing, but I started looking through it to see what to take out.

And I thought, well, you know what?

The things that don't further the stories about Prince and the songs themselves, they kind of some of them fell to the wayside.

So it's like some of the stories about things that were outside that range, I thought, well, you know what, they may not fit the book and maybe they're things I can talk about at other times or there are things that these people write about in their books when they start writing them.

Because I'm sure that there's going to be a lot of books coming out from these people because they all have great stories to tell.

I mean, literally, the people I was able to talk to for this book are, you know, members of the revolution, members of the time, members of the family, members of Apollonia 6, Vanity 6, that kind of stuff.

You just all the engine most all the engineers that were involved during that era, singers Jill Jones, Susanna Melvoin, people like that, that you just go, wow, these people were there during this thing.

And so what I wanted to do was make a book that gave them the opportunity to tell their stories.

And I kind of just thought well, you know, they'll let them.

I'll use many of the quotes as possible and I will get out of the way.

Yeah, you did, you did a great way of arranging everything.

And you know, for any Prince fan, this is just, it's going to be on the, on the bookcase shelf for, for as one of the books that is going to be there for a long, long time.

You know, I'm reading this, I thought I knew a lot about Prince in the Minneapolis sound, but I was like, I didn't know that.

And you just.

So many surprises.

And we'll talk about some of the stuff throughout our chat.

But how long did you start thinking, how far back before you started writing this book and, you know, this big undertaking?

Well, this book came from.

I used to work for a magazine called Uptown magazine.

Oh yeah, great magazine.

Prince.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It was a magazine out of Sweden and it was about Prince and the Minneapolis music scene.

And I worked for that with Pierre Nilsson, who was the author of dmsr.

And we did the Vault and things like that.

And for those who don't know, the Vault is a book that is kind of a comprehensive look at what Prince did in his career.

Daily things daily.

You know, not as much daily, but it goes over what he did as much as possible.

With that.

We started talking about how cool it would be to do a book about studio sessions.

And this was 20, 22, 23, 24 years ago.

And we realized, you know, this might be a little tougher to do.

And so I started nibbling at it and nibbling at it and realizing I can't do the whole career, but I could do the first, you know, a two year period.

And so I started drafting it out and I realized there's over 220 sessions during that time and all kinds of like almost 100 times on stage and all those things.

And I thought, well, that's a great story.

It's the story of a guy who went from being a cult favorite to being the biggest artist in the world.

And at the end of it, wanted to get rid of that, was tired of it, and didn't want to be Mr. Purple Rain.

And I thought that's a pretty compelling story.

And as I was doing that, I realized, you know, there's other periods of his career.

But this came from a conversation I had over two decades ago, and I just started nibbling at it.

And about five years ago, my wife said, are you going to write this book?

And I thought, right, yeah, I guess I am.

And so I wrote it, finished it.

About.

And I started shopping around at the time for a publisher.

And then he passed.

And I still don't like to say he died.

Sometimes it's easier to say he passed.

And I found a publisher.

But before that, I actually went to a lot of people I interviewed.

And I thought, because I've interviewed 40 to 50 people for this book and future books beyond this, and I asked a lot of them, what do you think?

Do you think I should publish this?

Because I didn't want to seem opportunistic.

After he passed, there was a lot of times we all kind of had to sit back and think, okay, what do we do now?

What furthers his legacy?

Without seeming like you're taking advantage of this.

And most of them came to me and said, you know what?

You've been doing this for two decades.

You really should come out with this.

It tells a more intimate story than is generally not than is told.

And so I thought, okay.

And over that year, I started going back to some of these people and talking to them and asking them, you know, to follow up things or just to make sure that the information was correct and for specifics.

I mean, when the Purple Rain CD came out, the deluxe cd, Jill Jones was not happy with the way they talked about her or didn't talk about her, really.

And I completely understand that because she had a lot to do with some of these songs.

And so I saw she was upset about this and I reached out to her because we've known each other for years.

And I said, let's go through every song one more time.

And we went through and found some new stuff that I didn't know about and added that, or Susanna Melvoyne.

And I would go back and forth and.

And she would answer as many questions as possible, or I'd call Susan Rogers, who's one of the engineers, and just Follow up questions 20, 30 years after the fact.

And they were all really helpful about making sure that we're telling the truth on this.

And there were stories that contradicted.

There were people that said one thing and another person said another thing.

I kind of addressed that too, because there's going to be times that people looking back after a few decades don't have the same memories.

And Prince was also a rascal when he'd tell people one thing and know that it was something else or just kind of trying to point you in a different direction because he didn't want you looking.

He's a magician.

Look at my left hand and then he's doing something with his right hand.

That's sort of how he worked.

So I used as many of his quotes as possible.

But I also understood that there were times that he was trying to throw everybody off track and that was sort of his way too.

And, you know, kind of put one person against another in a way that is a.

To make it so that nobody kind of knew where they stood completely with him.

And, you know, and I think that part of it is that he was an artist and would change his mind.

And what he said on Monday might not necessarily be the.

The same way he felt on Tuesday.

And that's a tricky one, you know, when you're dealing with somebody like this.

And we're just enjoying our talk with you.

And let's get our listeners the best way they can pick up this book, whether the hard copy or digital, and hit us up with some sites and all that information.

You can find it on Amazon, Amazon.com it is on there.

You can get the E book from there, and the physical book should be available in the next few days.

There was a shipment issue and they weren't able to get the shipment for last week for the launch, but they've told me that they should be getting it this week, which is great, and that I'm looking forward to.

You work on something for 20 years, you can't wait until everybody has it in their hand.

But the people that have downloaded the E book have been very happy with it.

You can also, if you're curious, you can read the first chapter and the preface, but by going to my site, which is duanetoodall.com, which is D U A N E T U d a h l.com and click on the links and you can download the PDF of the first chapter in the preface.

The book also has a forward from Questlove, from the Roots.

That's right, yeah.

Who had read the book early on and was just a complete champion of the book.

And that was exciting.

And he wanted to write the forward, and I wanted him to write the forward.

So that worked out perfectly.

And I can't say enough fantastic things about him because he's, you know, he's a huge scholar when it comes to this stuff.

And that's.

I was just lucky, you know, so.

And I wanted to make sure.

I thanked you because I have wanted to.

I've been a fan of your show for now.

I've told you this privately, but I want to make sure I say this publicly.

I've been a fan of your show for a while, and you have.

First off, you're credited in the back of the book because of the research you've done.

You've done.

I don't know if you knew that, but the stuff you do and the people you talk to and the people you find and the way they open up to you is phenomenal.

And it's obvious that, first off, you're a fan, and second off, that people respect what you do because they come to you.

And I came to you.

I've been reaching out to you with questions for a long time.

And then to come to you and say, you know, the book is coming out and you're like, you want to do the show?

And I'm like, yeah, so.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, I want to make sure that certain things get mentioned, and your show is definitely one of them.

And I've been.

Any chance I get to talk about your show, I do that.

So, yeah.

Thanks for.

Thanks for all those great words, Wayne.

Sure.

Yeah.

And we're.

I'm just thinking about the book.

And.

And the time that on the tour was the time Vanity 6 and Prince.

Yeah, that actually was.

You know, I brought it up because that was my.

My first time I saw Prince was beginning at 83 in Hartford, a nice snowstorm that the show did go on, but just the battles that you go into detail that, you know, with the time and all the personalities and money and everything was just fascinating.

You know, us Prince fans, a lot of us know it, but people are reading the book.

You go into depth and people are really honest with you.

That was the fun thing is people really kind of opened up to me about a lot of things that were going on.

And the story of the time really is a story that didn't get told as much as I wanted to see.

And so when I was writing the book, I wanted to make sure that the story of Morris Day and the time and the things they were going through with Prince.

And the competition that Prince had created.

I mean, Prince created the time, in a sense.

And you have seven people who were, you know, pretty amazing on stage.

And they gave him a run for his money.

And the ironic thing is that it was an incestuous relationship.

Because Prince had created their music and wrote most of it.

And so you look at what they had done.

What they did is take the music that you provided them.

And they found a way to perform beyond expectations.

And so there was a bit of back and forth between them.

Taken off the bill in certain cities and told not to do certain dances.

I think the most astute comment.

But at the same time, they all still respected him.

I mean, it's not like there was any lack of respect.

One of the most astute comments in the book to me was when Monty Moyer said.

And he didn't say it to me directly, but he said that when Prince got on the stage, the stage lifted a foot.

You know, it was one foot higher just because of what he did.

And I think that's really true.

When you look at it.

You think every time Prince walked on stage.

There was this magic that he brought to it.

And as good as Morris Day in the time, which they are amazing.

Prince just.

There's something about what he can do or could do.

And that's, you know, that's.

There's something phenomenal about that.

And it's hard to deny that.

And it really is.

Actually.

It's impossible to deny that.

This is a guy that, you know, stretched across genres.

He was, you know, somebody that nobody else.

Nobody else could be like that.

And there's still people that say, oh, this next Prince.

But there is no next print.

I got an email from somebody pushing an artist this week.

Kind of along the lines of that I, you know, politely, you know, answer the email.

But I have the same.

Same mindset that you do.

Yeah, it's like, no, there's.

There's no next prints.

You'll be people that are amazing.

And I don't doubt that, you know, over the next hundred years or whatever.

There's going to be people that are just.

Blow me away.

But Prince was Prince.

And right now, it's an odd time for the community.

Because we're all in different stages of mourning.

And some people are in denial.

And some people.

We're all working toward acceptance.

But we're all bargaining Right now and thinking, how can we.

We just all wish there was something we could do to make it so that he didn't pass.

And there's.

I don't know how to explain it, but that we're all trying to cope with what happened and the fact that we don't have a leader with this now.

And we are no longer looking at what is coming because it was always the promise of the next album, next tour, next movie.

We're now having to go back and reflect on what he did and really look at it and kind of put it in context of his life.

And I think I'm hoping what this book does is takes the events of his life and shows you how his songs were his diary.

And in a way that I don't think we understood.

The fun thing to me is finding out that Prince gave us the clues about himself right in the open, right, right there for all of us to see.

And none of us realized that his songs.

And he says this.

My songs are all my life is in my records.

And I didn't quite get that until I started putting them in order and in context.

And I was like, oh, now he's happy, oh, now he's sad, now he's conf.

Now he's in love.

And you realize, oh, there's a story he's telling beyond what the songs are and what he's revealing about himself through his music.

And that to me was what this does is sort of brings you back to his music.

Because since he passed, it's been a tough time.

And we all look through.

I know I look through his music and I can't listen to his music and not think in terms of him not being here.

And I'm assuming you do the same thing where you'll hear lyrics and you go, oh, yeah, that's kind of.

You know, he didn't mean to say that.

But now he's talking about death in this song.

I can't help but think about death.

I'm hoping that what this does is take you back to a time when he was alive and happy and vital and young and doing things that mattered.

And that you can listen to the music for the first time again once you understand how this song fit into his life.

Well, Dwayne Tudall is with us here on WVOF in the upper room with Joe Kelly.

And he has just released an amazing book, Prince in the Purple Rain Area Studio sessions.

Going into incredible detail on practically the day to day existence that Prince led from latter part.

And one of the key things, you got a hold of all the recording logs from Sunset Sound and other studios, which.

How did you pull that off?

I was working.

When I was doing work for Uptown, we were.

I was doing a lot of the LA research.

I live in Los Angeles and I talked to them people at Sunset Sound and I interviewed the manager and the owner and one of them said, do you want to see the work orders?

I was like, yeah, that'd be great.

And he started showing them to me and this was years ago.

And he said, I don't know if I asked or if he said it came up about me making a copy of these things.

And I said, yeah, I'd love that.

And then I was making a copy.

I kept thinking, somebody's going to walk in the room saying, hey, who are you kidding?

And so as I'm leaving there, I'm like going.

I'm nervous thinking they're going to walk out in the parking lot and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't leave with those.

And they didn't.

And I've had a great relationship with them the whole time.

I've come back to them and asked them for additional information.

They've been open, they've done additional interviews, they've let me take pictures inside the studios.

They've been great guys.

I mean, honestly.

Sunset Sound, first off, has history of, you know, many of the Beatles played there, the Rolling Stones played there, Led Zeppelin played there, the Doors recorded there, all these bands very famous sessions there.

Prince is the session that is important to me.

Not the other ones aren't, but just, you know, Prince is my focus.

But the fact that they opened it up and said, yeah, sure, and they gave me the information when Prince recorded there and Sheila recorded there and he did Madhouse there and he did, you know, a lot of different things.

And when I was looking through the daily logs, I mean, literally it would say what day he was there and what time he was doing things.

So you can say, oh, he did when the Doves Cry.

I don't have it in front of me.

But you know, when you start seeing, oh, that's dinner time or whatever, you just go, wow.

You now can not only tell the day, because it used to be like, okay, it was during the month of March, he did this.

Now I can not only pinpoint the day, but oftentimes the day of time of day that he was doing some of this stuff.

And there's something humanizing about that, that it's no longer just this big myth.

This is the story.

And you start to see, this is when he did the song for Sheena Easton.

This is when he did the song for Sheila E. Or whatever songs, the Bangle songs song for Stevie Nicks.

You start to see the dates of these things and hear the stories of the engineer talking about it.

And people don't understand.

The engineers are there for 18 hours a day sometimes with Prince.

They sit in a room with no windows with this guy, and so they have stories about him.

Then they're sort of overlooked in a lot of the prints, books, because I think people just never thought about the engineers.

But the engineers really, literally spent most of the day with this guy.

And band members would come and go and singers would come and go, but the engineers sat with him.

They would be there a half an hour before he got there and leave a half an hour after he left.

So, yeah, I think they have a lot to say about what was involved with the recordings of the songs.

And so I got the workouts from Sunset Sound.

I contacted Warner Brothers.

They gave me access to their vault of information, so I knew what dates the Warner Brothers got songs.

I went to the Library of Congress.

I went to the local musicians unions.

So I knew when they brought in strings, stringing instruments or other instruments like that.

I went to the Minneapolis Union.

So I understood when they recorded certain things in Minneapolis.

I tried to get all those things, people's diaries, people's journals, work orders from people billing for time with him, trying to put together this giant puzzle.

And I think it mostly is there.

You know, there's always going to be things that I wasn't there, so I can't say what happened.

But for the most part, I think you know that.

And here's the thing I need to stress.

It's not just a book of he did this on the 14th and then he did this on the 15th.

You've read it.

It's a story about him that happens to be told through his work orders and the days he was recording things as opposed to a cold list of songs at the state.

This is why he was doing the songs and with who he was doing the songs and what they meant to people and who was involved with them and who sang and what was.

What was recorded and what wasn't released.

So there's outtakes and there's songs that never, you know, that have never seen the light.

Of day.

They'll talk about things like that.

That's, you know, Vanity 6's second album.

I talk about the recording of a lot of the tracks for that that never made it out.

Now, you know, all this, all this information that you describe in the book and crafting of the songs.

I mean, you really show that this guy was a tireless worker, rarely took days off, flying from Minneapolis to Los Angeles.

And with all this, did any song stand out?

How we created it, that you discovered that you're like, wow, that just blew.

Your mind every time.

It's so funny.

I kept thinking new ones kept coming up, but I kept thinking how amazing this was.

She's Always In My Hair was one that blew me away.

Because it's a great song.

It's a B side.

And it was one of these songs that would have been a hit for anybody else.

But he said, yeah, I'm just going to release it on B side.

But it's a song that he did that he just did in the studio in One Day.

The Beautiful Ones.

He did the song in one Day.

You just start looking at.

This is what happens when you.

I think Bobby Z said it.

This is what you get when you put Prince in a studio for a day.

You get Beautiful Ones or something like that.

But the other thing was there were songs like Computer Blue that he would work on for weeks.

And that became sort of like this big epic thing.

And then it eventually got released on the Performing Deluxe, but it got edited down so much.

And I'm like you.

And like a lot of people who are Prince fans, I'm a completist.

I want to hear every note.

And a bunch of us will sit around going, yeah, they released that song, but there's a 22nd spot in there that they didn't that got edited out.

That's great stuff.

And we'll be very particular about that.

And it's fun to hear when this stuff did get cut out and things like that.

But the amount of work he was doing in the fall of 83 on some of the Purple Rain tracks that he recorded live, he overdubbed a lot of those things that he recorded at the 8-3-83 show because he wanted it his way.

And he could do that.

It's his band.

He can do whatever he wants.

And he's meticulous about what he wants.

And so when you start seeing that the entire month of September of 83, he almost didn't take a day off.

Right?

Exactly.

And that's kind of interesting.

And then finding out that there's a song that, you know, him recording the last part of Darling Mickey.

I go into detail about that.

It was actually a different track altogether.

And he combined with that or where he got his influences from.

You can hear some of the songs, you know, some parts of him.

When you listen to Gary Newman or a band called Eben Ozen, and you can hear little references that he would pull from things because he was being influenced and he.

You know, he was a sponge and would.

You could basically say a joke to him or whatever it was.

And there's a good chance that if he enjoyed it, he would find a way to put that in a song.

You know, he's recording albums for.

In the first part of 84, he recorded albums for the last part, last two songs from Purple Rain, Songs for the Ice Cream Castle album, Songs for Apollonia, six album songs for Sheila E's album, Song for the Bangles, an album for the family.

And this is all within the first couple, you know, first six, seven months of a year.

That's just.

Who does that?

Nobody.

Nobody does that.

That's crazy.

You know, most bands record their nine songs for the album and maybe a B side of something, and then that's it.

And they, you know.

But this is.

The other thing is.

People don't quite understand is this guy would go into the studio by himself and come out with this.

I mean, the amount of work that went into this is phenomenal.

This guy would spend so much time crafting something and make it right.

There's nobody else out there that does this stuff.

And so I thought.

Somebody asked me why I wrote this book.

And I thought to myself, when you find this stuff out, how can you not write this book?

There's so many great things to find out about this, and I think he's inspirational to people.

Any artist or anything, musician who wants to understand how to do this really needs to look into what this guy did.

Because nobody did the stuff that he did before, and still nobody's doing it.

I love Bruce Springsteen or I love whoever else, but they always had a producer and they had a band, and they had all this stuff Prince didn't.

He would come in, write it, produce it, sing it, record it, play all the instruments, and it would still be as good as anything anybody else was doing.

And that's just.

There's everybody else and there's Prince, and that's just the way music is to me.

Like it's mentioned in your book.

Someone said he wasn't spending Friday night hanging out with the fellas, he was working and creating, rehearsing.

I mean, the tour rehearsals with the Revolution and the time back to back is just incredible.

It was where he lived.

The studio is where he lived, basically.

I mean, for the most part, it was his social.

Because he would bring women in that he wanted to date.

He would bring in people that he liked.

Friends were the people who he communicated with were the people that were in his bands.

These are the things that he had.

He's not the kind of guy, I think it was Jill Jones that said, he's not the kind of guy you're going to take to a barbecue.

He's the kind of guy that, you know, his life is music and his guitar and everything else is an extension of him.

And when you see him playing guitar on the Rock and Roll hall of Fame or doing something, it's a part of him in a way that most other musicians can't have.

But it's because he worked so damn hard.

And everybody around him worked hard because of him.

And across the board, everybody I talked to respected how much he worked.

And you look at other people in the studio, they may be there for a few weeks.

Prince was there all year.

And even when he was on tour, he would find places to record, whether it's a sound check or rehearsal or a studio on the road.

That's just what he did.

Because that's.

I think music was relaxing to him at the same time as it was, you know, something he was.

It was commercial for him, but I think it was also something that he was able to.

That was his oasis.

And that's why he has so much music out there.

And that's why, you know, the range of what he did and the range of his music and the range of his fans.

Look at the cross section of fans are as wide as the cross section of his music.

That's a good point.

Another thing that's amazing to me is the community of people that love him and follow him and accept what he brought.

There's nobody else out like that.

And Dwayne Tudol is with us here on wvof.

We're really enjoying talking with him on the Upper Room.

And you can go to duanetoodall.com d u a N E T U d a h l.com order through Amazon.

And have you picked a spot out for your.

Your book signing?

I know you're out in the LA.

Area, but I'm gonna have.

I'm working on that right now.

I do want to do a book signing, probably hopefully we can do a book tour, maybe the east coast and a few other cities.

I'll be up in Minneapolis in April.

I'd like to do a book signing up there, talking to a couple other authors about maybe even doing a few book signings where several authors at the same time.

Yeah, I think that'd be kind of fun to have, you know, so that way you kind of have three or four authors that you really like.

You can come hear all of them talk and purchase whatever books you want and get the signature right there.

You know, I think that would be kind of a fun thing to do.

I have not found figured out where.

Probably in January, I'll do a book signing out here in Los Angeles.

Christmas was sort of.

This is my first book, so I don't know how all this stuff works, but I looked into it and Christmas, most of the places were booked up.

So I thought, okay, well, I'll do it in January and get that going.

I'm also probably going to do some signed books that I'll sell from my website.

I haven't worked out the details on that yet, but it'll probably be a limited number of books I'll do with that.

And I also have a Facebook group called Prince the Complete Studio Session Book Series.

And that's.

Please, if you are curious about what's going on with this, sign up for that.

Reach out to me.

I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter.

And say, hi, Please ask me questions.

I'm open to questions all the time.

And like I said, if this book does well and people like it and want a second book, I'm happy to do that because I seriously love writing these books.

The people I've met, the things I've gotten to find out, the places I've gone, are just phenomenal.

I make documentaries for a living.

And so this, to me, was like making a documentary into a book.

That's what it was for me.

Yeah, we're going to hold you to that.

Not just one book after this.

You know, you're going to have to do it for us because it could.

Be your favorite era.

What's your favorite era?

You know, I have different.

I have great things about each stuff.

I mean, I'm partial to the revolution, the MPG, the different configurations.

But my first interview ever was Andre Simone.

So we go back, have a great connection.

Yeah, back.

And he's out your way.

Yes, he is.

We've had lunch before.

He's a great guy.

I'VE known his wife for years.

Right.

I adore both of them.

They're great people.

Let me ask you this question because since, you know, you know, you have some loose plans to eventually go through other eras and in depth like this on the Prince and the Purple Rain studio sessions, how difficult do you think it would be toward the later years in the Paisley park era to really go now?

Very difficult, yeah.

That doesn't mean it's impossible.

You know, I think one of the things that I've enjoyed about Prince is that he's shown that the impossible is possible.

And I think that what I'm hoping happens is that this book does do something that the family, the estate, Warner Brothers, whoever else is involved notice and that they feel like, wait a second, this honors him, this extends his legacy.

And this is something that we should find a way to work with me on.

And whether it's, I'm working with them, they're working with me, we're working together, I don't know what it would be.

The way I see it right now, I'm standing in a room that's pitch black and I don't know what doors are going to open when the book comes out.

And I'm hoping that I'm in a large room with no light.

I'm looking forward to finding out what happens with this.

And I would like to go to Warner Bros.

I'd like to go to the estate, I'd like to go to the family and say I would like to do more of these books and I would love to do, I'd love to get everybody's help on this because there are doors.

I don't know what's beyond them.

And if I can be doing this more with Warner Brothers, I can help out with some of their re releases.

And I would love to do something like that or I would love to work on documentaries or whatever it is.

I don't know where that's going to go.

But working hand in hand with the estate or with Warner Brothers or both would be fantastic because they've got information they may not know what to do with.

And I think that this book and that kind of stuff would be a great avenue to get out the word of what this guy did and the scope of what this guy did.

This is 500 pages on two years of his life.

He had a 40 year career, you know, so that's, that's, that's a lot of books.

A lot of books.

And I don't think, you know, from following him, he never took an Extended vacation.

I know mainstream media would always say, oh, here's his comeback.

But, you know, we knew that wasn't true.

No, exactly.

He was a guy that recorded all the time and, you know.

Yeah.

Later years, he didn't come out with as many albums as he was for years.

He was coming out with an album a year, and then he didn't over the past few years.

But that didn't mean he wasn't working.

This is a guy that.

His life was around music.

And so not only do you have all the songs he did, but then you've got rehearsals and sound checks and everything like that.

This is a guy that I think was always looking forward to what he was going to release and what he was going to do.

And I think he said, what's your favorite.

People say, what's your favorite song?

The next one.

Well, yeah, because he always knew that what was waiting for him had the potential to be the most amazing thing he'd ever done.

And he grew as an artist.

And I think that's the saddest thing to most of us is the potential that was there.

Imagine what he would have been like as an elder statesman.

And we're missing that because he passed.

And that's the sad thing to me, and the toughest thing for me when I did the book was having to go through it and take out the parts that said Prince is and make it Prince was.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That broke my heart because, you know, I didn't change anybody's quote because that's what they said at that moment.

And I thought that's not my job to change somebody's quote.

But I had to go back and manually change every time I talked about Prince is the most dynamic, blah, blah, blah, to Prince was the most dynamic.

And that hurt.

It hurt my soul.

I mean, really literally hurt me.

Because it was confirmation to me that this isn't some goof and this isn't some play that he's doing or this isn't a Prince is dead type thing that he did before.

No, this is.

Prince really is not coming back.

And that hurts.

So that kind of stuff.

And it was a tough year for a lot of us, you know, coming.

Up on a year, more than a year and a half, and still really tough.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, but working on the book that year, just kind of cleaning things up was just very tough because, you know, it's very difficult.

And you know the old saying that you're not going to find out the whole truth about somebody unless it's told Anonymously or posthumously.

That's sort of true in some ways, you know, but I think that the.

The nice thing is people were very open before he passed, and they were not only open, they were honest.

And they wanted the story out.

They wanted the.

You know, and it's a good story.

It's not critical of him, other than the fact that, you know, there were times that he may have been so focused on his work that he ignored other things.

But outside of that, I don't think it's.

I wanted to write a book that he'd read and appreciate, and, you know, I wanted.

I really wanted him.

One of the saddest things to me, besides losing him, which obviously goes without saying, is painful, but that he can't read this book.

And I really wanted him to read this book because there's things in here that I don't.

I don't think he understands the effect he has on people in the arena.

He sees us cheering and stuff like this, but I don't think he understands how intimate his music is to so many of us.

Right.

Yeah.

And the personal relationship we have with his music and him through his music, I don't think.

I don't know if he ever grasped that.

And that's one sad thing, because, you know, he can be playing it, and he's a master of controlling the crowd, but he also related to every person in the arena on an individual basis.

And it wasn't like.

Just because we were all cheering didn't mean that it wasn't affecting each one of us personally, you know?

And I think that.

I don't know whether he understood that, and I'm hoping that somehow he understands that now.

When was the last time you saw him perform?

Wow.

I saw him.

I'm in Los Angeles.

I was lucky.

I got to see him in a lot of different.

Probably the last time I saw him perform was when he did the Jimmy Kimmel Show.

I was there for that, and that was fun.

And I didn't get to see the final tour, which I read, one tour I wanted to see.

I think it was at the Forum, and it was Janelle Monae open for him, and Sheila was on.

Shelley was on stage.

And then Stevie Wonder played with him, and it was Stevie Wonder's birthday.

It's Friday the 13th on top of that.

And all of a sudden you're hearing this riff going, and I don't know what we're going, this is a Cool riff.

This is a heavy, thick riff.

And all of a sudden you see Stevie Wonder rising out of the stage and you realize it's the riff for superstition.

And even just saying it, I get goosebumps because it was so good.

And just you just.

It was like a. I was like, maybe it's my imagination was like a two and a half or three hour concert, it seemed like.

And it was just so phenomenal.

And I wasn't too far back and it was just a great, great time.

But I used to see him when he played the glam slam out here.

That's right.

And he would play small shows and I would be in front of the stage or I went to see him in Vegas.

I saw him in Cork, Ireland, on a nude tour.

I was a big fan.

I didn't get to see him until Love Sexy.

I was never in a city where I could afford to see him until Love Sexy.

And saw him at the Forum, Forum, Sports Arena.

I don't remember where it was, but the Love Sexy Tour, and that was a phenomenal show.

The guy just did so many.

He was so good at not just the music, but the performance and the settings and the stage and his fashion and his concept of all art.

It just.

You know, I relate him to David Bowie a lot.

And the fact they both passed, you know, within months of each other is a double, double whammy, you know, because both of them understood art and music in a way that embraced the style of it.

And you can hear a song of his and you can picture how he would do the video or how he'd tell a story in your head already, you know, just by hearing a certain songs.

So it's.

It's funny, I talk to people and if I mention them like a Prince fan, and they go, yeah, I like Prince.

And they don't really know him.

I have.

It's like I can't connect to them almost.

It's like I can't relate to you completely.

But if.

But if I meet somebody and they say, yeah, they're Prince fan, and we start talking, you instantly have a 75% connection right there.

And you're just working on the last 25%.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

You'll start talking about lyrics with each other or tours, because you know this stuff and you're probably the kind of guy.

What I know about you is you'll see a documentary and you'll see a picture of Prince and you're.

They're talking about the Love Sexy tour and showing a picture of the Purple Rain tour and you're going, wait a second here.

That's the wrong picture, the wrong era.

And I think that I'm in that group of people that want it.

Right.

I think that's also where the book came from, is I wanted to make sure I got as much of this right when it came to a thorough examination of when and where and how.

Oh yeah, you've definitely pulled it together.

You have all the references which definitely, I mean, I could never pull that off.

You just have done an amazing job.

You can go to dwaynetudoll.com also Amazon.com and I've got a.

You know, we're going to wrap up pretty soon, but I wanted to ask you recent events, you know, the, the news of the music that Prince left behind, videos that were moved to out your area in California and, and also the big news that a lot of not, I shouldn't say a lot of the stuff, but some of the stuff, audio and video, had a lot of damage to it.

What do you take of this whole situation?

Well, I'd heard that before.

I mean, I'd heard from engineers in the past that, okay, it was not kept as well as it could and there were water leaks and things like that.

And yeah, you want to have.

This is historic stuff.

You know, it's like imagine somebody said, yeah, there was four or five albums by the Beatles that they recorded, but they kind of got ruined by water or something like that.

You'd be furious.

You'd be like, wait, what?

They had a bunch of albums that they recorded that we'll never hear?

Well, yeah, that could be.

That's the equivalent of this I have for the first day when I heard that the music was taken out of Paisley Park, I was upset, like, because I had a knee jerk reaction going, why?

Outrageous.

You know, that's where it belongs, that's its home.

And then I started thinking about it and I realized Iron Mountain, the place they took it to, has a pretty stellar reputation of being able to do this.

And this music needs to be archived properly by people that do this.

And Paisley park is no longer an active studio.

It's not.

It's a tour and it's a great.

I suggest anybody go up there.

It is a tour.

Now you take.

There's not an engineer that sits there working on this stuff.

So when you have this stuff that's just sitting there getting older every day, you really.

You're wasting what's there.

It really needs to be digitized.

It really needs to be cleaned up.

They're not going to get rid of the tapes.

The tapes will always be there, and they'll probably move the tapes back there.

But they have to archive this stuff in a way that preserves it, because there is stuff that really needs to be released or held onto for historical reference.

And if the family plans on making money off this, and I hope they do, they're going to have to find a way to do this properly.

There's equipment that was used for the original recordings that is no longer around.

That's tough to find.

Iron Mountain would be a place that would.

Would have that sort of thing.

Find it, use the best engineers, and make a digital copy of it in a way that's safe.

You know, as much, I think the reason why people get upset about the Paisley park thing is because it's a.

It's close to our heart and not say that Paisley park is near our heart.

It's nostalgia.

And we feel like, oh, it should be there.

Well, it's.

It's not.

If it's there, it might not last.

And if there's any problem there, it's gone.

Don't you want to have backups of this?

Yeah.

Don't you want to have a way of.

Of preserving this?

I know I would.

And I guarantee you that they had to have some sort of agreement to take this out of there, because you don't just pull up to a truck to the Paisley park with a truck saying, okay, load it up.

And I've tried that.

It doesn't work.

You have to have some sort of agreement with the family.

And there seem to be fighting and not checking with everybody.

And unfortunately, there's a big controversy about this.

But to me, it seems to make the most sense to have it somewhere that is guarded, that it can be properly archived and properly digitized by Google so that it can be used.

These are assets.

And if the family doesn't have Prince touring anymore, they're going to need to have some sort of revenue source, and this is it.

And here's the other thing.

It's not just music.

It's video.

There's tons of video in it.

There's a whole room of video in Paisley Park.

It's not just that it's photographs probably as well.

It's also rehearsals.

This man had tapes.

Every day of rehearsal would be three or four or five or six or seven cassette tapes of rehearsals.

Now there's boxes of that stuff.

I would be very happy if they, if the family said, you know what, while we're trying to figure this out, we're going to release some rehearsals.

I mean, I would buy them.

Nice idea.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, if they said, we're going to have a subscription thing for 12 months and you can subscribe for the entire year and every month you get one or two 90 minute rehearsals that are just him jamming with a band on different eras, I'd be like, take my money, take my money.

And I think people would enjoy that.

So I don't think the family quite understands that that's a viable source of income right now.

And I'm hoping they figure that out because there are ways that they could be doing stuff while they're waiting for negotiations to work out with Warner Brothers or whoever else it is, you know, and personally, I kind of hope that they all go back to Warner Brothers.

I would like to see it all under one house.

You know, I know there's people that don't always like that, but it seems to me Warner Brothers is never going to give up their catalog.

So maybe you should go toward them and find a way so they could start releasing box sets of all his career, you know, because he had some vital stuff after he left war, Warner Brothers, musicology, things like that.

I would love to see those kind of songs on a greatest hits album.

They should be a career retrospective and you can't do that easily unless it's at one place.

And the family should always have a say in this.

Not just hand it off blindly.

But there's got to be a way to combine everything he's done and make it into one big package so that it can be.

It can be properly archived and properly re released with new foot, new songs and new whatever, you know, that's just.

It's driving me batty because if you don't do it soon, it's going to be forgotten.

Michael Jackson, the albums are coming out with his stuff.

People are not really that interested because.

As you were talking, that thought was going through my mind.

I wasn't going to say his name, but yeah, exactly like that.

Yeah, I like, I like mj.

I grew up something.

I grew up.

I grew up at Jackson 5 listening to him.

But he's being forgotten and it's only been like nine years.

And not that he's being forgotten, but he's being overlooked and put to side as a different era.

If Prince wants to continue, if the people want Prince to continue to be vital, they're going to have to find a way to make the next generation understand how important he was.

And I'm hoping my book and books like this do help people extend the legacy of somebody.

Because Prince was important and what he did was important, and he crossed boundaries and he opened doors for people that would never have had doors open for them before.

And I think he deserves to be, you know, important for years to come.

But unless they find a way to.

To take it.

I don't say take advantage, unless they find a way to do something with his archive properly.

Right.

You know, and I was actually.

I like the Pearl Rain Deluxe cd, but what was surprising to me was including Roadhouse Garden on there, because that should really have been in a Roadhouse Garden album, you know, with other stuff that he was planning because he had talked about making a Roadhouse Garden album.

So it was odd to me, me, even though it was recorded during that period, to have that.

It was, to me, showed me that they didn't quite understand that there's a larger picture with pieces that can fit.

You know, we'd all like to get the rest of the Dream Factory album or Crystal Ball album, you know, that he decided not to come out with.

There's all sorts of pieces of his projects that never made it out.

And as a fan, I want to complete that album.

I would love to be able to say, oh, these are the eight songs that should have been on that album.

I will add them to my collection.

So now I have the bigger thing.

Or when he comes out with a Sign of the Times Deluxe, have the Crystal Ball CD in there and have the Dream Factory stuff and have the Camille and all that stuff in there.

And you just hope that they have the foresight and the understanding of his career to do that.

Unfortunately, the people that are putting these things together at Warner Brothers probably weren't around when Prince was there.

And they don't necessarily understand who Jill Jones is and why she was vital to what he did or who each one of these people were.

And that's the thing we're fighting right now is trying to figure out how to make sure that the people and the voices of the people that were there are told and that their stories help people understand what went on during that time.

And again, that's why.

That's one of the reasons I wrote the book, is because I thought that some of these people were being overlooked and their stories are being overlooked, and some great stories there's things in the book that I still look at and laugh out loud about.

We're friends with all the guys from the time.

And I was reading your quotes from Jelly Bean, and I could just see his facial expressions as I'm reading the words.

I said, you got it perfectly, Jelly Bean.

The cool thing is I had.

I did not do the interview with Jellybean that was done for Uptown magazine and Pierre Nilsson and Alan Freed, who was the person that did the interview, who were both friends of mine, said, do you want the actual tape?

And I said, yeah, right, right.

And so then I reached out to Jellybean and I said, I'm doing this book and I would love to use your quotes from this.

And he didn't question it.

He said, absolutely, and signed off.

And I want to make sure that anybody who I was given access to things that they didn't know me.

I reached out to them.

I wanted to make sure I talked to every.

Retalked to every person I interviewed and.

And told them, the book is coming out in a year.

I want to get your permission.

And one or two of the people said, you know what?

Looking back, Prince just passed.

I don't want to.

I don't want to be involved.

Okay?

And I honored that.

I thought, you know what?

That's fair.

They were like.

Some people said, this is my friend, and it's just too soon for me to make a comment about it.

Even if I'd interviewed him years ago, they still said, it's too soon.

And I thought, absolutely.

We've lost an icon, you've lost a friend.

It's my job to honor that.

So I would make sure that I honored any person that said.

And it wasn't many.

It was one or two that said that.

But I thought, you know what?

But the people that.

The cool thing was the people that I reached out to, like Jelly Bean and things like that, said, absolutely.

And so I'm looking forward to getting them the copy of the book, because I agree, Jelly Bean's voice is very distinct.

Oh, yeah.

And having him tell some of the stories of the time is a delight, because you can hear him saying, let me tell you.

And there's something about him that you just can't help but like.

And, you know, I'll tell you quickly, the last time.

Time we.

We were.

It was a few months ago here in Connecticut.

The time played at the casino, and we hung out with the guys up at the hotel suite after the show.

And wow, it was the first time I've ever heard Morris Day talk in his voice without being in the so called character.

I mean, he.

We were talk.

This is.

We were talking about John Blackwell before he passed and you know, obvious, you know, with Prince and everything in Morse.

I was listening to Morris and I was thinking, wow, I've never heard him talk like in his actual speaking voice.

That's great.

Yeah, I did not.

I'm not going to interview Morris.

I really wanted to.

I just.

Yeah, either have I. I've never had a chance.

I think he's.

I've seen him interview and I used plenty of his quotes from other things, but I just have not had a chance.

I'm hoping sometime in the future again, I'm hoping that what happens with this book is that there's a number of people that may not have wanted to talk because they didn't know me.

You know, who's this guy?

He was some fan who's writing a book.

And I hope that they read this and they go, okay, now I understand where he's going with this and there's an honest view to this and that they want to talk to me for future things.

I would love to do an updated version of this book with, you know, because I'm assuming over the next year there's going to be new stuff that comes out.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Yeah, I would love to eventually, you know, a couple years down the road, do a deluxe version of this book that has, you know, extra quotes, extra dates, extra information, corrections.

Because I'll tell you, I know there's probably some mistakes.

I'm not going to say this is, you know, the Ten Commandments.

There's, there's boundary.

I know there's.

I can look at it and I can see there's one or two things where I had a typo that was a mistake and I was like, ooh, got to fix that.

But you know What?

It's a 550 page book.

There's going to be, you know, there's going to be a couple window dressings that are not quite right, you know, very minor for the most part.

It's backed by the dates from the work orders from Warner Brothers, from personal journals and all that other stuff.

So it's kind of, you know, and then the quotes.

I think that the cool thing to me was hearing people say, oh, no, we recorded that then I remember that because we were going on tour right after this and you're going, whoa, really?

That's different than I expected.

And so I ended up moving dates that were like the ladder was earlier than I thought.

And Temptation was later than I thought.

That kind of stuff is fun to find out when you can start placing things properly with confidence.

Yeah.

And it's definitely an incredible read.

And you must have it for the completest Prince fan and those that just love Prince.

And you can go to dwaynetudoll.com d u a n e t u d a h l.com order through Amazon.

You can read the the online version of it or you can get a hard copy sent to you.

And Dwayne, thanks so much for coming by.

You know, you're a great guest.

Amazing to talk with and talking with you all these years, this is great.

I've been wanting to talk to you about this stuff.

Not just this, but for years.

And again to tell you not only am a fan of the music, but I'm a fan of yours.

I think that you people, like you bring something to.

I know we're not doing an interview about you, but seriously, what you do is you find these people and you have them tell their stories in a way that's honest and open.

And I used information from some of your stories and I remember for a long time been asking you, when are you posting that?

When you.

I know that's how I get to know you is by by nudging you, saying, is that gonna be online?

No, we, you know, no, I'm not comparing anything to Paisley park and Prince's stuff, but I started to listen to some of the interviews that I did and you know, there is some degradation and stuff like that.

I gotta take care.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Well, this is the thing.

And people need to understand that this stuff is going to start to dissolve deep as tape.

And if it starts to dissolve, it never comes back.

And also memories fade.

All this stuff needs to be documented.

And I can't wait till some of these people start writing books.

I can't wait till some of the members of the revolution write books.

I can't wait till people in the MPG write books.

I want this to happen.

I love the revolution.

I love the mpg.

There's so many eras to prints I love.

But I want to know.

And as a completist, I want to know things.

I enjoyed Maite's book.

I enjoyed Steve Park's book.

I enjoyed Afshin's book.

I want to know this stuff.

And so to me if I have a small part in extended his legacy.

I'm elated.

I'm absolutely over the moon about that.

So thank you for giving me the option to talk to you and for inviting me on your show.

Yeah.

We got to have you on future dates.

I'm sure you're going to have a lot of projects coming up.

And we're going to go out with some of the music you detailed from Purple Rain right here on wvof.

The Up Room with Dwayne.

I was going to say Dwayne Tudall.

Yes, it is, too.

Joe Kelly and Dwayne Tudall here.

Thanks so much, Dwayne.

Thank you.