Why Did Prince & The Revolution Split? Engineer Susan Rogers Shares. Sunset Sound Roundtable

Clip from the amazing interview with Prince recording engineer Susan Rogers on what she witnessed during the transition of bands for Prince.

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[levieenrose]

Prince and the Revolution fit like a glove. Personally I think he did his best work with the Revolution. It was, and remains to today, fresh and highly creative.

[chippy]

Susan, who worked so closely with Prince for an extended period of time, seems to have a great deal of insight into the way he was thinking at the time. The one thing she said that struck me as quite sad is that Prince had a distrust of stability, trust and love. This must be why so many of his songs reflect this theme. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with Prince’s devoted purple army.

[avace]

Having seen both bands live in the 80s, I can say that I love both equally for different reasons

[RastaSaiyaman]

Wendy said in interviews that she knew something was up when during the rehearsals for the “Parade” tour, Prince had expanded the band, to incorporate members of Protégé bands such as The Time (Jerome Benton), The family (Eric Leeds and Atlanta bliss) and Sheila E. (Miko Weaver)

What Prince was doing was basically road test what became the first NPG line up. BrownMark said that Prince asked him to stay on, along with Doctor Fink. Making them the only revolutionaries to become NPG members. Mark declined the offer.

And yes, I know people say that the band wasn't the NPG, but the “LoveSexy” band. But with both Doctor and Mark calling it the NPG and the LoveSexy album opening with “Welcome to the New Power generation” and the band themselves wearing outfits with “NPG” embossed on them, I tend to go with what Mark and Doctor are saying.

These days, the scrubs that Doctor wears on stage are NPG-era scrubs, signalling that he was part of both bands.

[kevinpayton]

I'm always a fan of Prince's music but my favorite era of his was with the Revolution, no disrespect to the New Power Generation. The NPG made great music with him too.

[tonyabrahams]

Susan Rogers is a very heartfelt articulate and interesting woman, could listen to her all day

[dxwallace]

Susan was the ultimate "fly on the wall" as pertains to telling all the great Prince stories. She has told so many little nuances, like when she first started with Prince, Jesse Johnson, was so nice and helpful to her, he showed her how Prince like his drums mixed and so forth.

[recipehacker]

This woman is brilliant. So thoughtful. Love her reflections.

[ms.capricorn]

I am a fan of Sheila E's solo music/albums and her collaborative music with Prince.

[konstantinkoverchenko]

Prince kept evolving. Looking back at the timeline of his career, each phase was incredible.

[giri.goyo_yt]

So thankful for Susan. What a beautiful, honest ear and voice to illustrate Prince's talent, heart and intentions.

[hauntological]

Susan is an amazing woman with incredible insight. I would dearly love her to pen a biography or even an autobiography about her time spent with Prince.

[tomgebarowski]

I preferred The Revolution, but his other backup bands were good too. Wendy & Lisa should make a comeback as a duo.
They were very creative & talented!

[barneymiller]

She's fabulous. I learn more about Prince and more about making music from her interviews than from almost anyone else.

[johnbrowneyes]

I really love the Prince music from 78 thru 89.
Bought all the 12” singles and collected the B sides. Batman soundtrack was cool.

[OmarJano]

So hooked to these episodes. The conversations are on another level!

[sttarch]

Sign is one of my fav albums. I've watched the DVD 100 times.

[wolfie]

She’s so intelligent on all levels you can tell by her descriptions of things

[djmylesmatisse]

Going deeper, tensions and stresses between band members and Prince involved overworking and underpaying, not using the band on many recording sessions throughout the years as well as Prince not bringing the band members into the songwriting side of things enough so that they could get their creative side fulfilled. A combination of many factors led to band unhappiness.

[DonnyNoMarie]

IMO, what Susan said was part of the reason for the split. Prince had arrived. He no longer needed The Revolution to reach the mountain top and he could no longer manipulate them with the promise of "when we make it big." Like Pepe said, "Prince would use you until he used you up."