‘Live 4 Love (Early Version)’ Track Review
‘Live 4 Love (Early Version)’ is an amazing snapshot into the creative genius and working of Prince. A final, polished version caps off the 1991 ‘Diamonds And Pearls’ album, complete with rapping from NPG member Tony M, and a sizzling guitar solo to close the song and album. It’s one of my favourite songs from the album and, in my opinion, the perfect song to close ‘D&P’; very few closing Prince tracks reach the stratosphere of ‘Live 4 Love’. It has a high energy, lyrics touching upon family and war, and an augmented intro borrowed from his own unreleased ‘We Got The Power’ from 1988.
A previously unreleased version of the song was released just recently, as promo for the upcoming ‘D&P’ super deluxe edition box set. It’s one of 47 previously unreleased songs included on the set, and one of six released in the run up to the box set. ‘Alice Through The Looking Glass’ was previously my purple highlight of the preview tracks, but once I sunk my ears into the sonic landscape of ‘Live 4 Love (Early Version)’, my favourite soon changed. I was interested to hear what this take would sound like, wondering whether it was at all like the early version from the ‘Diamonds And Pearls Beginnings’ bootleg. As far as I can recall, the single release is different — at the very least it runs longer with a runtime of over seven minutes.
Not only that, but the musical arrangement is incredibly sparse, slower and less produced. Gone is the reused intro, instead opting for a count in. Gone is the soaring distorted solo at its climax, replaced instead with simple but addicting noodles spread throughout the song. Even rapper Tony M is absent from the track, with only Prince’s vocals being heard here. At some points it feels very intimate, with the whispered rhetorical question of “how can eye die / for love?” being a particular stand out moment of the song for me.
The original album version is one I’m extremely familiar with, so I can feel all these differences in my bones. I play it as often as I play ‘The Flow’ from Prince’s [Love Symbol] album. Hearing a slower take on the song unsettled me at first, but as all these new and unheard elements began to show themselves, it started to amaze me. Another particular standout is the new lyrics present in the song, which I presume were changed for the final album version. With Prince being such a powerhouse and so prolific, I think people can easily imagine a song like ‘Live 4 Love’ being cut in one take. Prince could easily make music like this in his sleep. But here we see a different side of him, giving us a different version of a song we already know that’s contrastingly different. It’s as if he’s figuring it out, playing around, having fun with himself ~ and that’s just with the lyrics. As far as the music goes, a lot of it resembles the final version, bar the tempo and missing guitar solo. Until you get to the last couple of minutes, that is.
As previously mentioned, ‘The Flow’ is one of my favourite Prince tracks, coming from the ’92 [Love Symbol] album. Even though it’s a short track, running at two minutes long, it has an interesting history. It was first performed live in July 1990 before being recorded that September, two years before it’s official release, during Prince’s Nude Tour. Played in medley with concert opener ‘The Future’, the band swiftly segues into ‘The Flow’ with keyboardist Rosie Gains providing backing vocals behind Tony M’s rapping. Prince’s band through the Nude Tour of ’90 was a prototype version of his New Power Generation, and it’s at these concerts where we get a sense of what’s to come, as both Rosie Gains and Tony M would be incredibly prominent vocalists on ‘D&P’ after release.
Despite taking two years to see a proper release, ‘The Flow’ is strangely present on this early version of ‘Live 4 Love’, much to my pleasant surprise. And it again feels like Prince is playing around, having fun, testing the water to see how both songs would sound if played back to back — as far as I’m aware, this never happened in a live Prince show. ‘Live 4 Love’ practically morphs into ‘The Flow’ on this song, but Tony M isn’t present at all, with Prince taking 100% of the vocal duties. In fact, the only other musicians present on the early version are Michael Bland on drums and Sonny T on bass; both members of the NPG and often dubbed the “New Power Trio” when together.
‘The Flow’ and ‘Live 4 Love’ are similar here as both are extremely high energy, fully produced and layered on their respective album releases. On this take however, both are slowed down with sparse production and a sense of treading carefully. Again, it’s odd hearing a song you love so much for it’s high tempo being slowed down, but this take offers a unique glimpse into Prince’s recording process. Playing the album version of both songs beside this early version can show you what worked, what didn’t, what changed, and what stayed. Above all it shows that, despite his air of mystery and immense talent, Prince was a human creative just like us. It’s easy to shroud him in a purple glow, and there is immense genius and ingenuity to be praised. But as us purple fams like to imagine every song was done in one take, born out of a dream and tracked in an hour, ‘Live 4 Love (Early Version)’ shows the meticulous trial and error that occurred to give us one of Prince’s greatest closing songs on the second best selling album of his career.
