December 1992 - Q magazine

Paisley Park Prince's studio and office HQ at 7801 Audubon Road-that's Paisley Park to you, squire - where amplifiers are left on 24 hours a day "to prolong active life and sound fidelity". Last year's electric bill was $65,000.

You might not think this blandly anonymous edifice would be rock music's most mythical palace of fantasy. But yes, this really is Paisley Park, Minneapolis, USA. Prince is your host, and Q's Mat Snow is your tour guide. (One of them, however, hasn't turned up.)

LIKE SO much in life, the reality of Paisley Park proves a little different from the ad. Where is the laughing girl on the see-saw so alluringly depicted in Prince's song Paisley Park from his album Around The World In A Day? And the woman who sits all alone by the pier? The "colorful people whose hair on one side is swept back" (whose smile, moreover, "speaks of profound inner peace")?

They are nowhere to be seen, and nor is, as promised, Paisley Park to be found "in your heart." Take, instead, a 20-minute drive down the Interstate 5 highway out of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. Yawning miles of what would once be called The atrium, definitely the atrium. sunrise industry line the route, thrusting new soft- ware companies and similar occupying elegant, dis-creet premises set in acres of landscaped greenery. And at 7801 Audubon Road we find another of these edifices, a building too new to convey the faintest whiff of history, yet destined to become in the full- ness of time one of rock's greatest stately homes.

Unlike the royal residences, however, no flag is raised to announce that the regal personage is in. You take your chances and many bands book themselves into the studios at Paisley Park in the flimsy hope that Prince will happen by, like what he hears, and swiftly pen a classic tune just for them - and those chances are slim or none. Should Prince drop into Paisley Park, Q's team is informed by our guide that under no circumstance may we photo- graph or even approach him. Who knows what would have happened had we ignored his injunction; Prince's conspicuous absence ensures we'll never find out.

THOUGH THAT yellow BMW never pulls into

the Paisley Park driveway to disgorge the master of this palace of sound, hints of his presence or omnipresence are everywhere. Ushered into the

aqua blue reception area, the eye is drawn to a trophy cabinet bearing just a sample of the multifarious hon- ours bestowed upon the petit Prince - his Oscar for the Purple Rain soundtrack, his gold record for producing Sheila E's album Romance 1600, and the State of Minnesota proclamation of Paisley Park Day.

It was on September 11, 1987 that Paisley Park was officially opened and we were treated to the sort of technical specifications to make hardened musos drool: costing $10 million, the studio and rehearsal complex was designed to Prince's very particular specifications. The complex boasts three studios: C, whose budget-priced 24 tracks offer demo standard to the perfectionist, or quite enough to be going along with to any other artist; today, in October 1992, the re-formed British art-funk band Shriekback are in . and the festooned doves.