Sheena Easton and Prince

He took a break from recording and turned on the TV. She was performing on The Tonight Show. He liked her voice. Never anything sexual.

I think it must’ve been purely sexual.

Prince didn’t like or even respect other singers/songwriters/musicians.

Prince’s relationships with all of his female collaborators was always odd.

He sort of wanted to be with them, sort of wanted to be them, and sort of wanted to befriend them, and sort of wanted to boss them around and belittle them.

Reports all concur that for every nasty word or controlling critical comment lobbed at the women he worked with or slept with (or both), he would say or do or offer something very encouraging or generous (Gemini, they can be two-faced).

Imo he never quite sorted out his ambiguity toward women as free individuals with inferiority—it’s like he couldn’t find the middle ground of respect, between awestruck worship and just plain using and abusing out of spite.

^obviously that should read ‘inTeriorty’. Not a Freudian slip, just my tiny keyboard and cracked screen combo

I think it was the beginning of the end of her career. The world didn’t like a slutty Easton

I remember that when Nancy Reagan was trying to put together a “Just Say No to Drugs” mega concert, she refused to invite any acts known to have had a drug past or present.

But then she also refused to invite Sheena because of her Sugar Walls song, which had nothing to do with drugs.

The concert never got off the ground

She was very pretty, with a pleasant, non-descript voice that could be plugged into a number of musical settings effectively while never outshining his own singing, and probably most important of all, she was even shorter than him. The ideal duet partner for him.

[quote] Prince didn’t like or even respect other singers/songwriters/musicians.

That isn’t true.

I liked those songs when I was a little kid, even though I guess I didn't realize the 'dirtiness' of Prince back then.

He wrote “Sugar Walls” about her vagina - that would indicate an element of sexuality to their relationship.

Prince was like a gay scene queen. He took these marginally talented women and treated them like divas and stars - even when he could have worked with very talented women.

R11 he did work with musically-talented women, though?

To name but a few: Wendy Melvoin & Lisa Coleman, Mavis Staples, Sheila E., Gayle Chapman, Rosie Gaines, Candy Dulfer, Ida Nielsen..

R10, he may just have written that sing but not specifically about her

Prince: Jehovah's witness, musical genius -AND- a libertine par excellence. So yes a few contradictions.

I had friend who worked for him for FOUR MONTHS painting and re-painting a large windmill on his Chanhassen property. Purple each time. Color not quite right, new formula, do it again. and again. Never bitchy, always friendly but the color was not quite right. After spending all summer and at least 50% of his time painting the windmill, and as a professional contractor was paid accordingly, Prince decided he didn't like the windmill after all and tore it down.

R14 fantastic anecdote, exactly what one expects from His Purpleness!

Was it a windmill with furnished usable rooms inside? Or a purely decorative structure?

Per my friends description it was three stories tall, over forty feet. Lower right corner in this photo. He loved working for him as there was never any pressure to work faster or quibbles about money. Just an absolute insistence that the color be perfect.

[quote]I think it was the beginning of the end of her career. The world didn’t like a slutty Easton

I, on the other hand, think it gave her a few more years she might not have had. Her "sexy" period began around '84.

But she never struck me as self-directed. She needed others to provide the material and determine the direction, and it shows. Her musical output was all over the place.

If I were to pin her fade on one factor, it would be the restructuring/all-but-dissolution of EMI around '87. They had always seemed solidly behind her. She was not so fortunate at her new label, MCA, although her first release for them, The Lover in Me, sold respectably.

A bit off topic...Nick Hornby has written a book and Prince and Charles Dickens which was released this week. It's about their genius, talent and commonalities between the artists. It sounds very interesting...I'm surprised Hornby is a Prince fan.

“The Arms of Orion,” the Prince and Sheena duet, should have gotten higher than #36 on the charts, right? It’s not the greatest song in the world but at least “Top 20” material IMHO.

Of course, it’s the third single from the album and there is no music video and the song isn’t prominently featured in the movie and the world was probably exhausted by Batman hype by the time this song made it on the radio…. But still!!

Jill Jones was one of the most talented young female singers Prince ever worked with, and she gave him so much work on backups etc. as well as being a Muse. She's underrated, though, and surprisingly few non-fans know or remember just how much she did for and with Prince.

CAT! We need you to rap.

Been listening to this off and on for a couple of days, Susan Rogers was Prince's engineer for many years she is interviewed at Sunset Sound about their work together.

Without scores of women offering Prince either their technical and creative work, ideas or inspiration, as well as fan adoration, he wouldn't have had a career.

Watch the video at r22 and shut the fuck up r23.

Susan Rogers tells the whole story which is opposite of what you just wrote you dumb ass.

R24 you need to come up with a new insult - “dumb ass” makes it very easy to identify you.

R19 it's too bad that hype backlash soured so many people on the Batman album, because it was really creative and kind of a deep dark take for a comic-book OST.

I mean, 'The Future'? 'Electric Chair'? 'Trust'? All daring songs to cut considering the assignment.

Since the rumors about Prince and Madonna fucking in the 80s turned out to be true, I'm sure Sheena fell under Prince's seductive spell and opened her Scottish Lotus Flower for him at Paisley Park as well

R5 not true in the US. She had an increased popularity surge when she turned sexy.

R11 Sheena Easton, Chaka Khan, Mavis Staples were established and had careers before and after Prince.

R21 Cat is an absolute nutcase. I briefly sent her a friend request and friended her on facebook. She's a mess. She went ballistic when Boy George joked about sleeping with Prince.

Best Bond theme ever

R31 I love that song. It literary got stuck at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 staying in that position for several weeks during the fall of 1981.

I remember an interview with Sheena in which she said she developed her vocal power (such as it is) by singing along to Streisand albums.

Any pop star of the 80s/early 90s lived to be touched by Prince’s genius, and I believed he really enjoyed the collaborations.

I like the Prince-written "Eternity". It's an unusual song given unusual production and vocal treatment. I think it's great. The video is meh. Mostly because Sheena's costumes weren't to my liking. Fabio is in the video.

Here is another take on "Eternity" from a couple years later. Very similar production; the main difference is Chaka Khan's grittier voice. This particular Khan album deserved better than it got. (There's a second Prince-written song on it, and that one has guest trumpet by Miles Davis.)

r35 I really like Chaka's C.K. album. I like her version of Eternity just not as well. Especially as the song progresses, her vocals aren't great on that song - which is rare for her. I like the other Prince song on the album - Sticky Wicked and the single "Baby Me" (my favorite from the release).

Sheena has said she thinks 101 is her best recorded vocal. I like the Prince (Uptown) remix.

When asked what made their professional relationship so fruitful when so many of the ladies he worked with saw just one hit at best, she said, "You know, I didn't know him as well as people would make it out to be. People thought, 'Sheena Easton and Prince—they must be having an affair.' But I did know him well enough to know he loved to write and produce. He's very prolific. God forbid, when that man passes and they go in there. He's got quite a vault.

"When he'd write a song, he'd just go down to the studio and record it. A lot of writers would record stuff on a little two-track and then put it away, and if they were going to use it then they would pull it out and fully record it. He owned his own studio, so he just go down there and write and doodle on a 48-track. He'd sit around and noodle on full studio equipment. So we had stuff there that was great stuff. And he'd play it and I'd go, 'That's great'—and he wouldn't use it.

"I think he knew it wasn't for him, so he would send to the artist he believed would do it best. Like when I first did 'Sugar Walls,' I came into the studio. David Leonard, who was also his engineer, and we were working in separate studios. He said, 'Prince sent over a track for you. We saw you on The Tonight Show the night before and Prince said 'Ya, I gotta write something for that girl.' And so he sent over 'Sugar Walls,' and it was one of those things where it was like, 'Here it is. If you want to do it, here's my number. Then when we worked in the studio, we got along really well. We cracked each other up, we made each other laugh.

"[After that], he really liked my voice and thought we should do more stuff. Then occasionally he'd ask if I wanted to come in and listen to stuff. That's how we did 'U Got The Look.' 'U Got the Look' was a track he'd basically finished for himself. It was just a Prince track. He said, 'Do you want to just come in and sing some backup vocals on the choruses?' So I went into the studio, and because I didn't know I was singing against him (sings parts!), I was all over the place—and he said he kind of liked that, so he expanded it into a duet.

Songs like "Eternity" are what helped kill Sheena's career.

Who'd want to have sex with Prince? He's gross.

I would have had sex with Prince, if the opportunity presented itself.

Ew.

R40/R41 Prince had serious game. It didn't matter that he was little and a bit of a sleaze, because unlike most men, he worked out how to talk to women and get deep with them in a way that made them feel listened to and seen, so they wanted to fuck him. Rare gift.

I like the U Got The Look (Long Look)

When I was fourteen, and even now if he were still alive, I would have fully jumped feet first into his life being a Paisley satin trench coat wearing member of his entourage, being his "assistant" and in an R Kelly situation

Thanks R38, great interview!

Anyone else see Sheena play live at Long Beach Pride?

R37, I've always hated that song. Even now, it sounds so dated and so unlike Sheena's other songs.