Sign o’ the Times (1987)
On the 34th anniversary of the album recording of I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man, the estate released a remastering of the original demo to promote its placement on the forthcoming Sign o’ the Times box set. A surprising element of this previously unheard recording is how the singer’s refusal to “take the place of your man” only lasts until the final chorus when he relents, adding “…but I’ll try, yeah, I’ll sure as hell try”. Probably a bigger surprise though is how this fully-fledged song from 1979 didn’t crop up on his second or third album. It could have slotted seamlessly into Dirty Mind but maybe Prince always had bigger plans and had to wait until his technical chops matched his vision. In 1986 he ditched the song’s new wave garb for a technicolour coat of country, rock, blues and 60s pop, woven with intricate strands of electric and acoustic guitar, and brocaded with handclaps. Everything is held together by the hi-hat that doesn’t let up, even throughout the extended blues coda which helps keep the listener tantrically charged and biting their bottom lip for a third of the song, on the edge of an explosion that finally comes at the six-minute mark when the main refrain returns with a bullet and a scream. Given the lyrics’ original ending, could this be the point in the story where he gives in to the woman’s advances? In later acoustic renditions, such as on the Musicology and Piano and a Microphone tours, I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man remains a firm refusal of a rebound romance. But now I hear the quiet section on the album version as the singer steeling his nerve and shoring up his reserves of will power before his defences finally crumble in a scream of pent-up passion. I’m just glad that he changed the opening line from the intial draft. Keen eyes may have spotted in the handwritten lyrics (released by the estate on the same day as the demo) Prince originally opened with the line “She was only fifteen…” before crossing it out and replacing it with “It was only last June”. The music video with Cat, taken from the Sign o’ the Times movie, could have had a very different vibe indeed.