Thread by @anildash

This is the fun track: today’s my turn to share a #PrinceTwitterThread, one of the most fun traditions amongst Prince fans. Today is a celebration of Power Fantastic, a fan favorite, and a standout for this year’s deluxe re-release of his 1987 masterwork, Sign O’ The Times.

On its own, Power Fantastic as a song teaches us about confronting fears, about intimacy, about seeing the creative process. And maybe about power. In the context of Prince’s entire career, though, it opens a window on so much more.

Take a moment and listen to Prince's warm-hearted band directions, the extraordinary and piercing vocals, the deeply personal feeling of this performance — it almost feels like we’re eavesdropping on a personal moment. You've never heard Prince like this.

In truth, what we’re hearing _is_ a personal moment, really. On March 19, 1986, Prince invited his band the Revolution to his new home to record in his beautiful new home studio for the first time ever. It was a one of the few times they'd ever do so.

Prince had just built this new home, the grown-up house that he’d live in for the next two decades. @JeffKatzPhotog captured Prince in his then-new living room, and you can tell from his beatific vibe that he was in a place of extraordinary creativity.

Everyone present was sharing something of themselves. @TheRevolution were at their peak, building this jazzy new song on the foundation of an earlier track that @wendyandlisa had composed while in the south of France in 1985, called Carousel.

But for this recording, Lisa Coleman sat upstairs at Prince’s piano in new his living room, connected only by headphones to the rest of the band who were downstairs in the studio. Longtime engineer Susan Rogers sat the controls for the recording console. Together, apart.

And usually, Prince liked to record his vocals totally alone, handling the controls himself while sitting at the mic. But since there wasn’t room for that this time, he sat in the control room with Susan Rogers — tucked away facing the corner of the room with just a microphone.

The track we hear isn’t the first time Power Fantastic has been released; the song was also one of the new tracks on Prince’s first greatest hits collection in 1993. But this is the first we hear the song’s striking musical intro — and Prince’s affectionate direction to the band.

Hearing Prince guide the band on what to play leads us to one of the recurring tensions around Prince’s outrageously abundant creativity: credit. Wendy & Lisa built the initial foundation for this song, but their credit was omitted upon its release in 1993.

It wasn’t uncommon for members of the Revolution to not get proper songwriting credits on some of the songs created in that era. At times this was simply due to the frantic pace and “we’ll just make more music tomorrow” spirit of the moment. But mistakes happpened.

As years passed, and the listed credits had significant financial & business impact on people’s careers, what seemed like small omissions at the time started to loom increasingly large — especially as Prince centered his focus on artistic ownership and control. And, well, power.

Against this backdrop, rock-centric critics also began to ascribe far _too much_ credit to others for the increasing ambition & complexity of Prince’s mid-80s work. Prince had ventured from his funk/pop roots to jazzier work that earned the attention of no less than Miles Davis.

Prince’s “discovery” of, and by, Miles Davis and other jazz giants was too often credited to the influence of Prince’s white collaborators and bandmates by absurd 80s (and later) writers. Prince grew up as the Black son of two Black jazz musicians in the 60s. He knew Miles Davis.

That dynamic was particularly acute when Power Fantastic was only an unreleased outtake circulating amongst fans; Matt Blistan’s scintillating muted trumpet was often erroneously credited to Miles Davis, implying that a composition this rich must have been someone else's work.

Both Prince *and* the Revolution were given too little credit.

But now, let's listen to what Prince is singing — the music itself could be described as a “power fantastic”. Prince’s words, seen in his own handwriting here, could be describing the power of the magic Prince & the Revolution had in the studio together.

We also get a perfect way of understanding how extraordinary Prince’s vocal gifts were. Listen here to the two takes overlaid, and you can hear both how precisely he could hit the exact same pitch every time, *and* the differences in the choices he made in phrasing and tone.

Power Fantastic was one of the songs that helped build the myth of Prince’s legendary “vault”. Traded amongst diehard fans, it was one of a handful of songs that proved Prince’s archive held work that was equal to any of the greatest pop music ever recorded.

Appropriately, Prince held the track closely, choosing not to include it on any album until he could share it in the moments of maximum intimacy with his fans. Its initial release in 1993 was only for fans willing to buy an entire box set just to collect his b-sides and rarities.

Prince didn’t play Power Fantastic live for nearly a decade after its belated release. When he finally unveiled it, more than 15 years after its recording, it was on his own Paisley Park stage, in front of the small group of fans he invited in for one of his annual celebrations.

Even in the years that followed, the handful of times that Prince performed Power Fantastic were almost always at the private soundchecks where he only let in those who followed his work most closely. This was for those he referred to as "fams", not fans. Family.

For his final tour, Prince sat down with just a piano and microphone. In these shows, he set aside his mysterious public persona and directly engaged his audience in the unfiltered way that, until then, had been limited to just private soundchecks and aftershows.

That final tour began, of course, at Paisley Park. Prince had sang, “Paisley Park is in your heart”. And in letting the people into Paisley Park, he let them into his heart.

At the debut performance of that tour, Prince paused to explicitly give credit to Lisa Coleman for the influence of her “crazy chords” on his own playing. Then he went on to say, “I met Miles Davis who came to my house, and he played similar chords.”

What became clear was that, when Prince prince played a song like “Power Fantastic”, he was mirroring the playing of one of his favorite collaborators, and sharing his love for that work with the audience he trusted most. He was letting us into his home, and heart.

Minor G is, according to Prince, the chord of pleasure.

Back in 2002, Prince let a couple of dozen of us into his soundcheck at Lincoln Center. He sat with us for a while, then after chatting a bit, he went up on stage. A few songs in, he played Power Fantastic, then slyly asked, "we're just rehearsing... is that alright?" It was.