From Fingerprint To Prince: The Rise Of The New Power Generation

Prince was a pop maestro, and a pop maestro requires a consummate backing band. For Prince in the '90s that was The New Power Generation (The NPG), successors to The Revolution.

After participating in Minneapolis' epic Prince tribute last year, The NPG decided to take their "celebration" of the late musician on the road. Now the nine-piece will hit Bluesfest.

The NPG's music director and keyboardist, Morris Hayes, refers to the collective as "the funk jukebox". Indeed, The NPG's Princely repertoire is even more expansive than that of the recently reunited The Revolution, he says, unwittingly perpetuating the Purple One's traditional inter-band competitiveness. "With The Revolution, when they left, they left with the records they had done. They didn't have to play NPG music. But The NPG had to play Revolution music, because that was all Prince music. And so we had to know a lotta material." The NPG's vocalists in Australia will include Gett Off MC Tony Mosley plus guests Tamar Davis and Andre Cymone - Prince's childhood bestie and original cohort.

Prince initially dropped the phrase "the new power generation" in Eye No, the intro to 1988's acid house-inspired album Lovesexy. He then featured both a band and an anthem by that name in the movie Graffiti Bridge, his eccentric sequel to Purple Rain. Officially inaugurated, The NPG played on Prince's 1991 'urban' blockbuster, Diamonds And Pearls.

Hailing from Arkansas, Hayes entered Prince's sphere in the mid-'80s. Post-concert in Memphis, Prince's Revolution entourage caught the muso gigging with his outfit Fingerprint. "They heard the band playing some of their songs and came up afterwards like, 'You guys play the songs like we do. Everybody else we hear playing our songs, they butcher 'em - it just sounds terrible.'" Hayes headed to Minneapolis ostensibly to collaborate with The Revolution's bassist Mark "Brownmark" Brown on his Mazarati vehicle at Prince's studio hub, Paisley Park. Yet, here, he started from the bottom. "In 1988 I was working at the studio by then as a production assistant, just driving the van and doing whatever." But Hayes impressed Prince while experimenting with keys parts for The Time's Shake!, a number on the Graffiti Bridge soundtrack. And he'd cameo in the flick as a member of George Clinton's troupe.

As a (super-)producer, Prince contributed several songs to Martika's 1991 album Martika's Kitchen, most famously Love... Thy Will Be Done. However, Hayes finished Don't Say U Love Me - the production attributed to Paisley Park. "It was funny because [The NPG guitarist] Levi Seacer [Jr], who was one of the co-producers with Prince at that time, he threw me a bone. He says, 'Look, Prince wants to get this track done. Here's a tape of him playing the piano and he's just kinda tapping out the beat with his feet, on his boots.' He said, 'Just go and arrange the music around what he did.'" Seacer instructed Hayes not to mess with Prince's ideas.

In 1992 Hayes served as bandleader for Prince's protege/girlfriend Carmen Electra, a pop rapper. He subsequently became The NPG's keyboardist, replacing Rosie Gaines. Hayes played on Prince albums like Come and The Gold Experience (a personal fave) as the star battled his label, Warner Bros Records. And, with Prince's (heavy) input, The NPG cut their own LPs. Meanwhile, the posse delivered live. They backed Prince at 2007's monumental Super Bowl show. Later, Prince and The NPG were joined by a jubilant Kanye West at the Swedish festival Way Out West for a mega-jam (YouTube it!). "Of course, Kanye is incredible when it comes to what he does," Hayes notes. "He's a different kinda cat but, when he gets on the stage, he does what he does. So it's cool."

Having missed Prince's first Australian tour with The NPG, circa Diamonds And Pearls, Hayes finally made it here in 2012. "It was amazing," he recalls. "I actually wanna move to Melbourne. It's the place where I bought shoes - and Prince complimented me on my shoes." Nevertheless, that year, Hayes quit.

Ever-enigmatic, Prince will always be remembered for his songs, musical chops, showmanship, prolificacy, and aesthetics. But ask Hayes what aspect of Prince doesn't get enough attention and he cites his "severe" guitar-playing. "I think one of the things we overlook is how many things he does so well," he explains. "I think it used to kinda bum him out - every time one of these guitar-player magazines come out with the guitar gods, he's always ranked really low in that! I just never really understood that. It just has to be because he does so much that people sleep on that stuff." Still, Prince might have answered this question differently. "I asked him one day, 'Prince, what do you think is the thing you do the best?' He's like, 'You know what? Morris, I think, at the end of the day, I'm a poet. I think I do lyrics best, because I hate bad lyrics, man - nothing bothers me worse than bad lyrics.'"