Bobby Z. and Morris Hayes, longtime Prince collaborators, spoke with The Current’s Morning Show host Jill Riley about their latest titles — music advisors for the Broadway adaptation of Purple Rain.

Use the audio player above to listen to the interview, and find a full transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Jill Riley: You're listening to The Current. Well, after a run of preview performances, the stage adaptation of Purple Rain is now open at the State Theatre in Minneapolis. But just how do you adapt a movie like Purple Rain for the stage? Well, joining me to talk about it is Bobby Z., who was drummer of Prince's band, The Revolution, and Morris Hayes, who was in Prince's band The New Power Generation for almost two decades and served as Prince's musical director for several years. Both Bobby Z. and Morris Hayes now also have another title: Prince music advisors for the stage adaptation of Purple Rain, and they are here to join us on The Current's Morning Show to talk about it. Bobby Z. and Morris Hayes, welcome to The Current's Morning Show.

Bobby Z. and Morris Hayes: Thank you.

Jill Riley: It's great to talk to both of you this morning, and I wonder if we could start by both of you talking about how you first met Prince and ended up working with him for so long. And I'll just go in alphabetical order here. Bobby Z., why don't you go first?

Bobby Z.: I met Prince in South Minneapolis at Moon Sound. Chris Moon had a couple of studios. This one was on 28th and Dupont, and he had opened it up to recording. Recording had kind of changed from the formal recording studio to the four tracks that you could now have. Chris set up a funky studio, and he realized Prince could play all the instruments. And I stumbled in one day and listened to the demo he was recording with stacked vocals, and he was playing parts, and I was pretty much hooked then. I was 19 years old, I was playing in a country-rock band in the back studio, and my life changed that day when I met him, became friends with Prince and Andre Simone and formed a trio. And then from there, we moved on many, many years to form The Revolution, and then remained good friends his entire life. But all the great musicians after me, I'll let Morris speak to that. But it was quite a fraternity for all the musicians that played with Prince.

Jill Riley: I would say so. That's a great segue to Morris Hayes. Morris, I wonder if you could tell us just how you first met Prince, and you had a long run of working with him as well.

Morris Hayes: Yeah, it was incredible. I was working with a band that was in Memphis, Tennessee, when Prince was on tour, and some of his musicians came to the club that the band was playing at, and just made some compliments about how great the band sounded, playing their music, you know, Brownmark and Craig Rice. And so later on, I got an invitation to come to Minneapolis to audition for Mazarati, and I was doing a music video with Brownmark at Paisley Park, and Prince saw me in the video, and he asked about me. Craig Rice had got me a job driving a van, picking up talent for the Graffiti Bridge movie. I got a lucky break working with Levi Caesar and played on a song from the movie at the time. Prince heard it, and Alan Lee heard it, and so that's how he started talking to me, is he found out I could play, and then made a compliment about the music. So that's the CliffsNotes version. But after that, I got an opportunity to go out on tour, opening with Carmen Electra for his Diamonds and Pearls tour, and then I got in his band in 1992.

Jill Riley: Excellent. I'm talking with Morris Hayes and Bobby Z. as the stage adaptation of Purple Rain is now open at the State Theatre in Minneapolis. The two of you have a really big role in this musical, and that's the role of music advisors. If you could talk about what does that mean to this production?

Bobby Z.: Well, we went to New York several years ago, and we met the musical director, Jason Michael Webb, who is a Tony Award winner, and frankly, made our job much easier because he's so talented. And we went to see his play that he had done, the Michael Jackson play, MJ the Musical, and both Morris and I were just knocked out by that production of music. Then we met with him, and he was a complete Prince student of music and everything. Our advisory role is basically just to bring the years of experience between Morris and I, there's like 35 years of day-to-day interaction with Prince, and on a musical level, that's just very subtle. You know, there's just things that are just in bar three of one song that has a string part, or something's missing here, or the snare drum shouldn't be that, or this shouldn't be that. And they're very receptive to that. So we've been just kind of slowly listening to it and making our comments and corrections as the play unfolds. And here we are. The play is open, so it's been a quite a journey.

Jill Riley: I wonder if we could talk about the music in the stage adaptation of the film, because my understanding is that the music kind of goes beyond Purple Rain as the album. That this isn't a Prince biography. This isn't a jukebox musical. But there's a lot of the music, not just from Purple Rain, but a lot is incorporated in to tell the story of The Kid.

Morris Hayes: Yeah. I mean, the thing is, if you have a production that started out at about four hours, you got nine original songs in Purple Rain, you're not gonna cover that much time with that much music. So you have to basically bring in a lot of the music from through the eras. Any time Prince — you know, Jesse Johnson told me this, he said, "Whenever Prince does a record, he actually does three." So there's material all over the place that did make it to Purple Rain and just prior to. I think one of the songs is connected to Bobby and his wife, a beautiful song that's in it. And so they find opportunities to use a lot of different Prince music. There is even little piece of “Diamonds and Pearls” from the NPG [The New Power Generation] that's in there, they found a great spot. So they've taken great care to really curate some of these songs, to fill some of these spaces, and in a very creative way. My hat is off to them for figuring out how to use a lot of other Prince songs and some surprises, that we don't want to necessarily give away, but that they've done well with putting them there.

Jill Riley: Morris Hayes and Bobby Z., they are on the line. We are on The Current's Morning Show, and we're talking about the stage adaptation of Purple Rain, which is now officially open after a few weeks of preview performances, now officially open at the State Theatre. I remember hearing about the production and how it was going to be having its preview performances, and really the opening, in Minneapolis. And Minneapolis, it's like another character in at least the movie. Why was this so special for this to begin here?

Bobby Z.: Well, I think the producer, Orin Wolf, was quite adamant about just tackling this kind of elephant in the room. Coming to Minneapolis and grabbing the bull by the horns and just facing these fans that lived it in reality. And of course, First Avenue is part of the story, and Minneapolis is part of the story. And I just think it was very bold and gutsy on their part to come here and debut it, preview it here. But I think at first, I was a little squeamish about that, but I absolutely think it was the right choice now, because you know, if you can make it in Minneapolis, you can make it anywhere with this particular story. And I think facing these very critical fans — Prince is like Paul Bunyan around here. Very tall. To face the Minnesota crowd, I think was a good choice, and they seem to be responding quite well.

Jill Riley: Yeah. I mean, the two of you guys knew Prince for a long time. You worked with him for many years. Do we know if he ever had a vision for this to be an onstage production?

Morris Hayes: Well, whereas I didn't speak to Prince about Purple Rain in particular being the subject of a Broadway musical, I know that he went to several Broadway musicals, and some musicals in the West End in London. And Prince definitely was interested in doing something in the format. I mean, that's something that he spoke about. He even wanted to do an opera. He talked to me about it. He had spoken to Kathleen Battle and some other folks about doing just different things. Prince was always forward-thinking about these things that he wanted to do. But because I didn't hear him say, it doesn't mean that it didn't happen. That was my conversation, and I know he was interested in the medium, and here we are. I'm glad to see that the Prince Legacy group and all of the folks behind this have done this. The key is to keep Prince's legacy forward and introduce this music in this to a new crowd and to a new generation of kids, to really see how incredible an artist that he is. And I think this is great, another format that people can go and enjoy on the Great White Way [aka Broadway], you know? It's like, it's an ultimate high to have something to be presented on Broadway. And I think just having to be here in Minnesota first is a great honor for Prince, and I think it's a great treat for all of the people here that supported Prince from the start of his career.

Jill Riley: Yeah, I love how you use the term “introduced to a new generation.” A new generation of fans, but also for another whole segment of the, I guess, entertainment audience, of those who just love Broadway musicals.

Bobby Z.: Absolutely. I mean Morris and I talk about it, it's another feather in Prince's cap and another medium, right? And certainly, the actors and everybody involved are very conscious of that, that they're playing with Purple Rain, and they're playing with the purple alchemy a little bit. But I think it's all about that, about taking it forward and bringing this to Broadway goers and younger generations, international travelers that might be in New York and get to see. [The song] “Purple Rain” touched lives globally, all over the world, and that song seems to have magical powers. I think it's wonderful that all this effort is being put forward to bring Prince's music to a new generation. As you said.

Jill Riley: You are listening to The Current's Morning Show. Bobby Z. and Morris Hayes were both long time collaborators of Prince's and are the Prince music advisors for the stage adaptation of Purple Rain, which is now open in Minneapolis at the State Theatre. Bobby Z., Morris Hayes, thank you so much for joining us to talk about your involvement in the musical and to get your perspective. We really appreciate it.

Bobby Z. and Morris Hayes: Thank you very much.

Jill Riley: All right, take care. And yes, I agree, “Purple Rain” has magical power, so let's hear it, and it's on The Current.

Credits

Guests – Bobby Z., Morris Hayes
Host – Jill Riley
Producers – Nilufer Arsala
Digital Producer – Natalia Toledo

External Links

Purple Rain Broadway Website - https://purplerainbroadway.com/