(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Prince always pursued his ideas to the fullest extent. Part of the reason he was such a perfectionist and determined to work solo as much as possible was because he didn’t want any of his ideas to be diluted or affected. That led to some incredible art, but it also led to some weird moments, like a 1993 musical based on a Greek epic.
He was like this from the very start. In 1977, when he got his first record deal, he convinced Warner Bros to let him, a 19-year-old nobody, make his debut completely solo. He played every single instrument, wrote every note, recorded it and produced it all on his own. Determined from the very start that no one else would get in the way, he set the tone right there and then.
It continued that way. The 1984 Purple Rain era is another great example. Prince suddenly seemed to get the idea of making a film in his head despite being a musician and very much not an actor. But he made it work, writing some of his best songs not for an album but for the film’s soundtrack. That’s all Purple Rain was, originally just a film soundtrack. But it was so incredible that the world has since held it up as the artist’s finest moment.
From the start to his dying days, no one could ever tell Prince no or get him to doubt an idea once he had it. Once that initial spark was in his head, no one could ever get in the way. So in the early 1990s, when he got the idea to put on essentially a stage show of an epic poem, no one was going to stop him.
Titled Glam Slam Ulysses, the 1993 production was based on Homer’s 8th-century poem The Odyssey. Reworking sections of the poems into songs composed for the show, Prince, as always, wrote and produced the song and came up with the entire concept for the show, which ran for 13 performances at his very own Glam Slam nightclub in Los Angeles.
It gets even more ridiculous. The show features an as then unknown Carmen Electra as a dancer as the two were currently busy working on her debut album. It was also choreographed by Jamie King, a famed dancer and director who has worked with the likes of Madonna, Michael Jackson, the Spice Girls, Britney Spears and many more big time pop names. So it’s clear that Prince was really taking this thing seriously, putting his best performers into the mix and calling on big names to help him out.
Even with that help, though, the show was Prince’s through and through. Despite dealing with a text from ancient times, of course Prince’s take on the take was a cheeky one. When reviewing the show at the time, Variety reported that it featured “enough phallic symbols and references to make even Heidi Fleiss blush.”
However, the key to understanding the madness of a concept like Glam Slam Ulysses is to see it on the wider Prince timeline. Just before the shows happened in August and September of 1993, Prince had changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol as an act of rebellion against his label. In June of that year, he’d stated that he’d no longer be releasing new albums while a battle with Warner Bros over his vault of unreleased material raged on. So, instead, he would be doing what he deemed ‘alternative performances’. Glam Slam Ulysses was one of those, and it certainly was alternative.
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