The Story Behind The Song
Picture, if you can, a track being recorded in 24 hours by an artist playing all the instruments and who takes a break only to allow his sound engineer to sleep. Imagine, if you will, a genre-defying pop song with a guitar solo intro and a hypnotic drum pattern but no bass. This is what it sounds like when Prince creates a masterpiece.
Peggy McCreary was the sound engineer and recalled Prince's demanding recording process: "He would run through a track with just a piano and a vocal. And sometimes he'd do the drums and then the bass... The room was always set up and you had to be ready to do whatever he felt like doing. It was real spontaneous. You had to be there with him, which was the hard part and the exciting part... It was the longest I ever worked with anybody in my life."
Originally the song had a bass line but Prince decided to remove it. According to McCreary, Prince remarked: "There's nobody that's going to have the guts to do this." He felt the song was strong enough to be a hit without it and decided to do something really daring. "That's what Prince was all about," she reflected.
And he was correct. When Doves Cry was the year's biggest selling single in the US and is recognised not only as one of the most original pop songs of the 1980s but of any era, included in the Top 100 Greatest Singles of All Time by Rolling Stone and inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs that shaped popular music.
The track was written for Purple Rain, a movie that showcased Prince's musical talents (for which he won an Oscar) and provided his acting debut. In the film, the song accompanies a montage of intimate moments between his character and his girlfriend, who dumped him for a rival. This helps explain the lyrics, the precise meaning of which has perplexed some fans.
Clearly, the song is about the ending of a love affair and "doves" is a metaphor for the lovers and particularly Prince. In Purple Rain, he mourns the loss of the relationship with his girlfriend and fears he is making the same mistakes as his father. Symbolism was important for the religiously and spiritually-minded star. For example, purple rain is a metaphor for the apocalypse, a time when there's blood in the sky. Red and blue combine to make purple, and rain symbolises a calamity issuing from the heavens. He later explained that "purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith guide you through the purple rain." So is there deeper meaning to When Doves Cry?
It appears to imbued with similar symbolism. "Dream, if you can, a courtyard An ocean of violets in bloom". Violet symbolises love and faithfulness, and a courtyard can signify a refuge. A dove is also associated with love and peace and a crying dove signifies anguish at the loss of both. In Celtic mythology, a dove's cry signified that someone had peacefully transitioned from life, again suggesting the end or a new beginning.
When Doves Cry topped the US Billboard Chart for five weeks in July 1984 it fended off Bruce Springsteen's Dancing In The Dark, denying him a No. 1 single (it was also kept from the top spot by the dreadful Reflex by Duran Duran but the less said about that the better). "Whenever I would catch one of his shows," Springsteen later remarked, I would always leave humbled." Perhaps that is the greatest tribute to Prince, who tragically died after an accidental overdose in 2016. During his career he released 30 albums and sold over 100 million records.
Yet, like all great artists, his work lives on. When Doves Cry is as captivating today as it was original 40 years ago, a remarkable achievement, even for the Prince of Minneapolis.
We hereby instate When Doves Cry by Prince on The Wall as No.8 Best Single of 1984
A throw away guitar into, worthy of Eddie Van Halen himself, heralds the start of a minimalist, mesmersing masterpiece. Dave B
