If you believed the British press in early 1989, there was trouble in Prince’s kingdom. The NME trumpeted “a crisis in his Paisley Park empire” and rumours that the Lovesexy Tour was losing “thousands of pounds per week”. There was further speculation that the Minneapolis genius may completely relocate his centre of operations from the United States to Europe, and then he suddenly split from his management team, Cavallo, Ruffalo and Fargnoli, with Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli briefly taking over the reins.
There was also the spiritual and financial fallout from the Lovesexy album, released the previous May. It had sold less than expected in the US and had only seen the light of day when Prince pulled The Black Album from release. The singer alluded to a dark night of the soul on 1 December 1987, telling Rolling Stone in 1990: “I suddenly realised we can die at any moment and we’d be judged by the last thing we left behind. I didn’t want that angry, bitter [album] to be the last thing.”