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The Undertaker, VHS & Laserdisk (1995) The Undertaker Warner Music Vision (1995)
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The Undertaker

Warner Music Vision

Turn off the violence, there’s children watching

The Undertaker is a VHS home video containing footage of Prince performing six live-to-DAT tracks (the seventh, Dolphin is a studio rehearsal), albeit credited under the name Camille. Michael Bland is on drums and Sonny Thompson on bass. The session was recorded in the studio at Paisley Park at 3am on 14 June 1993. Bland and Thompson were unaware at the time what was intended to be a rehearsal session was actually being professionally filmed to produce a video.

The studio performance was done in one take and with no later mixing. A loose storyline was edited into the footage, comprising a female (Vanessa Marcil) needing to use a phone (a time pre mobile phones) to call Victor and so wanders into and around Paisley Park Studios and things gets trippy. The whole thing had been produced as the video for the cancelled The Undertaker album Prince intended to release as a free covermount CD on 1,000 copies of Guitar World magazine sometime in 1995.

It is understood Warner Brothers denied Prince the release of the album because it would coincide with their release of The Hits/The B-Sides that September. Warner eventually only released the home video version. Prince had just that 7 June changed his name to Prince love symbol in protest over the ownership of his music by Warner, so The Undertaker episode coming at this juncture did the relationship no good at all and Prince would have to wait until 2007 to release an album as a covermount, which he would eventually achieve with Planet Earth.

The track Poor Goo is inspired by Prince’s technician James McGregor, known as McGoo. The Undertaker was one of a pair of home videos issued in Europe and Japan by Warner Brothers on 6 March 1995, the other being The Sacrifice Of Victor. The releases were timed to coincide when Prince was performing his Ultimate Live Experience Tour in the UK, issued in the label’s attempt to recoup as much as possible in the aftermath of their closure of Prince’s Paisley Park Records label the previous year and the substantial advance paid Prince to produce the 1992 Love Symbol Album. His relationship with Warner became  highly contentious and would be until 2014 that they reached amicable resolution of the ownership of his master recordings.

Prince | The Undertaker

Performers

Vocials/Guitar
Prince
Drums
Michael Bland
Bass Guitar
Sonny Thompson

Tracklist

  1. Introduction (4:40)
  2. The Ride (9:38)
  3. Poorgoo (4:38) 2
  4. Honky Tonk Women (2:46) 1
  5. Bambi (4:05)
  6. Zannalee [Prelude] (0:44)
  7. The Undertaker (9:44)
  8. Dolphin (3:38) 2

1 Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
2 Rereleased by NPG Music Club in 2001.

Data

Director
Paris Patton
Released
6 March 1995
Running Time
40 minutes
Orig. Format

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