User:JennKR/sign2

Recording
In November 1985, Prince purchased a highly-secluded, thirty-acre estate in Galpin Boulevard, Chanhassen, south-west of Minneapolis. Although a fairly modest property, Prince insisted a studio be built in its basement and left Rogers to oversee the construction of several isolation rooms suitable for housing group performances. In March 1986, while Rogers was still resolving the studio's technical issues, Prince informed her without warning that the Revolution would commence recording at the facility. By now, the Revolution had expanded to include a great number of performers, including several non-musicians, to the discontent of Wendy and Lisa who were its predominant members and thus preferred a more intimate grouping. Nevertheless, they were pleased that Prince was allowing them more creative input; sessions for Parade had been highly collaborative and their next project, The Dream Factory, seemed founded on a similar ethos.

By spring 1986, sessions had begun in earnest, and they began with "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker". Prince was set on programming the drum machine to sound live, using spontaneous rolls and pauses; his vocals mimicked this by changing pitch from high to low throughout. Musicologist Alex Hahn notes that the song gets its "mid-range dominated sound" due to a technical glitch. Recorded during a snowstorm that caused a power outage at the studio, Prince had been immersed in a creative state and failed to notice the absence of the song's high-end; Rogers, however, realised that the studio's soundboard was running on half of its usual wattage. When Prince learned of the problem when mixing the song that evening he felt that it had aided the track's subdued feel and did not re-record it. The Dream Factory's centrepiece—"Power Fantastic"—followed, a jazz excursion that drew inspiration from Miles Davis' 1959 album Kind of Blue and incorporated a composition by Lisa called "Carousel". The song was one of many long "sweaty jam sessions" that dominated the early recording of the album, with Eric Leeds remembering it as "one of the greastest things [they] ever did". Other tracks that emerged between late-March and mid-April were "Starfish and Coffee", lullaby "A Place in Heaven", experimental "It's A Wonderful Day" and Lisa-penned piano solo "Visions", which Prince, to everyone's surprise, made the album opener.

The first configuration of The Dream Factory was completed on casette in late April 1986. Included in the sequencing were two tracks recorded in 1982, including "Strange Relationship" and "Teacher Teacher". Despite its completion, Prince continued producing and held a nine-day session at Sunset Sound. There, he forged "It", using a Fairlight CMI synthesizer to sample a tough drumbeat, forgoing hi hat. He also added a minimalist keyboard riff, replete with horns and complicated guitar work. Sessions continued through to summer 1986 when Prince recorded ballad "Slow Love", a song written during his relationship with Carole Davis who is credited as a co-writer. At Sunset Sound, Prince worked on "The Cross", "Sign o' the Times" and reworked the 1982 track "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man". "The Cross" was a lyric that had persisted with Prince and he expanded on it to write a song that described Christ's second coming; keen to create an atmosphere that reflected that song's statement, he sung the title lyric against harsh chords before removing them, leaving only his voice aided with echo. The song was followed by a track linked thematically, "Sign o' the Times", a social commentary on AIDS, drug use and gang violence—events which would precipitate the return of Christ—completed within a ten-hour session. The recording period culminated with Prince revamping "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man", adding cymbals and keyboard, as well as extending its middle eight to include a slow groove.

The third and final configuration of The Dream Factory was completed on 18 July 1986, however, by this time the collaborative atmosphere forged in earlier sessions had disintegrated. Wendy and Lisa had become infuriated with Prince. Although their discontent initially stemmed from Prince's failure to properly credit their musical contributions on the recently-released Parade, it included his inability to offer Susannah a stable, monogamous relationship. These issues were exacerbated by Prince's removal of several collaborative efforts such as "Power Fantastic" and "It's A Wonderful Day" from the final configuration of the album; studio sessions became disrupted by verbal confrontations, which according to Rogers, were a "weekly if not daily occurrence". At the end of July 1986, Wendy and Lisa announced their desire to leave the Revolution, but were convinced by Alan Leeds to stay on exclusively for the Parade tour. Prince, as a consequence, abandoned The Dream Factory, but days before the Parade tour in August 1986, recorded "Hot Thing" and "Forever In My Life" at his home studio. "Hot Thing" was a product of Prince's astute use of the LM-1 drum machine, its funky beat assembled with just four tracks: the drumbeat, a kick, a snare and a hi hat. Rogers recalled finding it "funkier than most people's finished tracks" and believed Prince was the best drum programmer she had ever seen. The other track from these sessions, "Forever In My Life", would undergo an accident during vocal arrangement. Prince had asked Rogers to mute his background vocal so he could record his lead vocal on top of it, only to discover on playback that the lead vocal lagged behind the background vocal throughout. To her surprise, Rogers found that "it sounded great and he was very happy with it, so we kept it".

Following the conclusion of the Parade tour, Prince increasingly felt that he had to return to making music alone. On October 7 1986, Prince contacted the Revolution to inform them that they had disbanded; although Bobby Z and Wendy and Lisa were fired, he gave Doctor Fink the option to remain, which he took up. Prince told a reporter, "I felt we all needed to grow... [They all] needed to play a wide range of music with different types of people". By mid-October, Rogers had taken her first vacation in three years and Bill "Coke" Johnson stepped in as engineer. Along with instrument musicians, Prince and Coke began "Housequake" a song with a "party-like" atmosphere, bolstered with saxophone and trumpet inflections. When producing its vocals, Prince used the varispeed to pitch his voice up, an effect previously used on "Erotic City" that gave it a higher, feminine quality. Pleased with the result, Prince embarked on Camille, a side-project where all songs were linked by the pitched vocal and released undercharacters the pseudonym of the same name. Over a ten-day period, Prince completed four new tracks, including "Rebirth of the Flesh," "Rockhard in a Funky Place," "Good Love," and "If I Was Your Girlfriend." He also revamped the Wendy and Lisa composed "Strange Relationhip", mostly by removing their additions. The album was sequenced on 5 November 1986 and sent for a test pressing with a January 1987 release date fixed.

As Warner Bros. prepared to release Camille, Prince found himself changing its sequence and adding tracks from The Dream Factory. He began favoring the release of a triple album called Crystal Ball that incorporated songs from both albums, although released still under the guise of Camille. He spent two further intense weeks at Sunset Sound, recording "Adore" and "Play in the Sunshine", while updating "It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night" which had been recorded live on the Parade tour in Le Zénith, Paris, France. On 30 November, the triple-album Crystal Ball was completed. Shortly before Christmas, Prince recorded "U Got the Look", although found composing it frustrating and tested several instruments to no avail. He settled on centering the song on a grating synthesizer and shredding guitars, but then asked Sheena Easton to contribute to it when she appeared at the studio unannounced. At first Prince asked Easton to play banjo, but when it became obvious she had never played one, she sung and provided percussion despite having reservations with its sexual nature. As expected, Warner Bros. "balked" at the expense of manufacturing a three-LP set and, realizing the possibility of low return, requested that Prince remove songs to make it a double LP. Weeks of bickering followed until Prince reluctantly agreed and removed seven tracks from Crystal Ball and retitled the album Sign o' the Times after one of the songs. The album was completed on 15 January 1987 with the insertion of an "instrumental cross fade piece" between the title track and "Play in the Sunshine".