Prince’s vault is the stuff of legend - a high-security room at his Paisley Park studio complex where he stored all of his recordings (many of which remain unreleased) and other archive material.
It turns out, though, that His Royal Badness wasn’t the only one to have a treasure trove of his music in his possession, as former Revolution member Lisa Coleman has just discovered a collection of cassettes from her days with the band in her loft.
“Found some cassettes in the attic!” she captioned a recent Instagram video, which has Coleman panning across a selection of tapes that are labelled with a tantalising selection of song titles. There’s Venus De Milo (long and short versions), a track from Prince and The Revolution’s 1986 album, Parade, and Neon Telephone, which Prince wrote under his Joey Coco pseudonym and gave to alt-rock band The Three O-Clock for their fourth and final album, Vermillion, which was released in 1988.
Other rarities include A Place In Heaven, Witness 4 The Prosecution and Emotional Pump, all of which eventually appeared on the Sign O’ The Times (Super) Deluxe Edition, which was released in 2020. There are versions of And How (which ended up being sung by Jevetta Steele) and Sign O’ The Times track The Ballad of Dorothy Parker, too.
Whether any of these recordings offer anything different to those contained in Prince’s vault is unknown, but Coleman’s post certainly aroused plenty of interest, notably from former Prince collaborator Sheila E. “Emotional Pump! My favourite song,” she wrote. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God.”
There was also a comment from The Roots’ drummer Questlove, who joked that he was flying out to listen to the recordings now. Whether anyone beyond Coleman will ever actually get to hear what’s on those cassettes, though, remains to be seen.
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