CHAPTER ONE: HOW THE VAULT VOLUME I, II & III BECAME CRYSTAL BALL

The genesis of Crystal Ball as The Vault
When O(+> released his Emancipation album on 19 November 1996, it was announced in the booklet: “Coming soon: The 3 CD set of previously bootlegged material – Crystal Ball.”

Crystal Ball was originally the title of Prince’s 1987 album Sign O’ The Times before the record company Warner Brothers had him reduce it from three to two LP’s and leaving out the Crystal Ball title track. When O(+> talked to Rolling Stone to promote the release of the triple CD album Emancipation, he said: “Sign O' The Times was originally called Crystal Ball and was supposed to be three albums. ‘You'll overwhelm the market,’ I was told. ‘You can't do that.’ Then people say I'm a crazy fool for writing on my face, but if I can't do what I want to do, what am I? When you stop a man from dreaming, he becomes a slave. That's where I was. I don't own Prince's music. If you don't own your masters, your master owns you.”

Now that he was free of his contract with Warners, O(+> was going to do the things they didn’t allow him to do, and that included releasing a triple CD Crystal Ball, now a collection of tracks from his famous vault with hundreds of unreleased songs. The idea for the Crystal Ball collection came earlier, when Prince’s publicity firm announced on 7 June 1993, his 35th birthday, that Prince had changed his name to the symbol of his latest album. O(+>’s intention was to fulfill his Warner Bros. contract with “Prince” recordings from the vault while continuing to record and release new material as “O(+>.” And in 1994 he started making The Vault collections for Warners to release, numbering them Volume I, II and III. These collections spun off into the 1996 Chaos And Disorder and 1999 The Vault… Old Friends for Sale Warner releases before morphing into the independently released Crystal Ball collection as work on them continued on and off for three years until Crystal Ball finally saw release in early 1998.

The Vault Volume I became The Gold Experience
In the summer of 1994, O(+> had tried in vain to get Warner Brothers to release his Gold Experience album in tandem with the Come album. With no release of The Gold Experience in sight, O(+> figured that the songs on it were becoming old news = vault tracks and assembled a Vault collection that contained many tracks from The Gold Experience. This Vault configuration was one of the sources for the Outtakes 1993-‘94 bootleg which appeared in 2004.

O(+>: The Vault Volume I (summer 1994)
1. Chaos And Disorder (4:13)
2. Listen 2 The Rhythm
3. Now (4:30)
4. Right The Wrong (4:42)
5. Acknowledge Me (5:27)
6. Ripopgodazippa (4:39)
7. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World (4:37)
8. 319 (3:19)
9. Shy (5:04)
10. Billy Jack Bitch (5:31)
11. Eye Hate U (6:12)
12. Gold (7:36)

The song Chaos And Disorder became the title track of its own 1996 album that also included Right The Wrong which was recorded on the same day as Chaos And Disorder in October 1993. Listen 2 The Rhythm, recorded as The Rhythm on 6 April 1989, would get re-recorded as The Rhythm Of Your Heart for Mayte's 1995 Child Of The Sun album. Acknowledge Me and Ripopgodazippa carried over to disc 1 of the 1998 Crystal Ball collection. The rest of the tracks from The Gold Experience ended up getting released a year later when that album was released after all in 1995.

O(+> also set out to make The Vault Volume II and III which along with a then assumably reworked Volume I were offered to Warner Bros. in late 1995 before spinning into the released Chaos And Disorder and The Vault… Old Friends For Sale albums in 1996 and ultimately becoming the 3-CD Crystal Ball collection in 1998.

The Vault Volume II tracks
Detroit Free Press asked O(+> in December 1997, “You’re one of my favorite guitar players. Are we going to see any more music like Purple Rain or Chaos & Disorder? I’m interested to hear more of that rock, bluesy style,” to which O(+> answered: “Disc 2 of Crystal Ball is for you!”

And even from the genesis of that disc as The Vault Volume II, the concept seemed to be a collection of mostly guitar driven tracks. O(+> shot a video for the Vault Volume II track The Same December on 8 November 1994. The song had a similar sound to the version of Dolphin that was included on The Gold Experience, indicating that they were probably recorded at the same time.

A video for the Come remix 18 And Over was also made which indicated that O(+> had come to regard the track as a song in its own right and that it was probably included as such on the original The Vault Volume II collection.

Two older songs, the 4 August 1985 Prince And The Revolution recording of the song Empty Room and the May 1993 recording of Zannalee, also got the video treatment, indicating that they were also included on The Vault Volume II.

I Like It There was recorded in late 1994 and in October 1995 a video was made for the track featuring a playback performance of the song with The Paisley Park Power Trio of Michael Bland on drums, Sonny Thompson on bass and O(+> on guitar.

Another likely candidate for inclusion on The Vault Volume II was Calhoun Square which was recorded 15 June 1993, and which was bootlegged around this time. It was an overdubbed version that finally saw release on disc 2 of the 1998 Crystal Ball collection, though.

O(+>: The Vault Volume II (October 1994)
Track list unknown but includes: I Like It There (3:15), The Same December (3:24), 18 And Over (4:52), Zannalee (2:51), Empty Room (3:25) and Calhoun Square (4:28)

Except for Empty Room and 18 And Over, all of the tracks had been recorded with members of The New Power Generation.

Possible The Vault tracks
The Vault Volume II appear to have been a compilation of songs that didn’t make Come or The Gold Experience. As such, Interactive, What’s My Name and Strays Of The World could have been on it. Those three songs were certainly on Crystal Ball disc 2, but Hide The Bone was on Crystal Ball disc 1 but not on The Vault Volume I. It’s About That Walk was probably saved for Volume III because it got released on The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale. Somebody’s Somebody and New World could have been included on either volume before getting included on Emancipation. Of course, the compilation could also have included tracks that have never been released or bootlegged and remain unknown to fans.

Work on the three The Vault volumes wrapped in December 1995. At that time, the collections were offered to Warner Brothers who declined to release them, but in 1997, quite a few tracks from The Vault were bootlegged on the Past, Present & Future II bootleg credited to The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.

Prince: The Vault Volume I, II and III (December 1995)
Track list unknown, but includes Chaos And Disorder (4:13), Right The Wrong (4:42), Acknowledge Me (5:27), Ripopgodazippa (4:39) and Dark (Remix) (5:14) on Volume I; Interactive (3:04), I Like It There (3:15), Calhoun Square (4:29), The Same December (3:24), Zannalee (2:51), Empty Room (3:22) and Strays Of The World (5:06) on Volume II; 18 & Over (4:56), 5 Women (5:19) and Sarah (2:51) on Volume III

Dark (Remix) was retitled So Dark for Crystal Ball, but is identical, while 18 And Over was retitled 18 & Over.

The Vault spins into Chaos And Disorder
In early 1996, negotiations began between Warner Bros. and O(+>’s new attorney, L. Londell McMillan. An agreement was quickly reached that O(+> would ultimately deliver two albums of material from the vault to the label which would then release him from his contract.

O(+> decided that those two vault-releases should be The Vault Volume II and III, but instead of just letting them be released as they were, he decided to do quite a lot of additional work on Volume II in particular, updating tracks, removing tracks and adding new ones and transforming Volume II into the Chaos And Disorder album and Volume III into The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale. Chaos And Disorder would get released in the summer of 1996, but The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale wouldn’t get released until 1999.

O(+>: Chaos And Disorder (1996)
Chaos And Disorder (4:20)
I Like It There (3:15)
Dinner With Delores (2:46)
The Same December (3:24)
Right The Wrong (4:39)
Zannalee (2:43)
I Rock, Therefore I Am (6:15)
Into The Light (2:46)
I Will (3:36)
Dig U Better Dead (4:00)
Had U (1:26)

Chaos And Disorder and Right The Wrong were taken from The Vault Volume I. The album retains the guitar-driven rock theme of The Vault Volume II without actually including all of the tracks from there. Besides Chaos And Disorder, I Like It There, The Same December, Right The Wrong and Zannalee, it’s unknown if Dinner With Delores, I Rock, Therefore I Am and Had U also came from The Vault, but Into The Light, I Will and Dig U Better Dead were taken from an early 1996 configuration of Emancipation. Except for I Like It There, The Same December and Had U, the rest of the tracks were reworked for inclusion on the Chaos And Disorder compilation. Zannalee was the only song previously known to fans and many preferred the original version to the overproduced version on this collection.

Prince: The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale (1996)
The Rest Of My Life (1:40)
It’s About That Walk (4:26)
She Spoke 2 Me (Extended Remix) (8:20)
5 Women (5:13)
When The Lights Go Down (7:11)
My Little Pill (1:08)
There Is Lonely (2:29)
Old Friends 4 Sale (3:27)
Sarah (2:52)
Extraordinary (2:28)

The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale had a nice, cohesive – almost jazzy - feel to it musically. All of the tracks were recorded – or reworked as in the case of Old Friends 4 Sale – in the 90s. An unknown version of The Rest Of My Life surprised fans, but along with My Little Pill and There Is Lonely it had previously been bootlegged on a tape with songs for the aborted soundtrack for the 1993 movie I’ll Do Anything. An edit of She Spoke To Me had appeared on the soundtrack for the 1996 movie Girl 6.

Besides 5 Women and Sarah, it is unknown how many of the rest of the songs that came from The Vault Volume III, but Extraordinary came from an early 1996 configuration of Emancipation.

It's About That Walk, When The Lights Go Down and Extraordinary were the only previously unknown tracks for fans, but some of the previously bootlegged songs had been reworked. The piano intro of 5 Women had been cut off and horns by the The NPG Hornz had been added to the track. Sarah had some rhythmic guitar playing added and keyboard had replaced the piano at the end.

The Vault becomes Crystal Ball
Where The Vault Volume I, II and III featured mostly recent recordings from O(+>’s vast mid-90’s projects, the release of some of them on the Chaos And Disorder and The Vault… Old Friends 4 Sale collections left room for even older tracks when The Vault got reworked into Crystal Ball in 1996/1997.

In July 1996, Hans-Martin Buff became O(+>’s main recording engineer on the Emancipation album, and when work on that album was wrapped, they set about assembling Crystal Ball and built it around the skeleton that The Vault Volume I, II and III provided after removal of the released tracks.

In 2018, H. M. Buff told The Violet Reality about working on Crystal Ball: “It was fun for me as a fan, of course. I virtually got a list of songs, and he opened the vault for me and then I went shopping and it was one of those little trolleys like you have in hospitals and such and I filled that sucker up and brought it upstairs. We started transferring it from tape machines to digital and we did a lot of editing. Quite a bit. Specifically, I remember the song Crystal Ball itself and Days Of Wild and Cloreen Baconskin and weird stuff like that. We mixed one or two and did a couple of segues and stuff, but it was a very quick process – like two weeks so that was really easy. (…) It happened quite a bit that we would take old tapes up which was one of the real perks of my job. (..) There were a couple of comments about a song I’m not going to tell you about that did not make it onto Crystal Ball which is quite amazing. It was a well-known song by another eighties pop star that he did a new backing for that he was asked to. It was never released. And he commented on how the stars - people were just partying to it. (…) There was one song which is out now which was my favorite bootleg ever which is Wonderful Ass and that was the one Revolution song I remember that was supposed to make it onto Crystal Ball. And that was left off.”

It is possible H. M. Buff was talking about Why Should I Love You? by Kate Bush as the song by another eighties pop star O(+> was asked to do a new backing for. After all, they had recently collaborated again on the song My Computer for Emancipation, so why not include their past collaboration from March/April 1991 on Crystal Ball? That didn’t happen, though, but Prince’s take on Why Should I Love You? turned up on YouTube in January 2022 and can be heard right here while reading on:

H. M. Buff edited Crystal Ball tracks shorter
“Probably the most independent task I had… He would – and I did that with Crystal Ball, and I did that with Days Of Wild on that project and with any new song he did – he would say ‘cut out the beef,’” H. M. Buff revealed to Funkatopia in a 2022 interview and mentioned his work on Emancipation as an example: “So let’s say the new song would be like eight minutes long, it would be based on a beat Kirk programmed that would be eight minutes long and then he would write a song through there and then he’d do a rough mix and then he’d give it to me and say ‘cut out the beef’ and then I would just listen to it, musically with producer ears, and go, like ‘this is where I’m getting bored. Maybe we should take that out?’ And then I’d suggest that to him. ‘Why don’t we…?’ And then that eight-minute song would be 5:20 or 4:50 or something. And the same with Crystal Ball, he said ‘edit it’ so I went and made it a bit more concise, and he approved some edits. Some he didn’t.”

H. M. Buff’s 8-9 minutes long edit of Crystal Ball obviously wasn’t approved by O)+>, as the version that got released on Disc 1 lasted ten and a half minutes. Anyway, “Same with Days Of Wild live thing. It’s on the third Crystal Ball disc,” H. M. Buff continued in the Funkatopia interview. “And it’s the same with Cloreen Baconskin. That as well was twice as long. That’s the thing about Prince. He was an enormous Prince fan. He thought that the guy Prince was just awesome. Me personally, I like Cloreen Baconskin because I like weird. A lot of the more pop-oriented people, they start foaming at the mouth. ‘Why would you out that on a record?’ (…) but Prince, he liked everything on there equally.”

Cloreen Baconskin wasn’t exactly “twice as long,” though. In Matt Thorne’s 2012 Prince biography, H. M. Buff also recalled working on Crystal Ball: “There were two songs on that album that I edited until the cows came home – Crystal Ball itself and Cloreen Baconskin. (The latter) was really long, there was another four minutes to it.”

Artists are partial to their recent stuff
She Gave her Angels was also an edit and probably replaced Empty Room on Crystal Ball as they had musical similarities. She Gave Her Angels was likely recorded in June 1995 as the lyrics mention that month. In the booklet for Crystal Ball, O(+> said it was about his then fiancée Mayte. The song was originally supposed to have been on the Emancipation album, though. “I think one of the great losses of Emancipation was She Gave Her Angels which ended up on Crystal Ball,” H. M. Buff said in the 2022 Funkatopia interview. “And the reason why it ended up there was that it was on the Muppet Show so it should be released, but that was like the center point of the second disc until The Holy River took over. That would have been a huge Bohemian Rhapsody size song sonically and in terms of content.”

A new longer edit of 18 & Over was also made, and it’s possible Crucial is also a 1997 edit of the 1986 song. Movie Star, also from 1986, had an intro added with a bit of Jam Of The Year from Emancipation played at the party Prince enters in the song and the “right there, honey” part was edited out. Fans would be a bit peeved about essentially getting a new version of Movie Star instead of the original version.

As for the selection of songs on the collection, H. M. Buff told Funkatopia: “I would have taken some of that cool stuff like Splash or Wonderful Ass that was on the list as well but didn’t make the cut on Roadhouse Garden or there. Somehow, he thought a remix of 2morrow was just as valid as that stuff and that’s something I learned during that project: He doesn’t see a difference between the creative worth of what he did last year compared to some treasure of the eighties.”

Number one at the bank
O(+> decided to sell Crystal Ball directly to fans over the internet. His keyboard player in his New Power Generation band, Morris Hayes told about that decision in a 2018 The Current interview: “The internet was an interesting situation because I think that's around the time where Madonna and all them got these big crazy deals, and I think he was just telling me, ‘Man, I don't need a label. Think about it. If you have a name - Madonna don't need a record label. Janet Jackson doesn't need a record label. They have names that are so big now, if we implement the sales online that we could do, then I think it's over.’ And I think that could've really singlehandedly sunk the record labels had he succeeded outright.”

1-800-NEW-FUNK began taking pre-orders for Crystal Ball in May 1997 and it was announced that the set would be shipped within a month, but nothing happened. In an interview published in July 1997, O(+> said that Crystal Ball might be ready to ship by Christmas. The delay became official when O(+>’s website Love 4 One Another stated in August that the album would not be manufactured until 1-800-NEW-FUNK had received 100,000 orders.

At an MTV press conference in August 1997, O(+> talked about the impending release of Crystal Ball: “I have a new package called Crystal Ball. And it’s a 50-dollar package and there’s gonna be 4 CDs in it. And it’s kinda like a piece of art. It’s a crystal ball sort of and the CDs go inside, and you can sit it on your coffee table. Now it’s an expensive package to make so to cover the cost we have to price it that way. But if you do the math, 150,000 copies - you’ve taken care of your business and it’s a good day at the races. You see what I’m saying? Alright. You have to understand, NPG is going to be taking the bulk of that money and then we pay our cost to the manufacturer and distribution is just a postage stamp. Crystal Ball is pretty much a bootleg. You know underground classics.”

“It’s finished. We just mastered it and we’re just pressing out copies now. And we’re taking orders. It’s ready to go. We’re waiting till the orders get to a certain point and then we start mailing them. ’Cause after a 100,000, like I say, that’s a good day at the races. (…) I don’t like the ideas of platinum albums and all that other kind of stuff. It doesn’t mean anything. When you’re taking the bulk of the proceeds... I mean what do you care. I don’t need to be on a chart at that point. I don’t need a number one. It’s number one at the bank.”

“At the bank, I’m platinum at 50,000 copies,” he added to USA Today.

Crystal Ball distribution angered fans
O(+> explained in several interviews by fax while on tour in the US how wonderful the Internet was because he could record music and the fans could have it instantly. “As soon as I’m done with it, I get it on, take orders and press records.” In an interview with Sacramento Bee published 28 September 1997, it said O(+> had received more than 70,000 pre-orders for Crystal Ball. “It’s coming out by Christmas,” he stated.

By October, the number was reported as 84,000. Still, it would take an additional month after Christmas for the wait to be over. On 29 January 1998, 1-800-NEW-FUNK began shipping Crystal Ball to fans who had pre-ordered the set. The 3-disc Crystal Ball collection consisted of mostly outtakes and leftovers and a fourth disc was The Truth album. A 5 CD limited edition of O(+>'s Crystal Ball collection that was only available from 1-800 NEW FUNK also contained The NPG Orchestra: Kamasutra. The mail order edition did not have the booklet with O(+>’s comments to the songs chosen for the compilation. The fans were expected to get that information from a website created specifically for the project.

The delays and lack of information regarding the release caused a great deal of frustration and anger amongst O(+> fans. Shortly after the news that shipping would commence, it was announced that the set would also be officially released to retail stores which upset many fans who had been led to believe it would only be available to those who ordered it from 1-800-NEW-FUNK. To further rub it in, Crystal Ball (including the booklet) became available in many retail stores in mid-February 1998 before it reached fans who had mail-ordered the set – and at a much lower price. This caused many fans to cancel their pre-orders. The botched marketing of Crystal Ball was widely viewed as a fiasco.

"When somebody wants to say that you’re a flop in the industry, that’s because you only get seven cents an album” (if you’re signed to a label), Prince told The Guardian in July 1998. “We sold 250,000 copies of Crystal Ball. That’s all we ever intended to sell. Now it’s finished, over, and guess who gets the lion’s share?”

Evaluating the release model
NPG keyboard player Morris Hayes talked about the Crystal Ball release in a 2018 interview with The Current: “The biggest problem I think he had was that he didn't trust anybody. So, in order to make that record, Crystal Ball, there was a big kerfuffle about it because people had put in orders for this thing and waited like months and months. Then he did a deal with Best Buy, and it ended up coming out in the regular store while the people who had put deposits were still waiting for theirs. I think it was just a fulfillment thing. We had three people in the back that was trying to get these things out, and he had so many orders, you can't get three people - but he didn't want outsiders in there, so he had people that he trusted, but only a few that were doing it. And I think - just in my own mind again - I'm no record mogul and I'm not anybody that is savvy with that whole thing, but I just thought, ‘Wow, had that rolled out in a big way it could've upended the situation.’ Anybody that had stature like him could say, ’Oh, so Prince had this model that he's proven could sell these things and get them out there.’ Of course, nowadays that's commonplace. But back then I think it would've been a very frightful thing for the record labels had he been really successful in the rollout of Crystal Ball on the internet like he wanted. I think then it would've been really scary for them because any artists with a name, once they got out of their record deal, would be like, ‘yeah’ – they’d have their own distribution because now they have the name recognition to put it out.”

Evaluating the content
Crystal Ball encompassed 25 tracks and five remixes that concentrated on two periods: The 1985-1986 Parade and Sign O’ The Times era and the 1993-1996 years which spawned Come, The Gold Experience, Chaos And Disorder and Emancipation. The only exception was Cloreen Baconskin which dated back to 1983. Thus, the Crystal Ball collection was hardly representative of Prince/O(+>’s entire career.

O(+>: Crystal Ball 1998 (CD)
Disc 1:
1.Crystal Ball (10:28)
2. Dream Factory (3:07)
3. Acknowledge Me (5:27)
4. Ripopgodazippa (4:39)
5. Lovesign (Shock G’s Silky Remix) (3:52)
6. Hide The Bone (5:03)
7. 2morrow (4:13)
8. So Dark (5:14)
9. Movie Star (4:25)
10. Tell Me How U Wanna B Done (3:15)
Disc 2:
1. Interactive (3:03)
2. Da Bang (3:19)
3. Calhoun Square (4:46)
4. What’s My Name (3:03)
5. Crucial (5:06)
6. An Honest Man (Vocal) (1:13)
7. Sexual Suicide (3:39)
8. Cloreen Bacon Skin (15:37)
9. Good Love (Edit) (4:55)
10. Strays Of The World (5:07)
Disc 3:
1. Days Of Wild (Live 9/12-1995) (9:19)
2. Last Heart (3:01)
3. PoomPoom (4:32)
4. She Gave Her Angels (3:52)
5. 18 & Over (5:40)
6. The Ride (Live 28/10-1995) (5:13)
7. Get Loose (3:31)
8. P. Control (Club Mix) (5:59)
9. Make Your Mama Happy (4:00)
10. Goodbye (4:34)

Crystal Ball started out with the title tracks from Prince’s unreleased 1986 Crystal Ball and Dream Factory albums – Crystal Ball being a different edit of the previously bootlegged track and Dream Factory being a slightly different version of the then recently bootlegged track. Crystal Ball also included previously unheard versions of Crucial, An Honest Man and Sexual Suicide from the 1986 era, as well as a pristine release of Last Heart which had been bootlegged since the 80s. Cloreen Bacon Skin was basically an early version of the 1984 The Time B-side Tricky. The previously unknown Make Your Mama Happy was a nice surprise.

The collection was a treasure trove for fans of O(+>’s 1993-1996 era of music. They finally got songs like Acknowledge Me, Ripopgodazippa, Hide The Bone, Interactive, What’s My Name, Strays Of The World and 18 & Over which they knew from bootlegs since 1994.

A live recording of Days Of Wild from Paisley Park on 9 December 1995 got included on Crystal Ball instead of the original studio recording of the song, though, which was a bit disappointing, but obviously O(+> himself was more pleased with this recording. The live version of The Ride was lifted from the 1996 Love 4 One Another TV movie. Get Loose was previously known as Loose Dub #2.

Critical reaction
Crystal Ball didn’t attract much attention from the mainstream music media or radio. The reviews were mixed with some critics complaining that much of the music sounded uninspired and aimless and concluded that O(+>’s famous vault didn’t contain many superior tracks. “As usual the music is funky and often fun – but most of it is for fanatics and completists only,” noted the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “There are good reasons most of this stuff wasn’t released,” added Entertainment Weekly. Still, around 100,000 copies of Crystal Ball were sold in the US so it did become number one at the bank. It peaked at number 62 on Billboard’s Pop Chart and at number 59 on the R&B Chart.

Many fans felt the release was an anti-climax after the long wait. Almost everything had previously been bootlegged or heard in concert – Make Your Mama Happy, Da Bang and Poom Poom were the only tracks that had been completely unknown to fans prior to the release. They wondered why O(+> hadn’t included the gold they knew were in his vault. Some also thought that the collection should have presented the tracks as recorded chronologically, but O(+> had approached making the collection as if he was making an album. And once initial feelings of disappointment had died down, many fans came to realize that it was actually a pretty good release. And the reason a lot of tracks that seemed obvious for inclusion weren’t included was because they featured contributions from Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin and O(+> was saving them for a projected Prince And The Revolution collection.

The official Crystal Ball website that was made featuring O(+>’s liner notes and the lyrics to the songs on the collection has been preserved online right here: Explore the Crystal Ball