Skip to main content

Enter your email below to be the first to hear about new releases, upcoming events, and more from Dig!

Please enter a valid email address
Please accept the terms
I Would Die 4 U: Behind Prince’s Declaration Of Self-Sacrifice
MediaPunch Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
In Depth

I Would Die 4 U: Behind Prince’s Declaration Of Self-Sacrifice

A complex exploration of faith, family and psyche, I Would Die 4 U became an immortal part of Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’ finale.

Back

A key song in both the Purple Rain movie and its soundtrack album, I Would Die 4 U packed a lot into its two minutes and 49 seconds. Prince’s family history; the narrative arc of his Purple Rain character, The Kid; and everything from his spiritual beliefs to explorations of his own complexities – all are present in this tightly woven pop-funk number, recorded live at a landmark concert in Prince’s hometown and later recognised around the world as one of the best Prince songs of all time.

This is the story of I Would Die 4 U, and how Prince turned personal experience into a universally relatable song of romantic and spiritual devotion.

Listen to the best of Prince here.

The backstory: “His father had said one time, ‘I would die for you’”

Prince had been drawing from events in his own life ever since he’d started to jot down ideas for what he initially called Dreams: a semi-autobiographical movie that reflected the tight-knit – and highly competitive – music scene in Minneapolis. When he first met with Albert Magnoli, the scriptwriter and director who would help Prince develop these ideas into Purple Rain, he was astonished at Magnoli’s intuition. After listening to the filmmaker sketch out a plot for the film, Prince told him: “You’ve only known me for ten minutes, yet you tell me basically my story. How is that possible?”

I Would Die 4 U was one of more than 100 songs Prince had given to Magnoli, for potential use in the movie’s soundtrack, and Magnoli immediately connected its title with an episode from Prince’s childhood. “Prince told me that his father had said one time, ‘I would die for you,’” Magnoli explained to Prince scholar Duane Tudahl, in the book Prince And The Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions: 1983 And 1984. “I think that he mentioned that to me; it was in the song, and somehow I knew that this was something they had visited a long time ago.”

Indeed, so important was the phrase to Prince that it appeared as a line of dialogue in Purple Rain, spoken by The Kid’s father during a harrowing scene of domestic violence seemingly based on arguments the young Prince had witnessed in real life.

The lyrics: “I think Prince had experienced something”

Other lyrics from the song were also alluded to in the scene, as The Kid’s father accuses his wife of being “a goddamn sinner” (lyric: “You’re just a sinner, I am told”), demands acknowledgement for his role in heating the house (“Be your fire when you’re cold”) and laments what he sees as a lack of belief in his own artistic talents (“All I really need is to know that you believe”). As a measure of the ways in which Prince was exploring not only his life but also his psyche with Purple Rain, I Would Die 4 U also draws upon his religious beliefs, its opening verse touching upon themes of forgiveness, with later verses framing the song’s narrator as the Trinity of Christian religion: God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. “I’m not a human, I’m a dove,” Prince sings, hinting at a transcendence that his onetime guitarist Dez Dickerson felt lay at the heart of the song.

“I think Prince had experienced something,” Dickerson told cultural critic Touré, speaking for the book I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became An Icon. “I think he had a moving experience with respect to the idea of who Jesus is, or was, and he wanted to express it in a song. It’s not a very cloaked lyric. It says what it says: He’s saying he is Jesus.”

That was wasn’t all Prince was saying. With its opening lines, “I’m not a woman/I’m not a man/I am something that you’ll never understand,” the song also calls to mind the androgyny that was central to Prince’s image and which would see fans embrace him as one of the most pioneering LGBTQ+ musicians in history. “I am something that you’ll never comprehend,” he sings later, underscoring the mystique that he cultivated throughout his career, and which the Purple Rain project enhanced, even as it brought elements of his life to the big screen.

The recording: “Something special in the energy”

As with Prince’s plans to make a feature film, I Would Die 4 U dated to at least 1982. That February, he ran his band through a lengthy jam on the song’s main riff during a soundcheck for a show on the Controversy Tour. More than a year later, with the Purple Rain movie in pre-production and the members of his new backing group, The Revolution, in place, I Would Die 4 U would be refined during rehearsals at the former pet-food warehouse in St Louis Park, Minnesota, where Prince developed some of Purple Rain’s songs and finessed his live show.

Speaking to Vice more than 30 years later, keyboardist Matt “Dr” Fink would recall the difficulties he had in playing the song’s bass part, noting that it was possible – at a stretch. “Sometimes I would get off rhythm a little bit because you had to be so spot on, and you had to play it with two hands!” he told Keith Murphy. After Prince asked why he couldn’t use one hand for the bass and one hand for the song’s chords, Fink told him to find out for himself. “I said, ‘You try it.’ But neither one of us could do it.”

Writing in Prince And The Purple Rain Era Studio Sessions, Duane Tudahl explained how one of Prince’s recording engineers devised a workaround: “It was decided to sequence some of the keyboards, so Don Batts created a cutting-edge system that could be triggered by [Revolution drummer] Bobby Z during the live performance” of the song. With this new kit in place, Prince and The Revolution debuted I Would Die 4 U, along with four other Purple Rain songs, at a benefit concert held at Minneapolis’ First Avenue club on 3 August 1983.

Talking to this author, for the book Lives Of The Musicians: Prince, Revolution keyboardist Lisa Coleman described the gig as “super intense and dark and sweaty”, with “something special in the energy” as they kicked off with the future Purple Rain opener, Let’s Go Crazy, and ripped through a mix of established classics and previously unheard songs which were being recorded on the spot. Sparse-sounding and running to a little over two minutes, Prince’s performance of I Would Die 4 U came complete with hand gestures that he would reprise in the Purple Rain film and which would soon be repeated back to him nightly by the thousands of fans that packed out the arena venues he was now commanding.

“I think he wanted to see what he could get, he wanted to see his band work out,” studio engineer Susan Rogers explained to Prince fanzine Uptown in 1994, speaking of Prince’s decision to record the First Avenue show. “He wanted to get as much as possible that he could use.” Taking the tapes to his favoured recording studio, Sunset Sound, in Los Angeles, Prince overdubbed and extended I Would Die 4 U’s basic live track across the end of August and early September, during a string of sessions that would also see him work on the First Avenue recordings of Baby I’m A Star and Purple Rain’s title track. Have effectively nailed Purple Rain’s three closing songs in one single performance, Prince arguably got more than he’d ever imagined from this crucial performance.

The release: “A practice in restrained ecstasy”

With their order slightly rearranged, these three songs would provide the thrilling climax to Purple Rain. After making amends with his bandmates Wendy and Lisa through the performance of Purple Rain itself, Prince’s character, The Kid, returns to the stage for I Would Die 4 U, finding further catharsis as he makes peace with his father and begins to mend his relationship with girlfriend Apollonia. As his equal devotion to God and love becomes clear, I Would Die 4 U segues into Baby I’m A Star: a declaration of arrival for The Kid and, as the film’s celebratory final set piece, the moment at which Prince himself is crowned the dominant force in 80s pop music.

Released as a single in the UK on 26 November 1984 (and following two days later in the US), with a dramatic ballad titled Another Lonely Christmas as its B-side, I Would Die 4 U continued Prince’s chart reign. Peaking at No.8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at No.11 on the Hot Black Singles chart, the song was, in Cash Box’s estimation, “a practice in restrained ecstasy” that inspired one of Prince’s “finest and most passionate” vocals. Billboard would hear in it a “nervous excitement” that “zaps like a high-tension wire” – something Prince would ramp up in an extended version of the song.

Recorded on 25 October, during a pre-tour rehearsal at Minneapolis Auditorium, this longer take on I Would Die 4 U showcased the live prowess of Prince’s band, augmented by Sheila E’s group, who would fill the support slot on the Purple Rain Tour. Featuring supplementary horns, Latin-tinged percussion and new vocal parts, the 30-minute recording was edited down to a more easily digestible ten minutes and issued on 12” on 19 December. During a filmed concert at Capitol Centre, Landover, Maryland, on 20 November 1984, the expanded Revolution revisited this new arrangement for I Would Die 4 U’s promo video – a performance piece that was as much an advert for the Purple Rain Tour as it was a marketing tool for the single.

The legacy: “It’s almost unspeakable the heartache and grace you feel coming from him”

Having made it a mainstay of his Purple Rain-era setlists, Prince would retire I Would Die 4 U until the Jam Of The Year World Tour of 1997-1998. It would be brought back into commission many times thereafter, with a short but particularly passionate version making for a highlight of Prince’s final ever gig, at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre, on 14 April 2016. Following his death just a week later, the song inspired many tributes to the star, among them one from avowed Prince fan Justin Timberlake, who incorporated it into his 2018 Super Bowl halftime show.

“If you listen carefully to the lyrics now after his death, it’s almost unspeakable the heartache and grace you feel coming from him,” Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin wrote in the liner notes to the deluxe-edition reissue of Purple Rain. For drummer Bobby Z, the song was “another parable in Prince’s lyric catalog. No other artist in history could sing of total self-sacrifice as Prince did on this.”

Buy Prince vinyl, box sets and more at the Dig! store.

More Like This

‘You’re Christmas To Me’: The Underdog Story Behind Sam Ryder’s Festive Song
In Depth

‘You’re Christmas To Me’: The Underdog Story Behind Sam Ryder’s Festive Song

Bringing pure festive joy back into the pop charts, You’re Christmas To Me saw Sam Ryder challenge the supremacy of pop music’s titans.

‘Mystic Man’: Revisiting The Magic Of Peter Tosh’s Spellbinding Album
In Depth

‘Mystic Man’: Revisiting The Magic Of Peter Tosh’s Spellbinding Album

A classic album waiting for a fresh audience, Peter Tosh’s ‘Mystic Man’ confirms its creator as a genuine original with plenty to say.

Sign up to our newsletter

Be the first to hear about new releases, upcoming events, and more from Dig!

Sign Up