The Family



"But nothing compares to you"

- The Family, "Nothing Compares 2 U"

Now, here's a bit of a trickier case. After The Time disintegrated for the first time in 1984, Prince restructured the band with a few new musicians and renamed it "The Family". Its members were as follows:


 * Paul "St. Paul" Peterson - vocals, keyboards, bass
 * Susannah Melvoin - vocals, keyboards
 * Jerome Benton - vocals, comic foil, percussion
 * Jellybean Johnson - drums
 * Eric Leeds - saxophone, flute

But on the resulting album, The Family (1985), Prince decided to be a Control Freak and once again wrote nearly all songs ("River Run Dry", the sole exception, was written by The Revolution drummer Bobby Z.) and played everything on the album, simply overdubbing vocals by Peterson and Melvoin and Leeds' saxophone and flute.

The resulting album contained a mishmash of high-energy funk ("Mutiny"), soul ballads ("Desire"), jazz instrumentals ("Susannah's Pajamas" - this title should not be surprising if youknow anythiong about Prince's Associates) and New Wave ("The Screams of Passion"). However, it did contain a small song called "Nothing Compares 2 U", which was Covered Up and turned into a massive hit single by Sinéad O'Connor in 1990.

The band itself was short-lived, lasting barely a year before Peterson left, sick of Prince's Control Freakism. Still, it marked the beginning of Prince'ss long-term collaboration with Eric Leeds, for what it's worth.


 * Deliberately Monochrome: Their covers and promo pictures.
 * Instrumentals
 * Self-Titled Album: Either Prince's associates had to have self titled albums as part of their contract, or he saves the good titles for himself.