While promoting his 21 Night Stand In LA tour, Prince made a very rare appearance on ‘Lopez Tonight’ with George Lopez last night. He performed a few songs including, “Laydown”, “The Beautiful Ones” and “You’re The One For Me”. He also discussed the current state of the music industry, how the internet has changed music and people covering his songs. Check out an excerpt from the interview plus videos below:
I’m in recording rehab right now, I’m taking a break. The industry is going through a lot of changes right now.
Do you think the internet has helped music?
It’s helped the people who sell the music, for an artist they don’t make the money they use to and I think we tend to not value things we can get for free. If you put anything in the place of music and say you got it for free, you’ll see what I’m talking about.
On people covering his music
I don’t mind fans singing my songs. My problem is when the industry covers the music. Covering music means your version doesn’t exist anymore or a lot of people think I’m doing Sinead O’Connor song and Chaka Khan song when in fact, I wrote those songs. It’s okay when my friends ask to do them but it’s this thing called a compulsory license law which allows artists through the record company to take your music at will without your permission and that doesn’t exist in any other art form, be it books, movies…..there’s only one version of Law & Order, there’s several versions of “Kiss” and “Purple Rain.”
On The Vinyl days of Music
We take this for granted, but I am here today because of the golden age of the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s in music. This is when artist played their own music, they wrote their own songs, they had to perform next to people like Ike & Tina Turner, James Brown, …you had to have your act together.
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