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Like A Prayer is the first track on Madonna’s fourth album Like A Prayer. It was long thought that the album version contained no Prince input, and only some of the remixes contain Prince’s guitar playing, however in a 2014 interview Patrick Leonard, the song’s producer revealed it’s actually Prince on guitar at the very beginning of the song before the door slams.
The 12-inch containing the versions with a bit more of Prince’s uncredited guitar input were released three weeks prior to the album’s release on Like A Prayer, the album’s first single. The 'Dub Beats' version, remixed by Bill Bottrell, also contains a sample of the studio version of Bob George, five years before its official release.
Furthermore, a back-masked version of the guitar solo was used as the basis for Act Of Contrition, the eleventh and final track on the Like A Prayer album, which was also released as the B-side of the Like A Prayer single three weeks before the album came out. On Act Of Contrition, the credit ‘The Powers That Be’ could be interpreted as an allusion to Prince.
Prince’s contribution was recorded in mid-November 1988, at Paisley Park Studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota. It is likely that his solo was recorded by itself (or possibly for use on Like A Prayer), and the track was compiled later.
In 2009, the album version (albeit remastered) of Like A Prayer was included as the ninth track on the Celebration compilation. A remastered version of Like A Prayer (7" Remix/Edit) was included as the eighth track on the Finally Enough Love compilations. In October 2023, Madonna embarked on The Celebration Tour, her first tour to be staged without a live band, using her original masters as the musical backbone of the show. Like A Prayer was performed during the final segment, titled ‘Uptown’, with a dancer playing a cloud guitar and wearing a chain hat 'performs' the guitar solo, more or less confirming that the solo was in fact played by Prince. A snippet of Let’s Go Crazy was also used as part of the performance.
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Recording Information
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Recording Sessions
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| Date
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Studio
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Additional info
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| Late September 1988
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Johnny Yuma Studios,
Burbank, CA, USA
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Tracking (Madonna demo; no Prince input)
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| Mid-November 1988
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Paisley Park Studios,
Chanhassen, MN, USA
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Guitar solo recording by Prince
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Recording Personnel
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- Madonna - lead vocals, background vocals, additional synthesizer
- Prince - guitar solo (uncredited)
- Jonathan Moffett - drums
- Guy Pratt - bass guitar (on the album version)
- Randy Jackson - bass guitar (on the 7" version)
- The Andrea Crouch Choir - background vocals
- Bruce Gaitsch - guitar
- Chester Kamen - guitar (credited for whole album, specific involvement uncertain)
- Dann Huff - guitar (credited for whole album, specific involvement uncertain)
- David Williams - guitar (credited for whole album, specific involvement uncertain)
- Donna DeLory - background vocals (credited for whole album, specific involvement uncertain)
- Niki Haris - background vocals (credited for whole album, specific involvement uncertain)
- Geary Lanier - clavinet (credited for whole album, specific involvement uncertain)
- Paulinho Da Costa - percussion (credited for whole album, specific involvement uncertain)
- Patrick Leonard - acoustic piano, B3 organ, clavinet, synthesizer (credited for whole album, specific involvement uncertain)
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Versions
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Released Versions
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Information is given for Prince-related versions only
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Sampled, Referred to, Quoted in...
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