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Cape Horn is the fifth track on Eric Leeds’ first album Times Squared (on the CD release, fourth track on other formats). The track was written by Prince and produced by Prince and Eric Leeds.
Basic tracking took place on 26 June 1988, during a one-day session between Prince, Sheila E., ostensibly for a projected album by Madhouse. At this point the song was listed as Instrumental IV a.k.a. 20.
The number 20 was seemingly just associated to it as a logical continuation following 1-8 and 9-16 on Madhouse’s first two albums. It is however otherwise completely unrelated to the song 20 (A Girl And Her Puppy) recorded later in 1988.
Today’s session also yielded Uno (a.k.a. “Instrumental I” a.k.a. "17”), Dos a.k.a “Instrumental II” a.k.a “18” and Tres (a.k.a. “Instrumental III” a.k.a. “19”). It is unknown if this track or any other one from this session was seriously considered for the planned third Madhouse album, later known as 24. When work on that projected album continued in December 1988, new songs were recorded using the titles 17 (Penetration), 18 (R U Legal Yet?), 19 (Jailbait) and 20 (A Girl And Her Puppy).
Unlike the other three tracks from today’s session, Eric Leeds did record a horn-part over it in a session the next day. In July 1989 Prince asked Eric Leeds to compile tracks from the vault for a third Madhouse album, which Leeds then worked on in August and September 1989, selecting tracks and overdubbing on this and other songs.
This track was one of ten selected and, in keeping with previous Madhouse releases, tracks were given tentative numerical titles of 17 to 26 (the album would be titled 26) — this track was known as 20 since its conception in June 1988 and was therefore placed as the fourth track on the sequence at the time. When Prince suggested the album should be released as a solo album by Eric Leeds,Leeds came up with titles for each track, in Spring 1990; this track became known as Cape Horn and the album became known as Times Squared.
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