Our Destiny is a track initially recorded during Prince and the Revolution’s concert on 7 June 1984 at First Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the same show where the basic tracks for Roadhouse Garden and All Day, All Night were also recorded, although a version recorded by Prince alone is thought to have existed before. When working on this further, it is unclear if, but plausible that they used the basic tracks recorded at First Avenue on 7 June, but ended up overdubbing almost every part.
Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman worked on the track further for three days, from 27-29 September 1984 at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, California. Sessions with horn players and strings were organized and both Lisa Coleman and Jill Jones added a lead vocal to the track, replacing Prince’s vocals. Prince was not present for these sessions. Part of the strings that were recorded were later re-used for the opening of The Ladder.
Our Destiny is not known to have been considered for inclusion on Prince’s next album, Around The World In A Day. According to Jill Jones, the song was intended for an aborted musical titled Roadhouse Garden. It is likely that it was planned for inclusion on the Prince and the Revolution album Roadhouse Garden album worked on in 1998-9, but that album remained unreleased.
Although tracked separately in the studio, the song seems to have purposively been conjoined with Roadhouse Garden when released as the fifth track on the second disc (titled From The Vault & Previously Unreleased) of Purple Rain Deluxe Edition and Deluxe Expanded Edition in 2017 (as Our Destiny / Roadhouse Garden), emulating the live rendition of both, using the same four-on-the-floor bass drumbeat, performed as segueing into one another. It is unclear if this was originally intended by Prince for the studio version as well, or that it was only done as such before their inclusion on the second disc (titled From The Vault & Previously Unreleased) of Purple Rain Deluxe Edition and Deluxe Expanded Edition. It has been suggested this was possibly the case as there was a limit set to the number of songs to be released on the bonus disc of the release.
Of note is that this is the earliest recorded track to feature Lisa Coleman on lead vocals.
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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 May or early June 1984 (assumed)
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Flying Cloud Drive Warehouse, Eden Prairie, MN, USA (assumed)
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Tracking of Prince solo version (assumed)
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7 June 1984
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First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN, USA
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Live recording
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27 September 1984
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Sunset Sound - Studio 2, Hollywood, CA, USA
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brass overdubs
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28 September 1984
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Sunset Sound - Studio 2, Hollywood, CA, USA
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string overdubs, Lisa Coleman lead vocal and mixing
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29 September 1984
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Sunset Sound- Studio 3, Hollywood, CA, USA
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Jill Jones lead vocal and mixing
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12 May 1985
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Sunset Sound - Studio 3, Hollywood, CA, USA
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overdubs
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Recording Personnel
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initial live recording
- Prince - lead vocals and guitar
- Bobby Z. - drums (unclear if audible on released version)
- Brown Mark - bass guitar (unclear if audible on released version)
- Wendy Melvoin - guitar (unclear if audible on released version) and background vocals
- Lisa Coleman - keyboards (unclear if audible on released version) vocals
- Dr. Fink - keyboards and background vocals (unclear if audible on released version)
additional recording
- Orchestral Players:
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Versions
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Released Versions
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Sampled, Referred to, Quoted in...
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Unreleased Versions
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