Roadhouse Garden is a track that was initially recorded in May 1984, likely as the first song to be recorded at the new Flying Cloud Drive Warehouse in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. A live version was recorded soon after at a show on 7 June 1984 at First Avenue in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the same show where the basic tracks for Our Destiny and All Day, All Night were also recorded.
Although tracked separately in the studio, the song seems to have purposively been conjoined with Our Destiny 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.
Roadhouse Garden 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 also titled Roadhouse Garden. The track was at some point planned for inclusion on the Prince and the Revolution album Roadhouse Garden worked on in 1998-9, but that album remained unreleased.
|