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Yeah it's real. I had it on an old bootleg. Think it's on the work too. Even Prince was meh about it peep:
TLM: Can you explain how "Can I Play With U?" happened?
AL: I'm basing this on my files and Eric's journals and his recollections. Shortly after the meeting at the airport, they swapped numbers and I'm sure they talked about Prince submitting some material for the first Warner Bros album. As I said, there might even have been conversations before they met Tommy LiPuma and the Warner Bros people. So it was already in our mind that 'Miles was on Warner and you guys are going to end up doing something together.' Now, they've met and swapped numbers, it was more imminent. And once Prince has got a passion for something, he jumps right on it.
Within a couple of weeks, Prince was in the studio and he recorded the initial track was on the 26th and 27th of December 1985. Eric was in Florida on holiday with our parents and he got a call from Prince saying 'hey you gotta come round here.' Prince did the basic track on the 26th and Eric overdubbed his horn on the 27th. Eric recalls Prince intending to take the tape to Miles in Malibu and Prince said to Eric; "I'm going to take this tape to Miles in Malibu. Do you want to go?' And Eric was well up for it! I don't know why, but that meeting never happened but they sent the tape by messenger. In January Prince sent the multi-track tape to Miles for him to do whatever overdubs he wanted to do. This didn't happen until February and March. Prince was never present at any of those overdub sessions - he had absolutely nothing to do with them. He was enamoured with Miles but I don't know how ambitious Prince was about working with Miles.
TLM: It seems that Miles always wanted greater collaboration but Prince never seemed to countenance them working together in a studio on an album. Why was this?
AL: First of all, you're dealing with two people who are control freaks. And if Miles is a control freak, multiply that five when you come to Prince! As enamoured as he was with Miles, it was never to the extent that he wanted to sacrifice his control. By the same token, there was Prince's MO of producing other people - by then he had produced Chaka Khan, George Clinton, Patti Labelle - throughout his career. His idea is not the standard producer/artist relationship He just simply writes and produces a track that he thinks would be good for an artist and then he's willing if necessary to supervise the vocal overdub in the case of singers, but he doesn't really like to do that. He's uncomfortable directing other artists that he respects. He doesn't see himself in the role of a traditional producer, whose job is to bring out the essence of what the artist is. With Prince it's a matter of 'This is how I do it and here's how you could fit in. Give it a shot and see if you fit in.' But he's not going to change what he does to fit the artist, so in that sense he's really not a producer, at least of other people. And I think he realises that about himself, that lack of flexibility of as a producer.
And Eric reminded me of a quote -and here I'm paraphrasing - he remembers Prince saying to him 'I can't imagine what it would be like to tell Miles what to do.' In other words, 'I wouldn't want anybody telling me what to do, so how dare I tell the great Miles Davis what to do.' So the idea of being in a studio with Miles and trying to direct him was foreign to him and he just couldn't even conceive of that scenario. The irony was that Miles would have welcomed it and that's what we were trying to get through to Prince. Unlike Prince, Miles was somebody who was open to that and who would be interested in seeing where you would take him. Miles had the spirit of adventure to be wide open to see what it would be like for you to direct him as a producer. It was really all about Prince being completely intimidated at being in that role and how he really couldn't understand someone being in that role.
TLM: Prince pulled the track from the album.
AL: I remember Prince's reaction when he got the tape back - he wasn't enthralled with it. Not so much because of what Miles had done with it. But he just lived with the song long enough and realised that there wasn't really anything brilliant about it. It was something that had been hastily and impulsively done. I feel certain that Prince felt that if there was going to be a collaboration that was officially released, it should be something more significant than what that track was. That wasn't a reflection of Miles's playing, but more about the composition and the significance of the quality of the track in itself. He seemed to lose interest in that track and the fact that album ended up going in a different direction . I think if Tommy LiPuma or Miles had gone back to Prince and said 'look this track isn't great. Let's do more and let's make an album together,' I think Prince would have probably submitted twenty tracks. I don't think it would have changed his MO or his willingness to spend a lot of time in the studio together, but I think he would have been interested in submitting tons of tracks in the hope of making an album. But that didn't happen. Whether he was hurt by that, I don't know, but I know he just seemed to lose interest.
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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles
"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."
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