Amanda Palmer & Jherek Bischoff share string quartet cover of Prince's "Purple Rain"

Amanda Palmer and Jherek Bischoff, who collaborated earlier this year for their David Bowie string quartet tribute EP Strung Out In Heaven, just shared a similar take on Prince’s iconic song “Purple Rain.” This is not the first time they’ve covered it either. The track, which clocks in at 10 minutes long, incorporates some of “Let’s Go Crazy” as well. Listen below.

All proceeds from the song go to Elevate Hope Foundation, a non-profit that was supported by Prince, providing musical therapy for abused and abandoned children. You can buy it here.

In a statement given via Amanda Palmer’s Patreon page, Jherek said:

I came across Prince’s music under strange circumstances. I was a teenager living on a small sailboat traveling all around the world with my family. I was often cut off from any people besides my parents for a month at a time. For some that would be a nightmare, but for me it was alright. I was already practicing hard to be a musician and was learning every bass line and every guitar line on the hundreds of CDs that my family had. After I had exhausted every CD, I came across a tape of my brothers that had “Purple Rain” scribbled on it. I tell this story because I had no clue if Prince was “cool”, or if he was popular or anything. I was not aware of the amazing culture he was forging. I was not aware of what the band looked like. All I knew was that this music touched me extremely deeply. It simultaneously touched on everything I love… drama, skill, visceral impact, intense passion and great songwriting. It just had everything. I didn’t have anyone to bounce these feelings off of, no skater friends, no friends in the band room. Just my headphones relentlessly playing this magnificent record, and the strength of his genius.

Read the full statements given by Jherek and Amanda, check out the cover art by Sarah Beetson, and stream the cover below.

As mentioned, Amanda is also releasing a covers album, You Got Me Singing with her father Jack on July 15. They’re touring with Thor & Friends in support of that album, including two NYC shows at Le Poisson Rouge with Thor and Friends on July 19 & 20 (tickets) and upstate at Basilica, Hudson on July 23 (tickets). All dates are listed below.

Jherek Bischoff:

I came across Prince’s music under strange circumstances. I was a teenager living on a small sailboat traveling all around the world with my family. I was often cut off from any people besides my parents for a month at a time. For some that would be a nightmare, but for me it was alright. I was already practicing hard to be a musician and was learning every bass line and every guitar line on the hundreds of CDs that my family had. After I had exhausted every CD, I came across a tape of my brothers that had “Purple Rain” scribbled on it. I tell this story because I had no clue if Prince was “cool”, or if he was popular or anything. I was not aware of the amazing culture he was forging. I was not aware of what the band looked like. All I knew was that this music touched me extremely deeply. It simultaneously touched on everything I love… drama, skill, visceral impact, intense passion and great songwriting. It just had everything. I didn’t have anyone to bounce these feelings off of, no skater friends, no friends in the band room. Just my headphones relentlessly playing this magnificent record, and the strength of his genius.

Years later, my dearest friend Sam Mickens and I were living together and we had a band called The Dead Science. I finally had someone who shared my deep love of Prince, and we went through a phase of watching Purple Rain nearly every day for a good 6 months. Seriously. This culminated in us having The Dead Science double as a Prince tribute band. We did a couple tours where we would play a Dead Science show and then play a party post- show as a Prince tribute band. It was awesome. We were pretty raw. It was just a three piece; Sam mostly rolled around in ecstatic bliss, while I basically tried to play all the melodic parts on bass as loud as I could, and Nick held down as much rhythm as he could. We had some memorable nights.

Years later I found myself in Amanda Palmer’s Grand Theft Orchestra. For a New Years Eve show, we wanted to do something fun, and we quickly realized that the one artist/record we could all be completely stoked about covering was Prince/Purple Rain. It was yet another memorable evening. I got to sing my absolute favorite song ever, “The Beautiful Ones,” and as the clock struck zero, we finished Purple Rain with an infinite rain of confetti falling down as I kissed my girlfriend.

I got to see Prince live once. I was at a meeting for a music festival I was working at. I knew that Prince was playing that night but I was extremely broke, living in my van, etc. At the end of the meeting, the people from the festival said: “Hey, anyone want to see Prince? We have some free tickets here.” I ran up, snagged a ticket and ran as fast as I could to the venue. I got to my seat right at the moment that Prince walked out on to the stage. I was experiencing his music once again by myself, but this time in a stadium full of people. It was one of the best performances I have ever seen.

I am so in love with Prince and so sad that he is gone.

Amanda and I recently made an EP of David Bowie songs with string quartet and when Prince passed away, we went back and forth about whether we should make something. We knew in our hearts that we wanted to, but it seemed like a bit much, so soon after the Bowie record. But losing Prince was just too much. Losing them both, just too much. Making the Bowie record was so extremely therapeutic for us, and getting deep into those songs really was such an intense and beautiful experience. It was no different working on this. It just gave me an even deeper love of one of the greatest musicians ever to walk this earth.

Amanda Palmer:

Jherek and I had already bonded over our deep love of Prince while were touring together in support of my kickstarter-ed record; we even decided to learn the entirety of the Purple Rain album – every strange synth part on every song – for a New Years Eve show at Terminal 5 in 2012. Unsurprisingly, there’s no evidence or footage on youtube…every fan video was wiped by Prince’s team in the 48 hours after the show. I respected that. Even though Prince’s attitude towards the internet frustrated and sometimes baffled me, I could always see things from his perspective; I found myself thinking that it must have been so incredibly frustrating for him to become fluent in a language – the language of 1908s and 1990s record labels, contracts and ownership – that was becoming a dead tongue in his own lifetime. Especially when his knowledge was so hard-won.

“Purple Rain”, the album/soundtrack, was my first cassette tape, purchased with allowance money when I was about ten years old. It became the sole resident of the book-size silver sony walkman that I wore around my neck on a nylon strap (they hadn’t quite figured out the hip-clip method back in 1985, we all walked around looking really silly with those neck-walkmen).

The Walkman was a life-changing invention for the young music listener: my entire world became a film to which Prince was the soundtrack: my walk to school, my walk home from school, family trips in the car, my own little universe at night, falling asleep with headphones on, gazing at the Prince poster above my bed (this one, to be exact). He created my universe in song, and mansions full of doves and computers and Darling Nikkis danced in my head as I slept.

In a move that’s part ironic and part poetic we used the money from my patreon, a subscription system I’ve been using (instead of using a record label for this project). My patreon greatly resembles Prince’s “NPG Music Club” , which was a proto-crowfunding website back in 2001(2001!) into which fans could pay a yearly subscription and get their Prince-content directly from Prince (it failed, alas…he, like Bowie, was ahead of his time).

Jherek and I are putting this version of “purple rain” up for as close to “free” as we are able on bandcamp.com ($1 and up), given that Prince’s publishing rights need to be paid. We are giving the remainder of the profit, until further notice, to Elevate Hope, a charity that provides music therapy for abused and abandoned children founded by Prince-coterie member Shiela E.

Jherek recorded the strings live in L.A., and I cut the vocal for this song in a huge converted church in Hudson, NY. I found myself thinking, as we started recording, that the entire experience of Prince could be summed up by those first two lines of “Let’s Go Crazy” (which we decided to mash into our arrangement, because why not). It sums up, perhaps, the experience of any human who tries to hammer out some offering that can become to soundtrack of our lives; the music to which we can dance and sing and scream ourselves clean. The mantra, basically, of any artist who humbly stands before an audience and offers their voice:

Dearly Beloved.

We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.

…….

Thank you, Prince. With your music in our ears, we will hopefully punch a higher floor.