Let the music play on
The Alexander O'Neal Story
How Prince kicked Alexander O' Neal out of the Time.
In the 80's Roger Nelson introduced us to the Minneapolis sound and he had started to burn the charts and also rule the airwaves, this young man is no other person than the artiste we all know as Prince Having been successful with his first two albums he needed to spread his wings, So sometimes he would jam with some of his friends to get new sounds. Among them was this young Prince lookalike Morris Day who had a song which prince liked and wanted, so he asked what Morris wanted in return for the song, a credit that they wrote The song or help him set up his band and also get a record deal, Morris settled for the latter, which is the band. About that time there were a lot of bands competing with Morris's band, among those band was Flytyme, a group which had super producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and Alexander O Neal who was the lead vocalist for Flytyme .
The Time With Morris Day
Before striking a deal with Prince, Morris had said to Terry Lewis that he would like to Merge his band with Flytyme sometimes in the nearest future, when the deal was struck the plan was for Morris to abandon his band and join Flytyme as their drummer and as A result jellybean Johnson the Flytyme drummer would be kicked out thereafter. This had been agreed on with Terry (the band coordinator)
A meeting was set up with Prince in which every one except Alex agreed to all Prince said, Alex asked Prince about how and when they will start getting paid, he also asked what Jellybean's fate would be, these two questions made Prince to quickly come to the conclusion that Alex was too opinionated and would be a problem in the and. After the meeting Morris got a call from Prince to kick Alex out and that Morris would Be the new lead vocalist for Flytyme and put jellybean back as the drummer and Prince changed the name of the band from Flytyme to the Time.
Prince
How Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis gave Alexander O Neal his big break
Prince was a genius and also a control freak, he never wanted any other act to sound like The Minneapolis acts ,which were mainly from his stable, but before the Time took off Under prince, Morris Day had advised Jimmy and Terry to get side hustles because he was taking acting lessons, so they took to producing other acts outside the Prince stable. Sometime in 1983 when they had their off days from the Time, they flew to Atlanta to produce the SOS band record, which had the single "just be good to me", unfortunately this became a hit on the billboard charts and Prince fired them, fortunately Clarence Avant's Tabu records gave them more production work to do. among the acts was Jeffrey Robinson, but the two producers were not too impressed with the single, so the project was abandoned. One saturday morning while high on weeds and blasting his music, Alex got a call from Terry Lewis who said to Alex "Go turn that music down nigger ", at first Alex was not too Happy that someone would call his home and call him names, Terry later told him that he and Jimmy had got him a deal with Tabu records , his first record was recorded and released in 1985 the album was a smash and it had two hit singles, "if you were here tonight" and "Innocent."
Alexander O'Neal
In 1987 Alex had another Monster Album "Hearsay " this album had hit singles such as
"Criticize", "fake lovers" and " what can I say to make you love me girl, he had so many albums
after these two but none of the later albums will march the success of the first two albums.
Alexander O'Neal on stage
