The Warner Bros Phone Call That Led to Prince’s “Cream”

The scene was set up as a victory lap. Prince and the newly assembled New Power Generation had finished Diamonds And Pearls and flown to Los Angeles to perform for Warner Bros staff on the Burbank lot. The reaction was strong. Then the phone rang, and the call was for Levi Seacer Jr.

Seacer played guitar in the New Power Generation, and in this moment he functioned as the label’s line to Prince. Mo Ostin, Warner’s chairman and CEO, was on the other end with a problem. The record was solid, but the radio people did not feel they had a first single. Ostin wanted Seacer to carry the message, reasoning that he and Prince talked the same musical language, and that coming from the label it might not land. Seacer’s response, as he tells MusicRadar, was disbelief at being asked. He agreed anyway.

The Burbank set had complicated things. It leaned heavily on older material, Alphabet St., Purple Rain, Partyman, Let’s Work and a cover of the Ohio Players’ Skin Tight, with only Daddy Pop, Jughead and Gett Off drawn from the new album. Whatever the executives heard that night, it was not yet the single they wanted.

Seacer brought the request back to Prince. What came out of it was “Cream.”

The sequence is worth remembering for what it shows about how the biggest pop star of the period operated. Warner Bros had leverage, a finished album and a release schedule. Prince had the songs. The answer to a corporate request for radio was not a concession but a piece of writing that met the demand on his own terms.