The Gold Experience (1995)
Two studio versions of Endorphinmachine exist. One recorded in 1993 which out-Aerosmiths Aerosmith with a raw slab of screaming RAWK. And the other released on 1995’s The Gold Experience where Prince beefs up his earlier track with overdubs and makes you smoke the whole pack of cowbell. Your preference may depend on which you heard first (the original was never released but regularly performed in concerts and on TV before the album dropped) or it may depend on your tolerance for cowbell. Either way you’re treated to some primo Prince screams and for once they’re not all kept in his pocket until the song’s crescendo. Straight out the gate, we’re hit with banshee wails as he grabs the horns of the devil’s music and rides it like a rodeo bronco. Another two orgasmic, neuron-popping screams grace the climax, one so powerful it blows the music out. This is what the Endorphinmachine does to you. It’s clearly based on The Excessive Machine – the contraption in The film Barbarella which pleasures you to death. Is this how he killed off his Prince persona? The “Prince esta muerto” sign-off makes painful listening today but its placement here suggests his first incarnation was bumped off with a turned-up-to-eleven endorphin overdose.