401: Call of the Wild

Unreleased (1985)
Ten days after Led Zeppelin’s much-anticipated reunion at Live Aid – a disapointing trainwreck of a performance that they wouldn’t let be included on the official DVD – Prince was inspired to go into the studio and record his version of a Zeppelin-style stadium rocker. Call of the Wild’s music is dark and menacing, evoking breached chain-link fences, searching spotlights and air-raid siren guitars alerting that someone has broken into, or out of, the compound. The drum, described as “pumping blood to your brain”, has a war-like beat and on every alternate bar there’s an amplified wind noise on the 3 and 4 that sounds like either your own exhausted panting or the guard dogs breathing down your neck. Ominously it slows down towards the end, telling you you’re cornered, options narrowing, but when it starts up again for the last thirty seconds you know somehow you’ve Steve McQueened it.