PRINCE TAKES BEATLES’ PATH ‘AROUND THE WORLD’

How naive of us to have thought last year that Prince was merely trying to duplicate the superstar status of Michael Jackson. Prince’s real target--as suggested by the new “Around the World in a Day” album--appears to be the artistic legacy of the Beatles.

“Around the World” falls short of the sociological impact of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” which cemented the Beatles’ position as the spokesmen for a generation. Still, the highlights of this warm, daring and frequently humorous work are encouraging to those who feared that Prince’s lame sexual posturing on the “Purple Rain” tour meant he was becoming the Bo Derek of rock.

“Around the World” is a play on the title of Mike Todd’s Academy Award-winning 1956 film “Around the World in 80 Days,” but the inspiration was clearly “Sgt. Pepper’s,” the Beatles’ landmark 1967 LP that brought an arty consciousness to rock.

The collection, due in stores Monday, is reminiscent of “Sgt. Pepper’s” in several ways, including the psychedelic touches in the music and the artwork on the cover. The latter offers a deceptively pastoral scene that brings together the conflicting characters and themes from Prince’s continuing tales of the struggle between sin and salvation. Among the images: a temptress with an apple standing near a ladder stretching up to heaven. On a collision course in the sky: a bomber and a dove.

The most significant link between the two albums, however, is the willingness of Prince and the Beatles to risk alienating their audiences at times of immense popularity by playing down many of their musical trademarks in order to move to a different artistic level.

“World” does include traces of his familiar musical approach--the intoxicating mix of dance-floor zest and eye-opening sexual bravado that has worked so well for him since the “Dirty Mind” album in 1980. Mostly, however, Prince--working again with his Revolution band--turns to softer and more reflective styles. Folk replaces funk in some spots, and a cello takes over for the fuzz-tone guitar elsewhere.

Don’t get the idea, however, that Prince has become tame. There are still plenty of teasing, bizarre touches in the album to sustain Prince’s provocative persona. The difference is an intimacy that he has rarely shown on record--a slight lifting of his mysterious veil.

What are his fans going to think of the album?

Change is a dangerous thing in rock and many of the young fans who embraced the heat and force of “Purple Rain” may find “World” too tame. But the odds were against any follow-up LP matching the spectacular success (10 million sales) of that collection, especially in view of the backlash that has been swelling around him in recent months.

If the horde of “Purple Rain” movie fans do accept Prince’s disarming shift, he will have pulled off a major coup. Even if they don’t, there is enough freshness and charm in “Around the World” to satisfy those who were into Prince before “Purple Rain.” So “Around the World” may be good strategy as well as good music.

Prince came of age musically with “Dirty Mind,” the album that defined his sexual-renegade stance. Though his aggressive approach (highlighted by songs about such matters as incest and masturbation) was dismissed as crude and gimmicky in some quarters, Prince offered a liberating message that challenged listeners to examine their assumptions and actions rather than accept what had been outlined for them.

The triumph of last year’s “Purple Rain” sound-track album was that Prince reached a wider audience (toning down his language and adopting more conventional rock musical touches) without sacrificing his liberating vision. Things ran into trouble, however, on the “Purple Rain” tour.

Because of the success of the film and the string of hit singles, Prince was the toast of pop: a hit with both the teen-age rock crowd who responded to the flash in his style and the more sophisticated listeners who appreciated the artistry.

Selling out shows with a speed that must have even impressed Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen’s accountants, Prince became a near-parody of himself, pandering to the audience’s fascination with his sexy persona. If he wasn’t recycling James Brown dance steps, he was rolling around with an imaginary sex partner on the floor.

Prince was also the victim of severe misfortune and/or misjudgment, including his failure to participate in the “We Are the World” recording session and an incident outside a West Hollywood restaurant where two of his bodyguards allegedly attacked two photographers.

This led many to think of him an arrogant jerk, which was exactly the point of a recent, hilarious “Saturday Night Live” skit in which the Prince character--after realizing his mistake in not joining the benefit recording--cuts his own version of “We Are the World.” As the Prince look-alike sings, “I am also the world, I am also the children,” two beefy bodyguards (played by wrestling champ Hulk Hogan and Mr. T) beat up on Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson and Paul Simon look-alikes who try to join the session.

What happened to Prince?

There is a possibility that Prince was simply overwhelmed by his sudden, enormous success. After all, here is a guy who was booed off the stage in 1981 when he opened for the Rolling Stones at the Los Angeles Coliseum. It’s a pretty heady experience to come back four years later and be the toast of rock. Loneliness isn’t the biggest danger at the top; isolation is.

But we don’t really know what’s happening inside Prince’s world because he has cut himself off from the media. His last interview was in 1983.

We can, however, speculate about why he changed from this liberating figure on stage to a cold, somewhat indulgent one. In retrospect, Prince may have simply been assuming the role on stage of the arrogant, self-absorbed kid, the central figure in “Purple Rain”--much the way David Bowie portrayed “Ziggy Stardust” on his first U.S. tour.

The problem is that the audience is left to separate the matter of where the stage character ends and the performer begins. Even after all this time, we’re still not sure in Bowie’s case. “Around the World,” however, may be Prince’s attempt to clarify things.

The word is that this album was finished before the tour, so it still might not give us an accurate glimpse of today’s Prince, but the decision to go ahead and release the album--rather than rush out another album in the “Purple Rain” style--was a wise one.

In some ways, the album title and packaging imply more of a concept than the music delivers. In fact, most of the album’s freshness comes from the expansion of his musical vocabulary. Rather than break new thematic territory, Prince is refining his previously introduced thoughts about social order and spiritual guidelines.

The album’s title track, which Prince wrote with his father (John Nelson) and musician David Coleman, is more an introduction to the album than a fully developed opening number. Much like the opening track on “Sgt. Pepper’s,” the song--with its exotic Middle Eastern textures--is an invitation to a journey. This one is a trip through Prince’s emotional world. In a sly, humorous aside, the diminutive Prince says, “The little I will escort you.”

The first stop on the album, “Paisley Park,” is so close in theme and psychedelic sound to “Sgt. Pepper’s” that you almost expect to hear a refrain from “With a Little Help From My Friends.” There are even the nonsensical lines that the Beatles used to delight in throwing into songs. Prince’s contribution to the tradition: “Who ever said that elephants were stronger than mules?”

In “Condition of the Heart,” Prince talks about the sting of romantic rejection, recalling the fragility of “When Doves Cry.” The most immediately appealing track is the folk-flavored “Raspberry Beret,” which could be viewed as a tender, PG-rated version of the spicy “Little Red Corvette.” Side 1 closes with “Tambourine,” a playful but slight tale of sexual delight.

Side 2 moves closer to Prince’s familiar post-funk/rock style. In fact, the snappy percussion and provocative observation of the socially conscious “America” and morally aware “Pop Life” could have have fit nicely into “Purple Rain.”

Finding no comfort in the material world, Prince turns in the final two songs to higher ground. “The Ladder” is a lavishly arranged but fairly straight-ahead, saxophone-accented gospel narrative, while “Temptation” is a mini-play in which the wild side of Prince (with flaring guitar and his speeches about sexual temptation) meets his Maker.

In the body of the song, Prince sings--frequently in an exclamatory, falsetto vocal against a teasing, vamp-like beat--about how everyone has vices, including “this little Prince,” who is “guilty in the first degree.”

The music slows as he tells us, “I’m not talking about any kind of temptation, people, I’m talking about . . . sexual temptation . . . You. I want you. . . .”

All this is obviously too much for God. In a deep, electronically altered voice to provide the proper authority, God tells Prince he wants this woman for the wrong reason. Prince tries to plead his case, but God isn’t in a debating mood. He closes the case by saying, “Now die.”

Screams Prince: “Noooooo, nooooo. . . . I’m sorry. I’ll be good. This time I promise. Love is more important than sex. Now I understand.”

To us, he adds: “I have to go now. I don’t know when I’ll return. Goodby.”

It’s a fascinating close to the album, especially on the heels of the announcement that Prince will be taking an indefinite break from live performances. Some listeners are bound to dismiss the high-wire emotionalism of “Temptation” as a sign Prince has gone off the deep end, while others will respond to it as outrageous gospel fervor.

“Around the World” obviously represents to Prince the end of a chapter in his life and career. While it lacks the sure-fire accessibility and punch of “Purple Rain” or “1999,” the album raises more questions than any other LP by this baffling but extremely gifted performer. Who knows where he’ll head next?

However, one thing is certain: Prince is a lot better off chasing after the ambition of the Beatles than the false idolatry of the “Purple Rain” tour.