Publication: Chicago Tribune [US]
Date: July 2, 1989
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Title: "Queen of the Jungle Sheena Easton Has Survived Rumors and Wangles"
Written By: David Silverman

'Get it straight. I've never slept with Prince. "

A strange declaration, an even stranger way to begin a conversation, but Sheena Easton is clearing the air. Speaking from her publicist's Los Angeles office, she has launched into the topic of her flamboyant mentor with little prompting. The mere mention of the Purple One, who is now "Batdancing" his way to even greater glory, is enough to open a spigot of denials.

"Every bit of it is trash," she said of the barrage of stories that repeatedly linked the two outside the recording studio.

"He's a brilliant musician and I respect him. He's helped me in my career, given me guidance and taught me about making and writing music. I'd be crazy not to work with him. But that's where it ends, never anything more than that."

Her words come in bursts, tough but with a lilting Scottish burr and sprinkled with the occasional emphatic curse. In the three years since the release of her last solo album, Easton has seen the press only once - when they were setting her up with Don Johnson, during a stint of guest appearances Easton made last year as Johnson's wife on "Miami Vice."

Now that her latest LP, "The Lover In Me," has spawned its first Top 10 single and she is on a summer tour (including Poplar Creek on Saturday), Easton is making up for lost time with a heavy dose of rumor control.

"Eventually, I'm sure, Elvis Presley will be brought into all of this with Prince - as the third member of a love triangle - and the truth at last will be known."

Finally, she laughs.

This isn't the voice of the wistful girl who sang her way from a 1979 BBC music-business documentary to a best new artist Grammy two years later for the hit singles "Modern Girl" and "Morning Train." Nor is it the young woman who flourished in the volatile world of Prince's musical visions, pumping out dance hits like "Telefone" and "Sugar Walls."

After nearly a decade tied to one of the hottest sharks in the rock 'n' roll fishbowl, Easton has emerged as a modern girl of another sort - one who is certainly able to defend herself, who has even learned to strike first on occasion.

"The music business and television or film, entertainment in general, tears people apart very quickly. After the fight I've had, you learn to stay out of the mess until it begins to affect you. Then you stop it before it destroys you completely."

Her voice is strong, and the reference to her just-concluded battle with her former record label, EMI-America, is thinly veiled and bitter.

After making successful but not groundbreaking pop through the middle '80s, Easton sought a new direction in late 1986 with an album of ballads, "No Sound But A Heart." She entered the studio at a time when the label was changing hands. By the time the LP was finished, EMI had become EMI-Manhattan and the company's new management wanted no part of the project.

"We were in the studio finishing the album even though it looked like the company was going out of business," Easton said of the doomsday atmosphere during the last days of recording "No Sound."

"I knew that it was time to leave, but it also meant leaving the album behind. I had to sacrifice everything we put into the album, a part of me, in order to move on. It was a slow process and not an easy one."

Slow eventually would mean a three-year legal tangle that would prevent Easton from recording any new solo material.

"The positive side is that it also gave me the opportunity to reach out to new areas, to do things I might not have had I continued only in my solo work."

Her first project, the Prince -penned duet single "U Got the Look" shot to No. 1 at the end of 1987. She was Prince's perfect foil as a slicked-down, punked-up stiletto.

A single-track song that left little lyrical mystery, "U Got The Look" set imaginations on fire. Like Apollonia, Vanity and Sheila E. before her, Easton soon suffered the slings and arrows of those who feast on Prince's penchant for nubile collaborators. There were tabloid tales of everything from an alleged million-dollar Parisian love nest bought for Easton on a whim to a disastrous break-up over ESP.

But unlike the other Princettes, Easton survived on her own, moving on to projects and attention outside Paisley Park, Prince's studio.

In 1987, during the height of Easton's legal battles, the producers of "Miami Vice" began looking for a cure to popularity problems that had dropped the show from No. 5 to No. 49 in the weekly ratings in less than two years.

The solution: marry off Sonny Crockett, Don Johnson's pastel-cop character, in a ceremony that would mix elements of a royal wedding and "Scarface."

Carly Simon rejected the part several times. Loraine Bracco, who landed the part, went down with the flu and was forced to leave the set just a week before shooting was set to begin. Within 24 hours, Easton, who had read for the part originally but was rejected, was rehearsing a marriage proposal in Johnson's arms.

"It was so quick that there was no time to think. Everyone said it was a good move. I felt I could do the acting, but there were also doubts in the back of my head as to whether I'd be making a fool of myself in front of the world.

"After we started shooting, things got easier. But I learned quickly that I'm never going to play Shakespeare, either."

The critics gave Easton a B-plus for her performance as pop star Caitlin Davies, and the marriage earned the show its highest ratings of the season. But after five stormy episodes, Easton/Davies was killed off by a couple of drug-dealing music industry executives.

"I was actually relieved when they made the decision to kill me off," Easton said. "If they had just divorced us, there'd be talk of me coming back in other episodes, and I wasn't ready to make that kind of commitment."

Movie offers followed her "Miami Vice" appearance, and Easton suspects she'll find something soon. Recently, however, the parts haven't exactly been what she had in mind.

"One of the scripts had me playing a Scottish vampire, which isn't the best way to build acting credentials. For right now, I think I'd like to play smaller parts, weird people and characters that are more interesting because they're not always at the center of attention."

Meanwhile, music is once again Easton's chief obsession. "The Lover in Me" was an ambitious project, bringing together some of pop's most proven hitmakers. It was produced and written by L.A. Reid and Babyface, Prince, Angela Windush and Jellybean Benitez, the largest group of collaborators Easton has yet assembled.

"Before I worked with the writers and producers on the album, I told them I wanted to project a lot of different sides to my personality. The album has a strong attitude and basically says, "Take me or leave me, but this is who I am and don't mess with me.' "

For Easton, the search now is for independance, away from her role as just a pop star and from the shadow of the man who helped thrust her to stardom.

"I've never wanted to break from the creative edge that Prince has," Easton said, reflecting on their six years in the studio. "But it felt like he was sending me in a direction. Now I have to guide myself to find out what's there."