MPR’s Mike Mulcahy reports on a tour of Prince’s Paisley Park by visiting foreign officials as a way to promote the Twin Cities.

[Unidentified artist is Tom Wait’s “Straight to the Top (Vegas)” from the album Frank's Wild Years]

Transcript:

(00:00:09) This was as close as the foreign officials got to hearing rock music by Prince or anyone else at Paisley Park. It's an unidentified artist being played over a multitrack recording system in one of the control rooms at the Chanhassen Studio about a dozen visiting ambassadors Embassy personnel and Trade Center officials took the tour of princes 10 million dollar. Cording complex Paisley Park management person. Harry Grossman says, he's a little gun. Shy about letting anyone visit especially the media because he thinks people will perceive the building as a playground for a spoiled Rockstar instead. He says it's a state-of-the-art facility that's already attracting business away from more established studios in Los Angeles.
(00:00:51) We have to recording studios and we have a rehearsal facility, which also can double as a third recording studio that Room is being started in two to three weeks. We have we just finished our second room and we'll move into the third. We have a production Sound Stage we have office facilities. And then we have some specialized Technical Services rooms that are in-house for us to maintain. Our own
(00:01:14) equipment audible gasps were detected as the visiting dignitaries walk through banks of recording equipment and Paisley Park gymnasium size Sound Stage, but had the officials ever even heard of Prince Bernhard. Davenport is a deputy Mission Chief from And
(00:01:30) of course, it's known all over the world, but it's more for my children. And for me, I'm a bit old
(00:01:37) Davenport says the Irish rock band U2 does a lot of recording in Dublin, but he and others say they've never seen anything as advanced as Paisley Park
(00:01:46) the share technical sort of quality of the detail of design of floors of recording studios of just absolutely amazing. It can be very few places like this in the world, but I guess, you know one didn't associate Minnesota with state-of-the-art recording, you know sort of modern
(00:02:04) music for his part World Trade Center president Rick Nolan concedes. This was one of the more splashy stops on the Diplomat store, but he says it helps demonstrate a commodity Minnesota can offer the world.
(00:02:16) They've taken a lot of products from all over the world and with Minnesota brain power. They put together the finest Production Studio anywhere in the world and that's something that we have to do a better job at exporting and that is our knowledge our brain. And power
(00:02:30) capabilities World Trade Center president Rick Nolan leading foreign diplomats through the Paisley Park recording complex in Chanhassen. I'm Mike Mulcahy.