Let’s Rock in Boulder, then a new name
Let’s Work began as Let’s Rock. Between 10 and 21 July 1979, at Mountain Ears Sound Studio in Boulder, Colorado, Prince cut it during sessions for the abandoned Rebels album. The title came from a dance he had seen in clubs that summer, the Rock. He wanted the song out as a single at once. Warner Bros. said no. The track sat. He liked it, and he thought the name would sound dated by the time a label would actually release it.
He re-recorded it in the spring and summer of 1981 at Hollywood Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, for the Controversy album, and finished it at Sunset Sound in Hollywood between 14 and 23 August 1981. The released master credits engineers Bob Mockler, Ross Pallone and Mic Guzauski. The album cut runs 3:52 and sits as track six. Controversy came out on 14 October 1981 on Warner Bros. Let’s Work is the dance record on a short album that also holds the title track and Do Me, Baby.
The single followed on 6 January 1982, a 2:56 edit, with Ronnie, Talk to Russia on the B-side. The 12-inch arrived on 17 February, an 8:02 dance remix. Prince and Morris Day cut that remix on 8 December 1981 at Sunset Sound, and Day plays drums on the extended section. The US 12-inch also carries Gotta Stop (Messin’ About). On the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart the single reached number 9 and stayed 16 weeks. It bubbled under the Hot 100 at 104. With Controversy it had already spent six weeks at number 1 on the Disco Top 80 in late 1981.
Let’s Work would become a highlight of the Controversy album and a decent-sized hit single, reaching number 9 on Billboard’s Hot Soul Singles and topping the Dance/Disco chart.
(Zachary Hoskins, Dance/Music/Sex/Romance, 2018)
He kept playing it. An official live recording from the Masonic Hall in Detroit, the late show on 30 November 1982, is the one on his channel. The Controversy tour and the early 1999 shows both used the long version. The 12-inch also drops pieces of his own records into the mix, including bits of Controversy and Annie Christian, an early case of him sampling himself rather than waiting for someone else to do it.
The song people bought in 1982 is not the Boulder demo under the old name. It is the Hollywood remake, renamed so the club step would not date it, with Morris Day on the 12-inch and a number 9 on the soul chart. The Rock, as a Minneapolis dance, left almost no pictures. Let’s Work is the record that survived the refusal.
