Home / Prince Discography / Filmography /
3 Chains O’ Gold: Video Collection Prince video
Warner Music Vision
videoWhat’s Mayte got to do with the New Power Generation?
3 Chains O’ Gold is the VHS promotional video collection for the Love Symbol Album. The videos are interwoven to form a story centred upon the backdrop of Egypt, where the father of the fictional crown princess of Cairo is assassinated by seven men. The princess, played by Mayte Garcia, flees to the US and takes with her the three sacred gold chains of Turin and seeks Prince’s help by sending him a video. He watches it and falls in love. But, frightened by commitment he attempts promiscuity yet realises that his heart belongs with the princess – sealed with a date at the zoo. The seven assassins are hot on her heels and hunting her down to retrieve the mystical golden chains.
Mayte was enlisted to the New Power Generation in 1992 to dance on the Diamonds And Pearls Tour. Her arrival into Prince’s life became a key influence on his following Love Symbol Album, for which he contrived an Egyptian theme and produced a series of videos that combined to tell the story titled 3 Chains O’ Gold. In what became her first assignment for Prince, in January 1992 Mayte was sent to Cairo to shoot scenes which would later influence this storyline. The footage appeared in a TV special entitled Act I, showcasing promotional videos from Prince and the NPG’s Love Symbol Album, broadcast on ABC on 18 December 1992 shortly after the release of the album. The story was developed further for 3 Chains O’ Gold following the narrative of the album. It was further adapted into a 48-page comic book published by Paisley Park in 1993. Its centrepiece is the title track 3 Chains O’ Gold which rounds the story more explicitly in the form of a rock opera.
The storyline how Prince met his princess did in fact mirror real life, in that Prince was indeed introduced to Mayte as the result of watching a video tape compiled for him by her mother as a teenage professional belly dancer. On joining the band at the age of 19, Mayte danced on the subsequent Act I and Act II tours of 1993 and dated Prince over the following four years. The theme of Prince choosing to settle down with Mayte runs throughout Love Symbol Album. They married on Valentine’s Day 1996.
The video My Name Is Prince is filed in the alleyway next to the Minneapolis branch of Glam Slam. Prince dances on top of a police car that had actually turned up during the filming over concerns the filming was breaching the peace. The two officers were happy to oblige. My Name Is Prince was the first appearance of Prince’s best stage prop the golden gun mic – a wireless Sennheiser MD431 mic mounted on a revolver grip.
When shooting the promo for 7, the presence of young children, seven boys and seven girls dressed as mini Princes and Mayte’s, triggered a shift in the couple’s relationship and their desire to have children themselves. Shortly after meeting, in Prince sent Mayte to Cairo accompanied with Randee St. Nicholas to shoot footage with which to find a later use. This was indeed later incorporated into the videos for Sweet Baby and Damn U and the concept formed the backbone for 3 Chains O’ Gold. Prince had quite a deep interest in Egyptology and had amassed many books on the subject, found at Paisley Park following his death in 2016.
The videos
My Name Is Prince
- Location: Paisley Park Studios
- Director: Randee St. Nicholas
- Date: August/September 1992
Sexy MF
- Location: Paisley Park Studios
- Director: Sotera Tschetter
- Date: March 1992
Love 2 The 9’s
- Location: Paisley Park Studios
- Director: Parris Paton
- Date: Spring 1992
The Morning Papers & Damn U
- Location: Paisley Park Studios
- Director: Randee St. Nicholas
- Date: October 1992
The Max
- Locations: London Earls Court (live) and Paisley Park Studios
- Director: Parris Paton
- Date: Mid 1992 (live) and Mid 1993
Blue Light
- Location: Paisley Park Studios
- Director: Parris Paton
- Date: Early 1993
Eye Wanna Melt With U
- Location: Paisley Park Studios
- Director: Prince
- Date: October 1992
Sweet Baby
- Location: Cairo
- Director: Randee St. Nicholas
- Date: January 1992
The Continental
- Location: Paisley Park Studios
- Director: Sotera Tschetter
- Date: Late 1992
7
- Location: Paisley Park Studios
- Director: Sotera Tschetter
- Date: May 1992
Epilogue
Upon the seventh day of the sixth month, nineteen hundred and ninety-three, marking the beginning and ending of cycles of creation, Prince, reaching the balance of thirty-five years, put into practice the precepts of perfection: Voicing bliss through the freedom of being one’s self incarnating the New Power Generation into the close of the six period of involution giving birth upon himself to regenerate his name as Prince Love Symbol, For in the dawn, all will require no speakable name to differentiate the ineffable one that shall remain.
Performers
- Vocals/Guitar
- Prince
- Drums
- Michael Bland
- Rhythm Guitar
- Levi Seacer Jr.
- Keyboards
- Tommy Barbarella
- Bass Guitar
- Sonny Thompson
- Raps
- Tony Mosley
- Vocals
- Damon Dickson
- Mayte Garcia
- Percussion
- Kirk Johnson
Tracklist
- Prologue (1:02)
- Segue (3:30)
- My Name Is Prince [feat. Kirsty Alley] (3:52)
- Segue (2:46)
- Sexy MF (4:27)
- Segue (2:55)
- Love 2 The 9's [feat. Mayte] (3:32)
- Segue (0:27)
- The Morning Papers (4:01)
- Segue (1:17)
- The Max [feat. Mayte] (4:49)
- Segue (0:47)
- Blue Light [feat. Mayte] (3:07)
- Segue (0:31)
- Eye Wanna Melt With U (3:49)
- Segue (0:36)
- Sweet Baby [feat. Mayte] (4:03)
- Segue (2:04)
- The Continental [feat. Carmen Electra] (2:24)
- Segue (4:20)
- Damn U [feat. Matye] (4:08)
- Segue (3:52)
- 7 [feat. Mayte] (4:32)
- Epilogue [feat. Kirsty Alley & Mayte] (2:37)
- Segue (0:48)
- The Call (end credits) [feat. Kirsty Alley] (3:01) 1
1 Hidden track.
Data
- Directors
- Paris Patton & Randee St. Nicholas
- Released
- 16 August 1994
- Running Time
- 73 minutes
- Orig. Format
Related releases
![Sexy MF [video single]](https://goldiesparade.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sexymf-video.jpg)
© Goldies Parade, 1998 – 2026 • Privacy