Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman felt the end coming. They were on stage during the last date of Prince’s famed "Purple Rain" tour. According to the toro, the evening seemed more ex-citing than usual, the band tighter and the music better than ever. The vibe seemed 'inescapable to the whole band, including Prince. "He broke all his Purple Rain guitars' during ‘Purple Rain’ – some-thing he’d never done before," re-members Wendy. "We did ‘Sometimes It Snows In April’ as an encore, and he seemed moved by it. We kinda knew then." Still, the two were "numb" when word finally came down several weeks later, that Prince was in factdis banding The Revolution. "We would have stayed (with him in a new band) had he asked us," says Lisa, "but he wanted to do something different. I can understand that. But it was still a sad time. I mean, we been working with him since the 1999 tom. It was like home." Regardless, Wendy and Lisa went on. to do the most obvious thing – they made their own record, Wendy And Lisa for Columbia. Both admit that the new project is a lot different from the .things they used to do mth Prince. It wasn’t meant to be another Revolution record," says - Wendy. "It’s us, where we’re com ing from." At one time, Wendy and Lisa held one of the most ended positions in pop music. During Prince’s heady "Purple Rain" days, the duo was Prince’s main musical confidante and the co-stars of the Prince persona. Long a musical individualist who helped popularize the one-man-band concept among his musical generation, Prince surprised musical peers not only by allowing Wendy and Lisa important sloth' in his band, but allowing them to collaborate on 'songs. Wendy and Lisa wrote "Mountains" on Prince’s Pan uk album, and the song "Purple Ram" made gener-OU8 l188 of Wendy's guitar chords. "It was exciting when Prince asked me to start writing string arrangements for the song," says Wendy. "I got to call my brother down to the studio in L.A. with is cello td perform it." According to the duo, Prince had mentioned returning that favour by writing a song for their album, but it never came. "You know Prince;" says Lisa, "probably bogged down with a million 'other, things." Wendy and Lisa's pairing is a bit of a real-life cliche. You see,, both of their fathers, were also musicians and best friends and their pairing made it almost inevitable that their. daughters meet. Deepite this built-in assurance of eventual collaboration, the two-grew up together Without really working together musically until just before "Purple Rain." Prince was looking for a guitar player for the Revolution and Lisa  recommended her friend. Prince heard her and was impressed, but Wendy really earned her stripes with Wince when she demonstrated her funk instincts while the two were jamming a rendition of James Brown’s "Body Heat." Perhaps Wendy and Lisa stood out from the rest of the band simply because they were females, but whateier the reason, folks began to listen up. Soon the duo be-came the only members of the group to get any kind of media attention. Prince used to send them out to do interviews on his behalf (as he does today with Sheila E.). They once appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with their boss, but the story was as much about them as it was about Prince. Soon, "Wendy and Lisa" were more thin names; it became their moniker. "Once I was in a store by myself," says Wendy, and a little girl saw me and said, ‘Loak mommy, it’s Wendy and Lisa!’ We became one person to the public." Wendy and Lisa have plans to face that public via a tour some-time in ’88. The two don’t seem afraid to face skeptics who are ready to compare them to their old employer. But by creating an a/bum void of the usual Minneapolis sound, they may have already side-stepped that problem. Not that they' don’t still care. "We think about him all the time," says Wendy, "and we talk about the old times. That’s what ‘Song About’ is about. But life goes on and we’re glad to have a future to look to." *