Fender Rhodes

The Fender Rhodes is an electric piano used by Prince and his band members throughout his career. It was popular with jazz fusion and R&B artists of the 1960s and 1970s. Prince played one on For You and Dr Fink used one live on the Prince tour.

In the 1990s, Prince began to revisit older sounds in his music. Tommy Barbarella toured with one around the Gold Experience and it appears in the Gold and Endorphinmachine videos. It appears prominently on The Rainbow Children and N.E.W.S., which drew on the funk and jazz fusion of the 1970s. Ken Rich Sound Services rehoused the Fender Rhodes in a plexi-glass case (like the plexi-glass Hammond B3 and Leslie cabinet). Prince played this Rhodes on the One Nite Alone tour. This instrument remains in the collection at Paisley Park.

Renato Neto and Chance Howard also used a Fender Rhodes live in the 2000s. They discussed this in the August 2004 issue of Keyboard magazine.