Prince takes final bow
Prince iconic superstar and pioneer of American music
dies at 57:
‘Purple Rain’ singer whose sprawling career spanned decades and
genres died at his Paisley Park recording studio in his home state of
Minnesota last week, leaving a gaping hole in musical genres as diverse
as R&B, rock, funk and pop.
The death was announced by his publicist Yvette Noel-Schure after
police had been called to the premises which double as his music studio
in the Minnesota city. No details were given for the cause of death,
though he was earlier rushed to hospital, apparently recovering from a
bout of flu.
The sudden death of the diminutive man who became such a towering
musical figure, selling more than 100 million records in a career of
virtually unparalleled richness and unpredictability, prompted an
emotional response across the music world.
Towering musician
On Twitter, fellow celebrities vented barely contained grief. Boy
George called Thursday “the worst day ever,” Katy Perry said: “And just
like that … the world lost a lot of magic.”
Barack Obama, who was flying from Saudi Arabia to London on Air Force
One, said he was mourning along with millions of fans. “Few artistes
have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more
distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. As one of
the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all.”
One thing was certain: Prince lived life to the fullest right up to
his early demise. If anything, the workaholic who regularly slept three
hours a night and would play impromptu concerts until dawn was
accelerating the pace of his hectic schedule when he died.
He cut four albums in his last 18 months, and had let it be known he
was writing a memoir that would be released next year. Hours after he
was released from hospital, he announced that he was going to throw a
dance party at his music complex which he dubbed “Paisley Park After
Dark.” He said tickets would cost just US$10, and said of his recent
tussle with flu: “Wait a few days before you waste any prayers.”
Standing just 5 feet 2 inches tall, Prince truly had an outsized
influence on the world. Born in his beloved Minneapolis on June 7, 1958,
his sprawling musical tastes, androgynous style, genre-bending
imagination, sexual outrageousness and flirtation with religion left
fans forever guessing about where he would go next.
His wry, almost satirical relationship with fame, combined with his
masterful skills at self-projection, led him to play with his own name.
Which is perhaps unsurprising, as he never really had his own
self-identity: he was christened Prince Rogers Nelson after his father’s
stage persona, Prince Rogers.
Outsized influence
In 1993, Prince famously changed his name to an unpronounceable
symbol, causing momentary panic across newspapers and publishing houses
who scrambled to find ways to replicate it. Their distress was eased
when a way out was found with the description “the artist formerly known
as Prince.”
That moniker remained until 2000. But far more important was his
equal willingness to shatter norms and conventions in music. His love of
songwriting stretched right back to childhood – he penned his first song
aged seven – and while he was still a teenager he recorded his first
demo tape at Moon’s Studio in Minneapolis, earning himself a contract
with Warner Bros.
Over the next 40 years he made 40 albums and won seven Grammy awards
in a flood of musical output that even left the artiste himself
bamboozled. Last year, he told the Guardian that he’d decided to
dispense with a band and with a huge back library of previous songs
because he found it so hard to marshal.
Breakthrough
“Tempo, keys, all those things can dictate what song I’m going to
play next, you know, as opposed to, ‘Oh, I’ve got to do my hit single
now, I’ve got to play this album all the way through,’ or whatever.
There’s so much material, it’s hard to choose.”
His breakthrough came with the 1979 album Prince, which hit the top
of the Billboard R&B charts and contained the smash singles Why You
Wanna Treat Me So Bad? and I Wanna Be Your Lover. Dirty Mind (1980) and
Controversy (1981) both managed to attract musical admiration but also,
as the latter title suggested, provoke a firestorm of criticism for
their edgy interplay between religion and sexuality. With every cleverly
concocted row, Prince’s star shone brighter.
But it was in 1984 with Purple Rain that he really captured global
adulation. Purple Rain was not so much an album and film, it was a
cultural phenomenon. The song of the same name, with its first verse
dedicated to his father and recorded over a daring 13 minutes in the
First Avenue club in Minneapolis, went on to provide the skeleton
structure for both album and movie.
Prince was rewarded with 13m sales of the album. The film, featuring
a central character called ‘The Kid’ who leans heavily on Prince’s own
life story, won him an Oscar for songwriting.
While other artistes who cut their teeth in the 70s have settled for
repetitive revivals of their past glories, none of that would satisfy
Prince. With the passing of the millennium, his creative production and
desire to explore new pastures only grew more intense.
In 2007, he performed a 12-minute set at the Super Bowl that has
widely been credited as the greatest half-time show ever at the
footballing event. Then, from February 2014 to June 2015 he went on a
series of Hit N Run tour dates, wreaking havoc across 15 cities for 39
gigs in a little over a year.
Flanked by his band, the Purple One’s guerrilla gigs would be
confirmed sometimes no sooner than a few hours before via Twitter.
Stopping in at locations from London to Louisville, Paris to Montreal,
his epic sets would take place in a litany of shapes and sizes, at jazz
clubs and arenas. Those who witnessed his most intimate performances
would have been rewarded, after hours stood in snaking queues, with a
greatest hits funk extravaganza, the likes of Let’s Go Crazy and Little
Red Corvette performed so close you could stare into the whites of his
eyes. As a result, thousands of fans were given the opportunity to watch
the great musician perform a career-spanning set for one last time.And
if all that wasn’t enough, he still found time to fight a running battle
with ‘slave label’ Warner Bros, sue bootleggers for US$22m, become a
Jehovah’s Witness, and in 2010 declare the internet ‘completely over.’
(In such a long and storied career, it is perhaps permissible to make
one glaring mistake.)
Barney Hoskyns, author of Prince biography Imp of the Perverse, said
Prince was an artiste who defied labels and genres. “This was a guy who
effortlessly wrote great riffs, grooves and who packaged them in a
really distinctive way. He came out of the white Midwest, not the black
ghetto, so he synthesised a lot of influences. He knew he wanted to
define his own musical persona.”
His final shows were last week at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, where a
strict no photos or video rule was in place for two consecutive sets.
Billed as the Piano and a Microphone tour, Prince played solo at a
purple grand piano.
Before concluding with ‘Kiss,’ his third encore performance in the
earlier show, Prince sang ‘Heroes’ in tribute to David Bowie, who died
in January.
When the Guardian visited him in Paisley Park last year, he described
spending the previous night just playing to himself for three hours
without pause.
“I just couldn’t stop. That’s what you want. Transcendence. When that
happens … Oh, boy.”
-Guardian.com
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