Prince Chaos, Disorder, and Revolution

313 Pages·2011·3.76 MB·English

by  Draper

To my darling Nicky
A BACKBEAT BOOK
First edition 2011
Published by Backbeat Books (an imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation) 19 West 21st Street, New York, NY
10010, USA www.backbeatbooks.com
Devised and produced for Backbeat Books by Outline Press Ltd 2A Union Court, 20-22 Union Road,
London SW4 6JP, England ISBN: 9781458429445
Text copyright © Jason Draper. Volume copyright © 2011 Outline Press Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission, except by a reviewer who wishes to
quote brief passages in connection with a review. For more information you must contact the publisher.
Editor: Thomas Jerome Seabrook Design: Paul Cooper Design
CONTENTS
Introduction
CHAPTER 1: I Wasn’t Born Like My Brother: Handsome And Tall
CHAPTER 2: Let’s Work
CHAPTER 3: People Call Me Rude; I Wish We All Were Nude
CHAPTER 4: All The Critics Love U
CHAPTER 5: Baby I’m A Star
CHAPTER 6: U Got 2 Try A New Position
CHAPTER 7: Got Any Dreams You Ain’t Usin’?
CHAPTER 8: Talkin’ Stuff In A Violent Room
CHAPTER 9: I’ve Seen The Future
CHAPTER 10: We R The New Power Generation, We Want 2 Change The
World
CHAPTER 11: Eye Hate U
CHAPTER 12: The Exodus Has Begun
CHAPTER 13: Emancipation
CHAPTER 14: U Ever Had A Crystal Ball?
CHAPTER 15: This Is The Work We Must Do 4 Revolution 2 Come 2 Pass
CHAPTER 16: Don’t U Miss The Feeling Music Gave Ya Back In The Day?
CHAPTER 17: U Need 2 Be A Superstar Or Grow Up—But Not Both
CHAPTER 18: Prince Is Alive! (And He Lives In Minneapolis)
Timeline
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
Photo Insert
*
INTRODUCTION
I make music because if I don’t, I’d die. I record because it’s in my blood. I hear sounds all
the time. It’s almost a curse: to know you can always make something new.
1
Prince
Prince Rogers Nelson first became fascinated with music at the age of six, when
he saw his father’s three-piece jazz band perform. Everything about it seemed
amazing: the sounds that came out of his father’s piano; the chorus girls that
came out dancing at Nelson Sr’s command; the emotive power the whole thing
had over the people in the audience.
Prince became obsessed with music as an outlet for his innermost feelings. In
the 80s, those feelings seemed to fall perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist. Twenty
years after that epochal event in a tiny jazz club in his hometown of
Minneapolis, Minnesota, Prince had become a global superstar. The most
famous musician on the planet, the author and star of Purple Rain, had only just
turned 26.
Commercial success is one thing. Being one of the most important and
talented artists ever to have graced the earth is quite another. With the April
1978 release of his debut, For You, Prince began a ten-year run of albums on
which he continued to push himself and his art further and further. In a decade
widely remembered for its selfishness and soullessness, Prince redefined the
concept of ‘soulful’ music.
Taking his lead from the flag-bearers of funk—Sly Stone, James Brown, and
George Clinton—and artistic pioneers such as Miles Davis and Joni Mitchell,
Prince imbued his art with his idiosyncratic view of life, turning out music from
the mind of a sex-obsessed deviant (Dirty Mind); a bomb-fearing party-animal
(‘1999’); a God-fearing man searching for a ways to reconcile the spiritual with
the sexual (Lovesexy); and so much more.
When Prince had finished redefining the music, he took his battle for
individuality to the record business. During the 90s he waged war against his
record label, Warner Bros, changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol,
and pronounced himself a slave to the system. He might have faced derision
from all corners then but now, a decade into the 21st century, it’s become
obvious that Prince’s actions weren’t just crucial for him, but for whole
generations of musicians to come.
Many in the music business continue to suffer as a result of their initial failure
to embrace the internet, but not Prince. He was the first artist to release a whole
album online via his own self-financed record label, and has continued to seek
out new ways to release and promote his music, even going so far as to give it
away for free. His fight for artists’ rights has shown future generations that they
don’t have to adhere to anyone else’s rules, and shown how one man can stay
relevant for more than 30 years on the strength of a passion to challenge the
status quo and change the way things are done.
It should come as no surprise that an artist who wages war on staying still
remains impossible to define. “I’m not a woman, I’m not a man,” he sang on
Purple Rain’s ‘I Would Die 4 U.’ “I am something you’ll never understand.” He
has remained true to that expression ever since, whether by fusing masculine and
feminine concepts, changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol (and back
again), turning his back on his raunchy past and becoming a devout Jehovah’s
Witness, or breaking new ground on the internet and then seemingly removing
himself from it entirely. Throughout it all he remains Prince: indefinable,
contradictory, an enigma wholly committed to beating his own path.
This book is not a muckraker, it’s not a gossip, and it’s sure as hell not bent on
setting one man up to knock him down. Prince has been ridiculous, Prince has
been amusing, Prince has been astounding. He’s been the envy of every
musician on the planet. His peers might be stuck in an endless cycle of albums
and tours, but Prince doesn’t need to be seen unless he wants you to see him.
Prince: Chaos, Disorder, And Revolution will simply tell you what happened
and how, leaving it up to you to make your own conclusions about the man who
has done it all, and yet continues to look for more ways in which to do it.
Jason Draper
London, England
1
I Wasn’t Born Like My Brother:
Handsome And Tall
I went through a lot when I was a boy. They called me sissy, punk, freak, and faggot. See,
the girls loved you, but the boys hated you. They called me Princess.
1
Prince
“I named my son Prince because I wanted him to do everything I wanted to do,”
Prince’s father, John L. Nelson, told A Current Affair in 1991. Even though his
son was only 33 at the time, Nelson Sr boasted: “He’s done all of it.”2
Much less could be said for John L., a gifted pianist and leader of The Prince
Rogers Trio—a Minneapolis jazz combo that gave Prince Rogers Nelson his
name. With both parents musicians (his mother, Mattie Shaw, was a former jazz
singer), Prince was surrounded by music from the moment he was taken home.
Apart from co-credits on his son’s future compositions, however, John L. Nelson
would struggle to break out of the small-time gigging scene. His son would go
on to become the first artist since The Beatles to simultaneously land a Number
One album, single, and film—all at the age of just 24.
Having struggled in Louisiana, Prince’s parents had moved separately to
Minnesota during the early 50s in search of work in a part of America that was
known for its liberal race-relations. Prince would later use his parents’ mixed
heritage—his father was part Italian, while his mother had African American,
Native American, and white roots—to confuse interviewers who refused to focus
on his music alone. A much less mixed influence was, undoubtedly, John L.’s
career as pianist in the Minneapolis clubs.
Prince was born on June 7 1958 at Mount Sinai Hospital, Minneapolis, and at
the age of five was taken by his mother to see The Prince Rogers Trio play in a
downtown Minneapolis club. The group’s mix of jazz standards and original
material wasn’t earth shattering, but the experience seemed nonetheless to
change Prince forever. He watched with interest as his father, decked out in the
sharpest of suits, led the band through its repertoire and held sway over the
crowd. When a line of dancing girls came out—seemingly also under Nelson’s