I am too shocked and crushed to even say much. He was the music of my youth. I lost my virginity to a Prince song, because that’s what you did in the late 80s. Even if you didn’t put it on specifically for the big moment, Prince would have been on the radio ANYWAY. He was the biggest genius who was actually active during my lifetime. If you were in high school in the 80s, he was everything. He IS everything. He was a superstar MAESTRO. I’m in total shock.
At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2004 ceremony, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne, George Harrison’s son and a host of others performed “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” And that’s awesome enough, right?
But wait for it. Wait for it.
My cousin Liam said on Facebook in regards to this guitar solo by Prince:
Everyone onstage here is completely astonished and delighted. Look at George’s son Dani’s expressions. Widely claimed as the greatest guitar solo ever played. Which is of course ridiculous as that’s done every night somewhere from someone’s bedroom to a dingy dive to a soccer stadium, but this NIGHT, HERE, it was done by Prince. And it is incredible.
Epic. You keep thinking it couldn’t possibly get more epic … and then, of course, it DOES.
I can’t accept this. I am here in Albuquerque for my film premiere and doing interviews and going to parties with people I met 5 minutes ago … and all we’re talking about is Prince.
This is so terrible. I was worried last week when I saw his plane had made an emergency stop, and then wanted to believe that it really was just dehydration.
What a loss.
And that solo. I like Tom Petty laughing when Prince leans so far back that his roadie/bodyguard catches him.
The man was just made out of music. We are richer for his music and poorer for his loss.
His Super Bowlperformance. Playing Dylan and Credence and the Foos, ’cause he’s Prince and that’s what he wanted to do. And that nasty guitar sound he had. It was completely NOT the greatest hits of a lot of the other performers (nothing wrong with that). Just him saying “listen to me.” And casting a LONG shadow!
He was also this:
“This is a tragedy for all of us,” said Jim Olson, the sheriff of Carver County, where Prince’s estate, Paisley Park, was located in the town of Chanhassen. “To you, Prince Rogers Nelson was a celebrity. To us, he was a community member and a good neighbor.”
That Super Bowl performance was NUTS.
I am devastated. I don’t know how many more of these losses of beloved artists from my childhood I can take. 2016 has been rough so far.
That guitar solo is one of the sexiest things ever. It always leaves me a little breathless.
Me too, Natalie.
He was so much a part of the music “scene” when I was 14, 15- and I feel really lucky that that was the case. Like, something that strange, a person that bizarre, was the #1 guy! And we all just took it for granted. “Oh yes, Prince, he’s awesome.”
Terrible terrible
Prince is dead long live Prince. I can’t understand how this man is dead. He was EVERTHING to me as a young girl. I was just starting to get boys and sex and things and there he was.Oh my God! So much music so many dirty lyrics so many young girl fantasies and now he’s dead. I don’t even know how to say how much he meant to me personally even though I never meet him.He was one of a kind just the way he dressed and let his freak flag fly and didn’t give a fuck!
I don’t even know what to say. I came home from work and my husband told me. I said “are you teasing me?”. I mean, why would he do that, but it just didn’t sink in.
He was absolutely one of a kind-like Becky said-this is just so sad.
Exactly the clip I pulled up first after I heard. Magic. Otherworldly. Where does that guitar go at the end? He slays it and then literally disappears it. Only Prince.
For those who can’t get enough of this clip, Daniel Ralston has a great breakdown of it.
The guitar vanishing into the wings above is so perfect. And then!! How he just turns and walks off the stage. Struts off the stage. Ha!
Thank you so much for that link – I haven’t read it yet but I will.
Bill Janovitz – a guitarist and author – also wrote about that solo on his site. I love how everyone is just like, “Look at Dhani’s face when Prince comes on!!”
http://billjanovitz.blogspot.com/2016/04/cover-of-week-56.html
oh god, the STRUT!!!!
Dhani is so gorgeous in that clip. I just fall in love with him. I want to make him that happy all the time!
Thanks for the link that was a great read! That’s the thing about that track, it can be used for evil (there are quite a few Beatles songs that are at constant risk of this). It has a rock solid chord progression and structure and such a specific mood but it needs to be felt or it’s just kinda slow and sludgy and almost parodic. Prince doesn’t just play it well, he makes it bright, he makes it live.
I FINALLY hooked up with my college crush after we watched Purple Rain together in the TV room in my dorm. It was the culmination of about a year’s worth of obsessing, and totally beautiful and perfect, at least for a little while. And I owed it all to a shared love of Prince.
(You may recall me writing about him – White Turtleneck Boy.)
I was on a long drive today and wept from one border of Massachusetts to the other, as the radio played all his songs.
Of course White Turtleneck Boy! I remember!
What you say is so true. I haven’t even really processed that aspect of it. His vision of sex – as such a pleasurable thing – that somehow included women? – as opposed to just “I’m gonna tap that”- even though Prince was clearly into “tapping that” as well – I mean, “Cream” basically reads like a How-To, and it’s all about HER. Like, this was the hit music of my youth and I barely grasped how out of the ordinary it was at the time.
I heard about this at lunch when a coworker shouted–literally shouted–“PRINCE DIED.”
I said, “He didn’t!” I was ANGRY.
“He did!”
“He’s not dead! Prince can’t die. He’s not from this planet.”
It was David Bowie all over again, except more personal and intimate because just what you said. I actually said to another woman, “Even if you were a shy nerd like me who thought boys would never look at you, and you were mostly right about that, you somehow nonetheless at least made out to a Prince song or two,” and, yeah–we took a survey, and no one in the office could deny it. His music made things possible that wouldn’t otherwise have been possible.
And he changed things in a way that I’m not sure he gets full credit for even now. My coworker who announced his death concluded, “He was the opposite of Mike.” That’s not how I’d put it, but I got what she was saying. You had this King of Pop–undeniable, still imitated to this day, absolutely legendary and no disrespect intended–but then you had Prince, who was a whole ‘nother being entirely. It was like he was from the future, and I was so glad every time he came to visit.
// “Even if you were a shy nerd like me who thought boys would never look at you, and you were mostly right about that, you somehow nonetheless at least made out to a Prince song or two,” and, yeah–we took a survey, and no one in the office could deny it.//
hahaha Wow! Pure pheromones!Amazing.
And I love what you say about him being from the future. He really was. He was like Bowie in that way.
Oh–and at the grocery store on the way home–I have to tell this even if it’s a poor reflection on me. I get in this long line, and it’s finally my turn, and the bagger of the cashier/bagger team points to my six-pack of beer and says, “Now you know you got to share: two for me, two for her, two for you–” and I say, “but we have to pour one out for Prince,” and she says, not missing a beat, “but only half a one,” and it took me a second, but then . . . holy shit, did you really just make a short joke about Prince?
Of course she did. And once I recovered, I cracked up. It reminded me of this long-ago Vanity Fair interview with Madonna, where the reporter trailing her is in the elevator with her as she’s going to see Prince, and she says, pushing the button for his floor, “Time to go visit the midget.” And of course she’s only an inch taller than he was. I know that can read disrespectfully, but reading it then I thought, “There’s an affection there–‘I tease because I love’.”
Ha!!
My daughter said “He’s, like, your generation’s Elvis”.
(The Twin Cities may as well have shut down for a blizzard, BTW).
I see you picked the title I was gonna use for my post tomorrow….
He and Elvis both had that pan-sexual thing going on – but I guess most of the great rock stars do. They’re crazily androgynous figures who are so UNIQUE and yet tap into a universal, or express a universal.
You either have that or you don’t. Nothing worse than someone TRYING to be pan-sexual.
We keep losing our true originals, and he was nowhere near old enough to go. Nothing else on earth sounds like a Prince song. He didn’t even have imitators, really.
A friend of mine told me a great story: she has a coworker who used to be a stylist for Prince. Prince liked to take his crew rollerblading for fun, and had a special pair of roller-skates that were clear and had rockets in them. He kept them in a briefcase.
Oh my God. They had rockets on them and he kept them in a briefcase. I’m dying!!
I ran into Prince once – sort of. It was at First Avenue (where Purple Rain was filmed) about this time thirty years ago, right about the time I moved to the Twin Cities.
But my best Prince encounter was more of a one degree of separation thing.
The other guitar player in my band worked at a coffee shop located by where all the Twin Cities record labels were based, and where groups like Husker Du and the Replacements were based. He did it for the music networking.
One day I was having a cup, and he introduced me to a new barrista, a dizzyingly attractive latin-american woman. She was a musician. I started trying to work whatever magic I had at that time of my life.
“I have a demo tape I’m going to give to Prince”, she said.
You and me and every other musician in town I thought; “I’d love to hear it sometime”, I said. She played me something on her Walkman. I resolved to come back and talk more.
A few weeks later, news made the rounds that she was dating Prince; they lived together for a bit, and he produced at least one album for her.
Other than that, I’m sure I had a shot…
Wow!
So I googled “Raspberry Beret” and accordion, because it’s the only Prince song I ever play on the accordion, and I found your old post about it. Glad to hear someone else tried it. Now I’ve got to learn to play Cream.
I don’t remember that old post – I’ll look it up.
Cream is an all-time fave for sure.
Oh my God, how on earth could I have forgotten THAT post??
Thanks so much for reminding me – Michael and I are still in touch and we still laugh about that.
I’ve read, I’ve listened, I’ve shared, I’ve wept. But really I must choose a small period of denial. Simply cannot accept it as reality. Not yet. Not him.
I am glad I was in a community of artists when the news hit. Musicians and filmmakers and actors and all the rest. People just looked at each other, not saying anything, shaking their heads.
It’s horrible.
Absolute heartbreak. When I went to work this morning in downtown Minneapolis, the sign in front of our building was changed to purple and I broke out in tears. Such a craftsman as a musician and singer.
:(
When I saw this, I thought of you, Sheila– (I’m going to attempt a hyperlink here, so if it goes horribly wrong, either copy-paste the web address in the center of my copy, or let me know, so I can resend the link with breadcrumbs attached): You’ve probably seen this.
Out of all of the Prince tributes I’ve seen over the last few days–that outstanding solo, another highlight–except for turning on the radio last night and unexpectedly hearing the station playing the entire “Purple Rain” album, this is the one that had me smiling with tears in my eyes.
well, it almost worked. :-) I will keep trying, but not today…
I fixed it!
Yes, I saw that tribute. It also brought tears to my eyes.
Oh Prince NO.
This is sad. And unbelievable. I am really having trouble believing this.
My grade ten students were straggling in, and one of them says, “Prince is dead,”
I looked at her sharply, “No he isn’t. Wait. What do you mean?” She looked back at her phone, “Yeah, Prince is dead.” I put a hold on class, got the students to use their phones and laptops to check this out. I clearly could not proceed until I knew the truth. I almost called the main office…
Bowie and now Prince, this is reminding me off the part where the Dolphins fly away from the doomed Earth in “Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy”.
// this is reminding me off the part where the Dolphins fly away from the doomed Earth in “Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy”. //
Heather, that made me cry
As more and more clips are unearthed, we’ll be seeing the many other sides of him:
https://www.facebook.com/dmlady/posts/10210286123007503
Professor Batty – yes, someone shared that on FB and I just love it so much – it shows work, process, collaboration. Just beautiful and yes, a side you almost never saw.
Just devastating. Very glad to hear people’s thoughts and feelings and the clips people are sharing.
Not sure if this has popped up on the thread yet, but as a Prince fan, a musician, and a one-time wannabe record producer, this clip – the original recording of the song “Purple Rain”, at a live gig at First Avenue in 1983 – is just spellbinding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AhqtQ790wE
Ooh – thanks Mitch – I haven’t seen this yet!!
enough 2016. enough.
A lovely little recollection form Paul Westerberg: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/paul-westerberg-remembers-prince-i-cant-think-of-anyone-better-20160422
Loved this bit:
‘My first recollection of seeing him was a dress rehearsal for one of his early tours. I was next to another musician, a couple other guys that were up-and-comers and that thought they were hot shit, and we were watching Prince. The guy turned to me and said, “I’m fucking embarrassed to be alive.” And that’s how I felt. He was so good. It was like, “What are we doing? This guy is, like, on a different planet than we are.” It was showmanship, it was rock & roll, it was fun, it was great. I think it helped everyone around. It made us all think that Minneapolis wasn’t the dour town that we tried to pretend it was. He was like a ray of light in a very cautious place. He was a star. He made no bones about it. He was glitz to a place that wasn’t used to it. I remember a little scuffle broke out in front of the stage one night and Prince said, “Stop fighting, you’ll mess up your clothes.”
Oh man every bit of that is so awesome.
He was great! His name and work will be remembered for years!
My brother wrote a whole series of essays discussing Greatest Albums – this was a while ago, but it’s a beautiful post and all of us O’Malleys went to re-read it in the last week. Here Bren talks about Purple Rain.
It really brings me back to what it was like to hear him for the first time:
http://hypnopompandcircumstance.blogspot.com/2008/10/43-greatest-albums-prince-purple-rain.html