“Art is about building a new foundation, not just laying something on top of what’s already there.” — Prince

It’s his birthday today.

It still doesn’t seem real. I still have moments where I think, “…. wait a second … he’s dead?”

In April of 2016, I attended Ebertfest. Directly following that, I flew to Albuquerque to attend the Albuquerque Film and Music Experience, where my short film – July and Half of August – was having its premiere. I arrived and my friend Stevie (he who stalked Dean Stockwell with me) picked me up at the airport, with much shrieking of joy at seeing one another again. We went to his house, he cooked me dinner, we hung out, it was wonderful. Then he drove me to the big hotel where I would be staying. Mum was flying in to attend the festival with me. I walked into the hotel and there were all these guests, wearing badges, and you knew they were there for the festival. Somehow, as if by osmosis, after I checked in, I got the sense that something had happened. Everyone was talking very intensely and checking their phones. I can’t remember who told me the news. I am sure I checked my phone. Maybe Mitchell texted me: “have you heard?” The bottom dropped out. Literally everyone in that lobby was thinking about the same thing, talking about the same thing, huddled in upset groups. I couldn’t BELIEVE it. I texted five friends. I needed to be with my Prince people. I texted my brother. I was in a state of shock. I got in the elevator to go up to my room, stunned, and a couple of other people got in, and I said, “Prince.” And they all – strangers to me – nodded and shook their heads and said things like “I can’t believe it”. I’ll never forget it. I was in the perfect place for news like this – unwelcome as it was – to come down. These were all artists and professional musicians. Everyone feels connected to Prince. He was only 57 years old.

The festival’s closing night was a concert by its special guest, studio musician/genius guitarist Nathan East, who’s played with literally everybody. His whole family was there, musicians many of them. Mum and I still talk about that concert. There was a FEELING in that theatre, a connectivity and love and power. I wrote a piece about the spontaneous tribute that occurred.

As awful as Prince’s passing was, and as weird as it was to hear the news in a place I’d never been before, surrounded by strangers … it was the perfect place for me to grieve, feel the loss, and also just be thankful I was on the planet at the same time, that I got to experience his rise, his music, in real time.

Personal Prologue over:

The Syncopated Ladies are a tap-dancing group based in Los Angeles, headed up by Chloe Arnold (she and her sister Maud were both featured in the wonderful documentary Tap World). They have a Facebook group where you can see their latest videos.

Here is their tap-dancing tribute to Prince. Tapping away to “When Doves Cry.”

One of the fun things in the wake of his death – if you could call it fun – were all of these crazy stories emerging of Prince’s behavior, random Prince sightings, who he was “out in the wild”. This was a persona he maintained, a persona that went so deep it WAS him. Because that’s how you get to be as huge as Prince was. Jimmy Fallon’s encounter with him is my favorite:

Everyone covers Radiohead’s “Creep.” I wrote a whole post about it. The song is an anthem for the weirdos of the world, the isolated outcasts, the lonely, the self-loathing. Prince did an absolutely epic 8 minute version of it at Coachella in 2008. I can’t even describe where he goes with it, what he does with it. The self-loathing is gone. It’s a celebration, a “fuck you” to the normals – it’s better to be a creep! – and he digs deeper and deeper into it, deeper than even Radiohead itself can go. “Creep” is one of those malleable songs where you can put so much stuff onto it. I still remember the first time I watched this performance. I could barely process it.

A couple years back, I had a blast talking with Film Comment editor-in-chief Nicolas Rapold and writer/Criterion editor Andrew Chan about “concert films” on the Film Comment podcast, and one of the films we discussed was Prince’s awesome Sign o’ the Times. Have a listen!

I’ve posted a bunch of my brother Brendan’s music writing here on this site and he wrote quite a bit about Prince. They’re excellent pieces, so here they are:
on Purple Rain
on Under the Cherry Moon
Seeing Prince at Jones Beach
Seeing Prince at Madison Square Garden

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.

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.

You keep thinking it couldn’t possibly get more epic … and then, of course, it DOES.

Prince was the music of my adolescence. I lost my virginity to a Prince song. I am a Gen X cliche, and proud of it. Even if you didn’t choose Prince specifically for your own virginity-loss, Prince would have been on the radio in the background 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. And what was the song playing? “International Lover”. lol

He can’t be replaced.

 
 
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