rogifan said:

Here's a couple more interviews with Elisa. I love reading these interviews because they show what a great guy Prince was and how much he mellowed and matured as he got older. http://www.reviewjournal....ger-prince

“It was really nice to see him after 20 years. Being able to connect with him again, not thinking I’d ever see him again. When I walked in the room, it was like a brother. He immediately hugged me, and he basically told everybody in the band that, you know, ‘You’re going to love Elisa. She’s got such a great spirit.’” Fiorillo’s recollection of the times she spent with Prince echoes what countless other associates have said about him since he died: that he was there when you needed him, always kind, generous and went out of his way to accommodate you. When Prince asked Fiorillo to join the New Power Generation, for instance, she was raising a toddler. The prospect of leaving her behind to go on the road was daunting. “I explained it to him when I first joined the band,” she remembers. “I said, you know, before when I was doing this when I was 21, there was no kids involved. Now that I have a 3-year-old, I really don’t know that I can tolerate being away very long.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry. We’re going to do residencies, and you can bring your family. This is a family-oriented thing, and we want to make her feel included. So he actually let me bring my daughter to rehearsals a couple of times. He played ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ on the guitar, and she sang. There’s memories I can’t even … there’s so much, I can’t even … it’s a lot.” Eventually, the demands of the road meant Fiorillo was gone for a month and a half at a time, which started to take a toll on the singer. “That was so tough to Skype my daughter, and I know that he could feel that sadness that I was feeling,” Fiorillo says, explaining how sensitive the superstar could be. “One summer, I remember him calling me on the phone, saying, ‘Elisa, I don’t want you to go this summer, and it’s not because I don’t want you there. I just think you need to be with your daughter. So I stayed home, and I was like, ‘Damn, I need the work.’ He really did care about that, and he didn’t want me to lose that.” But then, in true Prince fashion, when times started getting lean, Fiorillo says, she’d get another call from him to return to the road, almost like he knew, instinctively. “It was almost like as soon as our money … the band was starting to lose a little money because we weren’t working, all of a sudden, Prince calls,” she says. “We got a gig, and we had plane tickets the next day.”

http://lasvegassun.com/bl...e-rain-pe/

She recorded a YouTube clip with a jazz trio around the time Prince was headlining at Club 3121 at the Rio. Through the Prince circuit, the artist had seen that clip and called Fiorillo to reconnect. “I was working at my daughter’s preschool cooking chicken nuggets and French fries and veggies,” she said, chuckling again. “I took the call in the bathroom, and there was a major echo. I kept thinking, ‘Please don’t let him know I am in the bathroom.’ ” Prince asked how she was. “I can’t get a gig,” she told him. “We’ll change that,” he said. Thus, Fiorillo toured intermittently from 2009-2014, crisscrossing the country and visiting such international outposts as Paris and Abu Dhabi. Prince was always mindful of Fiorillo’s role as a mother, often taking her off the road for periods so she could balance her life. “I’m going to take care of you, don’t worry,” he often said. “I’ll be calling you.” “Just don’t forget me!” Fiorillo said back. “Touring was tough, but I always knew — and everybody in the group talks about this — that just before he would call, you would hear a Prince song. It was like the bat signal.”

What great memories! Thanks for sharing them. I read the Review-Journal piece a few months ago, but I'd not seen the other one. It's always nice to hear about Prince's kindness and generosity.

FlyOnTheWall said:

FlyOnTheWall said:

I think Prince had less pressure on him in the last 15 years of his life. No more WB and no more trying to keep up with the young bucks. Making good money and doing his own thing. I am glad he seemed at peace the last 15 years of his life.

rogifan said:

FlyOnTheWall said:

What great memories! Thanks for sharing them. I read the Review-Journal piece a few months ago, but I'd not seen the other one. It's always nice to hear about Prince's kindness and generosity.

Yep. And this is why whenever I read a story or anecdote from someone I need to know the time frame. The Prince of the last 15 years was quite different to the one that came before. He mellowed out a lot. Elisa's stories remind me of the story Shelby J. posted on FB about when her father passed away. I think it was 2010 or 2011 and they were in New York doing W2A shows. When she found out about her father she was so distraught she just up and left for airport to North Carolina. She called Prince when she got there, he said he knew what was going on, that she needed to stay with her family and he would be there if she needed anything from him. One thing I'm finding out from people who were close to him is how much he valued family and people having their family around. His hairdresser Kim Berry said something similar...that spouses and kids were always welcome at Paisley. Elisa too shared a memory of her daughter watching fireworks on the 4th of July from the roof of Paisley. I love hearing these stories though it makes me a bit sad that Prince didn't seem to have a closer relationship with his siblings.

anangellooksdown said:

laurarichardson said:

rogifan said:

laurarichardson said:

I think Prince had less pressure on him in the last 15 years of his life. No more WB and no more trying to keep up with the young bucks. Making good money and doing his own thing. I am glad he seemed at peace the last 15 years of his life.

I sometimes feel like the 90s were a lost decade for him. The whole WB and name change thing, writing slave on his face. I didn't like the makeup he wore and I thin a lot of his promotional shots made him look dark and angry (at least in the early part of the 90s). And I didn't like the cussing either. I do wonder if it was just a phase he had to go through and maybe that wasn't the real Prince after all?

Middle age crazy, trying to keep up with the rappers in vulgarity and maybe a little scared for his carreer.

laurarichardson said:

rogifan said:

laurarichardson said:

Middle age crazy, trying to keep up with the rappers in vulgarity and maybe a little scared for his carreer.

I have to believe the emergence of rap and hip hop which really became popular as the 80s was flipping over to the 90s had an effect on his career. What I loved about the 3EG era is he embraced the rocker in him. I always felt he was more of a rocker than an rnb artist and I much prefer him shredding his guitar to singing a ballad in falsetto.

I think he was a better RnB artist then rocker. His RnB ballads are some of the best in that genre of music. I like him as a rocker but very few African Americans can make it in the music industry just playing rock n roll and the popularity of rap just made it even more difficult.