Inside Paisley Park, archivists have discovered thousands of costumes, shoes, notebooks, guitars, and more

Last week, on the one-year anniversary of Prince's death, the New York Times ran a pretty fascinating interview with the archivist charged with cataloging the thousands of times left behind in his Paisley Park estate.

Angie Marchese and her team have spent the last year going room by room. So far, they've cataloged more than 7,000 items, and they still have a ways to go. As Marchese told the Times, that number amounts to less than 5% percent of the compound's holdings.

Read more about it here https://consequenceofsoun...t-hoarder/

^^^ Video on the above link.

Wow

Now, that is beyond cool.

I read this article over the weekend and--well, aside from making me sad--it was sooo interesting. Fascinating that he adorned himself primarily with costume jewelry (he sure knew how to wear it). How he never wore the same suit twice and had so much of his clothes custom made. He had a pair of shoes for each one of those outfits too! How they didn't find any liesure clothes at all. Like he was always 'Prince' outside and inside the house. No flat shoes AT. ALL. I love him. That's so funny. Though I wish he had some regular ole' fuzzy slippers to relax in at home.

I recognized the chain necklace from the 2013-2015 period, in the top of the jewelry chest.

120 guitars...whoo! It's so funny--I've been following Prince for so long, when I read that, the first thing that came to my mind was: the number of guitars he own is divisible by 12. I wonder if that was just coincidence or intentional. He was def. into numbers. Maybe it struck me that way because I read something recently (in Princevault most likely) that talked about Emanicpation being 12 songs and 60 minutes per each of the three discs.

I actually had the same thought about him being a closet pack-rat (not unlike myself) cross my mind at a few points in the article. How he held onto certain pieces of stage equipment.

It made me sad at first, but the article also made me smile, just to see how human he was behind the scenes.

They just scratched the surface too. There are so many more items to be archived.

I'm sure he wasn't simply a hoarder, he also had very good business reasons for holding onto old stuff, especially to old instruments and other gear.

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He might have been envisioning Paisley turning into a museum for a long time, so he knew all those costumes and other artefacts will become valuable assets.
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Also, just as he was archiving every recording in the vault, possibly for future releases (and I'm convinced he wanted his heirs to eventually release it all), he knew the importance of holding onto old gear when it comes to prepare a new release. Almost every single record company maintaining an archive regularly runs into the problem of not having the proper gear for some old tapes (or any other formats) anymore. There can be huge differences between two tape recorders and sometimes it is very important to find the particular model a tape was recorded with.
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Keeping old instruments is also important if you ever want to go back to an old song and rerecord it, or simply if you feel like creating something new using those oldschool sounds.
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Prince of course was one of the very few in the position of being able to hold onto all this stuff, being wealthy enough throughout his entire career – while most professional musicians, often the most famous ones too, usually go through periods in their later life when they are forced to downsize and sell anything they can.

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[Edited 4/25/17 1:57am]

Bluu said:

120 guitars...whoo! It's so funny--I've been following Prince for so long, when I read that, the first thing that came to my mind was: the number of guitars he own is divisible by 12. I wonder if that was just coincidence or intentional.

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Coincidence. I don't think he even knew exactly how many guitars he has – he often broke guitars and often got new ones too. I would imagine that if he still had a regular guitar technician, they would also hold onto valuable parts from broken instruments such as necks that could be reused later.

By the way, 120 is not a huge number of guitars at all for someone like Prince. Even amateur musicians sometimes have a dozen or so. Keith Richards has more than 3000.

MiceElfAgin said:

luv4u said:

I wonder how much of that is pre 1990??
Looks mainly post 90.

PP opened in 88, so I hope he brought lots of his old junk with him.

He knew how important all those clothes, shoes, guitars, etc would be for turning PP into a museum one day. Remember, it was done according to Prince's own direction, with a room for each era, etc. He had a masterplan for PP.

The comment about him not wearing the same outfit twice is not true. Especially in later years he used to mix and match a lot of his clothes.

MMJas said:

He knew how important all those clothes, shoes, guitars, etc would be for turning PP into a museum one day. Remember, it was done according to Prince's own direction, with a room for each era, etc. He had a masterplan for PP.

The comment about him not wearing the same outfit twice is not true. Especially in later years he used to mix and match a lot of his clothes.

Yes, he wore some things more than once in the later years and we saw him wearing more casual stuff.

suprised that it's only 5% so far, but i can't imagine how complicated it must be

MiceElfAgin said:

I'm sure he wasn't simply a hoarder, he also had very good business reasons for holding onto old stuff, especially to old instruments and other gear.

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He might have been envisioning Paisley turning into a museum for a long time, so he knew all those costumes and other artefacts will become valuable assets.

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The tour gear they mentioned doesn't fit that description.

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Also, just as he was archiving every recording in the vault

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Which Susan Rogers started, not Prince.

laurarichardson said:

--He was not a hoarder he had talked about turning Paisley Park into a museum 20 years ago. He had already started working on it.

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Putting stuff uncataloged in a garage etc. isn't "starting a museum". First rule is: having a proper catalog.

What impressed me was the people that made his clothes kept a record of each outfit and what it was used for. It said they would even draw pictures of Prince wearing the design so they could make it look right!

I think I always assumed he would be. Somewhere in that 1987-1990 period there was a lot of stuff I noticed. But I would not call it a hoarder.

I think like a lot of different types of arts, there is some kind of forethought of these things being in 'museums' or on showcase highlighting their lives in the future.

justAmeda said:

What impressed me was the people that made his clothes kept a record of each outfit and what it was used for. It said they would even draw pictures of Prince wearing the design so they could make it look right!

This is impressive. And just as important as the guitars over the years.

BartVanHemelen said:

MiceElfAgin said:

I'm sure he wasn't simply a hoarder, he also had very good business reasons for holding onto old stuff, especially to old instruments and other gear.

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He might have been envisioning Paisley turning into a museum for a long time, so he knew all those costumes and other artefacts will become valuable assets.

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The tour gear they mentioned doesn't fit that description.

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Of course it does.

BartVanHemelen said:

MiceElfAgin said:

Also, just as he was archiving every recording in the vault

Which Susan Rogers started, not Prince.

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Seriously, Bart?
And your point is?

Guess what: when people say things like "Prince recorded all his shows" they don't actually mean he ran out to the mixer before every show to press the red button himself either.

Did you guys hear about the room withing the room inside the video...room?

Basically, when I toured, the guide inside the video room showed us a rare footage of a concert. Then he told us two stories.

1- In the room we were in, there was a semi-circle shape corridor hidden behind the walls. It was accessible through a fake door. Inside were hundreds and hundreds of videos.

2- In that same place, was a suitcase with money in it. But the money was...monopoly money.

Anyhow, talking about hoarding. He did hid a collection of videos he was...hoarding.

Dang, I think I need to reset my echo button today

BartVanHemelen said:

malbena said:

Did you guys hear about the room withing the room inside the video...room?

Basically, when I toured, the guide inside the video room showed us a rare footage of a concert. Then he told us two stories.

1- In the room we were in, there was a semi-circle shape corridor hidden behind the walls. It was accessible through a fake door. Inside were hundreds and hundreds of videos.

2- In that same place, was a suitcase with money in it. But the money was...monopoly money.

Anyhow, talking about hoarding. He did hid a collection of videos he was...hoarding.

Dang, I think I need to reset my echo button today

the first thing that came to mind when I read about about that room is, that's probably where that video Mani wanted was--- he was hiding it in there.

Also, he did wear flat shoes. These last couple of years, he wore flat shoes and even flip flops.

What interests me is that for a guy who often claimed that he didn't look back and was focused only on the present and future, he sure held on to tons of stuff from the past.

laurarichardson said:

laurarichardson said:

disch said:

What interests me is that for a guy who often claimed that he didn't look back and was focused only on the present and future, he sure held on to tons of stuff from the past.

There U go, I've been saying the same thing for the longest

Superfan1984 said:

disch said:

rogifan said:

Superfan1984 said:

Also, he did wear flat shoes. These last couple of years, he wore flat shoes and even flip flops.

I hope they found these furry boots and will put them on display. He had a black pair too though I think he wore the white ones more often. I love them.

What furry boots?

[Edited 4/25/17 7:37am]

BartVanHemelen said:

laurarichardson said:

--He was not a hoarder he had talked about turning Paisley Park into a museum 20 years ago. He had already started working on it.

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Putting stuff uncataloged in a garage etc. isn't "starting a museum". First rule is: having a proper catalog.

Putting stuff uncatalogued in a garage is "starting a museum" you mean in your opinion its not