Prince: A new generation falls under his purple reign

The diminutive American pop star with many names and big ideas turned up in Britain out of the blue last week, instantly becoming the hottest ticket in town

http://www.thesundaytimes...378590.ece

Would like to read - didn't have chance to pick up a paper today...

Anyone got a subscription?

I'll take that as a no.

meejaboy said:

I'll take that as a no.

You could always do the honourable thing....

Here you go, I did not see this yesterday otherwise I would have posted it.

Prince: A new generation falls under his purple reign

Diehard fans may have queued all day, but it is surprising there was room for any of them given how many celebrities turned up last Monday to Prince’s “guerrilla” gig at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in Soho, central London. “The Purple One” played to an adoring crowd that included the singers Adele and Rita Ora, the models Cara Delevingne and Kate Moss and — unlikely though it seems — the actor and broadcaster Stephen Fry.

It is a miracle Jeremy Paxman did not attend, too. Last Monday’s Newsnight played out with a film of Prince fans taking turns to sing Purple Rain as they whiled away the hours: when a current affairs news show takes notice, you have got an event.

The actor James Corden was equally starstruck when he took a selfie with Prince at last week’s Brit awards. Over the past two nights Prince has packed out the Manchester Academy. The gigs were announced last Wednesday and sold out within seconds. Tickets that cost £70 were soon being offered for resale for up to £1,000.

Prince and 3rdEyeGirl, his new, all-female backing band, are showcasing a soon-to-be-released album, Plectrum Electrum, and each of the so-called guerrilla gigs promised to be different — some largely acoustic; others loud, electric rock.

The members of the queue singing Purple Rain looked as if they would be thrilled whatever he played: and, intriguingly, most also looked a good 20 years younger than their diminutive — 5ft 2in — frilly-shirted hero, who is 55.

“These aren’t people who grew up with Prince but their kids. He’s been incredibly successful in recruiting the younger crowd,” said Mat Snow, former editor of the music magazine Mojo. “It’s all about artistic integrity. Contemporaries like Madonna and the late Michael Jackson forfeited that sense of integrity by becoming almost like corporations, always on sale. With Prince you feel that above all he’s dedicated to his music. He’s out to create music to test himself and to test his audience.”

The guerrilla gigs were announced last month when Prince — who has sold more than 100m records and won seven Grammy awards — performed two numbers at the home of his friend Lianne La Havas, a British folk and soul singer, whose living room in Leyton, east London, had been turned into a mini concert hall, complete with purple stage lights.

Matt Everitt of BBC Radio 6 Music was one of only three journalists invited along and wrote a post on the BBC website afterwards detailing what the encounter had taught him about Prince: “He looks phenomenal — Afro, huge round purple-tinted sunglasses, black furry jerkin, skin-tight black rollneck and flares. He doesn’t like being recorded during interviews. He didn’t want to speak into the mike, and there were no photos allowed in the house.

“Prince doesn’t sleep much. He’d appeared at a club in New York to launch the single Pretzelbodylogic at 2am then flown to the UK. It’s Purple Rain’s 30th anniversary this year but Prince wasn’t even aware of that. He looked surprised to be told about it and was not that interested in looking back at the making of the record. He likes tea. With lots of manuka honey.”

Afterwards La Havas said: “What we’ve witnessed is very special. I feel very honoured to just know someone who’s that great at playing music.” But others, frankly, think Prince — or the artist once known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince — is a bit of an old ham.

“The brutal truth about Prince is that he hasn’t released a consistently great album since 1987,” said Dan Cairns, chief rock critic of The Sunday Times.

“In the early years he was untouchable: an innovator, a magpie — glamorous, audacious, everything you want in a rock star. But once he became hugely successful, hubris took over. He’s released some shockingly bad material. When he’s playing the hits live it’s great: if he then goes off into an extended jazz-funk jam you can cut the atmosphere with a knife. He’s clever and he’s probably worked out that by selling direct to fans he can make a lot more money. This isn’t just guerrilla gigs — it’s guerrilla marketing.”

Prince has been on the scene as long as most music fans can remember. He signed his first record deal aged 17. He produced, arranged, composed and played all 27 instruments on his first album, For You, yet he was such a perfectionist the album cost twice as much to record as he received as an advance. His influences include Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Joni Mitchell and Carlos Santana. Chaka Khan, the Bangles and Sinead O’Connor have all recorded his songs.

His second album, Prince, included his first million-selling single, I Wanna Be Your Lover. The double album 1999, released in 1982, sold 3m copies, but it was Purple Rain, two years later, that engraved his name on the roll of pop greats. The album sold more than 20m copies and spent 24 consecutive weeks at No 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, while a film of the same name won an Oscar and grossed about $72m (£43m). Songs from the movie, notably When Doves Cry, were hits around the world. At one point Prince had a No 1 single, album and film in America.

The singer was born Prince Rogers Nelson in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of a pianist and a jazz singer. He was called after his father, whose stage name was Prince Rogers. Prince is still based in Minnesota, where he owns a recording complex, Paisley Park.

He has never been afraid to take on the powers that be in the music business and beyond. In 1993 he went into battle against Warner Bros, then his record company, for artistic and financial control of his work. Prince appeared in public with the word “slave” written across his cheek and announced that he was changing his name:

“Prince is the name that my mother gave me at birth. Warner Bros took the name, trademarked it . . . the company owns the name . . . I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros,” he said, announcing that from then on he would have no name but be known by the “love symbol”, a glyph incorporating the male and female gender signs. “It is a concept that has evolved from my frustration; it is who I am. It is my name,” he said.

He started calling himself Prince again in 2000 when his record contract expired. His most recent battles have been over use of his material on the internet; last month he launched a claim for $1m each against 22 owners of websites and Facebook pages he says enabled the free distribution of recordings of his concerts.

Prince has been linked romantically with a number of glamorous women including the actress Kim Basinger and the singers Madonna and Susanna Hoffs. He has been married and divorced twice and had a son with his first wife, Mayte Garcia. Boy Gregory was born with Pfeiffer syndrome, a skull defect, and lived for just a week. In 2001 Prince became a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He allegedly attends meetings and occasionally knocks on doors to discuss his faith. He is also a vegetarian. The sleeve notes on one of his albums contained a message about the cruelty involved in wool production.

It is a mix that makes for an unusual social life. Peter Willis, a British journalist who interviewed the singer at Paisley Park four years ago, was invited back to his private nightclub to “party”.

“It’s lavishly kitted out with velvet circular sofas, a dancefloor and . . . on two huge screens, at least 20ft high, there are videos of him performing.

“But where are the guests? And where’s the bar? Of course, I remember, he’s a strict teetotal vegan — when one of those backing singers wanders in, offering me a glass of still water. She is closely followed by the other two, carrying trays of sliced melon and raw vegetables, which they place on a long table beside a large Bible.”

The singer played clips of his heroes Marvin Gaye and Barry White from the 1970s US TV show Soul Train, urging his guests — all five of them — to dance. “Surreal”, Willis wrote afterwards, “isn’t the word.”

Thanks!

DaveT said:

Thanks for posting...great artwork. Article is pretty lazy writing though...couple of intro paragraphs then a career rundown that could have been taken from Wikipedia

Yeah - crap - glad I missed it. Lovely painting though.

Thank you for sharing the article! I had been curious about it.

Yyes - thanks indeed!