{{{Here's the link... http://www.villagevoice.c.../lewis.php
Here's the text...(minus the co-review of the new Jimi Hendrix book)

July 28th, 2003 6:00 PM
Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince
By Alex Hahn - Billboard, 280 pp., $24.95

For those who were teenagers during the 1980s, Prince Rogers Nelson was the closest equivalent to the baby boomers' beloved Beatles this side of the whole hiphop cultural movement. Meeting Prince at Life in the late '90s, I thanked him for structuring my adolescent conception of what a true artist is: Watching him buck moneymaking inclinations for creative growth (e.g. brilliantly quirky stopgap records like Parade) taught me—not to mention students like D'Angelo, Me'Shell NdegéOcello, ?uestlove, et al.—a lot about the path of the artiste. }}}

Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince tracks one of the most captivating career arcs as yet unmined by the likes of Behind the Music—an up-to-the-minute biography superior to Dave Hill's 1989 Prince: A Pop Life for its eyewitness accounts and inclusion of the musician's highly publicized woes with his former record company, Warner Bros. Journalist Alex Hahn (also an attorney who successfully defended the Uptown Prince fanzine pro bono against the object of their affection in 1998) blends commentary from dozens of confidantes—including bandmates Bobby Z. and Dez Dickerson, tour manager Alan Leeds, and engineer Susan Rogers—into an often third-eye-opening view of Prince's musical genius and control-freak issues.

Fanboys will find satisfaction in the minutiae here. A quick handful for the initiated: Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin and pianist Lisa Coleman were indeed once lovers; an alleged Ecstasy trip provoked Prince to shelve The Black Album in lieu of 1988's Lovesexy; "The Beautiful Ones" and "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" were written for ex-girlfriend Susannah Melvoin, "Vicki Waiting" about ex Anna Garcia, "When Doves Cry" about Vanity 6 singer and ex Susan Moonsie; titles like "When We're Dancing Close and Slow" and protégé group the Time's Ice Cream Castle were taken directly from Joni Mitchell, whom Prince has admired since taking in a concert at around age 10.

Hahn's narrative reads like a soap opera. Prince was born in Minneapolis, the sheltered son of plastic molder John Nelson (nighttime pianist of his own Prince Rogers Trio) and local jazz singer Mattie Shaw. Following their divorce, young Prince consoled himself with his dad's left-behind piano, quickly forming a high school band (originally Grand Central, then Champagne) influenced by James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone. Offered the opportunity to go solo, he ditched his friends for fame, signing to Warner Bros. as a one-man band at 19. Patenting a sex-and-salvation paradigm through songs ranging from "Head" to "God," with a musical backdrop fusing New Wave with funk and rock, Prince led his own Revolution to the toppermost of the poppermost until 1984's Purple Rain commercial summit.

"He was precocious and brilliant, but lacked focus in his apprehension of new influences," Hahn says, relating the onset of Prince's creative wane, which the author pegs as beginning with 1987's heavily bootlegged Black Album. "After Prince decided to stop learning, the lack of continued stimulus, coupled with the absence of strong personalities like Wendy and Lisa from his band, quickly became apparent in his work." Possessed pinpoints other factors in describing the freefall of Prince's reputation and creativity: an inability to expose himself to new ways of seeing the world, an obsession with owning his master recordings (contrary to record industry practice), and the pursuit of his original black audience through the ill-fitting incorporation of wack rappers like Tony M. into his post-Revolution band, the New Power Generation. "We were his first black band, and our thing was to help him get his black audience back, because he had lost that," admits ex-N.P.G. singer Rosie Gaines.

All i have to say is Bla Bla Bla

Dickie - Did you read the book? I didn't care for it all that much. Nice info though

"Wack rappers"...

Anyone recommend this? I read Slave to the Rhythm by Liz Jones, but that was a while back - published about 97, no?

fun read as it covers over 20 years of pop music centered around Prince.

it's a great business-angled biography, with lots of relationship exposed in varying degrees of information.

i enjoyed it, though i found a lot of the information to be familiar, so i considering it more an introduction AND mid-level knowledge base of Prince... (i was more curious about the vault song catalog and him as a creative and lover since i've read most of the major interviews and press clippings over the years...)

cheers funk & all
d

FunkATron said:

All Praises 2 the Lord!


I had a chance 2 browse through the book ... I noticed that he mad reference 2 Prince & Mani getting married on Mayte birthday...Dec 31st ...but on her site it says her bday is Nov 26th... What's that about?

LIAR LIAR pants on fire


Love, Love

God Love is True

GodsloveisTrue said:

Actually, he said that Prince got married to Mani on ex-girlfriend's Anna Garcia's birthday... I doubt he had her birthday on his mind.

aqknight said:

Cheers guv. I'll prolly pick it up when i get the hard-earned cash in line. Gotta buy Bobby D tix today.
[This message was edited Fri Aug 1 18:08:46 PDT 2003 by FunkATron]

:cooL: