NME01 said:

BartVanHemelen said:

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He obviously didn't.

I really need to get hold of a copy of Uptown then. In the unlikely event I get my hands on a copy, would you say that the content is pretty accurate?

Uptown was a magazine/fanzine, not a book. They did publish some books though (Days of Wild, The Vault etc.). Best Prince fanzine ever.

NME01 said:

BartVanHemelen said:

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He obviously didn't.

I really need to get hold of a copy of Uptown then. In the unlikely event I get my hands on a copy, would you say that the content is pretty accurate?

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It's not like (fan magazine) Uptown did a long exposé about this; I just recall that they reported on one of Prince's first TV appearance, the oen where he acted all shy, and they quoted band members saying that it was all an act. Which made it so annoying that frikking Pepe Willie repeated that dumb "he's shy" shit in that lame BBC documentary a couple of years ago.

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I mean, we're talking about a man who wore yellow assless pants for a performance on an MTV award show back when people actually watched those shows. Or check the Dirty Mind cover, or that poster of him in a shower.

JudasLChrist said:

BartVanHemelen said:

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Because he's a grown-up? He'll happily bitch about other artists and the state of music in general, often wildly misinformed and patronisingly (check the slut-shaming interviews by 3EG to promote AOA/PE).

Yeah that. I'm glad you brought those interviews up. That really pissed me off, and it was so hypocritical... and having his female band members say it for him made it even worse. A real low point.

I think a lot of people were like WTF when 3EG made these statements. I certainly was...this was hypocrisy of the extreme. Was made worse by the fact that at Hit N Run he had some unknown (Melissa Jacks) dancing sexily in a dress so short it might have well have been a top.

There's a new interview with Alan Light @ PopMatters:

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Prince hasn’t fanned the flames of nostalgia for the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain this year, despite your book and this reported upcoming reissue of the album.

It’s why I didn’t pursue him for the book. I’ve spent a lot of time with him, I’ve done a lot of work with him, and he’s always very adamant that he won’t talk about the past. When I asked him [in] the 20th anniversary year of Purple Rain about it, he said, “I know what it was to do that, I know what it took for us to make that, I don’t need to revisit that. I need to move forward, I don’t need to look backward.” And so he’s never commemorated anniversaries, he’s never exploited that stuff. And look, I understand. He doesn’t stop to look backwards. Sometimes it’s really frustrating; sometimes you’d like to see him celebrate that. But it’s not like he doesn’t play the songs. The Purple Rain songs have always been the backbone of the live show; it’s not like he runs from it.

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There's a lot more, though I can't say it is that interesting.

He gives more praise in that article than in the book....

[Edited 1/6/15 10:26am]

BartVanHemelen said:

Nobody serious is gonna touch the subject because the only people talking are the same ones as always and they won't go on the record for the juiciest bits.

True, but didn't we even get a couple new gems out of that one local news "reunion" interview about the Purple Rain anniversary with one of the producers, and some random grip, and whoever else they could scrounge up? I haven't read the book, but it seems to me if you're going to focus on one period, and one project, there are a lot of angles that nobody has explored that aren't really even juicy. Lord knows there are plenty of questions about the production floating around. Just answering a few would have made fans thrilled.

treehouse said:

BartVanHemelen said:

Nobody serious is gonna touch the subject because the only people talking are the same ones as always and they won't go on the record for the juiciest bits.

True, but didn't we even get a couple new gems out of that one local news "reunion" interview about the Purple Rain anniversary with one of the producers, and some random grip, and whoever else they could scrounge up? I haven't read the book, but it seems to me if you're going to focus on one period, and one project, there are a lot of angles that nobody has explored that aren't really even juicy. Lord knows there are plenty of questions about the production floating around. Just answering a few would have made fans thrilled.

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Absolutely. Which is part of why this book is so disappointing. I don't get why he's spending time on finding out what Tori Amos or other celebs think of the album, instead of finding people who worked on the actual movie and album (beyond the usual suspects).

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I had the impression Light spent far more time talking about how he and his friends experienced that time than on how the songs came to be; call me crazy, but I don't care how often Light went to see the movie, but I do want to know more about the origins of various songs, whether there were studio versions before the concert recording, etc. But even the "100 songs to choose from" story just gets repeated, no details are offered.

BartVanHemelen said:

But even the "100 songs to choose from" story just gets repeated, no details are offered.

Eh. Sounds like he spent two weeks pounding the book out, and didn't really care too much then. He probably sold the book on a pitch that it would have participation from the other rock stars to make up for the lack of Prince cooperation.

Just finished this, and, of the 10 or 12 books on Prince I've read this one is probably somewhere in the middle. No big revelations but it's a good read and I didn't come across any glaring inaccuracies.

Recommended!!