thedance said:

P borrowed from Bowie??

No I don't think he did, P is (was) black and and not a duke..

Both was a real artist in his own rights.

I AM... respecting them both deeply, but more love from me to P, he was and will always be my number one.

Prince borrowed from european black male female asian arabic italian. People culture music styles and instruments...he borrowed a lot from women.

(I prefer 'he was inspired)

by Joni Mitchell? Yes

Especially in this thread about his changing look. David Bowie androgynous expression in the 70s is a definate inspiration. I see it throught Prince's Dirty Mind, Lovesexy, and 1992-1994Gold experience look

Near his end he stated "all that other stuff, you all can debate back in forth, but I Am Music"

let's never forget the no matter our ideas of the world, Prince never wanted and always resisted being bound to labels.

Bowie cited Little Richard as an influence.

Prince was inspired by many artists before him, he inspired many artists that same.

pretty cool:http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/plastic-soul-david-bowie-s-legacy-impact-black-artists-n494241

Telecaster5 said:

This is the only look he ever had that got me thinking: why the hell he used this? What is going on here?

I wonder what he tought about this picture 20 years later

I think the photo is 'off'

but when we see it from this view it is cool

thedance said:

P borrowed from Bowie??

No I don't think he did, P is (was) black and and not a duke..

Both was a real artist in his own rights.

I AM... respecting them both deeply, but more love from me to P, he was and will always be my number one.

Prince did borrow from Bowie. Very much so.

thedance said:

wow thanks oldfriends4sale!

so many great pics, I am really feeling them..

showing my love for P and his many looks......


.

[Edited 3/22/17 14:03pm]

thank U

I swear, there are moments when I'm going through my pictures to make choices

that is all just starts running back over me

I'm so glad I saw it all happening from the beginning

thedance said:

Rave Un2 the Joy Fantasic - Rainbow Children 1999 - 2001

he changed his look but the music didnt change as radically. it didnt need to, they are not linked really. i think he got the balance right.

bowie, as the true artist he was, changed look and music in equal measures(during the 70s).

if, as a fan you didn't like it, tough. bowie put out what he thought was in his mind at that time, and fans would either agree or not.

prince changed his look and but musically retained his signature blues funk/rock. his instrumentation/production may have changed but you knew you would get your mix of funk/rock/ballad/guitar stuff with prince. every live tour has the same format, regardlless of the album 'look' (cringe at the studious, perched glasses, sign of the times look).

compare diamond dogs/young americans with parade/sign of the times. not that i dont think prince intended to make a radical shift from one album to another. i think he didn't need it to be as stark as what bowie had done, because really, why risk it. write/record what you like at that moment, and present it with a new label (to be crude in marketing terms). audible/visual both had their importance for prince in different proportions.

tldr:prince changed his look superficially, bowie more radically. prince mix of styles/bowie one style per album.

i was drinking while i wrote this....forgive me,,,,

One Night Alone - Musicology

2001- 2005

3121 - Planet Earth

2005 - 2008

Paranoia.

LotusFlow3r 2009

20Ten - Welcome 2 tours

2010-2011

Wlcm2thdwn3 said:

transitional period - 3rd Eye Girl AOA - Piano tours

2012 -2016

‎la fin

purpleshadow said:

For every album Prince had different hairstyle and clothing.. Was it

really necessary for him to change them all the time?

Who's gona go through his different looks for each project and memorize them all?

He should have kept it more simple like MJ who has about 6 looks to remember ..

[Edited 3/16/17 11:27am]

.

considering it took jackson about 25 years to even release 6 albums im not sure how 6 different looks is any different than prince changing for every project.

I'm telling you something was off him with him near the end. And it wasn't just age. There was a something unkempt, beaten, weary and sunken to how he was looking that was way way out of character for him. No attention to detail. No meticulousness. I'm sorry but he looked frail and gaunt.

herb4 said:

I'm telling you something was off him with him near the end. And it wasn't just age. There was a something unkempt, beaten, weary and sunken to how he was looking that was way way out of character for him. No attention to detail. No meticulousness. I'm sorry but he looked frail and gaunt.

- Agree. Something he never showed before.

YummY!!! This is one of my favorite era/looks.

OldFriends4Sale said:

LotusFlow3r 2009

Flirt1 said:

Part of me wonders if his myriad looks and style changes had to do with his unsteady early years. Maybe it's a visual representation of the fluid changing person he had to be to survive. He figured out intuitively what it took to keep a roof over his head and access to basic survival needs of food, clothing and shelter. Imagine an abused child wondering if they'll love me if I do this or look like this. He certainly had a fascination for luxury and fantasy in his clothing and hair. Perhaps the result was a changing morphing sense of self. What do you all think?

Interesting ideas. Could be something to them. He admitted to colleagues that he became obsessive about appearances because he grew up poor and didn'talways have nice/fashionable clothes to wear.

Thanx for breaking down the pics into eras, OF4S.

What a fun walk down memory lane.

LBrent said:

Thanx for breaking down the pics into eras, OF4S.

What a fun walk down memory lane.

U R definately welcome

I swear going through pictures from beginning 2 end was fun and meloncholy at the same time

OldFriends4Sale said:

LBrent said:

Thanx for breaking down the pics into eras, OF4S.

What a fun walk down memory lane.

U R definately welcome

I swear going through pictures from beginning 2 end was fun and meloncholy at the same time

I know how that feels, too.

I find myself smiling and laughing with tears running down my face.

This is just my opinion and could be way off the mark, but I think Prince changed his look so often because he was constantly searching for himself, thinking he had found himself and his look reflected what he had discovered about himself, only to later discover something new about himself. Prince was constantly evolving and his looks would reflect that evolution. Prince showed throughout the years that he was not a stagnant individual. He could and would change bands at the drop of a dime, change the style of music he was into, would even change his house to reflect whatever style he was digging at the time. Why would he become stagnant with his looks?

I also think changing his look so much gave him some control to be able to stay, "I can reinvent myself any time I want." It also added to the mystery of Prince. When we (the fans) thought we had him figured out, he'd come out with a new look, a new album, a new band. He definitely kept us on our toes and I think he enjoyed never being stuck with a certain style, band, or sound.

benni said:

This is just my opinion and could be way off the mark, but I think Prince changed his look so often because he was constantly searching for himself, thinking he had found himself and his look reflected what he had discovered about himself, only to later discover something new about himself. Prince was constantly evolving and his looks would reflect that evolution. Prince showed throughout the years that he was not a stagnant individual. He could and would change bands at the drop of a dime, change the style of music he was into, would even change his house to reflect whatever style he was digging at the time. Why would he become stagnant with his looks?

I also think changing his look so much gave him some control to be able to stay, "I can reinvent myself any time I want." It also added to the mystery of Prince. When we (the fans) thought we had him figured out, he'd come out with a new look, a new album, a new band. He definitely kept us on our toes and I think he enjoyed never being stuck with a certain style, band, or sound.

I agree.

Also, I think he changed the things he could change creativity-wise...He could only change his height so much or his emotional makeup and childhood damage, but by reinventing himself creatively/artisticly...and I think his romance changes may have been a part of that, too, in a way.

That's how the industry works! People like 'new' things and 'new' things result in record sales.

Look at Madonna, she had to do this too.

As a creative, experimental person though, he probably wanted to do this anyway.

[Edited 4/5/17 0:46am]

Flirt1 said:

Part of me wonders if his myriad looks and style changes had to do with his unsteady early years. Maybe it's a visual representation of the fluid changing person he had to be to survive. He figured out intuitively what it took to keep a roof over his head and access to basic survival needs of food, clothing and shelter. Imagine an abused child wondering if they'll love me if I do this or look like this. He certainly had a fascination for luxury and fantasy in his clothing and hair. Perhaps the result was a changing morphing sense of self. What do you all think?

It is possible that it is related to his childhood, but I don't think it's because of the "fluid changing person he had to be to survive". It is true that you easily adapt to your surroundings, to the people in those surroundings, but Prince was unusual in that way. He didn't want to adapt to those in his surroundings, he wanted others to adapt to him and his surroundings. Thus his need to pick out the clothes others wore, his need to insert control over his surroundings. I got Mayte's ebook yesterday and read it, and she talked about how he would hire people to even make his hotel rooms look like home. Every time he rented or bought a house, he made it reflect him and his home in Minne. It is unusual for an individual with a traumatic childhood to exert that kind of control that he made others adapt to him, but it oddly makes sense to me. The amount of moving he did as a child, you feel like you have no home, no roots. I had moved and lived with various family members and realized I had moved 26 times by the time I was 21. And I never felt like I had a home. I was always the outsider wherever I went. Once he got a home, a place with roots, he took that home with him wherever he went.

Having a troubled childhood, tends to make one more introspective as an adult. I know, for myself, I wanted to understand my feelings, my thoughts, my actions, and my reactions and I studied everything I could get my hands on about childhood abuse and would look for those things that seemed to be universal amongst the survivors. "Ohhhh, so this is why I react this way." Once I had realized it was a result of my childhood, I could work to change it, change myself. I was determined that I was not going to let my abusers win and therefore that meant that I would not let them and their actions impact me and cause me to respond the way their actions made me respond.

I think it was that introspection, discovering things about himself, that made him change so frequently. But again, that's just my opinion. The only one that can really answer to why he changed so much can never tell us. It may be that he never really understood it either, and it just became a part of the mystique of who he was.

[Edited 4/5/17 7:57am]