I came across this article (not even searching for anything Prince related) and just thought I'd post it for anyone who hasn't read it.

Hey I was bored! Enjoy!!

Prince's House

by Chris Lee
Prince's house is an architectural, stylistic and sexual disappointment. At least it was in June 1985, when he lived on Kiowa Trail in Chanhassen, Minnesota, a quiet little suburb of Minneapolis best known for the Chanhassen Dinner Theater (I think they performed something called Nunsense for about twenty years) and its close proximity to tourist attractions like the ValleyFair theme park in Shakopee. Alas, it is not on the banks of Lake Minnetonka (so keep your clothes on, Apollonia).

I was 14 years old, growing up in the neighboring state of South Dakota, and I begged my parents to make the pilgrimage to Prince's house when visiting a friend of the family named Myra in Minneapolis that summer. I don't think my parents really thought too much of Prince, but they did seem to get a little caught up in the starfuck of it all; there weren't many celebrities beyond the local news anchors living in our neck of the Midwest, especially on the plane of stardom and notoriety that Prince existed upon. Remember, this was only one year after Purple Rain, and his fame was still wet. A visit to Prince's house gave me some glam fodder for any potential sophomore year "What I Did This Summer" essays and my parents would have a good water cooler story to tell about "that purple Prince" as I'd heard one of my dad's friends call him.

Prince's house wasn't located on a major street or found in the downtown sector of Chanhassen, population 11,732. We had to stop at a couple of gas stations to ask for directions, which I was more than willing to do myself because, my God, we were so close. "You can't miss it," I remember one middle-aged cashier at a Pump 'n Munch saying with pride, "it's purple!"

I was glad that Prince's house was tricky to locate. It validated his star, enigma and god-like status. We sped down breezy, twisting country roads with flat cornfields to my right—as a suburb, Chanhassen is kind of out there—and my parents were ready to give up. They started to get bitchy and irritable, despite the fact that "Let's Go Crazy" was playing on the car stereo, part of a mix tape I'd made specifically for the trip (as in, no dirty songs to offend mom and dad).

Suddenly, on a stretch of road we'd been down at least three times, we saw a tiny street sign partially obscured by trees, denoting that a narrow driveway we had somehow overlooked was the Princely grail we sought. My dad slammed on the brakes, threw the Buick Skylark into reverse, and sped up the surprisingly hilly street that was Kiowa Trail. My first reaction was that we were, like, on Prince's estate! But then everything took on a "Knots Landing" feel—Kiowa Trail was a cul-de-sac!? There were three or four homes to choose from, all of them fine and decent containing surely fine and decent Minnesotans, but right there, in the middle of it all, was a similarly upper-middle class structure painted light purple with dark purple trim and surrounded by what looked to be at least 10-foot tall gates.

And...well, it was just a house. No big whoop. Aside from the paint job, it wasn't showy or glamorous or sexy at all. Prince's front yard was dotted with evergreens and nondescript landscaping. But we parked the car across the street and stared at it just the same.

I remember that there were a couple other cars parked at equally respectful distances, containing people also staring at Prince's house, and it all seemed so very anti-climactic. Years later I would be reminded of this moment when I went with a friend to the annual motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota—motorcycles and their operators line the town's Main Street from beginning to end, but nothing really happens even though everybody keeps expecting something, anything. The crowds in Sturgis eventually get drunk and/or into fistfights and brawls on the street or inside the bars on Main because of this forced patience and numbing, frustrating anxiety. But when you're sitting in a Buick with your mom and looking at a house that's neither awe-inspiring nor dynamic—just the kind of place a successful, say, CPA would live in, but purple—you can feel yourself aging...and not in that good "May U Live 2 See the Dawn" kind of way.

After my weekend with my parents and Myra—who lived in nearby Bloomington, home today to the Mall of America—my dad decided we should stop by Prince's house one more time on the way out of town. Strangely enough, I was just as thrilled to do it again. And this time we were rewarded with a tiny bit of intrigue as a black limousine was parked on the grass directly to the left of the gates. A very obese black man sat with the driver's side door open, his legs spread with one foot on the ground and the other resting inside the vehicle. Looking decidedly casual and relaxed despite his ill-fitting chauffeur/security uniform, he held a walkie-talkie that he occasionally spoke into, and each time he did this we got really excited. Best of all, we were the only car there that afternoon. I thought that maybe I would have a singular experience at Prince's house, that I would actually see Prince coming or going, shared with no one but my parents and the three or four other modest homes dotting the circumference of Kiowa Trail.

Maybe Prince's staff used boredom as a technique to drive away the lookiloos, because the wait grew too excruciating, nothing ever happened and we finally left. But we got to see the purple house one more time and a fat man's crotch parked outside of it. I fantasized about what Prince was doing inside. I was convinced he was most certainly home, possibly giving Vanity a backrub as black rose petals dropped from above and a huge silhouette mural of a woman's face, with a solitary purple tear falling from one of the eyes—just like on the Purple Rain record sleeve—looked on from the master bedroom wall. Or maybe Wendy and Lisa were hanging around in the kitchen, helping Prince make Rice Krispie bars, trying out new eyeliner, shootin' the shit. While the exterior of Prince's house was disappointing, the fantasy of what went on inside remained and was perhaps strengthened by the home's lack of rock n' roll ostentatiousness.

I heard that Prince moved out of the house on Kiowa Trail not long after I saw it, and rumor has it his father became the new tenant. I also remember reading in a tabloid that Prince, while temporarily in love with Susannah Melvoin (Wendy's sister) of The Family, planned to build a love nest/mansion in downtown Minneapolis, but I don't think that ever happened. My most trusted sources told me that Prince relocated to the supposedly ritzier suburb of Eden Prairie, a name that I think embodies Prince's idealistic and spiritual side and his cornfield-neighboring mid-'80s residential roots.

I prefer to believe that Prince is beyond mailing addresses and lives a more luxe version of Sissy Hankshaw's lifestyle from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, picking up mail from post offices around the world (or sending a Jerome Benton-like assistant/sidekick to do it) and allowing himself to be free to change his mind, free to do most anything, anytime.

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Originally published in If Prince Was My Girlfriend, 1997
© 1997 by Chris Lee


here's the link > http://www.bychrislee.com...house.html

Or maybe Wendy and Lisa were hanging around in the kitchen, helping Prince make Rice Krispie bars, trying out new eyeliner, shootin' the shit.

i can so imagine them doin that...

Umm, I don't know how to brake this to you, but this is just a gate.

Didn't he recently bulldoze it?

Mmmm I remember a concert, just before "Do me Baby" I believe... where he said, "I love to take you to my house, It's a purple house..."... I guess he doesn't take anyone there anymore?

Are there no more groupies left??... do I really need to shave my legs?

Marrk said:

uh-huh

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Yeah, the mind fuck that is Prince.
Hi pops was living there and past on lately and P had the place flattened

righteous1 said:

Whoa that was my 506th post

The purple house may have been haunted by the ghost of bad taste.