LEE-ANNE GOODMAN
Canadian Press


Sunday, May 02, 2004

Prince. (AP/Chad Rachman)




JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (CP) - It's been a mere 20 minutes since he starred as the howling, hopping ringmaster of a stunning rock-funk circus, and Prince is serene in his quiet candlelit dressing room.

He's just ushered out, after a brief chat, some cable TV suits who were apparently looking to make a deal to air one of his live shows on Showtime. They appear chagrined as they shuffle past the black curtains leading from the dressing room and into the warm Florida night.

There's no sign of his bandmates - not Chance, the rotund and flirty keyboard player who shakes his jiggly booty with pride during the show; not Candy, the bodacious blond sax player with the killer backup vocals; they too have steered clear.

Prince, touring on his new album Musicology, has made good on his word to grant an exclusive interview to a reporter for The Canadian Press, despite having to postpone it repeatedly throughout the day of the show in this north Florida city.

If he wishes he was partying like it's 2004 with the New Power Generation, his band that's headed to a post-show party, he's too much of a gentleman to say so.

In fact, he seems somewhat miffed that the Showtime foursome - with their stiffly delivered post-show kudos that sound like something from a Saturday Night Live skit - showed up. He apologizes for the delay and devotes his attention to the matter at hand.

This is the diva? The apparently difficult and occasionally angry musical genius who battled Warner Bros. in the 1990s, scrawling the word "slave" on his cheek for every public appearance to protest the company's ownership of his master recordings?

"I still have a lot of fervour on that matter," Prince says with a smile after he realizes he's been engaged in a slight rant - to the point that he extends the interview another five minutes - about the battle that ended a decade ago with him taking total artistic and financial control of his songs.

He's still outraged that record companies routinely strong-arm musicians, but he's more sanguine, he claims.

"It's behemoth now; the record companies are never going to change. There's too much money at stake, and once I looked at it from that perspective, from the business standpoint, I started to understand. But I was lucky enough to get out of the system - I've been independent for 10 years and I'm going to stay that way. But it can't be that it's OK for one artist to own his own work, but not another. Why shouldn't everyone own their own work?"

The ordeal seems to have left its resentments. Prince, who lives part-time in Toronto with his wife, Toronto-born Manuela Testolini, praises Canadians for their refusal to be like Americans.

He likes to hang in certain unnamed Toronto nightspots because "they don't respond to a lot of American playlists and have playlists which I really dig. There's more of a European flavour, and more older, classic stuff that you just don't hear in America."

He's a fan of Nelly Furtado "because she doesn't sound like anyone else out there, and because of her vibe, she wouldn't make it big in America. And you guys can be proud of that; Canada is hip to her, hip to a different sound."

He even feels Musicology, lauded as his best album in a decade with its many tips of the hat to funk greats like James Brown and Earth Wind and Fire, has a unique sound because it was recorded in Canada's biggest city instead of in the United States.

His love of Canada isn't the only thing that's surprising about the man considered one of the most talented musicians of his generation. Always something of an enigma with an apparently healthy obsession with sex, fat funky bass lines and blistering guitar riffs, there's a lot more to Prince - his savvy, his visionary move to market his music online years ago and his new-found conservatism.

He says he doesn't quite see that the masses, perhaps weary of American Idol-ism and manufactured pop, seem to be clamouring for an all-out Prince resurrection since his electrifying performance with Beyonce at the Grammys.

But even a grey-haired U.S. customs agent in Toronto got wide-eyed with excitement when told the purpose of a trip to Florida was to interview Prince.

"He comes through here all the time," the agent whispered. "He's so tiny!"

Prince himself is thought to have singlehandedly turned the Musicology tour - coming to Toronto in July - into a massive sell-out by suggesting that this would be the last time he'd play his old classics live.

No one who buys a ticket will be disappointed: Prince's phenomenal live show is almost beyond description, even though he's not playing some of his naughtier tunes about masturbation, oral sex and other carnal pleasures.

"It was a different time, a different place, and I was different then," says the recently minted Jehovah's Witness. "I pushed the envelope as far as it needed to be pushed, and now it's on the floor, and people seem to want it to stay there. People don't want to turn on a football game and see Janet Jackson flashing. If they want to see it, they'll pick the appropriate time and place to see it."

His Jacksonville fans thought they were picking the appropriate time and place. The crowd roared with delight at every bump and grind of Prince's amazingly lithe body, at every dirty lyric, at every suggestive aside.

When he invited some 20-odd, mostly female, mostly gorgeous audience members on stage to "funk it up," there was no denying that sex and women play a huge role in all things Prince.

He's coy when asked why the crowd erupted when he sang a lyric about wanting to "go down south" in a plea to an angry lover not to make him sleep on the couch. "They misinterpreted me," he says with a smile. "I was talking about going down south to Jacksonville."

His sex appeal remains firmly in place, in large part due to his obvious love of women - he's always had women in his bands, has always promoted female musicians and his lyrics have always suggested a penchant for keeping his women satisfied.

When he sang a heart-wrenching acoustic version of Little Red Corvette, Prince himself assured the crowd that he did, in fact, have enough gas. Translation for those not familiar with the song: there's no need to worry, ladies, that he's lacking any stamina in the sack.

It also doesn't hurt that he looks like he hasn't aged in 25 years. There's not a line on his face, not an inch of middle-age sag - and yet no sign of a Botox face freeze or any other artificial elixir of youth. He even yells out on one song on Musicology: "I ain't had no nose job!"

Prince argues, however, that indeed he has discovered the fountain of youth.

"There's no special moisturizer, there's no special diet except that I don't eat meat - I just don't believe in time," he says. "If you don't hold yourself up to these artificial measurements we as human beings have put in place for time, then you don't worry about aging. And if you're not worrying about time, and if you don't have that ticking clock inside of you stressing you out, then maybe you won't age."

Prince sits back on the sofa and ponders further, then offers up another nugget that should please those who are delighted he's making a grand-scale comeback.

"If I believe I'm going to live forever," he says with a grin, "then just maybe I will."

© The Canadian Press 2004