I got
more...a lot more...when “1999” was released the following year. It's hard to
explain what a seismic shift that album caused. This was 1982 in the midst of
the Cold War. There was this new cable channel called MTV that showed nothing
but these things called “music videos.” Cursing and foul language were not
commonplace in pop music. If you wanted to hear the word “fuck” you listened to
Richard Pryor comedy albums or watched R-rated movies. Don't get me wrong,
there were tons of pop songs that were about fucking. They just didn't say
“fucking.” Prince came right out and said, “I want 2 fuck u.” That was from
“Let's Pretend We're Married” and me and my friends lost our shit over that
song. Another gem from that song, “...I sincerely wanna fuck the taste out of
ur mouth. Can u relate?” We couldn't relate, of course, but goddamnit we wanted
to.
Apart from
the most brazenly sexual lyrics I had ever heard in my short life, “1999” was a
political statement. It asked the question, “Mommy, why does everybody have a
bomb?” The answer? “I don't know, so shut up and dance.” During those days, we
all lived with the knowledge that the entire world could blow up at any second.
And here was this bad-ass motherfucker, who dressed like he came straight out
of the court of Louis the XIV (and who had previously rocked bikini underwear
and thigh-high boots, but more on that later), telling everybody that the only
way to face the pending apocalypse was to dance and fuck our asses off and if
we didn't know how to do that, just listen to this record and if, by the end,
you still didn't know how, then you're a double drag fool and there ain't no
hope for you. Also, there was a giant dick right there on the album cover.
After
“1999,” I went back and got “Controversy” and “Dirty Mind.” The former has
“Jack U off.” The latter is one of Prince’s best. It’s pop, funk, soul,
R&B, rock and roll, and punk, all in the service of anti-war anthems, songs
about individuality, “When You Were Mine” one of the greatest break-up songs
ever, and sordid tales of giving a bride-to-be head on her wedding day and
incest with your sister that would make a Lannister blush. This was also the
album cover that featured Prince in the aforementioned bikinis, etc. I had a
poster of that iteration of the Purple One on my wall, which, I’m sure, led my
mother to wonder if I may be a little confused sexually. In reality, I was just
a straight white boy who had found a new hero. A hero who was slowly making my
world larger and more interesting.
This is
probably a good time to reveal that previous to Prince, the edgiest thing I had
ever listened to was rock band/comic book heroes/multi-media corporation Kiss.
In my grade school years of the 70’s, I was more apt to be found listening to
the “Grease” soundtrack, the “Star Wars” soundtrack, and, for some ungodly
reason (ahem…white boy), Andy Gibb’s “Shadow Dancing.” I grew up in a small
town in Kentucky and didn’t have access to Creem magazine and had no idea about
the cool music being made in New York City and London. The Ramones and The
Clash would have to wait until my world got a little larger. Prince was one of
the main catalysts for the broadening of my horizons. He became a star at the
same time as I was going through puberty. Trust me when I tell you that going
through all the confusion and terror that comes with puberty was much more
exciting with Prince playing in the background.
In 1984, the
world turned completely purple with the release of the movie and album “Purple
Rain.” The album is one of the best ever made. The movie has its share of
problems, amateurish acting, misogyny, and did I mention misogyny? The musical
performances, however, are some of the most exciting ever captured on celluloid
and it has lots of Morris Day, which is never a bad thing. It was a massive hit
at the time. There’s really not another rock and roll movie like it. It wasn’t
an Elvis movie. It wasn’t “A Hard Day’s Night.” It’s “like father, like son”
dynamic is simplistic (father beats mother, son beats girlfriend), but that
doesn’t mean that there isn’t truth in the narrative and the final performance
of “Purple Rain/I Would Die 4 U/Baby I’m a Star” is just fucking brilliant. It
was a brave choice of subject matter for a rock star’s first film (can you
imagine Michael Jackson doing anything similar?) and it paid off. On a personal
level, as a kid who was prone to (undiagnosed at the time) depression, seeing
my favorite singer in a film where he imagines his own suicide and not only
survives, but triumphs, was damn near a religious experience and one that I
would revisit again and again whenever the thought of killing myself would rear
it’s ugly, selfish head.
“Around the
World in a Day” confused the hell out of everybody when it came out. Mainly,
because most people wanted “Purple Rain II” and not this
baroque-while-simultaneously-psychedelic masterpiece. It’s one of my favorites.
Next up was
“Parade.” It was the soundtrack to the film “Under the Cherry Moon,” which was
written and directed by Prince himself (and about which the less said the
better). “Parade,” the album, is Prince’s “Sgt. Pepper.” No two songs on the album
are alike. Each one a brilliant reminder that the writer/performer is a genius.
Then came an
album that is, start to finish, a two record set that belongs on any list of
the greatest albums ever made and proving, yet again, that if there’s a room
full of bad-ass motherfuckers and Prince is in that room, he would be the
baddest-ass, funkiest motherfucker of them all. I’m talking about “Sign O’ the
Times.” It’s art that you can dance to. It covers multiple genres of music with
Prince singing in multiple voices. I defy anyone to stand or sit still when
“Housequake” is playing. Ever wonder what a children’s album written by Prince
would sound like? Based on “Starfish and Coffee,” it would rival Dr. Seuss. Do
me a favor. Go listen to “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker” right now and come back
to this. Done? Good. That song sounds like nothing that came before or that has
come since. It’s new wave, pop, jazz, and lyrics that read like a tone poem
thrown in a blender that still comes out giving up the funk (and no matter
style of music Prince is indulging in on any given album, he ALWAYS brings the
damn funk). “The Cross” out-Jesuses most Jesus songs. It’s an album that will
leave your head spinning and your ass shaking.
I could go
on about other albums, because there’s something on each one that I love the
shit out of (“Sexy M.F.”, damn…”Pussy Control”, fuck yeah and oh by the way
read the words it’s actually a pro-feminist anthem), but you would get bored
reading that.
It seems like Prince has always been there. His genius was so massive that he didn’t seem human, but something otherworldly that this planet had never seen before. He sang about God and sex in equal measure, sometimes in the same song. It was heady stuff for a kid who was raised in a Baptist church. Whenever I was dealing with all the guilt that comes with teenage sexuality (particularly those of us who were told in church that sex was a sin), there was Prince singing about fucking his way to divinity. Suddenly, Sunday School was boring. Especially with “D.M.S.R.” playing in your head on repeat.
Prince is
the greatest vocalist in the history of popular music. Don’t debate me on this.
You will lose. Any list of the greatest guitarists of all time that doesn’t
have Prince in the top three is bullshit. He could play any instrument he laid
his hands on. There are numerous albums and individual songs that are nothing
but Prince, playing and singing everything. I’m trying to wrap this up and I
don’t know how. I don’t know if I’ve conveyed how important the man was to me.
I was only in the same building with him twice and that was seeing him live. First
in Atlanta with Troy Lambert on the “Lovesexy” tour. Second in Evansville with
Jeff Kolodey. How was Prince live? Only the best live performer I’ve ever seen.
I always hoped I’d get the chance to see him again. That ain’t happening,
though, and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart because I’ll never get to
see him with my wife. It breaks my heart because it turns out he was human,
after all. It breaks my heart that he died, alone, in an elevator. It breaks my
heart because the world was better with him in it. At the darkest moments of my
life, when I was alone and nobody else was there, when I didn’t know if I
should draw another breath, when I was hurting, he was there on my radio, in my
cassette player, on my turntable, and in my headphones. He was there when I was
happy and life was good. His name was Prince. And he was funky. It was a
privilege to exist with him on this planet at the same time.
“Sometimes
it snows in April
Sometimes I
feel so bad
Sometimes I
wish that life was never ending
But all good
things they say never last…”
