Mick Wall - Prince: Purple Reign

MICK WALL

PRINCE

PURPLE REIGN

For Linda Wall

Heartfelt thanks to all those that helped make this book happen: Anna Valentine, Robert Kirby, Malcolm Edwards, Joel McIver, Chris Salewicz, Emma Smith, Jessica Purdue, Krystyna Kujawinska, Mark Handsley, Angela McMahon, James Macey, Mark Thomas, Vanessa Lampert, Steve Morant, Ian Clark and John Hawkins.

Contents

Dispatcher:911, where is your emergency?

Unidentified male:Hi there, um, whats the address here?
Yeah, we need an ambulance right now.

D:Okay.

UM:We have someone who is unconscious.

D:Okay, whats the address?

UM:Um, were at Princes house.

D:Okay, does anybody know the address? Is there any mail around that you could look at?

UM:Yeah, yeah, okay, hold on.

D:Okay, your cell phones not going to tell me where youre at, so I need you to find me an address.

UM:Yeah, we have um, yeah, we have um, so yeah, um, the person is dead here.

D:Okay, get me the address please.

UM:Okay, okay, Im working on it.

D:Concentrate on that.

UM:And the people are just distraught.

D:I understand that they are distraught, but .. .

UM:Im working on it, Im working on it.

D:Okay, do we know how the person died?

UM:I dont know, I dont know.

D:Okay.

UM:Um, so were, were in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and we are at the home of Prince.

D:Youre in Minneapolis?

UM:Yeah, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

D:Youre sure you are in Minneapolis?

UM:Thats correct.

D:Okay, have you found an address yet?

UM:Yeah, um, Im so sorry I need, I need the address here?

Unidentified female:7801

UM:7801.

D:7801 what?

UM:Paisley Park, we are at Paisley Park.

D:Youre at Paisley Park, okay, thats in Chanhassen. Are you with the person whos...?

UM:Yes, its Prince.

D:Okay.

UM:The person.

D:Okay, stay on the line with me.

UM:Okay.

(Phone ringing)

Ambulance dispatcher:Ambulance, Shirley.

D:Carver with the transfer for Paisley Park Studios, 78.

AD:Paisley Park Studios, okay.

D:7801 Audubon Road.

AD:Okay.

D:We have a person down, not breathing.

AD:Down, not breathing.

D:Yup.

Purple is the most special of all the major colours, the one that appears the least frequently in nature. A synthesis of red and blue male and female, fire and water, yin and yang purple is always the colour that attracts the most attention.

In China, purple represents the harmony of the universe, spiritual awareness, a red purple symbolising fame and great fortune. In Japan, purple symbolises privilege and wealth aristocracy. In Europe and America, for centuries the colour purple has been associated with vanity, extravagance and individualism, with magic and mystery. In parapsychology, people with purple auras are said to have a love of ritual and ceremony.

Now, since 1984, purple has become the colour symbolising the greatest musician of his generation, Prince, an artist for whom all of the above meanings would apply... 100 million records sold; seven Grammy awards; an Oscar; a multitude of BRITS, MTV and American Music Awards. A musical innovator on a par with David Bowie; a guitarist to rival Jimi Hendrix; a better dancer than James Brown; and a singer with more than one voice and many more ways than one of expressing it. Prince achieved more in his four-decade career than other artists achieve in a lifetime.

And then there were the women... A renowned lover of women who married and divorced twice, Prince was also linked with some of the most beautiful, glamorous and in many cases famous women on the planet, including Madonna, Kim Basinger, Carmen Electra, Nona Gaye (Marvin Gayes daughter), Twin Peaks star Sherilyn Fenn, Playboy centrefold Devin DeVasquez, and almost all of the women he worked with professionally... Sheena Easton, Bangles singer Susanna Hoffs, former backing singer Vanity, Apollonia, who played Princes love interest in the movie Purple Rain, Sheila E, another protge. Even his two wives, Mayte Garcia, a former dancer, and Manuela Testolini, who worked for his charitable foundation, Love4OneAnother, were involved in Princes work first.

His greatest love, though, as he was never shy of reminding us, was for God. He was born into a family of Seventh Day Adventists, and testifying was something he grew up doing, first in church, then later and for the rest of his life through his music. When, in later life, Prince became a Jehovahs Witness, it surprised everyone except those whod known him since he was a boy. Prince could be playful, full of fun, but he took his God and his music one and the same to him very seriously.

All wrapped up in the most stunning and provocative fashions ever seen on any music star, Lady Gaga eat your heart out. Princes look was as vari-focused as his music, raunchy yet androgynous; struttingly male yet teasingly feminine: silk, ruffles, pinks, lavish purples and red, topped off with beads, crucifixes, bippity-boppity hats, huge frilly cuffs and bared nipples thongs!

Music, love, spirituality, sex, fame, God, clothes... This was the Prince his millions of fans around the world had come to know and love over the years. Yet at the time he died suddenly, tragically, on 21 April 2016, it seemed like the best of Princes life and career was already over. His last worldwide hit single, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, had been in 1994, his last multi-million selling album, a Very Best Of compilation from 2001.

Friends say he had money worries, personal issues, his last stage appearances the Piano & a Microphone tour, in which he performed alone in mid-size theatres a far cry from the days when he filled Londons 20,000-capacity O2 arena for 21 nights, with a full-scale show that featured over a dozen different musicians, singers and dancers weirdly truncated performances attended by the ghosts of his and his audiences shared, mixed-up, funked-out, purple pasts.

Then came the next day, as news of his passing rolled across the media landscapes of the world like a great tsunami of tears. First disbelief then shock, then grief, then wonder then celebration and commemoration. In an era when social media gobbles up all the biggest stories and turns them into feather-light tweets, and a year when we have already seen so many celebrity deaths we have lost count (David Bowie, Terry Wogan, Victoria Wood, Harper Lee, Johan Cruyff, Alan Rickman, on and on...) news of Princes death eclipsed them all. Not since the deaths of Elvis Presley and John Lennon has one stars passing had such a huge global impact.

This wasnt just the weeping and wailing of indiscriminate fandom, as with Michael Jackson, this was about a major cultural event. Princes death didnt just make it into the tabloids, like the Sun and the Mirror, which both gave over their front pages to the news, but the great and the good of the media too; the New Yorker turning its front page purple; The Times, the Telegraph