Last night, I heard Prince on the radio while driving my daughter across town. You don’t hear Prince much on the radio these days, which is a shame. In fact, you don’t hear Prince much at all anywhere. A great deal of the blame for that is Prince’s. He’s a hermit. He’s a bad business strategist. He's fiercely independent and bullheaded. Eccentric. His fashion sense is suspect. And he somehow defies the laws of aging. I’m not sure Prince is even human or of this earth. Man, I love Prince.
I’ve known Prince longer than I’ve known my wife, kids, or a good chunk of my friends. By “know,” I mean “known of.” His Purpleness and I have never actually crossed physical paths, but it feels as if we have. For as damn weird as Prince can and has been, I’ve always felt like I was in tune with what he was going for at any particular time. I don’t know if that makes me damn weird, too, or even a “Slave,” but over the years, no matter what strange, career-killing move Prince was making, I somehow understood and even approved of it.
I first heard Prince at around 15 years old at a party I wasn’t supposed to be at. “1999” was spinning on the turntable, and “Little Red Corvette” was getting played over and over. I quickly went about scrounging up any dubbed tapes of Prince I could weasel my way into. It took a while before I could get my hands on all the songs from “Dirty Mind,” but I was persistent and eventually made it happen. From there, I made it my life’s mission to get “Controversy” and “1999.” By the time “Purple Rain” rolled around, I was fighting off urges to convert my entire wardrobe to purple pants, shirts, and scarves.
Prince came along at the perfect time in my life. I was in high school, and he was an oddball who opened doors to all sorts of oddballness that I wanted to explore. Eventually, he found massive popularity. Although I’ve always hated when musicians I like make it big and I had to start sharing them with others, I didn’t mind so much in the case of Prince. I thought more people deserved to be let in on the magical madness he was conjuring. When “Let’s Go Crazy” and “When Doves Cry” and “Darling Nikki” blasted through the stratosphere, it justified my adulation for his music. The “Purple Rain” craze also warmed my heart, as I took great satisfaction in watching all the “open-minded” kids who had once labeled him as a “sawed-off f*g” now dancing their little hearts out on the dance floor at the big high school dances.
I don’t listen to Prince much these days, and I haven’t bought much of his music since “Diamonds and Pearls” (seriously, “Get Off” is the baddest, funkiest song ever), but good Lord, my memories tied to Prince are incredible. I’ve seen “Purple Rain” dozens of times, and I’ll even waste an hour or two every few years or so suffering through “Under A Cherry Moon.” I fished for hours and hours at the Wahoo Creek with my boy Daryl listening to “1999” on a portable boombox, and the night that my man Tim and I went bonkers at a party trying to woo girls lip-syncing to “I Would Die 4 U” was, well, embarrassingly beautiful. (Poor Lynette.) “Purple Rain” may be my favorite song of all time, and I truly believe “The Beautiful Ones” is about as good as music gets.
Whenever I hear Prince, like I did last night, I think of being in my small bedroom, staying up way, way deep into the night, my head stuck directly between my two crappy stereo speakers, listening to “Purple Rain” over and over again. I miss that stereo.
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