Prince RIP

We have a thing called Caribou Coffee in Minnesota, which is like Starbucks. He'd go over there, and he didn't have any pockets. He didn't have a wallet or any credit cards. He just had cash he'd carry in his hand—like, a $100 bill. And whoever took his order, they'd have a good day, 'cause he'd buy his coffee drink and then just leave the whole hundred. He doesn't wait for any change because he doesn't have anywhere to put it.

<3 <3 <3

*Everything* about these stories. My current favorite:

Van Jones: He was very interested in the world. He wanted me to explain how the White House worked. He asked very detailed kind of foreign-policy questions. And then he'd ask, "Why doesn't Obama just outlaw birthdays?" (laughs) I'm, like, "What?" He said, "I was hoping that Obama, as soon as he was elected, would get up and announce there'd be no more Christmas presents and no more birthdays—we've got too much to do." I said, "Yeah, I don't know if that would go over too well."

amazing to read the other side of the infamous charlie murphy basketball/pancakes story

Davison: The backstory to that was—and this is the part Charlie doesn't tell—Eddie had wanted to play Prince his new album. So during that basketball game, Eddie's music was playing, via boom box, on a cassette. After that game, Prince goes over and he tosses the cassette out of the boom box, and he says, "Let me ask you a question: Do you see me stop my show to do comedy?"

Damaris Lewis (model, tour dancer): I tried playing Prince in Ping-Pong once. I told him he was the Serena of Ping-Pong and I would never be playing him again. He was literally a master of Ping-Pong.

Van Jones: At Paisley, the ping-pong table's right outside the studio. So it's kind of back and forth between recording, destroying somebody in Ping-Pong , go back to recording. Oh my God, it was embarrassing. To the point that he wouldn't even play me, he was just so disgusted with my inability to play. One time, he wouldn't even move—he'd stand in one spot, and his arms were not that long and I'm six feet two. Talking crap the whole time. He's like the worst trash-talker.

xp I was just going to post that. The idea of Prince clowning Eddie Murphy over his music career -- esp. given the Rick James connection and how much James hated Prince -- is beautiful.

Figures a JW would hate birthdays and Christmas

Hayes: Nobody was allowed to say "deadlines" around him. He hated that word. He said: "That's arbitrary and stupid. What happens when I go over the line? I'm dead?" Prince would always tell us "time is a trick." I remember one day I was late, and he was, "You're late, Morris!" and I said, "Well, you know, Prince, time is a trick…" It didn't work. He was, "How about I Jedi-mind-trick that check when you don't show up again?"

holy shit

Davison: We were on a flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, about a three-and-half-hour flight, and we'd been up pretty late the night before, but he wanted to go out to record. On the plane [he's] asking for pads and paper, and so I get him a notebook and pen and he starts writing, and he writes a poem, and he hands it to me. And I read it, and I go, "Well, you know, that's nice…sounds clever, good." I hand it back to him. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes later, he hands me another poem. I'm, like, "Oh yeah, that's just as good as the first." And I'm like, "Why does he keep handing me these poems?" This goes on for the whole flight, and we land, and he says, "Do you mind if we go to the studio?"—he was always cordial—and I'm like, you know, "You can do whatever you want to do." And he says, "Well, I'll just be there for a few hours and then we'll head to the house." And so we go to the studio. We were in there for three days, almost four days, straight. When he's finished, I go into the studio and I'm listening to the music. I asked him on the way home: "Did you have all that in your head? Not just the lyrics, not just the music, not just the melodies, but the arrangement, everything?" And he said, "Yeah, you know, I have to get it out when it's in there, or I can't sleep." He had written [the first two album sides of] Sign o' the Times. He had basically written an album in a three-and-a half-hour plane ride.

<3<3<3

I love all of this so much ... but still the regret that we had to lose him to get these stories

Freed: He wanted to sell a shirt for $1,000 that would get you into Paisley Park for free for life.

i think me and donald trump have the same favorite vault/unreleased/bootleg prince song. big tall wall y'all.

― fact checking cuz

you think he's not that into "donald trump (black version)"?

i love the stories about his sense of humor. dude was a funny motherfucker

prince is not allowed to die

this, the second post on this thread, remains truer than ever

Walsh: I said to him, "Come on, man—don't you want to make another Sign o' the Times, another Purple Rain?" I don't know if I framed it exactly like that, but he said, "No, no—Jim, I've been to the mountaintop. There's nothing there."

o_O

_*Walsh:* I said to him, "Come on, man—don't you want to make another Sign o' the Times, another Purple Rain?" I don't know if I framed it exactly like that, but he said, "No, no—Jim, I've been to the mountaintop. There's nothing there."_

o_O

^^^^ this one stood out to me too

This Susan Rogers RBMA lecture is fantastic. She goes deep on a few SOTT tracks, and so much more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ON0nQCQF08

For some reason, I thought that video title was Prince's full name, really.

lol at "Prince Engineer Susan Rogers Nelson"

lolol

Dang, that was one of my screennames in reserve.

Idk, that quote doesn't seem particularly surprising to me. It's a really dumb question.

I don't think that's a dumb question at all really

http://recordmecca.com/products-page/museum-quality-collectibles/prince-owned-worn-purple-rain-era-custom-made-pants/

20k for one pair of pants!

I can't imagine Prince of all people wanting to consciously retread past territory in the studio or recapture past glories. I'm sure he was trying to make good records at the time, or rather just getting out what he heard, same as when he made his classics.

This is also great from the GQ article upthread and seems worth sharing on here. I can picture the exchanges.

“When I first started, I tried one time to unify a group splintered by whether I was still ‘funky’ or not. That question still goes on, obviously.” — Prince, 2001, on his early experiences with web chat rooms

I can't imagine Prince of all people wanting to consciously retread past territory in the studio or recapture past glories. I'm sure he was trying to make good records at the time, or rather just getting out what he heard, same as when he made his classics.

I agree with this, but at the same time, he seems to become less interested in Big-Gesture albums, doesn't he? he does giant-package things like Crystal Ball, and the Rainbow Children's a concept album, but he kinda withdraws, it seems to me - whereas both Purple Rain and SOTT are pretty zeitgeist-aimed record imo ymmv

I can't imagine Prince of all people wanting to consciously retread past territory in the studio or recapture past glories. I'm sure he was trying to make good records at the time, or rather just getting out what he heard, same as when he made his classics.

You used to release zeitgeisty album after album. What went wrong: you or the zeitgeist?

*cue Sunset Boulevard reference*

I have a Prince-ordered but never sat-upon sofa in my living room (no kidding, really for real). I bought it at a factory sale a month before he died for 66% off of retail. I'm not selling it 'cause it's comfortable and we've already bought stuff to go with the cool purple velour.

what??

Prince left his ass cheeks imprinted on them

Aren't you the afraid he is secretly still alive and will pop up from behind that sofa when least expected?

A certain ILX thread of yore comes to mind, and I would ask you to ensure such a fate never occurs to that couch.

heh

I mean, it's obviously a sexy couch, but it should be kept clean. (It's from these guys:http://bretz.com/)

“When I first started, I tried one time to unify a group splintered by whether I was still ‘funky’ or not. That question still goes on, obviously.”

This made me cry with laughter for about 30 minutes last night.

said in his baby powder-soft voice

"Then I joined ILX and realized the original group was kinda sane in comparison, and..."

those without 77 access will not connect of course but:
http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=478

i love the stuff about madonna

"I hate the script"
"Well I hate your shoes"

Battle of the shade queens <3

that Prince Engineer Susan Rogers talk posted above is great. i'm 50 minutes in and she's talking about how they recorded his drum machine, by sending the drums individually to his BOSS guitar pedals. like putting the handclaps through the flange. amazing stuff.

I used to put my drum machine through a fuzz-box, so yeah.

I always wondered if Prince put everything thru flanger pedals & units because they're predominantly painted purple

What amazes me about some of Prince's '80s work is just how much of it has a demo-ish quality to it while still sounding utterly fantastic.

otm, i'd love to get digitized cassette dubs of the 80s albums, because this song bangs and the second generation dubbed sound of this copy is so warm and beautiful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I1YCYsqSgQ

I liked the part in that Susan Rogers interview where she talked about him starting songs by playing acoustic drums in the studio, just looking at a lyric sheet, no click, no guides, just having the whole arrangement in his head.

I assume she was talking about 'The Cross' since the interviewer had asked about it, but I'm curious what other ones this might apply to (most of the post-Dirty Mind songs I can think of with acoustic drums also have drum machines, which would have to be recorded first).

I used to put my drum machine through a fuzz-box, so yeah.

yeah but it kind of surprised me that he'd use a bank of BOSS pedals and not some specially designed custom box created by a electronics wizard. nope, just a cheap BOSS pedal. it's a small he's just like real people moment.