“This is for the wind that blows no matter how fast or slow
Not knowing where I’m going
This galaxy’s better than not having a place to go
And now I know (I know)”
I don’t even know where to begin. Words can’t express what Prince means to me and the impact that he had on my life.
I consider myself a half-decent writer but when it comes to describing the power of music, capturing just what it does to stir your emotions, make you break down in tears and lift your spirits, I’ve always fallen short. In college, I wrote some hackneyed reviews of Public Enemy, full of aggressive adjectives and adolescent posturing without an ounce of authenticity. In my Gil Scott-Heron biography, I wrote the book as a labor of love to pay tribute to his life and legacy but struggled to explain how his songs and lyrics made me feel, how they moved my heart and mind.
When it comes to your favorite musician, it’s even harder. Prince was not only the greatest of all time — the musicianship, the emotional lyrics, the sexual energy, the beauty of his mind, the open-minded vision, the universality, the sheer dirty stanky funk — he was my inspiration.
He showed me that it was good and glorious to be yourself in all your crazy ways. Fly your freak flag with a big smile. Sing opera at the top of your lungs in midtown on a rainy night. Cry yourself to sleep when your crush turns you down. Find your passion and push it all the way with a ferocious intensity until you realize it’s the middle of next week, you haven’t slept a wink and your stomach is growling for “a butterscotch cloud and a tangerine, with a side order of ham.”
When I first got the news on Thursday, as Liza Toft first saw the report on her phone, while we were driving on a highway in Florida, I almost lost control of the car. It was so unbelievable to think that this amazing artist who has been a north star in my life was gone. Later that day, (to be overdramatic for a minute) I found myself surprised that insects were still buzzing and birds still singing, that the world hadn’t grown silent in mourning and stopped spinning on its axis. I’m still trying to process this loss and it will take many years to come to peace with it, if that’s even possible.
All I can do is share some of my memories and moments:
1) My first girlfriend and I singing the lyrics to ”Lady Cab Driver” in 1984 to each other during those first few fumbling moments of intimacy.
2) Deciding to lip-sync “Darling Nikki” at my high-school graduation party, practicing for days in front of the bathroom mirror, and then chickening out. (Shameful.)
3) Bonding with my best friends — Dupre Vega David Voyticky Tekle Menelik — in college at Pomona over Prince’s music and style and bravura and attitude. We all thought we were his acolytes, growing our hair long, courting girls on campus, reveling in sappy romantic lyrics, bouncing around campus in Dave’s 21-foot-long beat-up black convertible Cadillac. With our ethnic mix (black, Puerto-Rican, Jewish, Irish) we could have been his back-up band. Prince was our prophet — his music was the soundtrack to our lives. (How many times did we recite those “If I Was Your Girlfriend” and “Bob George” lyrics to each other? “Prince, ain’t that a bitch? That skinny motherfucker with the high voice? Please, who do I look like baby? Yesterday’s fool?” and “For someone who can’t stand no TV dinners, you sure eat enough of them motherfuckers.”)
4) I’ll never forget seeing him in LA in 1988 and then Dupre and I seeing him perform in Frankfurt in 1989 — that crazy decadent LoveSexy tour with a stage full of neon lights, a fake nightclub and even a basketball court (with Prince playing hoops with sexy Cat, as she performed her rap during “Housequake”).
5) Back on campus, Dave and I spent entire nights talking about women and true romance and listening to Prince’s quiet songs like “Free” and “Sometimes It Snows In April,” talking about the meaning of the lyrics with the intensity of young dreamers.
6) As a DJ in New York in the early 1990s, feverishly hunting for bootleg copies of the “Black Album,” the album shelved in favor of “LoveSexy” during one of Prince’s religious revivals. I would take some of those nasty jams like “2 Nigs United 4 West Compton” and “Cindy C” and deepen the bass and extend the beat in my mix sets.
7) Sneaking in the side door of Radio City Music Hall (for $5) to see Prince perform during the Cream tour in 1995. It was amazing, as always, the first half devoted to running through most of his hits, the second half an extended improvisational jam full of jazz riffs with Prince bouncing around from guitar to keyboards to drums to perform with an ecstatic smile on his face.
8) Meeting Prince one night at a concert after-party at some small bar in SoHo, where he sat in a throne on a slightly raised stage while supplicants waited in line to honor him. The whole thing was ridiculous — but it was Prince. So I patiently waited in line to shake his hand. He took my palm, traced a sign in the skin, smiled up at me with a mysterious grin and talked about the sky.
9) When I met Liza, she told me about her adolescence in Minneapolis, watching Prince perform at First Avenue club in the mid-1980s and seeing him around town. And I was so jealous.
10) Going to see Prince perform at MSG in 2011 on one of our first date nights since the birth of Roscoe. As always, he was the consummate showman, blending hits with extended improvisations. When we left a little early to rush home to the babysitter, this big security guard stopped us and yelled: “You can’t leave now. No way. You can’t leave. This is Prince!”
11) All those times over the decades that I’d hear one of his little gems “Starfish and Coffee” and “Dorothy Parker” and “How Come You Don’t Call Me?” and just feel a warm glow throughout my body.
Prince, thank you for all the joy you have brought to my life.
