Page 7 - Pop History: Prince Pt. III

Episode Date: February 18, 2020

We wrap up our series on Prince; count along at home how many times Jackie says "see a therapist". Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Man, are you guys ready? Are you guys ready for the end? And I say the end of Prince's life, but we are talking about 30 years that we are going to condense into this episode from Batman to Prince's untimely death. And I'm excited about it. I've learned a lot. I've grown a lot. And, you know, I wish that, you know, now in reading about all of the ways that he truly battled with how his image was controlled and what he would allow out, I wish I could see more performances by Prince. And that is something that will forever make me sad. Well, at least there are 800,000 of them available on YouTube. Yes, absolutely. And I have been watching those. Hello, by the way, I'm Holda McNeely. This is our part three pop history on Prince,

joined, of course, by Jackie and Natalie. Hey, guys. And I am excited to do. jump in it. We have been, it's been a roller coaster of emotions for me. I've been battling with my thoughts of someone that is a true genius. And again, I'm not going to keep screaming get a therapist, but just so you guys know throughout everything that we're talking about in the back of my brain, I'm begging him to get a therapist. And I think that it's put a lot into perspective for me of there are times when you can't you can't blame a genius for being mentally ill. Right.

But he never got the help. You know, that's the thing. You can't play me for what I do. But you can ask for help and you can at least try to get help. And unfortunately, he did it the wrong way. I'm very emotional right now. Yeah. So we all sat down.

I feel like we all went our separate little ways and did our research. And I came in being like, oh, just so much fun. While my guitar gently weaves, what a great performance. Such a good performance. I came in really sad because I had a revelation at the end of all of the research. And it was a sad one. And then you came in, Jackie, just guns ablazing.

I got guns ablazoned over here. And I came in with like a little smile and a little tear in my eye with just so much appreciation for how much joy he brought the I don't know. And I also feel like we're about to give birth to this, like, information baby. And I need to give, I am like three months overdue. And, like, the doctors are like, I don't understand why this baby's still in this man's stomach. How are we going to get out of his penis? We're not sure how it's going to come out.

Yeah, we don't know where to cut, what to cut open. And if it doesn't have my eyes, I swear to God. I swear to God, I'm getting that baby tested for paternity. All right. So for me, it's like a sense of potential. at least relief, assuming that this is the final recording that we do about the life and legacy of Prince. And so vastly different energies happening right now.

Very different energies at the table. I wonder which energies we'll have at the end. We'll each, we're going to swap. Yeah. All right. We'll play musical chairs, personality chairs. I call Natalie. I don't want to be holding.

That means you're holding. Why? I feel like I'm the most jazzy hip-hopity happening. boy with the toys over here. And you guys are all sad and mad. And it's just like, why be sad and mad? It's a big beautiful world out there, guys. I think what it is, it's when you look at someone

that you viewed for such a long time as a, to me, a sex symbol, as someone that you, my panties melt off of me when I watch him perform. And to read all of these things about him that are not very nice, it's a little shattering. Yeah.

He wasn't a nice guy. He wasn't a nice guy. He also wasn't a touchy or a beater, right? It wasn't like a full like molesty. No, it was all psychological abuse and it's the kind of abuse that people can get away with. Sure. It is psychological abuse against his partners, against his bandmates, against anyone that worked with him. And that's not cool.

I'm upset. Whoa, Jackie. I'm upset. She has stated her truth. It's not cool. It's not cool. I agree. I very much agree.

That doesn't mean that we can't love his music, but that does mean we can despise the movie graffiti bridge. Well, that's for different reasons. It is interesting, yes. We are allowed to, we get to totally make fun of that movie, Jackie. Also, I think that really is so obvious, like, essentially this past week, I've been focused on his concert tours and the big performance moments and the things that he did to light the world up with his creativity.

and your focus has been the secret room. The personal side. The metaphorically. The Bluebeard's Castle closed door. Yeah. We found the key, but are you, do you regret it? But also, did I find the key? Because as again, we say that Prince, he's a very private person.

So all the things that are said, and I will say this with a grain of salt, because we will never really know because he didn't like a lot of people knowing exactly. what was going on in his life. For sure. It's true. So this is hearsay. I mean, I'm not going to say that an ex-wife, you know, is probably not going to color the person that destroyed her in a positive light. No. Also, it is sort of, we'll get into that very end of his life,

but a lot of the interviews from the people throughout his life who he sort of cut connections with or had an earlier relationship with, they all speak of him in reverent tones. But it's in an appreciative way. It's not like we, he was like my, we had this great personal relationship. It's always about how he changed their lives and that he was this otherworldly creature that they were really happy to have known.

It was because it was down to a sense of control. He wanted to control everyone around him because he knew he was a genius and fair. I'll give it to him. But controlling every single thing about every single person around. That's why he would make somebody. That's what he did with Apollonia from Purple Brain.

He liked to make people. And so you're like, oh, on the outside, he is giving them this opportunity. He is giving them a step up and he would. But the second he was done, he threw them away like a rag doll. For sure, but then that Super Bowl halftime, it's so good. He's so good.

He's just so good. Let's get into, we could just start on a weird ass note with graffiti bridge. the film that was originally to be a vehicle for the time who had reunited in 1990 with all original seven members as Warner Bros. demanded the original lineup he brought in to get the company's backing for it. But the time ends up putting out an album called a pandemonium. And after that, infighting causes them to disband. So Grafidi Bridge ends up going fully back over to Prince and is a sequel to Purple Rain. This is the weirdest.

Yes, it is weird. But also, this is another instance where Jimmy, who's a part of the time and not a made-up person, said that they had gotten, they had procured a scriptwriter, and they wanted to do another record alongside this movie. They asked Prince to get involved with the music part. He said, because we felt it wouldn't be a true time album without his involvement. The next thing we knew, there was graffiti bridge.

It became his project. And we were just kind of the bit players. I remember standing on the set and going, what a mess. This is going to be terrible. We laughed our way through and had. had a great time because essentially Prince came in and was just like, no, no, no, no, no. This is my thing now.

And he really, it is. Yeah, it's not good. That was in 1990. Correct. I think it came out 90. I believe so, 991, yeah. Really fascinating, not really a turn away from Purple Rain. It's pretty much the same movie.

But it is notable that it's all shot indoors. There's not a single natural scene in the movie. in the movie, it's all on South stage. So, Paisley Park, right? I would imagine that's where I was shot. Yes. But it's, it's funny that it actually kind of resembles Batman. It looks like the Batman movie.

But it is ridiculous though because graffiti bridge is actually a landmark in Minneapolis that was torn down by the time that the filming began, but why not at least go shoot close to there? Right, right. One exterior, just one exterior, just a still of where.

graffiti for it I know. It would have it would have made it feel less like a music

video. Like a, it felt as though it were in an hour and a half music video. Oh yeah.

Music video. Right, right. Essentially. And I think also there's something about this storyline which is, again, it's the same leads

from his foil is the same guys Morris Day, who's a real man in this movie. They're still fighting with each other but they're

fighting over a nightclub. And they have basically the same problems. And it's a little less charming whenever they're a little bit older, and we've already met them all, and they're still kind of fighting over girls.

It's still pretty creepy. It's real creepy. So this is what Morris Day had to say as a descriptor of the film. A sequel to Purple Rain is what it ended up being, and the role that the time plays is, well, crooks. In Purple Rain, we were small-time crooks, and now we've graduated to the big time. We own and control this area called Seven Corners,

which is really four corners and four clubs. And everyone answers to us. It's really about the rivalry between us and the kid who is the picked on felt sorry for hero. But in the end, he gets the girl and he beats us with a ballad. He changes our hearts and minds and makes us into good church-going individuals with a song. And then he laughs hysterically.

After they kill her. Spoiler alert. After they kill her. Spoiler alert. The whole plot line with her is so weird. Ingrid Chavez is the lead actress And she's beautiful And she's great

But she is not sexualized in the same way That Apollonia was in Purple Wing Are you telling me no one's thrown into a dumpster In this whole damn movie? Oh not close I mean it is close I believe there's two They drugged her twice

Okay Not that that's funny but it's funny No it's horrible So Apparently in the synopsis of the movie, I read it that she's supposed to represent an angel who came down from heaven to help them live more righteous lives. Which makes sense because she's referred to in real life by Prince as the spirit child. In the movie, both Prince, the kid and Moriste, the other, the antagonist,

both almost are her. Like, Morrissey desperately tries to are her with another dude. And then Prince almost are, sir, but then he withholds himself because he wants to are this. No, the whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. It was very, very upsetting for absolutely no reason. And Prince says he would survive if graffiti bridge is less than a blockbuster. He says, I can't please everybody. I didn't want to make Die Hard Four, but I'm also not looking to be Francis Ford Coppola. I see this more like those 1950s rock and roll movies, but I'm pretty sure they don't drug

anybody in those movies. They might behind the scenes, but they don't do it in the actual part of the movie. Well, I will say after watching Judy, they definitely drugged those people behind the scenes. But don't worry, ladies, the film flops miserably. It grosses about $4.2 million dollars. And the last two members of the Revolution, Dr. Fink and Miko Weaver, they both leave Prince's band after this film comes out. It's like a whole new era for him. Is there anything else you guys want to say about graffiti brutes before we move on because I know there's you have a decent amount. I actually will say what I appreciate about Prince is that Prince wanted to keep working with the time because he respected them so much. And he did say because he does believe

himself to be a bit of a God in this scenario. He's like to this day they're the only band I've ever been afraid of. They broke up because they'd run out of ideas, he says. They went off and did their own thing and now they're terrifying. And I like that I noticed a lot that. I noticed a lot that Prince refers to things that are really good as terrifying. And I think, I mean, that's a whole, I'm not even going to unpack that, but I also think it's a fun way to say it's like, oh, baby, they're terrified.

I was listening to a Prince live album earlier today, and at one point, right after the saxophonist launches into his sax solo, he's just like, Larry, you're scaring the hell out of me. Because, you know, again, knock it on. My only thing I'll also say about the movie is that it is, visually, it's fair, there's a lot of silly, fun things to see. You can watch it and kind of enjoy it. The music sequences are really cool.

And Mava Staples kills it. Mava Staples does a great. Yeah, George Clinton's in it. George Clinton does a great job. It is fun to see all these people brought in. But then you have Ingrid Chavez. So apparently meeting Ingrid Chavez, which he referred to as the Spirit Child or an angel,

And it was aura in the movie. Yes. Yeah. Was supposed to be the reason that the black album was originally canceled. So this is him backtracking, backdrawn. And it's like, no, no, no, it wasn't all those drugs it was doing. It's because I met this angel that had fallen from heaven. The whole black album thing is so weird.

Yes, I love the black album thing. She brought, so he had brought Ingrid Chavez to Paisley Park to make this poetry LP titled May 19, May 19th, 1992. and it was a spoken word poetry thing that after they had met that night, he made her come back with him to Paisley Park and was like, no, no, no, let's record this poetry album in three weeks from now. So in three weeks, she came back with 21 poems, and she says about it, Prince was hearing my poems for the first time

as he played on the synthesizer in the studio. I would say a title like, Heaven Must Be Near, and he improvised as I was reading. It was a moment captured in time. We did the whole thing in one straight recording. So she was another one of the ones that he brought to Paisley Park and was like, let me make you and then put her time. And then time will tell. So his new band is now called the New Power Generation.

And that is the band that would stay with him from 1990 all the way through to 2013. The phrase, welcome to the new power generation is set on the opening track of Love Saxe. If you remember that one, that was the one that was like 45 minutes long with all the tracks as like one long track. Yada, yada, yada. Back, he's, like, very naked on the cover, very pastel. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The first tour that they did was the nude tour, and that's in 1990.

And their first album with Prince is Diamonds and Pearls, which was his follow-up to Graffiti Bridge. And at this point, you have, Damon Dickinson is just listed as, quote, dancing. Tony M. is in the band as, quote, lead raps and dancing. They ended up actually becoming the Game Boys is what Prince described them as. Right. It's like he's going into the mighty, mighty boss tones. A direction is what I'm saying here. As well as his brass.

A lot of people dancing around. His brass section is called the hornheads. It's a lot bigger. There's more of an emphasis on rap. This is, by the way, I guess, to frame the whole thing, too, this is really, I feel like, the darker years for prints. Like, graffiti bridge doesn't set the world on fire. It does the opposite.

I think it's starting to make him look like a little bit of a laughing stock. And we're just about to get into the love story. symbol thing. And that, I remember that when I was growing up, I remember that when he changed him's name to a symbol, that was when I think largely people started maybe picking more fun at him as opposed to looking at him as this icon. Which really just fueled his anger because he didn't want people. He never wanted, he's a very serious person.

And what I actually like about what he was doing with the new power generation, which was the same with what he had done with the revolution in Purple Rain is that according to Tommy Barbarrella, who is the keyboardist of New Power Generation, he said his whole idea was of a band as a gang, that they were going to go and kick some ass. We want people to be scared when they see our equipment, is what Prince said about it. During the Purple Rain Tour, the Revolution will go out to clubs in their stage clothes, and we did that too. He loved to go where another band was playing and take over. That's the closest thing he got to family or friends. Yes.

So this was him again, I think talk about a darker time for him of trying again since he dissolved the revolution. He's very alone. And it's got to be this struggle for him between wanting to be alone and wanting to be in control of everything, but being so desperately lonely and wanting friends, but also friends that he could control. So he would make a band out of him. It's very interesting.

It's actually not too dissimilar to this friend. group in the sense of work is love. And for me, so much of my, I have to make such a special effort. And I always begrudge it up until I'm actually having a good time with my friends in a social situation. I have to make such an effort to do something outside of work with my friends. When I see Jackie and I hang out, it's over podcast. It's over Twitch streams and things like that.

You know what I mean? And when it's not that, I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe I made plans. I just want to sit my pajamas. So I kind of get that a little bit, even though. You are just like Prince. I'm just like Prince. I'm sorry, Prince. I'm sorry. The artist formerly known as Holden. Well, I mean, my, okay, I will be, to be fair, my dick is a little bit bigger. But other than that, I think that I'm pretty much one to one with Prince.

But okay. Although in all these things, did you ever see an outline of his pain? Like, was he packing he? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, he had. The short dudes usually surprise you. Yeah. He took a lot of lovers. I would feel like if he had a micro penis, One of them would have said something.

Also, he has the confidence of somebody with a massive piece. If you pretend like you have a giganto, then you will. That's just the way it is, guys. Manifested. It's the Napoleon complex. He has a lot of that going on in his life. Shall we get into the love symbol? Oh, he has to throw a tantrum.

He's throwing a tantrum. I'm sorry. I shouldn't make fun. I'm making fun because I've been upset. This is the part. I respect him very much. though I really do like this is insane this is the part I will say where it is is kind of warranted wherever I remember again I remember the general public response was just kind of like what are you

doing what do we have to call you now so here is why though at least we can explain why he did what he did and I really had no idea until this past week's reason me neither I was totally I was like I always just thought he was oh it's prince just being the crazy artist didn't trying to do something to change his image or make a splash in the news. But no, this actually had to do everything to do with tensions between him and his label Warner Brothers. So Prince pleads with his label. There was a specific label ally he went to, Mary Lou Bodeau, to let him release new music even while they are promoting the previous album. He just wants to keep releasing. Bodeau said, I would tell him that it was counterproductive, that people can only absorb so much music from one artist at a time. His

his answer was, what am I supposed to do? The music just flows through me. It is just this prolific point in Prince's career artistically. He is just putting so much shit out there. At least he is recording so much shit and he wants to put it out there. And the studio, and I understand both sides of this, to be honest with you, the studio on the other side of it is like, please, we need to properly promote this music. You got to put one album out at least a year and then let us do our jobs and get that music to the world. If you put out too much stuff, it just overwhelms the audience. It's overload.

It's too much. And I get that. But at the same time, I also get the idea of like, hey, if I have this work and I want to give it to everyone, then let me fucking do that. You know what I mean? But there are rules for a reason. And also, at the end of the day, he signed a contract. Yes. He did sign a contract because he never shied away from how many times they would give him money up front to make things

that they wouldn't ask for a script that would flop. That he would take the money. So taking the money wasn't an issue. And I guess that is where I'm just like, well, because it does suck. You're right. He should be able to do whatever he wants to do, which is why in turn we will get to it. He creates his own record company.

Because if you have that kind of money and you want that kind of control, then you need to have the money to make your whole world, which is what he was essentially trying to do. This is a wrestling match that's old as time with music. music labels and their artists. It's the same with producers and directors, everything.

There's always a power struggle. It's hard. And he also did change and open up a lot of doors for future generations of people that now know that you can own the masters to your music. You can go and fight. And that's what I'm trying to focus on with all of this because I did it out while reading it at first, immediately was just like, they're having a tantrum. But he wasn't.

He was really fighting for what was his. But at the other end of that, this is, and we'll keep doing the push. This is the contract he signed. This is with Warner Brothers and Chapel Music. He signed a contract for six albums, up to one release a year, for $10 million, a $10 million advance per album, and 25% of the royalties, which also made Paisley Park Records a joint venture with Warner Brothers, as opposed to like a vanity label like it was before. But just it This is the part I don't get The timeline of when he signs this contract

And when he starts to regret having signed the contract It all seems to happen at once It's almost like he signed the contract And then he immediately is like Oh, I hate this contract It's like but you it seemed like he had just signed it Anyways go to a therapist Go to a therapist

As a manic depressive I get these up and downs I completely understand I imagine it was like he signed the contract And then they were like we have demands from you and he was like, no. I don't want it. I want the money, but I don't want you controlling anything that I do.

So Gary Stifleman, Prince's attorney, had this to say. He really wanted to release the music in a way that was inconsistent with the contract. He wanted to put out an album whenever the urge struck him, and it could be a three-song album or a 70-song album. And, yeah, and I think really it also just came from his resentment towards Warner Brothers that they owned his masters. And at least, spoiler, and that's true. There is a light at the end of that tunnel years and years later.

But until then, he reacts to the tensions in what is one of these strangest moves. An artist has maybe ever made, a musician is maybe ever made. He decides to change his name to a symbol, which would later be copyrighted as love symbol number two in 1993. And he becomes referred to as the artist formerly known as Prince. However, one little stipulation on that, he always just wanted to be the symbol. He never wanted to be the artist or the artist formerly known as Prince or any of that. And you could not refer to him as that to his face. He would not.

And what I like, there was a quote of, I believe it was one of his drummers when people kept asking, oh yes, it was Tommy Barbarrella, the keyboardist of NPG. He said, so what did Prince's musicians call him? And Tommy Barbarrella said, hey man, I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that. Because they knew that they weren't allowed to call him the artist or the artist formerly known its prince. but what do you say? You have to refer to him as something in real life. Or like, like, from what I read? They just say, what's up, man, bro?

Whatever. You know, though, Diddy made the transition. He did. He did. He did. He releases his 12th album in 1992 called the Love Symbol album, with the symbol in question, huge on the cover of it. The album is, by the way, this album is fucking bonkers. It is a, quote, rock soap opera, according to Prince, and is about an Egyptian princess who gifts prince with a religious

artifact who was later grilled by a reporter played by Kirstie Alley in these weird in-between her skits. It's actually a pretty fun album. I don't know if you listen to it. It's a little, it is pretty insane, but I did listen to it. I did listen to it. I dig a lot of this stuff. Like, honestly, I really, even at his worst, musically, I think there's some really good

shit always, that's like the most impressive thing about this, especially this part of his career, because it's so prolific. That I must have been like, I was like, oh, there's got to be like, tons of clunkers in here. And every album I put on, it wasn't Purple Rain, but it was like a damn good funk album, a damn good rock album. Another thing I really like about this time period with him,

well, really all of his time, but he liked to make almost, he almost liked to make things a treasure hunt. Yeah. Sometimes he made it complicated to get his music, or he would put stuff out and then pull it back, which I don't know if we're going to talk more about the black album, but he did try to put that out.

And then he decided it was an evil album, and he pulled it out. And it could be, I don't know if this is something between the tension of him with Warner Brother, but Warner Brothers eventually put it out in 94. They did. They used it as a way to be like, this is going to be one of our albums because you already gave it to us. We're going to put it out. So they put out in 1984.

Essentially, as part of the make-good to fulfill his contract, because we did talk a lot about the black album last episode. But yeah, they still are sitting on that, and it's still just this incredibly popular bootleg. Because throughout all of the 1990s, Prince releases 15 albums and only, five of them were with Warner Brothers. Yes. It just is insane. Fifteen albums? One of my favorite factoids is his management had to send out floppy

discs with a special font to journalists for them to use in publications. That an actual That had the symbol. Yes. This is, think about how much man hours, how much materials went into this name change. Well, they had to go to

a full a what is it called? Like a design company to make this symbol because it's a fusion of both of the gender signs. It's male and female intertwined, fused by alchemy. This is how Prince chose to identify, not as a man in the traditional sense,

but as an androgynous glyph that signified beyond the structures of gender labels or even language. So this is, I mean, this is a statement. Beyond the fact that it is just, oh, I want to release my own albums under my own record label. This is a statement of that he is saying that he is,

he does not identify as either gender. And he also wanted to give a lot of emphasis towards the women that he worked with in his life. And particularly at this time, it was with Mate Garcia, who would eventually become his first wife, as well as Carmen Electra that were working with him at this point in time. When I'll get more into his relationship with Carmen Electra a little bit later,

but he wanted to make sure that the feminine quality of his life and that those elements were also very strong in the forefront of what he was putting out. I will say that this is the kind of difficulty being a difficult person that I like this aspect of. Yes. I've changed my name to a symbol. You guys figure out how everybody's going to put it on their print. I don't care. You do it.

Except for the fact that he would get so angry and pissy when referred to as the artist or something like that. That was, I feel like if I. I was gonna do something like that. I would still laugh if you try. Like if I just wanted it as a lion symbol. That, you know, I did like a Snoop Dog, but don't even go with Snoop Lion. I'm just lying.

If you called me Jackie or said, excuse me, Mistress Lion, I'd be like, I'll still respond to that. I like the side of it that he makes all the middle management have to do extra work. Not the part about him being mean to like me. So it was created by graphic designers Mitch Monson and Liz Luce.

Apparently, Prince just asked them, he makes the request for the astrologically inspired sign symbol. He then comes in after they've mocked up a bunch of them and apparently just very quickly chooses a design of theirs. And according to Monson, the one you see now was almost untouched. We did very little adjustment to that particular mark at all. So I just love to that he was just like, yeah, that one, whatever. Prince said, sounds good. Prince said, I always, I wanted to move to a new plateau in my life. And one of the ways in which I did that was to change my name to sort of divorce me from the past.

But I think the past is really just Warner Bros 100% here. And it's also, this is a common thread in everything that Prince does, that he doesn't want to look to the past. He doesn't want to think about the past. And also in the press release, he had stated, Prince is the name that my mother gave me at birth. Warner Brothers took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing tool to promote all of the music that I wrote.

So he sought, which is why, which will lead us into the time period that I remember as a kid when he would perform with the word slave written on his face. At the 1995 Brit Awards, he accepted an award there. And in his speech, he said, Prince in concert, perfectly free, on record, slave. And so that's why he starts doing that. And also it had to do specifically as well with his masters because he had said, if you don't own your master tapes, your master owns you. It's all about ownership. And so this is when things get really complicated when it comes to album releases and what he's trying to do and what they're trying to be. The other thing he was really trying to do was to create a symbol so that he could release records under the symbol moniker and records under the prince moniker so that he could release the music as he wanted to, which was constantly and aggressively.

It's mind scrambling just to think about doing this. So what he wanted was for the albums, the gold experience, he wanted that album to be released under his symbol moniker. At the exact same time as the album Come released as Prince. The album Come had a bunch of darker material on it and a more challenging material on it. The Gold Experience had the pop more like commercially viable stuff on it. But I actually wish that the labels let him do this

is I think that would have been a really cool move. releasing both at the same time and having them compete against each other as like as if they were two different musicians. Almost like the internal battle that he was facing 24-7. Yes. Yes. And the Gold Experience, of course, featured the most beautiful girl in the world. That was written for Maite as well.

It came out sometime before the album actually came out. And I think that's one of the elements you were talking about, Natalie, in terms of like how he released things almost secretly. It came out as like a weird EP release. I think it was also just slip it again, slipping one past the goal. Like I think sometimes what you think maybe

intentionally being this like smoke and mirrors artist, a lot of times was literally just him trying to figure out how to slip yet another ball past the goal, the Warner Brothers goalie. Was this a time period whenever he had the toll the toll free line? That's

not just yet. This is actually at the same time period. Another thing... I'm excited for it! Another thing that he was working on at this time, talk about slipping things, as many things in under the radar as humanly possible.

In late 1989, Prince had opened up a club called Glam Slam in Minneapolis. And then around this period of time, this is around like 92, 93, he opened up GlamSlam East, Glam Slam West,

and Glam Slam, Yokoama. So he had clubs, dance clubs in Minneapolis, in Miami, in Los Angeles, and Yokohama, Japan, because he wanted to showcase Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Sound and the Minneapolis scene. But he said that so many people didn't realize what it actually entailed that he wanted to bring it to their town. And it was a huge thing at the time that Steve Edelson, the Los Angeles club's co-owner, described Glam's West aesthetic as being entirely princesses. vision saying that they worked from a sketch made by prints. Set designers, artists and carpenters labored all day and all night to bring it to life. But what he was doing at these clubs is he

was creating this stage show called Glam Slam Ulysses. And this was the production's plot was loosely based on Homer's The Odyssey and featured live actors and dancers interacting with pre-recorded videos. Naturally, the piece was set. soundtracked by 13 Prince songs. This is where he had the relationship with Carmen Electra. Carmen Electra would perform cage dances in a cat costume

at GlamSlam West, and this is how they worked out what he wanted for the stage show that he wanted to unveil. He said a group of sirens donned skeleton bikinis with skulls protecting their breasts and finger bones curled over their

genitals. The thing is, is where is this show? I want to see it. Yeah. Each Monday, Prince would send Jamie King choreographer a selection of unreleased songs. The choreographer was then expected to develop an entire routine by that Friday.

Performances would take place at Princess Club Glamm slam. Over time, these segments would evolve into one all-encompassing show. So he's doing this while releasing multiple records at a time, while creating a whole entire, another complete persona of the artist formerly, noticed Prince the symbol. I mean, it really does go to show that all of the, the, the stories that you read about the fact that he never slept, he must never have slept. And also that at the time, like, this was much more sexual and explicit than the symbol guy.

Right. Right. Like, that was much more related to, like, joyous. Yeah. Joy, spirituality. Yeah. Yeah. Faith, things like that.

And, yeah, absolutely. And then he's got skull girls. And he's got skull girls and he wants to make a stage show. He wanted to have a huge, I think over time, probably a Broadway show. Right. So, okay, we've got chaos and disorder is the final release for Warner Brothers and was the least commercially successful. I put it on. It is like, it is grunge almost.

It's like a prince put out a grunge album. It's not, again, what's hilarious about all this, if it's anybody's, anybody else's album, it's like their best album. But if it's Prince, it's like, you know, down in the bottom of the list here in terms of his releases. But, yeah, it fulfills his obligations. It's a very angry album. It definitely is very much like going at Warner Brothers a lot. And also in 1996, it gets, we get even darker. We get very sad here.

Also, in 1986, Prince gets married to the dancer. What's her name again? Mite Garcia. And this was also right after he had proposed to Nona Gay, Marvin Gay's daughter. Right before he started dating Maita and then immediately married. I think he's been engaged a number of times. He's engaged a lot. Because we also talked about,

they got him and Shili E. got secret engaged. Yeah, what I did not know. I did not know that he proposed to Shili E. On stage during a performance of Purple Rain. She got. She got and staged, guys. I like that. So back in 1990, he actually saw her at age 16,

standing outside of his tour bus and said, There's my future wife to singer Rosie Gaines. He was 37 and she was 22 when they got married. And that same year, and this is where it gets really sad, she gave birth to a boy named Amir Nelson who suffered from Fyfer syndrome, which is a rare genetic disorder that affects the skull and the baby passed away just a week after being born. And they would end up even getting divorced in 2000, largely due to the stress put on by the relationship by this event as well as a miscarriage that she would suffer not too long after

that. And also... And this is on top of the fact that he gets back, when he gets back from their honeymoon in Hawaii, Paisley Park, he got back from the honeymoon. He was closing down Paisley Park and he let more than a hundred people go. He fired the new power generation. And then just kept on going. He just immediately, he came back and got rid of everybody. Then he lost the child. So he then, this is a spiral downwards. Ah, yes. This is when things get really, dark from him. By the way, I read an anecdote about how he went on Oprah with

Maity. I'm so bad. Myte. Maite. He went on Oprah with her, told her not to say anything about the death of the baby. There were rumors already at that point, but nobody knew anything. They just knew there were health issues there. But he made it seem like everything was fine and even

took Oprah into the nursery that they designed for the baby. The baby has passed. He takes her, Oprah, into the nursery and just talks to her about like continues the interview with her surrounded by all these like baby toys and things. It's very odd.

I don't think I could even watch that video. Oh yeah. I only read about it. I didn't look it up because that is... And I think it was just a couple of days right before that interview that Maite had another miscarriage as well. Oh my God. So on top of it was just so again the mental

illness. You know, I think that he had to separate himself almost from what was happening. Right. That even just the fact that everyone was confused of why he had that Oprah appearance because he didn't like anyone to be involved in his life at all. And who knows, maybe it was a break that was happening inside of his brain. Maybe he just needed to put on a persona that everything was going just fine

in order to almost force his brain into that space because in reality it was so dark. Yeah. And maybe that Oprah interview. you had been planned for a long time. And even somebody who is very sane, whatever that means, it takes a minute to process the death of a baby. Oh, my God. A few days after it happened, plenty of people would not be able to explain that to somebody

else. No. Guys, this is fun. Yay! This is the darker day. This is probably one of Prince's darkest times in the trajectory. We're covering his life. It has to be talked about, but it is rough.

Another dark thing at this point in time is the Prince Interactive CD-ROM. Because, you know, it wasn't a good idea. And this was around the same time. Everybody made CD-ROMs during this era. Yeah, do you remember Wu-Tang did it? And I remember I got the Wu-Tang one and you got to go into everybody's different room in the 36 chambers. That's what he did on his CD-ROM. He let you explore a virtual incarnation of Paisley Park.

And among other clips, you could listen to six. full songs, some of which were previously unreleased, watched four exclusive music videos, and remixes of some of his music. You know what? It didn't go very well for him. So, another blow to the self-esteem. You know what would go really well?

An LPN CD-ROM. Oh, I think we need to do that. Like, where in the world is Carmen San Diego? Yes. But we'll make Henry go. Yeah. I mean, of course, Jackie and I have talked about doing the LPN dating sim, which I would love to do at some point. Love to do.

So anyways, let's go back to now. I mean, on the brighter side, Prince is finally freed from the chains of Warner Brothers. And he has his big comeback with a 36-song, three-hour-long album called Emancipation. He's not working through some things. What are you talking about? He's making a bunch of songs.

He's doing good. He releases that through his own label, NPG Records, which of course stands for New Power Generation, which Prince had established back in 1994. This is also the first time he actually did covers on an album with tracks like Joan Osborne's One of Us. Oh, what if God was one of us? What if God was one of us?

Is that the song? That's the song, yeah. Oh, my God. She was one of the OG manic pixie dream girls. Yeah, man, just a stranger on the bus, bro. And actually, Prince is sort of a manic pixie dream boy. Yes, so it makes sense. Look at his joey eyes.

That's the thing. even in graffiti bridge, I can't look away from his eyes. No, and he rocks off the shoulder sweaters in that movie. I wish that I could. I mean, this is even after reading the stories, because I was reading Maite's book, and even after the stories, Prince saw some whipped cream and cookies at Garcia's makeup station.

They weren't hers, but concerned about her dancer's figure, he docked her wages. This is while they were married. I wish that my husband cared that much about. You know what, maybe that's it. Maybe you should ask Henry to start doing it. Counting your calories.

I should be so lucky. In 1998, he puts out a five CD collection of unreleased material called Crystal Ball. And this release is a little nuts. He's trying to release music now through his website as well as retail. It's a little too DIY. And as well as calling on the phone, Natalie. One 800 new funk. Yes.

I miss these, too. This is another 90s thing that happened. Do you guys remember? This is really related to Prince. Do you remember whenever we had the opportunity to choose the new M&M color? Oh, yeah. Oh, my God, yes. And then you had to call in, and there was like three or four options.

They ended up being the blue ones, which to this day still exist in Eminem. Yes, and they are delicious. They're more delicious than the other ones. They are. We got guys who weren't alive in the, or, you know, we're too young in the 90s. We chose that. We called in and we said we want blue M&M's. I mean, we were allowed to have control. Pretty sure I did the toll free and called in.

Yeah, there was a lot of call-in stuff around this time. And Prince was actually the first artist to sell albums directly to fans on the internet. That is with Crystal Ball. But that being the case, because of that, all of, like, the pre-orders through his website were not getting fulfilled until months after the album went on sale in retail stores. Especially because he completely self-finery. all of this because it was supposed to come to your, it was supposed to be sent to you in an actual crystal ball formation. That he had had all of these ideas of what they could get.

If they just call the phone number, if you just call 1-800 Newfunk, and all of these opportunities would come right to your torso. But what did people get? They got, essentially it was just a CDKs, except instead of it being in a square, it was in a circle. Well, they fucking, they take it and they should love it.

I appreciate it. What was frustrating is if you didn't pre-order it on his website, you wouldn't get one of the discs that was supposed to be included in the set. Like if you went and bought it from retail. I believe, and I could be, it's so confusing that I could be wrong. But I believe it's disc four, which was sold separately at one point, called the truth. And that is comprised of songs all centered around the acoustic guitar. It's a very stripped down thing.

And I really do love stripped down prints, not just clothing-wise, but also musically. I think it's fantastic. But also stripped down prints with them. But absolutely. This is around the same time that I got very excited because this was my introduction to Prince really was when he was on Muppets tonight. Now Muppets Tonight was one of my favorite shows. The reboot of The Muppet show. I loved it too.

And please look up the segments of Prince and this is the Prince that I know and love. So Kirk Thatcher, writer and producer of Prince's episode, recalled we were very excited that Prince had agreed to do our Muppet comedy and variety show. But had been told by his managers and support staff before we met with him that we must. never look at him directly or call him anything but the artist. As the writers of the show, we were wondering how we were going to work or collaborate with someone you can't even look at, especially while trying to create comedy with puppets. What, and what you will remember, and if looking at it,

this is actually what made this such a monumental performance for him, which I'd say something because I know it's just Muppets tonight, was that Prince had a willingness to poke fun at him. himself. In the episode's opening skit, Prince arrived at the studio lobby and conversed with the show's security guard, Bobo the Bear. When the grizzly guard asked for the singer's name, Prince looked directly at the camera, smiled and said, this is going to be fun. Which that's great. It's wonderful that he does like a whole like country bumpkin song with them. And at one point, when a band of Muppets dressed in Prince inspired fashion welcomed the musician on set by singing

delirious, the rocker Riley smiled and informed them that his leather and lace look was over. I just, it's like a fun side of prints that I feel like in reading all of this stuff, I was forgetting about. And I needed to remind myself of these things. He totally has a track record of making fun of himself. One of my favorite moves that he did was in 2013, he released a single called Breakfast Can Wait, and he used his cover art for that single was Dave Chappelle as him from The Chappelle show, which I love.

Like, I think he was always down to poke fun at his own. Speaking of impersonations of him, I remembered the first time I was familiar with Prince was from in living color. Jamie Fox does an impersonation of him. He's basically doing like a mock commercial for buttless jeans by Prince. I remember that. Yeah, it's a good one. I'll post the video of it.

Please do. So now we're in 1999, print signs with major label Arista Records and releases Rave Untoo with the number two. Just I'm not going to specify this every time because he does this constantly. He uses numbers instead of words and stuff like that. Rave Unto the Joy Fantastic, which features guest stars such as Eve, Gwen Stefani, Cheryl Crow, Chuck D, and Ani DeFranco. How 1999 can you fucking get with those featured artists? And in the liner notes of the album, he put a message in about the cruelty to animals

and the wool production industry. And I know Natalie will appreciate He was very much a fighter for animal rights and he was very much, he went from, I think, vegan to vegetarian throughout his life, but he was always very conscious of that. He was a clean liver, yes. All that good stuff.

But not a clean liver. You know what I mean? Yeah, no. He didn't have a clean liver. Not after all the pills. Yes, which is like, I feel. feel like there's such a safe to be cracked open about the drug use that we just don't get very much of. And even the fact that how much of a shock his death was, and we'll get there

obviously in this episode, but how much of a shock it was and how they still don't know where he got, what he got the, like the fentanyl from and everything. I mean, it's just so crazy. Which is insane. I mean, even down to the fact that there's a, I have this later on of my notes, but Morris Day, who from the time and from all of his movies, he said about drugs and prints, he's like, my introduction was early on with drugs. I had

my bout. I went there at a time when my body was still able to rebound. His introduction came much later when he was older and didn't have the stamina to bounce back from it. I just wish, because he was such a clean living individual. I feel like, dude, I kind of wish you went through it with me, so you could have had

that shit in your rearview mirror. I've been there. I would have been able to at least tell the monster that he was up against. The problem, though, with that is Morris Day was partying. Oh, yeah. The prince was coping with pain. It wasn't like he was going to clubs and getting groovy. And probably using it just to sleep at night.

Right. You know, and that's just such a different way of approach to drug use. So in- therapist, maybe at least see a therapist. So he puts out a pay-per-view concert called Rave Unto the Year 2000 on New Year's Eve of 1999, which consists of footage from his tour dates earlier that month. Oh my God, guys, do you remember when we thought Y2K was a thing? Oh, I watched the South Park Marathon.

And I was like, well, if there's a way to go out, it's while watching South Park, because that's what 12-year-old me really thought. I was old enough to be hammered. A few years older than you. Right. Just very drunk. I believe I was as well, actually.

I think that was a rough one for me. But I will say this. I will say we are about to approach the whole Jehovah's Witness thing. I know a lot of people are curious about this. I was definitely curious about this. And it also makes sense now too in reading about it, that it comes with the change back from the artist formerly known as Prince of him living as a symbol.

This is now finally because the contract is over. He did all the shit he needed to do. He goes back to being Prince. And what he also goes back to finding is God. And that is a huge part of why he became a Jehovah's witness. I'm actually going to go ahead and say, barring some factoid from you guys, I am coming at this from the perspective of,

I kind of like his relationship with faith, to be honest with you. Like, I don't have a big issue with it. We'll talk about it. I don't know if he did some stuff, though, that was, like, awful. I do know he knocked on a couple doors, which you do find to be a little intrusive.

But if you open the door, Prince, you would fucking talk to about God. You would fucking listen. You would definitely listen. It'd be so exciting then immediately following that, you'd be so bummed out. Can I have another cup of tea, Prince? Honestly, I'm out of tea. I really got to get to this doctor's important again.

I got to get out of here. So he fully drops the love symbol moniker on May 16, 2000, stating in a press conference after his publishing contract with Warner had expired, that now that he was freed from the bad relationships in proximity to the name Prince, he could now go back to using his real name. He was, so he was actually raised, going back to his childhood, a seventh day Adventist, which is apparently not too, too far off from the whole Jehovah's Witness thing. Except for the fact that Jehovah's Witnesses literally follow the words of the Bible. Ah, yes. That it is actual, there's no interpretation that they, they follow the approach to the new world transcription of the Holy Scriptures,

which is a revised Bible that was released in 1915th. And he did the whole thing. I heard somebody describe him going to the church. And he was that dude with the Bible with all the sticky notes poking out of it, you know, going over, asking questions and going through stuff, as much as he was actually really shy in church, which I guess makes sense. He was very shy in general when he was in large groups of people and not performing for them. So in 2001 he marries Manuela Testilini.

They get divorced in 2006, just as a little side note. And it's around this time that he becomes friends with Sly and the Family Stone bassist Larry Graham in 2001 as well. which started a two-year-long religious conversation between them. Prince said, I started studying the Bible once I changed my name back and started studying with my good friend Larry Graham. He helped me to just look at the Bible in a very practical way to cut through all the dogma.

I just wanted a clean, simple approach to it. Now, this is a, the marriage of Manuela Tesolini is actually a big part of him, because it is the same year he got divorced from Maité. and Maite said that I think Prince thought that because we lost our two children, our two babies, that I wasn't the one. That this was actually a speaking to him from a perspective of why he needed to leave her and to marry Manuel de Stalini. Now, Tessalini was also a Jehovah's Witness that he met because she became a consultant for his charity, love for one another. Love for one another is something that keeps coming back this phrase, is something that he used to have a website called Love for One Another, that he took the name of the, that it was the web, it was the web, it was the web,

that you could only buy his music from for a little while. And he created his charity organization out of it. Now, again, Prince was, I wouldn't say, and when it comes to familiar relationships, he was not a very good dude. What he was was a huge humanitarian. He was very active of being a humanitarian, and part of being a Jehovah's Witness

is not being allowed to discuss your humanitarian ways. You're not supposed to speak publicly about any of the good acts you do. Yeah, he did it. He did it. It was all like anonymous donations. Which I think it's really amazing. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Is that he worked with his wife at this point in time that everywhere he went, wherever he

was performing, he made sure that there were huge charity functions happening while in the town that he would perform at. And I love that. Which is odd. You can do that without being a Jehovah Witness. I'm just saying. Oh, for sure. It's like, but what's cool is that he never wanted to be about him.

He wanted it to be about helping people, and he was big with children in need. He really wanted, he worked in empowering women. I would say, I would definitely recommend the album The Rainbow Children, if you want a good perspective on this phase in his life. I think it is actually a very beautiful spiritual work. I put that album on, and I'm like, God damn. Again, if this was anyone else's album, it would be like, wow, Holder McNeely is the Rainbow Children.

I mean, it's the only good album he put out. but it's so damn good. But for Prince, it's like it's lost in the shuffle. You know what I mean? As you guys are talking about this Jehovah's Witness, like, transformation, it really wasn't his first struggle with figuring out whether he was religious or not. That happened throughout his career. And I'm sorry I keep going back to the Black album, but I found so much about it this week.

And it's so fascinating. And, like, when it was about to go out, he decided that it was evil. And so I think we probably touched upon this last week. But like a week before it was supposed to go out, pulled it off the shelves and he decided like Camille, his, his female alter, you go. Yeah. So whenever, if you listen to that album, it's really weird. And there's this song on it called Bob George.

Yes, Bob George. He, it's Prince and you can barely recognize that it's him. Because as Camille, you could tell it was Prince and it didn't really sound to me like a woman. But with this character, Bob George, it doesn't sound like him. and it sort of sounds demonish. I believe he called it spooky electric and it was this alter ego of his that lived inside of him.

That came out of Camille. Yeah. That scared him, like freaked him out. Yeah. And I really think that is a representative of the internal struggle he had with God and the devil and what he considered that to be. And as far back as that,

the religious aspect of him was he struggled with it. And according to Sheila E, she had said about him, when I first met him, he believed in God. But after that, there was a time when it seemed like he didn't believe in anything. But then he became a witness. And I felt for him that believing in something was better than nothing. Yeah, I like that quote a lot. But he needed this to strengthen him. But what a part of being a Jehovah's witness is that they believe that bringing souls to God is the most important thing. So what he would do is that according to his private chef, Margaret Wetzler, he had a floor to ceiling stack of Bibles and he would give one to every guest that came to Paisley Park. Now Morris Day was still working with him up until this time period. Ah. And there was a point when he had said, Prince asked you to return to Paisley Park to record,

only to ultimately turn you away when you declined his second request to become a Jehovah's Witness, right? This is what the interview asked. He said, I came to Minneapolis to record music. That's why he had me there. Then all of a sudden he's telling me, you're my. brother, I can't record with you unless you're on the same page as I am. So we're not going to do music unless you're willing to come to my God, the way I see God.

That's force feeding. And that's what Morris Day. So he also on top of this, again, it's another shedding of the people around him that were from his past in moving forward where he said, well, if you're not going to accept my God, I'm not going to work with you anymore. And it is also representative of like that sort of cultish religion, like a. Jehovah Witness, no offense. That's where I draw, I also draw the line there. It's like, I can't. Oh, man, I almost like so love what you're doing here, but that's when it gets little rough.

Especially if that's for you. If that's what you need, Prince, to feel good about yourself? That is what you need. And that's your belief. Have it. Feel it. Love it. But don't force anyone around you to do it.

Yeah, it's like a very Scientology kind of thing where you're, if you don't subscribe to it, then you're a suppressive person and you cannot have that person in her life anymore. And especially when he said in this same interview, he was also asked if he thought that he was trying to, that if Prince was trying to redeem himself for years of sin by being so overtly sexual, was it shame related? And what he said was when I was there, he was having the parties and all these young ladies

would come in scantily clad, half naked, and he's telling them, you'd need to put some clothes on. I'm like, dude, you're the reason they're half naked in the first place. It was weird to watch that transformation. It is, especially if you watch Purple Rain. Yeah, can you imagine? He rubbed on her pussy. It's graphic, sexy, cinemas.

You couldn't even have even played that on Cinemax in the 90s. Well, at least they weren't showing up dressed like dumpsters. What are we talking about? Let's talk about, let's move on to Prince and his wild, wonderful relationship with the internet. One thing I do love about him is that he does really try to take advantage of whatever the fuck is coming. his way. Raps big. All right, fine. I'm going to incorporate rap into my music. You know, whatever it is. Like synthesizers, of course, back in Purple Rain. It was all about the new technology. So at first he has a cool relationship with the internet. In 2004,

alone, by the way, he releases four separate albums of music, which is just too much. And he starts really engaging with his fan base at this time, which is amazing. He's using the NPG Music Club, which was his official website from 2001 to 2007. It had a monthly membership price of $7.77, because the religion thing probably, which got you at least three news songs a month, a free one-hour radio show hosted by Prince and other NPG members that featured music, commentary, and skits. And also, the pricing and offerings would change over the years. It's like Patreon, kind of. Yeah. Yeah.

But eventually, which is kind of fun when they had changed it because people were so upset because the site was so traffic heavy. the ticket section that Prince instead lowered the membership price to $250 a month or $25 for a lifetime membership. Don't make it even easier for people to get on there. That's the opposite of what you're supposed to do. Because he didn't really, I don't think he really got the internet at the time, but he was trying. But he was trying, which I love. And he won a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, won a mini Lifetime Achievement Awards we're going to talk about.

Wow, the Webbies were around that? Yeah, totally. Right, isn't that nuts? Wow. So also he's engaging with fans in other ways. He would do pre-concert sound checks where he'd be like communicating with them. He would do yearly, quote, celebrations at Paisley Park. And he would do studio tours as well as discussions with fans and music listening sessions with fans as well.

And some of these were actually filmed for an unreleased documentary by Kevin Smith. I really hope he puts that out at some point. I guess he was there recording stuff. Do you have anything else to talk about this time in the internet before I get to the while my guitar gently weeps performance. Let's just, let's roll her right along, baby. So also in 2004, and by the way, maybe while you're like listening to us talk about it, you may just want to pop the video on YouTube just right now and check it out.

It is just. It's insane. It's astounding. It's incredible. I just love it so much. So Prince is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 where he performed as well, in his own set, as well as in a tribute to George Harrison with the song While My Guitar Gently Weeps, alongside Tom Petty, Jeff Lynn, and others.

And he just rips the fucking doors off the place. He comes in, it's like right at the end of the song, he comes in with this solo. Producer Joel Gowlin said, they never rehearsed it, really. They never really showed us what he was going to do. And he left basically telling me the producer of the show not to worry.

And the rest is history. It became one of the most satisfying musical moments in my history of watching and producing live music. And these are amazing, these are amazing performers all on stage together. And actually the people on stage, including Tom Petty and everybody, they didn't know if Prince was actually going to show up on stage. So when you see him come out, you can see the look of surprise on them

because he, because Prince told the producer that, like, don't worry, I'll be there. I'm going to do it. You don't need to know what I'm going to do. But they also had absolutely no idea if he was going to show up or not. So when he comes on stage, you could just see them. It's a relief, but also like, all right, let's go go. See, again, that's the kind of difficulty I like. That's fun.

You make a bunch of the middle management guys sweat up until the very last second. That's my favorite. The legendary, the late great Tom Petty said, you see me nodding at him to say, go on, go on. He just burned it up. You could feel the electricity of something really big's going down here, which is so cool. Yeah, I just, I love it. Also, if you see at the end of it, he literally throws his guitar up.

You have no idea where it went or who caught it. The drummer said something along the lines of like, I still have no idea where that guitar went. It just disappeared, apparently. He literally just throws it up in the air and doesn't come back down. And you're like, what the fuck is that? Don't worry about it. It goes to the angels. It goes to one of his many angels that are, the women that are around him.

I hope so. It was a bit of a nod to the magic of Prince because, and we're about to get into the Super Bowl performance just a bit. And the Super Bowl performance, one of the things I didn't write down was a quote about how they were looking at him and the rain is pouring down and they're just like, there's no rain on him. He's not, well, there's like a couple of droplets on his shoulders and like a light mist kind of. but he doesn't look wet.

No, because he's ethereal. He's elusive, he's ethereal, he is otherworldly. He's not magic. He's not magic. Again, he's Agellical. Do you have anything? He is Agellical, and he's about to go to the whatever it's called the Between Me Nots or whatever the fuck they call?

Yes. The Between Me Nots. So anything before the Super Bowl performance? Let's just, no, I mean, we've got 10 more years. So, no, I'm good. Okay, so I'll try to make this as quick as possible. I know I have quite a bit on this. No, I also have quite a bit because how can you not?

It is the greatest. It is the greatest. Half-time performance of all time. And everyone says, if you look it up, everyone's just like, it will never be topped. This is it. I love one of his bandmates was like, yeah, every year I'll watch to see like, can they top it?

And every single year, I'm just like, now we're still on top. Especially with how difficult he is. is, I guess not difficult. He does it his own way. He does it his own prince way. And that he's like, all right, fine. Because they, I'm sure, had asked him many times to perform at the Super Bowl. And I imagine every time he said no.

But in 2006, he finally said yes. So I will say there is an oral history of his Super Bowl halftime performance that everyone should read if you're curious about it. It's really comprehensive. I took some of these quotes from that. And honestly, I don't believe so. So this is kind of what happened. Like at first, it was Michael Jackson, I believe, and stuff like that, right?

Then I believe MTV took it over and up until the famous nipple rip of Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson's fan. That hurts my ass. Nip what ever. The fucking breast situation. Nipgate, yes. Which was dumb and I think way overblown. But then they freaked out a little bit and they froze up and they were like, all right, we're going to get like Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones to make the boomers happy. will be safe and all that.

Good, I'm glad the boomers are happy. With Prince, they were like, okay, he'll be great for like a wide variety of audience. He kind of fits both molds. He's got a little bit more, we're looking for a little bit more edge again, but he's got, you know, he's still like old school. So apparently, and by the way, this is, her performance is February 4th, 2007. Before the performance, the producers of the halftime show go to Prince's house for dinner. Prince pulls out a portable DVD player after dinner just at the table.

table and just starts watching different halftime shows and critiquing them and just being this is what I would do this is what I wouldn't do that kind of stuff and the producers finally just ask him well how exactly would you do it and he just leads them upstairs to a room in the house with the whole band all set up gets his guitar and just turns to him and says hit it and then they just launch into a private show for these producers just fucking fucking rocked the doors off the place the producers mouth agape they all said essentially in Quoise you're like we could our mouths were just to the floor. They just were like, all right, great, you should definitely do it.

And they just, like, walk out of his house completely stunned, just, like, ready to go. Morris Hayes was his music director and keyboardist. He said, he said he wanted, Prince, that is, to do the greatest Super Bowl show ever done. He just said, we really want to think about what we do and not be like everybody else.

We kind of sat in the studio and talked about it. He's like, I like this foo fighter's song. And all along the Watchtower, he just started thinking about the show and piecing it together in his head. Well, that's why I like, according to Shelby Jay, one of Prince's vocalists, and the way his mind works is he wanted to be about the music

and not do what everybody's expecting. Like come out and play Raspberry Beret and then go into Kiss. He was paying homage to Ike and Tina Turner with Proud Mary and Queen. And then he mixed his music into that. It's like, no, it's not about me. It's about the music. It's about this moment. Yeah.

And he also, I feel like, wanted to just put on like an actual 12 minute concert for everybody. Like, this is me at my height. Like, this is what 12 minute Prince concert is, as opposed to being like, here's a medley of all my old hits. Remember Raspberry Beret? Yeah, exactly. So I think, and I think that just really up the any on how powerful the performance is.

So, but usually they do a press conference before the show. And because Prince doesn't do interviews, he was just like, you know what, I will just do a, I will just play music for them instead. Now, I love this fucking story because this is again, Prince playing around and having fun. And all throughout the Super Bowl thing, they're like, what people don't understand is Prince is a clown. Prince is silly. Like when the producers went and to get a review of what he was going to do for his set, like, weeks before the Super Bowl, when they came to his house, he was wearing like a yellow, like, weird suit.

And he was wearing those, like, little kid shoes where the little rollies. And he was, like, skating around his house and stuff and, like, sneaking up on people and being, you know, and like tapping him on his shoulder, they'd be like, ah, like. No, I read a lot of things that apparently he was a big prankster, but I think it had to be on his own time. Oh, yeah. It had to be completely that he chose to be the prankster.

He is the one doing it the way he wants it to be done. So at this press conference, Hayes said, his keyboardist music director, once again, Prince being a master of just stirring the pot and really doing something different, he had said, we're going to have the press conference, but just be ready for anything. And so we was like,

We knew that he knew that he was going to do something. So Prince gets up there with his band in front of the performers, and he says, We hope we don't rock your ears too much. Contrary to rumor, I'd like to take a few questions right now. And then someone from the crowd, possibly somebody that Prince planted in the crowd, just shouts, Prince, how do you feel about? And then he just fucking launches into Johnny Be Good.

By the way, you can watch this whole thing. He's in this room full of press people. They're all sitting down, bewildered. he just fucking rips into Johnny B. Good. It is so sick. If he, like, unbelievable sick rendition of that. He plays two other songs. It's, like, incredible.

The press people don't know what to do. Like, they're just sitting there like, what the fuck? He's got his whole band. He's got the twins at this point, by the way, who are a smoking hot identical twin duo that had great, beautiful voices and could dance like crazy. They're just fucking going crazy. It was amazing to watch.

Definitely check that video out as well. So cut to the day of the game and, of course, the halftime show. It is pouring down rain. Everyone's freaking out. Prince is literally the only one just being like, do not change nothing. That's what is. Don't change nothing. The stage, by the way, has to be rolled out in 48 separate pieces.

If you've seen the video performance, you should look up the performance right now. But if you've seen the performance, it is a giant love symbol number two. It is 48 separate pieces and 624 volunteers. have to roll it out and connect it electrically in the race. A cable, by the way, at one point, when they were coming out, a cable was severed, and a lighting crew guy named Tony Ward stripped the insulation off the cables and inserted them into a plug raw. Jesus Christ.

And held it there for the entire performance to keep the lighting rig working. He probably would have died if that fucked up. What is he, the baby from Adam's family values? Yeah, exactly. Exactly what it was. The performance happened in 12 minutes for over 140 million television viewers. I love this quote. This is from Nathan Vashar, the cornerback for the Bears, who played in the Super Bowl that year.

The last two or three minutes, I peaked out of the tunnel. I didn't want to go all the way out there, but for two or three minutes, I got to witness greatness. I haven't experienced that greatness again, which I think is amazing. And the reason why I think this is such an important moment, the last time Prince's biographer met with him in person, he said, Prince said to him, I was thinking we could start the book with the Super Bowl, what it feels like to get to that moment.

So like, this clearly was, I think, for him this, like peak moment. And if you rewatch it like I did earlier, it is fucking just the best. It is so good. It is so flawed. flawless and incredible, and it's pouring down rain during purple rain. It's just so amazing. His personal assistant slash manager, Ruth Arzot, said, I was like, you made history,

and he, Prince, was like, I always make history, which I think is like this amazing. Technically, I guess, worth a man's life. I'm glad he wasn't fried to death. Speaking of 2007, that just happens to be the time when I was in my mean girls. phase where I hung out with a big clan of girls who were just partying all the time. I mean, it sounds like fun. It wasn't, it wasn't not fun. But there, we used to have this ritual of like we'd be somewhere together getting ready

and we play music to get, you know, pumped up. And we went through this phase of playing pussy control all the time. And it's definitely one of those songs he didn't want people to hear anymore. I don't know what, why. his Jehovah Witness people wouldn't like the song Pussy Control. But I do feel like it did make us bigger monsters. Because you get pumped up by that song and then just go out and just wreak havoc on cities. And I regret nothing.

I mean, that is what the music was for. That's why that's all of early prints. And to middle prints, that's what he intended. He wanted to make monsters out of us in a fun, sexy way. Yep. So now we are just in an onslaught of albums that can best be described as please God Prince slow down as a person trying to do research on your life. You've got Planet Earth, Lotus Flower, 2010, all of this stuff coming out.

Around when does he have his weird fallout with the internet, Jackie? Well, I would say that it starts around 2007. Just like right after he stops his website, essentially. Yes, you know, all of it stopped. Like he was at the forefront of so much on the internet. And then immediately he's just like, you know what? Why don't we take a break here? And then he said that it's really important for him to keep the spirit alive in the age of technology.

So an interviewer asked him, you don't use computers? And he said, I do. But I don't let computers use me. It's more interesting to me to pick up a guitar. and create a sound out of thin air. That's analog. We're analog creatures. We breathe air.

We hear sound waves. We react to spirit and color. He's no for being the king of sin. That's the thing. He's not the king of sin. Synthetic music. What are you talking about? The Minneapolis sound.

What do you mean? Oh, you guys just don't understand. And this is also the time that he wants to reclaim his art on the internet. So he starts essentially a bunch of legal action against YouTube, against eBay, against Pirate Bay, which I haven't thought about in a good minute of time. Because they were using his music in an unauthorized fashion. Probably the most notorious manifestation of that was when Universal, which owned the publishing rights to Let's Go Crazy, filed action against Stephanie Lenz for uploading a short video of her children dancing to the song. Good. So they even sued this young mother that had posted just a video over a little kids dancing to it. Having fun, love and life. I think for me the most notorious, or at least the most hilarious one, is when he headlines Coachella in 2008.

And by the way, he's paid over $5 million for the performance. And I remember when this happened. Like, I remember reading about this like at the office or whatever. Well, Sheila, Ian shit were with him. I think Jimmy Jam was there. But I had no idea what it meant at the time. And now in research, I'm like, oh, I. That's huge. Yeah, that one would have been amazing. Oh, now it makes sense. So he covers Radiohead's creep, and this cover is posted to YouTube. And, of course, he goes after YouTube and all these upload sites trying to get it taken down, forcing it to be removed.

And Radiohead fights back. They're like, I want to see the damn thing, much less everybody else. And it gets it re-uploaded saying it's our song, let people hear it. And I love that. I love that. And I remember laughing about that. Oh, yeah. And he had really influenced radio.

Radiohead because then radio had also was big into not letting people stream their music and doing that whole kind of thing as well. That again, this is another way that Prince was really opening the control back to the artists of reminding artists that this is yours. Don't let someone come in and use it if they're not paying you for it. So I respect that so fully. But even back then, it was a bit of a laughing stock. Remember when Metallica did it? Like, oh, just let us listen to it. What a...

What a... Napster? Napster, baby. Yeah, what a crazy. What a... What a... And I remember radio had memorably put in rainbows out

on their website and just said, like, just give us a couple of... Give us nothing. It's a pay what you can. Pay what you can thing. And it was like such a cool movement. And now, of course, we have Spotify where you can listen to all these albums

we're talking about, by the way. It's fantastic. Because Spotify got back the whole album of Prince but that was from his estate though. So this, it was an loud thing. This is also, so now Prince is also getting even, I don't want to use the term crazier,

but he's getting more intense. Hey, let's go crazy. I mean, let's go crazy. And I think that maybe he did. Maybe that he was just, that was before this part of it. He even was closing down fan websites that people were opening for him,

that he wanted to remove anything on the internet linked to his likeness, which included photos, album art, even images of Prince-inspired tattoos. He took it all down. He wanted it all gone. It's just such an odd move. Do you think he would try to get people to slice off the skin that they put

Prince tattoos on? I mean, I hope not because I think I know at least three people with Prince tattoos, so I hope that they still are able to keep them. Now, in 2010, he famously told the Daily Mirror, the Internet is completely over. I don't see why I should give my new music to I. or anyone else. They won't pay me in advance for it,

and then they get angry when they can't get it. So he said the internet is over a long time ago. There are still some of his albums you cannot purchase on iTunes. Oh, yeah. But they're on YouTube, so. Yeah, yeah, you can find them. You can get them. Yeah, I think the only thing that I wasn't able to find on Spotify

was actually the black album, which you can get that way. So he also in 2010, he gets a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2010 BET Awards, and he's also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame that year as well. I mean, he's really like, I feel like the Super Bowl really put him back on the map in a huge way. He's doing all these performances all over the place. He's just putting out all this music. I think he's back in good form with people, even after this internet stuff is happening around the edges. I think for the most part, people have really re-embraced him because of that.

And now I have up to in 2014. So if you have anything before him getting back together with Warner Brothers, please say it now. This is also around the time when he, this is part of being a Jehovah's Witness was they are not allowed blood transfusion. So this is also in remembering that towards the end. Right. Towards the end with like so he probably most likely had a pain killer addiction throughout all of this part of it. He was denied a, he denied having a hip surgery that he desperately needed. He was in so much pain.

And this is starting about 10 years, at least, before he died. That makes sense. Because, I mean, he was dancing constantly in those high heels. If you watch him perform, it is like he's floating. It's really impressive what he does. The splits. The way he doesn't, I don't even, I forget even what I was watching. He jumped down, did a split.

And from the split, jumped it back up while playing the guitar and onto a chair and then like did this like twirl thing off while singing and before, like playing the guitar. No joke as a dancer watching him go from the ground to standing just by sliding up is, is. That's so crazy. It's insane. And that would eventually hurt your hips, especially if you weren't like, probably weren't taking the best care of your body 24-7.

And this is also around the time that he had created another, it was a three-girl group called third-eyed girl that was part of his, they were part of his backup dancer's singers, but then he created their own group out of it. And Welton, who was a part of third-eyed girl, said he's made comments like, you guys are more family to me than my blood relatives. So again, this is another creation of family for him that he needed around him at all times. But talk about it when he used to be elusive in private. Now he's even more so because then we later on learned that he is hiding addiction

to whatever pill that I mean we'll talk about it in a little bit opioids and you know pain kill you know it's anything I think to numb it was just bottles everywhere with a bunch of people's different names on them because they was like all these prescriptions written to people around him that pills were mixed in the bottles that he had no idea what he was taking he was just taking them yeah and this is utterly speculation this is just a plot I had and I don't know how long he was taking painkillers we none of us do but I do wonder if there is partly a justification of becoming a Jehovah's witness that he could continue to take them because he would not be able to get surgery. I do think that he would sometimes choose to manipulate his life into what he wanted. And I don't, there's no proof of that. But it is, it is curious that he went to a religion where he kind of had to justify his pill use. Right. I mean, and he did say that he, the reason why he kept taking the painkillers once he was eventually found.

out is that his hands hurt so much and his hips hurt so badly that he would have to stop performing. So, I mean, again, like, I think that there has to be some validity to that. Totally. Because Jehovah's Witnesses, they aren't allowed to really get much medical care. They're not supposed to. No. You just match. I don't think you're supposed to be on pills, though, either.

No, but I think you can be, but, you know, like, with a lot of shit, on the outside, he can't get surgery because people would know with pills he could hide it. Exactly. So a little bit of a happy ending for the label thing. In 2014, he re-signs with Warner Brothers after 18 years. He re-signed with the promise to release a remastered, but it was so that he could get his master's. I mean, it was like his lifelong thing of wanting to get his master's.

So it was a trade deal he would re-release, or rather release a remastered deluxe edition of Purple Rain, which is out, by the way, I believe it came out in 2017 or something like that, to celebrate its 30th anniversary, in exchange for ownership of his Warner Brothers recording masters, as I just said. And that was like a huge thing. I'm glad that that relationship was mended. I mean, that seemed shitty.

Another cool little side note after the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, largely believed, a guy largely believed to be killed due to police brutality, which led to riots in protest in Baltimore. Prince releases the song Baltimore and tribute to Gray and also holds a tribute concert at his Paisley Park Estate called Dance Rally for Peace. He tries to get everybody there to dress in gray and come out and wearing gray bandanas. And he also did a special concert in Baltimore to raise money and awareness against police brutality and things like that. And what's going on, this was definitely around the time of Black Lives Matter, I feel like, almost.

Is it? It is. Yeah. No, it is. I get my years a little foggy at this point. He gave lots of money to Trayvon Martin's family. and, like, he was, again, another anonymous benefactor that he would, he was huge in Black Lives Matter. It's hard to remember that Black Lives Matter occurred before the era of Trump because it feels like the last four years have been a thousand years.

Yes. Yeah. And, but all of this existed before the chaos that we are incurred. Yes. So he releases hit and run phase one in September of 2015 and hit and run phase two in December of 2015. and that would end up being his final album. His final tour is called the piano and a microphone tour, which sees Prince stripped down to just that,

starting at Paisley Park with some, like, essentially warm-up shows before moving to Australia and New Zealand and then coming to the U.S. And it is on April 7, 2016, that Prince postpones two performances at the Fox Theater in Atlanta due to influenza after seeing a family medicine specialist in the Twin Cities and performed his final show, though he was not feeling well on April 14th. So this is, like, in early April when he was like canceling shows and things like that, his personal chef Ray Roberts told police, Prince was eating less, losing weight, and didn't seem good.

Now, at this time, another one of Prince's protegees, Judith Hill, had said to investigators that he had been exhausted on his way to Atlanta, even telling her, oh, man, I love sleeping more. Maybe it means I've done all I'm supposed to do on this earth. which definitely alerted her a little bit of, well, you know, that's not what you're supposed to say when you're feeling good. Yeah.

So while flying back to his home on April 14th, I believe, or after, I think it was an overnight flight, he becomes unresponsive. And his jet makes an emergency landing where he received Narcan, which, of course, is used to reverse an opioid overdose. He becomes conscious, and against all medical advice, of course, because he's going to do it his own way,

he leaves. And he's literally seen the next day, bicycling around Minneapolis, shopping at a record store. He claimed he was feeling fine. He even went to a dance party that night. And it's on April 20th that Prince's representatives called

a California specialist in addiction medicine and pain management asking for medical help for Prince. Well, and this is a big, yeah, a lot of this came from Kirk Johnson, who was Prince's not only his good friend, but his bodyguard. And he was the one that had hooked him up with the doctor that eventually got sued

that was giving him all of these prescriptions. Now, Kirk Johnson, he never meant any harm, which is why after this happened on April 14th, he was the one that personally was calling addiction specialists to have someone come in to talk to him because he was his bodyguard, and he had no idea that he was taking as many pills as he was, and he just kept saying,

how did he hide this so well? Well, it's actually probably safer that he was getting the pills from that doctor because the problem didn't come. I mean, it was a horrible addiction, but you know, that he, you're going to get to this, I guess, with the pills. But yeah, if you want to talk about the death on yourself. So at 9.43 a.m. on the 21st, there is a 911 call requesting an ambulance for Prince. And the caller turns out to be the son of the California specialist who's there to treat his opioid addiction. Prince had been found unresponsive in an elevator and was pronounced dead shortly after the physicians arrived

due to an overdose on fentanyl. And fentanyl, again, I just cannot stress enough, like it's actually very dangerous right now to be doing even MDMA drugs and stuff like that. Finanel is killing is this massive killer in the United States and Prince's death was one of actually the big eye-opener deaths when it comes to funeral. That wasn't really a common known drug at that point.

And I could be wrong because I haven't. been doing a pop history on Tom Petty this whole time, but I'm pretty sure Petty as well, actually, which is so sad considering that performance of while my guitar gently weeps. But again, it is a fentanyl thing. Fentanyl is so scary, guys, and it just, just want to throw it out there. Like, it is so dangerous right now to get street drugs, like ecstasy or whatever the fuck it is, you know, because a lot of that stuff is cut with it. Yeah, and it's just an awful time right now for that sort of thing.

So there's an investigation as to who got him the drugs, but the investigation ended in 2018 with no criminal charges filed, which is just so brutal again to not even know where he was getting this stuff. Right. And that's what I was mentioning about the doctor, at least if it was a doctor feel good, they were coming from a pharmacy. And he was probably just getting this pill was from a friend of a friend of a friend.

Right. And everything I've read, there wasn't any indication that he intentionally took fentanyl. that there was no indication that anybody intentionally gave him fentanyl. He just ended up with a pills from somewhere. It's going to be one of those where if you're in that much pain, I mean, you're just going to take whatever the fuck you can get to relieve yourself of that. And to be found in an elevator, just so brutal. I would really like to just right now mention this is why I was feeling sad earlier.

This is just sad. So in his book, The Beautiful Ones, he started with, his co-writer and didn't get to finish, he does have a note in there that says when he's talking about the song, Let's Go Crazy. And I did mention this last episode, it's one of his biggest, most dynamic kind of party songs. You've probably all heard it. And the lyrics in it say, are we going to let the elevator bring us down? Oh, no, let's go. Let's go crazy. He in that song considered the elevator to represent the devil. And going crazy is God. So to him that was a really spiritual song, even though it's a party song.

He died in that elevator. And so it could be symbolically to say that his personal devil was the drug addiction. And it took him. Yeah. The devil took him away at the end of his life. And that broke my fucking heart to think about it that way. But it is really crazy. that song is about life and death,

and it talks specifically about an elevator, and that's where he ended his life. Yeah, that's really weird, too. Yeah. So his ashes were placed into a custom 3D printed urn shaped like the Paisley Park Estate. In 2017, Prince's Estate signs a distribution deal with the Universal Music Group

to put out unreleased tracks from his vault. Warner Brothers also worked with Prince's Estate to release material, and both made a deal with Sony Music Entertainment to distribute, in distributed starting in 2021. The first release posthumist to his death from the Prince Vault was the album, Piano and a Microphone in 1983. And I listened to it before I came here, and it was so beautiful.

It's just really great. It's just like him and a piano doing like Purple Rain, A Case of You by Joni Mitchell. It's just, again, it's all on Spotify. I cannot recommend this enough. It is just absolutely beautiful. So definitely check that out. He also, Title was releasing stuff in 2019.

The album Originals was released exclusively through title. But now you can get it all on Spotify, which is all original versions of songs he offered to other artists in the past. And in 2019, the album that I actually got my brother for Christmas on vinyl, 1999 was released in a super deluxe edition that includes 35 previously unreleased songs and two live concerts. How many times have you told us that you got that for your brother? My brother for Chris is really expensive. It was like so expensive to do and he loved it. And he took a picture with it and said it to me.

I was like, did he get it for his brother? I would think he about it all day. End up getting it for his brother? I just couldn't go to sleep last night because I couldn't remember if you got it. I'm just saying he was mean to his ex-wives. That's all I'm saying. I would also, I would like to say

there are a couple fun things you can look up that he did like some of his last appearances and performances that are really fun. If you remember Arsenio Hall at a shortland revival, and Prince... No, what is his? Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. The dog pound.

The dog found. The dog boughs. I don't know. And Prince was one of the first people to reach out to Arsigno and say, I want to be on your show, which was really sweet. And so he did a very rare interview with Arsenio Hall in 2014, which is really fun to watch. And it's hilarious because the audience is so,

excited that Prince is there. He says any of the sentences he says is immediately followed by like three minutes of applause. That's great. He's not saying anything. He's just like, being a dude. Yep. And I loved playing guitar on that one. And then everybody's like, like he's saying the deepest thing in the world, which is fun. Then also, SNL had their 40th anniversary show in 2015, which is a really fun thing to watch, but they had a big after-party, and there's cell phone footage from that that's up on YouTube. You should look up because it's, um, Prince is playing their after-party, and it's like a private thing, and they didn't air it.

And it's him on stage with like, I hammered Maya Rudolph. She is having the best day of her entire life. It's so cute. And he starts his song by going, daily inebriated. Super fun. And then also one of his weirdest decisions towards the end of his life is that he, we mentioned it before,

he made a cameo on New Girl, which is a comedy that I like and I watched at the time. And he just does the only acting job he's really ever done in this show because he liked the show and he went on. And he plays, it's a really funny episode. You should totally check it out. He played, he acted alongside an angel in graffiti bridge.

I mean, besides being the kid. But yeah, his one cameos in the new girl. The new girl won't do anything else except for the new girl, which you know what? And Muppets. And he plays himself in it. And it's very funny. That's great. But there's a little stinger at the end of that episode where they all call him magic.

And it was definitely like when he was not there. They shot it obviously like maybe weeks after they shot the Prince episode. And I wonder how we feel. felt about that because they all call him magic like six times at the end of the episode. I mean, if we didn't know it, I would assume he wants to be called magic. I know. Oh my God, guys. I think we're about done talking about Prince.

Is there anything else to say before we close this tome up? Well, the only thing I've definitely learned is that you have to, whether you, no matter what, go out and get a will right now because Prince did not have one. I need to do that. And they are, they, they, he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I think it's up and so by saying get a will. Get a will. Make sure you have a will.

Plan your dad. It's ripping, his whole family, even though he had such a weird relationship with his siblings, their whole family's ripped apart because they want it. And there, and no one knows where it's supposed to go to. I would, if, if it's all right with you guys, I'd like to just read a quick passage from the co-writer of the beautiful ones. His name's Dan Pipey. bring and I'm sorry I'm probably saying that wrong. If you don't mind, I want to read just a little bit about he wrote instead of finishing the book, the first half of the book is him describing himself

meeting Prince and the interactions that he had with Prince right up until his death. And so Prince would basically just, when they were deciding to work together, would just call him and say, like, I'm going to fly you to Minneapolis tomorrow and you're going to stay for two weeks and he would just have to go, okay. And then he would just summon him from different places and tell him. him to come there. So at one point he was in Paisley Park and he got a call from one of the assistants that Prince wanted him to come out to a private dance party slash movie night at Paisley Park. And so it says, so he writes, on a stairwell railing was the grill of an old car, the same one from Sign of the Times cover. And most impressively, two massive projection screens were broadcasting

Barbarella on repeat. Twin versions of Jane Fonda, 30 feet tall, strutted around a foreign planet and form-fitting future wear. There were whispers that Prince might join us that night on the dance floor, such as it was, but he never appeared. Instead, Moran, his assistant, slipped off to return holding a bundle of our coats and announced that it was time for the movie. I thought this was the movie, I said, gesturing at one of the writhing Jane Fonda's. Oh no, she said, we're seeing Kung Fu Panda 3. Apparently, Prince regularly arranged for private after-hour screenings at the nearby Chanhassen Cinema. We headed over in two cars and found a lone attendant in the empty parking lot ready to unlock the door.

Prince arrived just after the movie began, slipping into the back row. Moran, he asked, is there popcorn? She went out to fetch some. We watched as the animated panda ate many dumplings and relegated evil doers to the spirit realm. I heard Prince laugh a few times. As the credit rolled, he rose without a word, skipping down the stairs and out of the theater. His sneakers shining laser red into the darkness. And I felt like that was a really good representation of who Prince is, where he's...

Really fucking weird? He's a mysterious figure. He's kind of like a child. He has this sort of sexy side to him. He's got the Barbarilla dance party happening. And then he just has everybody go out to a movie theater in the middle of the night. and watch Kung Fu Panda 3 at his demand, you know? And he shows up, has a good time, and disappears before he talks to anyone.

I thought that was a good one, yeah. That is a great way. That is an amazing way to end this, because I feel like there have been highs, there have been lows. It is, what an interesting creature that we were graced with on this earth of ours. Absolutely. That is our episode of Pop History. Thank you so much for joining us. and oh my god what else can we even

how do we close this I just say Patreon.com forward slash page 7 podcast check that out Twitch.com slash holdnators ho This is where you can find me Jackie And you can find me on Instagram at Jack That Worm And also now you can find us on at page 7 LPN

Yes that's right on Instagram And I'm at the Natty Jean And we're going to revive our TikTok account So I feel like that's a threat All right Take care, everybody We love you guys We'll see you next week

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