Throughout the 1990s, Prince feuded with his record label, Warner Bros., over his rights as an independent recording artist—and made some of the most brilliant music of his career. During that time, Jim Walsh covered Prince for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and wrote about him passionately, thoughtfully, exhaustively. Here, in real time, is that coverage: a clip-by-clip look back at Prince in the ‘90s. Walsh’s newly unearthed interviews, essays, columns, and reviews make Gold Experience an essential slice of history for fans, scholars, and latecomers to the Minneapolis-born musical genius Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958–April 21, 2016). Join Walsh at the 1994 NBA All-Star game after party and release bash for the single “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” Accompany him to the after-hours clubs Erotic City, Glam Slam, and, of course, Paisley Park. Meet Prince’s wife and bandmate Mayte (and while you’re at it, take in the wedding and reception). Enjoy a two-hour sit-down interview with Prince. Explore Prince’s veganism, talk to fans in line for a Target Center show, preview the “Jam of the Year” concert and check in at the after party. The passions and influences, from Mozart to funk godfather Larry Graham; the gigs and the Paisley Park garage sale; Walsh’s open letter to the artist and his reflections on religion and spirituality. This is Prince as few have seen him, reported as only Jim Walsh can: a portrait of the artist from a dizzying array of angles, captured in living color for all time.
(Book). Prince has cut a singular path through the heart of popular music for more than 30 years. After making some of the most inventive albums of the '80s including 1999 , Purple Rain and Sign of the Times he turned his attention to redefining his role in the music industry, changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol, declaring war on his record label, Warner Bros., and leading the internet revolution. His subsequent career has had many ups and downs, but he remains a major commercial and artistic force, as evidenced by his ability to sell out the O2 Arena in London for 21 nights in succession in 2007. In 2010 he announced that the internet was "over" and released his latest album, 20Ten , as a free cover-mounted CD with several European publications. Prince: Chaos, Disorder, and Revolution is an authoritative chronicle of one of popular music's true mavericks. Covering every album, every movie, and every tour, it includes profiles of various key collaborators, assesses the artist's various business dealings, and details his many and varied side projects on stage, on record, on screen, and beyond.
An inside look at the early years of Prince, presented through both iconic and never-before-seen images taken by the photographer who was at his side through it all.
A warm and surprisingly real-life biography, featuring never-before-seen photos, of one of rock’s greatest talents: Prince. Neal Karlen was the only journalist Prince granted in-depth press interviews to for over a dozen years, from before Purple Rain to when the artist changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph. Karlen interviewed Prince for three Rolling Stone cover stories, wrote “3 Chains o’ Gold,” Prince’s “rock video opera,” as well as the star’s last testament, which may be buried with Prince’s will underneath Prince’s vast and private compound, Paisley Park. According to Prince's former fiancée Susannah Melvoin, Karlen was “the only reporter who made Prince sound like what he really sounded like.” Karlen quit writing about Prince a quarter-century before the mega-star died, but he never quit Prince, and the two remained friends for the last thirty-one years of the superstar’s life. Well before they met as writer and subject, Prince and Karlen knew each other as two of the gang of kids who biked around Minneapolis’s mostly-segregated Northside. (They played basketball at the Dairy Queen next door to Karlen’s grandparents, two blocks from the budding musician.) He asserts that Prince can’t be understood without first understanding ‘70s Minneapolis, and that even Prince’s best friends knew only 15 percent of him: that was all he was willing and able to give, no matter how much he cared for them. Going back to Prince Rogers Nelson's roots, especially his contradictory, often tortured, and sometimes violent relationship with his father, This Thing Called Life profoundly changes what we know about Prince, and explains him as no biography has: a superstar who calls in the middle of the night to talk, who loved The Wire and could quote from every episode of The Office, who frequented libraries and jammed spontaneously for local crowds (and fed everyone pancakes afterward), who was lonely but craved being alone. Readers will drive around Minneapolis with Prince in a convertible, talk about movies and music and life, and watch as he tries not to curse, instead dishing a healthy dose of “mamma jammas.”
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A Times, Sunday Times and Telegraph Book of the Year ______________________________________________ 'A triumph ... a masterclass in the bottling of its subject's seductive essence. His presence in this book is so strong that it's hard to believe he has really left the building' MOJO 'Handsomely presented, visually sumptuous' THE TIMES ______________________________________________ From Prince himself comes the brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time-featuring never-before-seen photos, original scrapbooks and lyric sheets, and the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic death. Prince was a musical genius, one of the most talented, beloved, accomplished, popular, and acclaimed musicians in pop history. But he wasn't only a musician-he was also a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of his early records to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of Paisley Park. But his greatest creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, the greatest pop star of his era. The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince-a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is composed of the memoir he was writing before his tragic death, pages that brings us into Prince's childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us into Prince's early years as a musician, before his first album released, through a scrapbook of Prince's writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince's evolution through candid images that take us up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book's fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain-the final stage in Prince's self-creation, as he retells the autobiography we've seen in the first three parts as a heroic journey. The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring's riveting and moving introduction about his short but profound collaboration with Prince in his final days-a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he'd so carefully cultivated-and annotations that provide context to each of the book's images. This work is not just a tribute to Prince, but an original and energizing literary work, full of Prince's ideas and vision, his voice and image, his undying gift to the world. ______________________________________________ 'Prince's voice comes through loud and clear; his personality, joie de vivre and single-mindedness jumping off the page throughout.' CLASSIC POP MAGAZINE 'The Beautiful Ones is for everyone. It's not a read, but an experience, an immersion inside the mind of a musical genius. You are steeped in Prince's images, his words, his essence... The book can be a starting point for a Prince fascination, or a continuation of long-standing admiration. Either way, it will deepen the connection of any reader with the musical icon." USA TODAY 'An affirmation of Prince's Blackness and humanity... Prince writes about his childhood with clarity and poetic flair, effortlessly combining humorous anecdotes with deep self-reflection and musical analysis... Prince is one of us - he just worked to manifest dreams that took him from the North Side of Minneapolis to the Super Bowl.' HUFFPOST 'A compelling curiosity that finds its author orbiting around a few touchingly intimate encounters with his sphinx-like subject ... with passages, lyric sheets and photographs from the Purple One himself' TELEGRAPH, Books of the Year 'Both a pleasure and a surprise ... Prince took the project very seriously, and it shows in the work he delivered. ... It shines an intimate and revealing light on the least-known period of his life' VARIETY 'The Beautiful Ones is a book in pieces, fragments of the ground-breaking autobiography Prince had planned. Pieced together after his death in 2016, it collects his handwritten childhood memoires, superb personal photographs and his chosen co-writer Dan Piepenbring's vivid account of their brief collaboration. Yet remarkably despite the central absence, it still catches something of Prince between the gaps - a trace of perfume, a glance to camera, a first kiss' SUNDAY TIMES, Book of the Year 'This is a beautiful book and a must-have for Prince completists' DAILY EXPRESS 'A ghostly memoir of a pop legend' THE i
PICTURING PRINCE sees the late icon's former art director, STEVE PARKE, revealing stunning intimate photographs of the singer from his time working at Paisley Park. At least half of the images in the book are exclusively published here for the first time; most other images in the book are rare to the public eye. Alongside these remarkable images are fifty engaging, poignant and often funny written vignettes by Parke, which reveal the very human man behind the reclusive superstar: from shooting hoops to renting out movie theatres at 4am; from midnight requests for camels to meaningful conversations that shed light on Prince as a man and artist. STEVE PARKE started working with Prince in 1988, after a mutual friend showed Prince some of Steve's photorealistic paintings. He designed everything from album covers and merchandise to sets for Prince's tours and videos. Somewhere in all of this, he became Paisley Park's official art director. He began photographing Prince at the request of the star himself, and continued to do so for the next several years. The images in this book are the arresting result of this collaboration.
"The definitive chronological guide to the life and times of one of popular music's true mavericks ... Prince: Life & times is a large format, lavishly illustrated, authoritative chronicle of his career, covering every album, every movie, and every tour."--Back cover.
Presents a photographic essay on the Prince tour "21 Nights" held in London in 2007, depicting the performer and his band in on-stage performances, backstage preparations, and after-hour sessions, in a text which includes poetry and song lyrics.
Featuring insights on even more groundbreaking recording sessions, rehearsals, and sound checks, the expanded edition of Duane Tudahl's award-winning book pulls back the paisley curtain to reveal the untold story of Prince’s rise from cult favorite to the biggest rock star on the planet. His journey is meticulously documented through detailed accounts of his time secluded behind the doors of the recording studio as well as his days on tour. With unprecedented access to the musicians, singers, and studio engineers who knew Prince best, including members of the Revolution and the Time, Duane Tudahl weaves an intimate saga of an eccentric genius and the people and events who helped shape the groundbreaking music he created. From Sunset Sound Studios’ daily recording logs and the Warner Bros. vault of information, Tudahl uncovers hidden truths about the origins of songs such as “Purple Rain,” “When Doves Cry,” and “Raspberry Beret” and also reveals never-before-published details about Prince’s unreleased outtakes. This definitive chronicle of Prince’s creative brilliance during 1983 and 1984 provides a new experience of the Purple Rain album as an integral part of Prince’s life and the lives of those closest to him.
At the one-year anniversary of his death, legendary musician Prince's first wife shares a uniquely intimate, candid, and revelatory look inside the personal and professional life of one of the world's most beloved icons. In The Most Beautiful, a title inspired by the hit song Prince wrote about their legendary love story, Mayte Garcia for the first time shares the deeply personal story of their relationship and offers a singular perspective on the music icon and their world together: from their unconventional meeting backstage at a concert (and the long-distance romance that followed), to their fairy-tale wedding (and their groundbreaking artistic partnership), to the devastating losses that ultimately dissolved their romantic relationship for good. Throughout it all, they shared a bond more intimate than any other in Prince's life. No one else can tell this story or can provide a deeper, more nuanced portrait of Prince -- both the famously private man and the pioneering, beloved artist -- than Mayte, his partner during some of the most pivotal personal and professional years of his career. The Most Beautiful is a book that will be returned to for decades, as Prince's music lives on with generations to come.
