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Prince: Inside the Music and the Masks, by Ronin Ro
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With a brand-new introduction and chapter that cover the last five years of Prince's life and work and his untimely death in April 2016.
In his three decades of recording, Prince had nearly thirty albums hit the Billboard Top 100. He is the only artist since the Beatles to have a number-one song, movie, and single at the same time. Prince's trajectory―from a teenage unknown in Minneapolis to an idol and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer―won him millions of adoring fans the world over.
Prince is the first book to give full treatment to his thirty-five-year career. Acclaimed music journalist Ronin Ro traces Prince's rise from anonymity in the late 70s, to his catapult to stardom in the 80s, to his reemergence in the twenty-first century as an artistic icon. Ro expertly chronicles his music and career, showing how Prince and his albums helped define and inspire a generation. Along the way, Prince confronted labels, fostered other young talents, and took ownership of his music, making a profound mark on the entertainment industry and pop culture.
- Sales Rank: #792665 in Books
- Published on: 2016-08-02
- Released on: 2016-08-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.31" h x 1.09" w x 6.15" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
Review
“An energetic, detailed balance of reportage and criticism about an icon of his era.” ―Kirkus Reviews
"The read of the year." --Chicago Tribune on Have Gun Will Travel
"A revelatory (and titillating) page-turner for fans and the uninitiated alike." --San Francisco Chronicle on Raising Hell
"The most comprehensive treatment yet of a pivotal figure...Probably one of the ten best books on rap." --Booklist (starred review) on Dr. Dre
About the Author
RONIN RO has written for USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, MTV, Rolling Stone, and Playboy. He has written several books about the entertainment industry, including biographies of Dr. Dre, Sean Combs, Run-DMC, and more.
Excerpt. � Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Prince
PART ONEThe RISE1THIS THING CALLED LIFEON JUNE 7, 1958, AT MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL IN MINNEAPOLIS, A baby was born. John Nelson faced his son in the crib and named him Prince Rogers Nelson--after his own musical stage name. "I named my son Prince because I wanted him to do everything I wanted to do," John later explained to Liz Jones.They lived at 915 Logan Avenue, a humble home in North Minneapolis. John worked at Honeywell, an industrial supplier, and he and his wife Mattie--a former singer that John met while playing parties with his group, The Prince Rogers Trio--together cared for their first son. They were already trying to raise five kids on what John earned at Honeywell when Prince was born, but within a year Mattie was again pregnant. When their daughter, Tyka Evene, arrived in 1960, John saw his dream of a music career slip even further away.Mattie also gave up her dream--since singing like Billie Holiday wouldn't pay the bills. She remained social, though, with a "wild side," Prince told Rolling Stone, while John was quiet, excited mostly by music.Since John still played shows around town with The Prince Rogers Trio, and still sometimes answered to his stage name, Mattie took to calling their son "Skipper." Prince obviously knew about his father's history leading "his own big band, playing around the Midwest and stuff," and how his mother sang for the group. But he didn't truly understand what his father did until 1963. One day, his mother took him to a local theater. They took their seats, the lights dimmed, and John emerged from behind a curtain with a smile. People applauded as he sat at a piano. While he played, the curtain moved again, and scantily clad dancing girls came out. "People were screaming," Prince recalled, according to Per Nilsen. "From then on I think I wanted to be a musician."The show took a hold of Prince, and for weeks after he tried to playany instrument within reach. He eventually settled, like his father, on the piano, and he would practice in the living room on John's. Then, in department stores, while Mattie shopped, Prince would rush to where the radios and instruments were kept to listen to music or play organs and pianos until his mother would get him. But piano wasn't enough. Prince would put two rocks in his hands, then smash them together to create a melody. He called this noise his first song. Soon, he'd use larger rocks to tap out a rhythm.But while Prince was taking his first musical steps, John was finding the pursuit a rough life. He was, according to local reporter Neal Karlen, "a Jazz musician in the whitest metropolitan area in the country" With a wife and six kids to support, he continued to work at Honeywell, but he couldn't accept that he wouldn't someday be a music star. So he kept creating new melodies. Despite a limited income, John did things like install a TV in the living room wall. Or he'd parade around in new suits and shoes, as if about to take the stage. By 1966, John had bought himself a snazzy new white Thunderbird convertible. His dream seemed by turns impossible and just within reach. When he saw that Prince and his younger sister Tyka were interested in music, he encouraged them to play his piano, realizing he'd have to live his dream vicariously through them. While young Prince tapped out melodies, Tyka told City Pages, she sang, "because that's what my mom and dad did."But just as quickly, moody John would see them bang away on the keys and tell them to get away from the piano. He needed it for his own dream, after all. Though the inner conflict persisted, inevitably he relented, and Prince showed him a melody he had written called "Funk Machine."Monday through Friday, Prince attended elementary school, where other students sometimes insulted his diminutive size. By 1967, the fifth grader was being bussed to a school in an affluent, predominantly white suburb. He wasn't thrilled. One day in class, he turned to a page in a textbook that had a black-and-white photo of a young, dead black man hanging from a rope on a tree.His sister Tyka recalled, according to Per Nilsen, that other students chased them back to the school bus many afternoons. "I didn't know it was because we were black," she said. Some days, other students by the bus protected them. But the next day would always bring another chase and more epithets. Inevitably, Prince tried to withdraw from the experience.One morning he hid his socks, believing this would give his motherno choice but to let him stay home. No dice. She yelled, "You're going to get to that school and find some socks!" He sighed and kept dressing. "She couldn't have them calling me a nigger with no socks on," he told PAPER Magazine, in 1999.Sundays, his mother took him to a wooden, two-story Seventh-day Adventist church where he was enrolled in a Bible study class. On these days, eight-year-old Prince bonded over music with his schoolmate, Andr� Simon Anderson, the son of his dad's former bass player, Fred. "The most I got out of that was the experience of the choir," Prince said of church, according to Nilsen.During this period, Prince's older half brother, Alfred--Mattie's son from her first marriage--was trying to dodge a few rules. In his room, Alfred sang along to his many James Brown records. He styled his hair in a Little Richard--type conk. He always seemed to have money. He also ignored John Nelson's curfews. Late at night, Alfred climbed out of a basement window and hit the street. With him gone, Prince and his cousin Charles tiptoed into his room to try on his clothes and play his James Brown records. Sometimes, Alfred caught them in the act. But he didn't mind.In the end, things didn't end well for Alfred, Charles told author Per Nilsen years later. His recreational drug use led to confinement in a local mental institution.Prince, himself, was born epileptic. As a child, he had seizures. While he trembled and shook, his parents stood nearby, wondering how to help. Still, "they did the best they could with what little they had," he explained.There were other stressors. In 1981, Prince told New York Newsday that his father "felt hurt that he never got his break, because of having the wife and kids and stuff." With Mattie resenting this, "there were constant fights."By 1968, Prince was watching things finally fall apart between his parents. They began having high-volume arguments that sometimes left Mattie in tears. Mattie and John had always been different. She was louder and more vivacious, while John was serious and strict. She had set aside music in the interest of her kids, while John did manage to play some shows in local clubs. "I think music is what broke her and my father up, and I don't think she wanted that for me," Prince later told New York Rocker. Serious musicians, like his father, could be moody. They needed space. Everything in their environment had to be just right. "My father was a great deal like that, and my mother didn't give him a lotta space. She wanted a husband per se."Finally John and Mattie called it quits. After thirteen years of marriage, they decided to separate and filed for divorce. John packed his stuff and moved into a small apartment near Minneapolis's downtown. Prince was shocked when John left. He didn't even take his piano. "Everything was cool I think, until my father left, and then it got kinda hairy," Prince said.At home, it would now be only Prince, his mother, and Tyka. "He left when I was seven, so music left with him," Prince said. "But he did leave his piano." Prince faced the abandoned instrument. In the past, John had often kept the kids away from it. For good reason: they would just bang on it. With his father gone, Prince approached the piano; he was the only one that seemed to notice it was there. And he started to play it in earnest.Meanwhile, Mattie took three jobs.�
Prince spent much of his time nearby on his cousin Charles's street. He told people not to call him "Prince." Referred to as "Skipper," he developed an acerbic sense of humor and coined numerous put-downs. But back at home, he'd return to being his father's son, playing melodies on the piano John left behind. At some point, Tyka stopped joining him. Though she never said who, someone, she said, had crushed her dream of singing, saying she was crazy to think she could be on stage. Prince taught her to draw and write stories. But he didn't abandon his own musical dream. Soon, he started practicing drums, playing on a box of old newspapers.Mattie, however, didn't support Prince's musical aspirations. She wanted him in school, and later in college. She sent him to different schools, where he maintained high grades, but Prince viewed his studies as "pretty much my second interest. I didn't really care about that as much as I did about playing." Since music had destroyed his parents' marriage, he explained, "I don't think she wanted that for me."Mattie eventually met Heyward Baker. With her divorce now official, Mattie married Baker and he moved into the house. Baker always brought the family presents. But, Prince told Barbara Graustark, "I disliked him immediately because he dealt with a lot of materialistic things."Prince tried to build a relationship with Baker, as close as the one he had with John. But when Prince tried to engage Baker in conversation, Prince claimed, the man seemed to merely tolerate him. He mostly spoke up, Prince claimed, when Prince did something wrong. "I don't think they wanted me to be a musician," he said of Baker and his mother. They didn't want him to be like John. But the more they pushed, the more defiantPrince became. Before long, he felt rejected, and bitter. He began to rattle off things he disliked about his new stepfather and "it kind of hurt our relationship."Years later, Prince credited Baker for helping to...
Most helpful customer reviews
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
PRINCE!!!!!!!!
By SindeeC
I was fan girl CRAZY for Prince when I was a teenager. Bought all his CD's sight unseen. Had his inappropriate half naked posters up on my walls with kisses all over them ( to my mother's horror). Turning down "Darling Nikki" real low so mom couldn't hear the very sexual lyrics, lol. Never thought I would be attracted to a man that wore makeup, heels, and thigh highs, but there you have it, I was! I was a fan for many years into young adulthood. Then marriage, motherhood, romance novels, (lol) and life took over whatever obsession I had with him. His death touched me deeply. More deeply than I expected... I guess it was because he bought a little purple to my otherwise colorless childhood, and to know that he's not with us on the planet anymore seems a little gray...
After his death on April 21st, 2016 (without realizing) I had missed out a lot on the progression of his career. Apart from dashing to the tv screen whenever I knew he would be on, I wasn't a very proactive fan anymore. Now I want to read all things Prince related. I can see the future, I'll be one of those Elvis like fan girl junkies, but instead for Prince!
while this book was enlightening in the musical areas though, it was pretty impersonal and cold. It was a lot about his music and a few disparaging tid bits here and there. Some of it annoyed because I guess I feel protective so soon after his death. I kind of felt that the author wasn't really a Prince fan at times. Nonetheless, I came away thinking that Prince really was way more talented than people really knew. His onstage persona was so flamboyant that it overshadowed his many talents. Most placed him in a purple box, but apart from his charismatic sexual demeanor, he was actually a musical genius. So even though I felt like the author wasn't really a fan, I think the legend that was Prince still shines through. Mmmm, maybe that was the authors intent all along...
P.S: I'm pretty proud of my teenage self to have picked a genius to be my Prince...
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
You'll Feel the Loss of Greatness, and Cherish the Music that Much More
By B. Matson
As a fan since the 1999 album, I knew a fair amount about Prince's music, but not much of his story, especially how his career started during formative years in the Minneapolis music scene, from his band-leader father through his early bands and opportunities to learn multi-track recording, and soon after producing and playing everything on his early albums under contract with Warner Brothers . So now, in the wake of his tragic death, the Kindle version and Voice sync option for this bio made a great convenient way to celebrate the life and work of one of the most gifted talents and greatest pop stars to straddle this century and the last.
What emerged for me is a poignant portrait of a visionary creative force of nature (his productivity is beyond amazing; it would be unfathomable, even for an entire band much less one person) and the vulnerable, and at times oddly naive personality behind the hyper sexual cockiness of his other-worldly charisma.
Repeatedly I found myriad comparisons with the life of Elvis Presley: impoverished upbringing inspiring ambition and a strong work ethic, a shy and sensitive yet magnetic personality; preternatural felt sense of music as musical omnivores and race-boundary smashing integrator of styles beyond all expectations; simultaneously driven by passions for religion/spiritually and unbridled sexuality (a subtext for Elvis and early rockers, which Prince unabashedly put up front as text;) media icons with promising but ultimately disappointing movie careers marked by unfulfilled potential, not slowing down enough to make a study of their craft with industry teachers / mentors. But more sadly, authentic & caring persons whose privilege and isolation helped thwart maturity necessary for a stable balance in personal relationships (with inbalanced power dynamics with younger women, and few friends who would ever challenge their excesses) and in business, and now legendary rock star-brand self-indulgences that magnify benign manchild tendencies into severe dysfunctions.
Prince navigates the trappings of fame better in many ways, perhaps benefitting from a latter 20th century awareness of the downfalls of past idols. Critically he had far greater confidence in controlling his creative destiny; it surely helped that he could find free expression at any an all times, as a self contained master, in a league perhaps only with Stevie Wonder, of writing, arranging, playing, and producing/engineering recordings. Throughou rocky 90's terrain of lower cd sales, mixed reviews, and tortured negotiations and defiance of labels & management, and wavering opinion amongst fans & media, he perseveres to ride the timely wave of 1999's anthemic resurgence into a new century of greater freedom and acceptance. This allows the book to end on late career highs like the Super Bowl halftime show, and secured sense of artistic legacy, dazzling the music establishment at his induction to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame of course. Now of course, with Prince's death spurring rumors of addictions / and possible HIV infection, it seems clear a creeping dark side would soon overcome another all-time great artist far too soon.
Revisiting Prince's discography along the way, my love for his work and spirit have deepened immensely, genearlly the very best possible benefits studying an artists life. I'm digging deeper into his later work including side projects, which still seems uneven, IMO, but loaded with brilliance throughout and more than worth the effort. Although there is little original and thoughtful assessment of the music, relying primarily on quotes for commentary that are too brief to dig out deep substance, the narrative nevertheless puts things in perspective for appreciate the evolution of his art, and hard won (with many self defeating turns) innovations with new business models which have had similarly profound influenced on newer artists in the digital age. (Whether many of the new guard are remotely in the league of Prince and his classic 20th century peers & influences may be another matter....)
It looks like the Toure book I Would Die 4 U is *the* source for deeper analysis I plan to read, and obviously future books will vie for definitive status with details leading to the end, and presumably greater access to less guarded personal accounts of life behind the purple fog of mystique Prince lived within. I only hope they will capture his more human side in his late career, such as his sly sense of humor, which as in this book gets lost in the emphasis the conflicts that fed his rebellious image. The few lighter moments, and others recalled recently in media by his friends, and which I saw on display at the one live show I was fortunate to see (kicking myself now not for catching *many* more,) show a Prince I sense as far closer to the heart of of the everyday man, known to be open, playful, generous and gracious in many unique (how else?) ways. At least until such a book emerges, this usefully chronicles the the fascinating journey of the culture's most singular personalities, and most priceless creator/performers of timeless, smashingly entertaining rock n roll, soul, & pop music. Spiritual Bon Voyage, Prince Rogers Nelson. May you shine as brightly in the beyond, even as your memory, and your past and presumably many forthcoming new releases, continue to immeasurably brighten the world you left behind.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Still looking for the perfect Prince biography
By Amazon Customer
I'm a product of the 80's and love Prince's musical genius. I know he was a mystery giving few interviews, but I wanted a little more in a "biography". This is my 1st Prince book and it's taking me a while to get through it. I want to know more about his personality and quirks and insights and his inspiration for his music and lyrics, and this book doesn't really deliver that, granted i'm not even half way through. The style of writing is so-so. Not flowing for me as nicely as I would like. Title is a little misleading I think. It will take a talented writer/journalist, to get to the real Prince. I'll try other books on Prince in the future. Anyone, any suggestions???
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