An Ode To Purple Rain

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April 21st, 2016

This is going to be a very short blog today. But it’s going to be a hard one to write.

With Thursday being Blog Day, I awoke this morning in one of those moods that can be described as 50% excitement to write something and 50% dread of coming up with a subject out of thin air. There are those days. And then the subject hit me like a concrete block. Today we lost Prince.

Rest in Peace.
Rest in Peace.

It’s been a terrible year for musical legends. I’m still not over David Bowie. I was never a Merle Haggard fan but I knew what he meant to those who were his followers. Glenn Frey was a tough one, too, because The Eagles were such a major part of my high school and college days. I probably saw him play a dozen times, and the odd thing is I was always just a middling Eagles fan. They weren’t exactly “my type” of music, but he was always my favorite member of that band and when they came to town, well, you just went. Because it was The Eagles.

But Prince. This is different.

I’ve been a major Prince fan, and an even bigger appreciator of his work, since “1999″ (the song, not the year.) It was the dawn of the epic MTV era, when everything seemed to be changing so fast and new sounds and approaches were nearly a daily thing. It was also, of course, the dawn of the cable TV era, and MTV was built for that. I’ve always been a huge music fan, so having a channel that did nothing but play these new artists, in video form and 24 hours per day, was right up my alley. I could literally sit in front of the television and watch MTV for hours, like it was a mini-series and I was binge watching before we knew what binge watching was.

When I saw Prince, I was mesmerized. He didn’t look like anyone else. He didn’t play like anyone else. He didn’t write like anyone else. He did things that were as wildly and wonderfully creative as anything I’d ever seen, while he could also be obtuse and clumsy, trying to stretch out into new areas and themes that, perhaps, only he could see.

It was obvious from the beginning that he was a musical prodigy, but what I loved about Prince from the beginning was that he never reacted to popular themes or styles. He never copied anyone. He never wrote or played a song just because he thought it would be popular. He wrote and played what he wanted, and you could tell in his attitude that if you then liked it, that would be fine. If you didn’t, that would be okay also. It helped that he was a marvelous writer and a phenomenal musician. The man could play and the man could sing. And the music he made was peerless.

He was, by the very definition, never a “pop star” because that title describes someone whose sole purpose is to be popular. He didn’t care.

His lifestyle and his partying days were both the stuff of legend, but they never slowed the creative process. His energy was boundless.

He put Minneapolis on the map and made me want to go there decades before I’d finally be fortunate enough to call the Twin Cities home.

Once Barbara and I did get to live there, we developed an all new appreciation of the man, because we were living in the epicenter of the Prince universe. One night, when he had a major concert at Target Center in downtown Minneapolis, he first played a gig in the afternoon, stretching it into the evening. He was a little late to the show in the arena, but his loyal fans were not distressed. They knew they had a magical event waiting for them, and it was just that. After a three-hour raucous concert, Prince headed across the street to First Avenue, and he played some more. He absolutely lived to play his music.

He took on the record companies single-handedly, and in the end he won. He would compose and record a full double-album and simply give it away at his shows, as part of the price of admission. It was all about the music, and all about being fair and being creative. And he would always be true to himself.

After a trip to Maui many years ago, Barbara and I were at the airport there, waiting to fly home. Prince, and a small entourage, walked right by us, having just gotten off a plane. He was, of course, dressed in purple. He had stiletto heels on his boots, and he was still absolutely tiny. It was his music that was huge.

We were fortunate enough to see him play at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul a few years ago. Yes, we got a free CD as part of our admission. The concert was played “in the round” and Prince filled the building with so much energy it was nearly draining for those of us in the audience. I’d frankly never seen anything like it. I still have not.

His movie “Purple Rain” was so awkward and, in many ways, amateurish it was actually precious. I still stop and watch whenever I pass it flipping channels. And yes, the musical scenes in the movie were shot at First Avenue, the venue he would still drop in to play (often in the middle of the night) until recently.

As many people know, I’m mostly a fan of heavy rock. I’ve seen Rush more than 20 times. My favorite channel on SiriusXM is Octane, where I can find Breaking Benjamin, Evans Blue, Chevelle, Seether, Disturbed, Tool, and other artists who take great care in their craft, but who love to play it heavy. I consider it music with guts.

Prince defied all of my musical tastes. That’s why I loved him so much as an artist. We use that term to simply label almost anyone who plays just about anything, but he truly was an artist. His pallet was ingenious and creative music, and his supply of it seemed endless. He was a genius. And his craft was truly music with guts.

Minneapolis is covered in Purple Rain today, and will be for quite some time.

Rest in peace, Prince.

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