Prince

This is an AP photo from Prince's 2007 Super Bowl performance. The Super Bowl. I loved it then. I love it now. 

Rest In Purple

I was sitting in my car on Wallace St. in Red Bank getting ready to go home and continue my ongoing, year-long battle with the pedal that was stuck on my bike. My dad called. "Prince died."

"No. It's an Internet hoax," I said.

He turned away from the phone, "Is it a hoax?!?" he called to my mom. He turned back to the phone. "No. It's confirmed," he said. "57."

I was, surprisingly, dumbfounded. I turned on the radio, and "Let's Go Crazy" -- one of my favorite songs of all time -- was just starting with its full, album-edit length speech.

"'Cause in this life
Things are much harder than in the afterworld
In this life
You're on your own"

I amazed myself as I started for real crying behind my sunglasses.

Like on a lot of things musical, my brother was way ahead of me on Prince. My 14 year old self couldn't stand anything that was big-time, mainstream pop. If it wasn't Springsteen, Pink Floyd, The Who, The Kinks, The Beatles or some other -- let's face it -- old rocker dude or group of old rocker dudes -- I didn't want to know about it. He had Purple Rain on cassette, though, and a 7" version of "Let's Go Crazy."

Prince's genius had been seeping into my consciousness, though. I like to think that, as a pretty musically closed-minded teenager, I still had the capacity to let quality break through. In the early days of MTV, "Little Red Corvette" was a staple. I remember being drawn to the simple video of Prince performing in front of that mic and thinking to my 13yo self, "I don't think this is about a car."

And Purple Rain. Just the drama of all of those songs. Each one just stirs something in you. "Let's Go Crazy," "When Doves Cry," "I Would Die 4 U," "Baby I'm a Star," "Purple Rain," and "Darling Nikki." Once again, "Darling Nikki" made me, a hormonal teenager, vaguely uncomfortable. I almost feel like I'd look around furtively as Prince sang those lyrics.

Prince was undoubtedly a Top 40 pop star, and that stirred my initial aversion to him. But, really, what could be more rock and roll or more subversive than his overt use of sexual imagery? "Raspberry Beret" reached number 2 in 1985 and contains the lyric "They say the first time ain't the greatest / But I tell ya / If I had the chance to do it all again / I wouldn't change a stroke." Come on.

And his rock and roll rebelliousness carried over into his business dealings. His contentious relationship with Warner ended up in his refusing even to put his name to any releases for the label. "The artist formerly known as..." is still a running joke, but he was making a real statement by identifying himself as only an unpronounceable symbol. He'd appear in public with "SLAVE" written on his face until he finally got his freedom and released Emancipation in 1996. The New York Times gave a good (and concise) run-down of all this yesterday.

Hey. I was a dumb kid. I couldn't see that this guy from Minneapolis was doing more to change popular music than Pete Townshend or Roger Waters or Ray Davies. I just knew that Casey Kasem played his music every week, so *blech*. But he got to me somehow. He broke through all of those pre-conceived notions and turned me into something else. He turned me into someone who, 30 years later, would cry in his car over the death of some pop star.