EMF Radio World

Prince’s Closest Friends Share Their Best Prince Stories
By Chris Heath
GQ Magazine
December 2016

From Van Jones to Carmen Electra, publicists to Paisley Park members, those close to Prince Rogers Nelson tell tales—ordinary and out there—of the late legend.

He was a legend, a virtuoso, one of the true gods of music. But he was also (at times, anyway) a person in the world like anyone else. He liked to send goofy Internet memes to his friends. He made really good scrambled eggs. He rode his bike a lot, went to the hardware store, called old friends late at night. Chris Heath spoke with band members, fellow artists, and Paisley Park veterans about the life and times of Prince Rogers Nelson—the real Prince, the man so few people got to know before he was gone.

Some select excerpts

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Morris Hayes (keyboard player; Prince’s longest-serving band member, 1992–2012): I remember taking him to the hardware store in my camping van. He wanted to go buy a lock. And we go to Ace Hardware—it’s snowing and freezing—and I say, “Okay, Prince, you stay in the car.” So I’m picking stuff up in the aisles, I look over, he just cruises by in a turtleneck sweater and his fuzzy boots, and people are looking like, “Oh my God, Prince is in the hardware store!” He comes and finds me and he’s got a handful of crap—like, “Can we buy this?” I’m, “What did you do with the car?” He says, “It’s out there—it’s just running.” I said, “Prince, you can’t leave the car running—somebody could just steal the car.” He said, “This is Chanhassen—nobody’s gonna steal the car.” So we get out to the car and sure enough it’s out there, just running, smoke coming out of the tailpipe. And he’s like, “I told you.”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Carmen Electra (dancer and singer; discovered by Prince in 1991): I don’t know one beautiful woman who didn’t want to be with him. But it did hurt me. It hurt me really bad. And I was too young to really communicate with him, so I just kind of pulled away. And during that time I went out with a guy—I hadn’t slept with this person—and Prince found out. He said, “I wrote this song about you,” and then he played “I Hate U.” It was hard to hear. And it was even harder to hear the parts of the song that said it could have been a completely different way. Then to say, “I hate you because I love you”—I literally cried in front of him. I think he just wanted me to hear it and know that he was really upset. Then he flew me back to Los Angeles.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Gilbert Davison: The backstory to that was—and this is the part Charlie doesn’t tell—Eddie had wanted to play Prince his new album. So during that basketball game, Eddie’s music was playing, via boom box, on a cassette. After that game, Prince goes over and he tosses the cassette out of the boom box and he says, “Let me ask you a question: Do you see me stop my show to do comedy?”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Chaka Khan (singer whose picture Prince had on his wall as a teenager and whom he first met in 1978; much later signed to his NPG Records label): Somehow he got my hotel number. At the time, Sly [Stone] and I were really close buddies. And Prince is a very good mimic, and he mimicked Sly on the phone and said, “I’m up here at Electric Lady Studios—come up here and chill.” I said, “Okay, I’ll be right over.” The studio looked completely empty. Finally I found this short little guy in this one studio with a guitar. I asked, “Where’s Sly?” He said, “That was me.” I said, “Who are you?” He was just everyday about it. I wanted to strangle him. I said, “Okay, nice meeting you,” and I left. So that’s how we met. He never let me forget it for a long time. He thought it was one of the funniest things that ever happened to him.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hayes: Oh yeah, I saw a really big change (P becoming a JW). It’s funny, man. We did this record, The Gold Experience, and for the most part we had really good reviews, but we got this one scathing review. Usually it didn’t bother him, but for whatever reason, this particular one kinda bothered him. He showed it to me and—I was the funny guy—I said, “You know what, Prince—they can kiss my ass. As a matter of fact, when we die they can bury us facedown and they can kiss our ass on the way out.” I said all of this stuff, I went on a cussing tirade, and he just died laughing. And two days later he plays me this song, “Face Down,” and it’s everything I said to him about that review. It was a crazy song. There was some pretty rough language in it. Larry Graham was on tour with us, and every time we played the song, Larry and his wife and his daughter would leave the stage. And finally Prince asked him [about it], and Larry asked, “Do you ever consider doing a show without the profanity in it?” And Prince told me he said, “Well, I could do—I mean, it’s just artistic expression.” But he said it embarrassed him. The fact that Larry would go backstage and then wait until the song was over—he said it really called into question how he was delivering his show. I think that’s when him and Larry started studying, and I noticed at that point a change kicking in. Then everything changed, and a lot of the songs we used to do, any of the stuff that was super racy, it got killed. There was a seismic shift.

Graham: I never had to leave the stage. Because he wouldn’t, you know, put me in that position.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hayes: Nobody was allowed to say “deadlines” around him. He hated that word. He said: “That’s arbitrary and stupid. What happens when I go over the line? I’m dead?” Prince would always tell us “time is a trick.” I remember one day I was late, and he was, “You’re late, Morris!” and I said, “Well, you know, Prince, time is a trick…” It didn’t work. He was, “How about I Jedi-mind-trick that check when you don’t show up again?”

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Davison: We were on a flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, about a three-and-a-half-hour flight, and we’d been up pretty late the night before, but he wanted to go out to record. On the plane, [he’s] asking for pads and paper, and so I get him a notebook and pen and he starts writing, and he writes a poem and he hands it to me. And I read it and I go, “Well, you know, that’s nice…sounds clever, good.” I hand it back to him. Ten minutes, 15 minutes later, he hands me another poem. I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s just as good as the first.” And I’m like, “Why does he keep handing me these poems?” This goes on for the whole flight, and we land and he says, “Do you mind if we go to the studio?”—he was always cordial—and I’m like, you know, “You can do whatever you want to do.” And he says, “Well, I’ll just be there for a few hours, and then we’ll head to the house.” And so we go to the studio. We were in there for three days, almost four days, straight. When he’s finished, I go into the studio and I’m listening to the music. I asked him on the way home: “Did you have all that in your head? Not just the lyrics, not just the music, not just the melodies, but the arrangement, everything?” And he said, “Yeah, you know, I have to get it out when it’s in there or I can’t sleep.” He had written [the first two album sides of] Sign o’ the Times. He had basically written an album in a three-and-a-half-hour plane ride.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Jill Jones: The picture on Around the World in a Day, when he showed me the cover, he pointed out who everybody was. Jerome was the little old man with the cane. He told me Sheila was combined with Melvoin] with the violin. And he goes, “And this is you.” And it was the old maid crying, with a blue dress and these horrible boots. I’m still: Why was I always crying? I cried in Purple Rain, I cried in Graffiti Bridge, before he cut it out. He always had me crying, and I’m crying on the cover. And then he said, “I’m gonna know you until the very end of this—you’re gonna be here.” And I said, “Why aren’t you in the [picture]?” He said, “I’m up the ladder. I’m gone.”

Plenty of other cool gems

http://www.gq.com/story/prince-stories