Prince Talks - The Interview

Why have you decided that now is the timeto talk?
There have been a lot of things said about me, anda lot of them are wrong. There have been a lot of contradictions. I don’t mmd criticism, I just don’t like lies. I feel I’ve been very honest in my work and my life, and
it’s hard to tolerate people telling so many barefaced lies.

Do you read most of what’s written about you?
A little, not much. Sometimes someone will pass along a fanny one. I just wrote a song called “Hello’which is lug to be on the flip side of “Pop Life? It says at the end, “Life us cruel enough without cruel words.” I get a lot of cruel words. A lot of people do. I saw critics be so critical of Stevie Wonder when he trade Journey's through the Secret 14 of Plants. Stevie has done so many great songs, and for people to say, “You missed, don’t do that go back” - well, I would never say, “Stevie Wonder, you missed.” [Prince put the Wonder album on the turntable, plays a then puts on Miles DanS~ new albwn.] Or Miles. Critics are going tosay, “Ah, Miles done went off.” Why say that? Why even tell Miles he went off? You know, if you don’t like it, don’t talk about it. Go buy another record! Not long ago I talked to George Clinton, a man who knows and has done so much for funk. George told me how much he liked Around the World in a Day. You know how much more his words mean than those from some mamma-janmla wearing glasses and an alligator shirt behind a typewriter?

Do you hate rock critics? Do you think they’re afraid of you?
[Laughs] No, it’s no big deal. Hey, I’m afraid of them! One time early in my career, I got into a fight with a New York writer, this little skinny cat, a real sidewinder. He said, “I’ll tell you a secret, Prince. Writers write for other writers, and a lot of time it’s more fun to be nasty!’ I just looked at him. But when Ireally thought about it and put myself in his shoes, I realized that’s what he bad to do. I could see his point. They can do whatever they want. And me, too. I can paint whatever picture I want with my albums. And I try to instill that in every act I’ve ever worked with.

What picture were you painting with ‘Around the World in a Day’?
[Laughs] I’ve heard some people say I’m not talking about anything on this record. And what a lot of other people get wrong about the record is that I’m not trying to be this great visionary wizard. Paisley Park is in everybody’s heart. It’s not just something that I have the keys to. I was trying to say something about looking inside oneself to find perfection. Perfection is in everyone. Nobody’s perfect, but they can be. We may never
reach that, but it’s better to strive than not.

Sounds religious.
As far as that goes, let me tell you a story about Wendy. We had to fly somewhere at the beginning of the tour, and Wendy is deathly afraid of flying. She got on the plane and really freaked. I was scared for her. Itried to calm her down with jokes, but it didn’t work. I thought about it and said, “Do you believe in God?”She said yes. I said, “Do you trust him?” and she saidshe did. Then I asked, “SO why are you afraid to fly?” She started laughing and said, “Okay, okay, okay.” Flying still bothers her a bit, but she knows where it is and doesn’t get freaked. It’s just so nice to know there is someone and someplace else. And if we’re wrong, and I’m wrong, and there is nothing, then big deal! But the whole life I justspent, I at least had some reason to spend it.

When you talk about God, which God are you talking about? The Christian God? Jewish? Buddhist?
Is there any God in particular you have in mind?
Yes, very much so. A while back, I had an experience that changed me and made me think differently about how and what I wrote and how I acted toward people. I’m going to make a film about it not the next one, but the one after that. I’ve wanted to make it for three years now. Don’t get me wrong I’m still as wild as I was. I’m just funneling it in a different direction. And now I analyze things so much that sometimes I can’t shut my brain off and it hurts. That’s what that movie will be about.

What was the experience that changed you?
I don’t really want to get into it specifically. During the Dirty Mind period, I would go into fits of depression and get physically ill. I would have to call people to help me get out of it. I don’t do that anymore.

What were you depressed about?
A lot had to do with the band’s situation, the fact that I couldn’t make people in the band understand how great we could all be together if we all played our part. A lot also had to do with being in love with someone and not getting any love back. And there was the fact that I didn’t talk much with my father and sister. Anyway, a lot of things happened in this two-day period, but I don’t want to get into it right now.

How’d you get over it?
That’s what the movie’s going to be about. Paisley Park is the only way I can say I got over it now. Paisley Park is the place one should find in oneself; where one can go when one is alone.You say you’ve now found the place where you can go to be alone.

Is it your house? Within the family you’ve built around you? With God?
It’s a combination of things. I think when one discovers himself; he discovers God. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I’m not sure. . . . It’s hard to put into words. It’s a feeling someone knows when they get it. That’s all I can really say.

Do you believe in heaven?
I think there is an afterworld. For some reason, I think it’s going to look just like here, but that’s part...I don’t really like talking about this stuff. It’s so personal.

Does it bother you when people say you’re going back in time with ‘Around the World in a Day’?
No. What they say is that the Beatles are the influence. The influence wasn’t the Beatles. They were great for what they did, but I don’t know how that would hang today. The cover art came about because I thought people were tired of looking at me. Who wants another picture of him? I would only want so many pictures of my woman, then I would want the real thing. What would be a little more happening than justanother picture [laughs] would be if there was some way I could materialize in people’s cribs when they play the record.

How do you feel about people calling the record “psychedelic”?
I don’t mind that, because that was the only period in recent history that delivered songs and colors. Led Zeppelin, for example, would make you ‘feel differently on each song.

Does your fame affect your work?
A lot of people think it does, but it doesn’t at all. I think the smartest thing I did was record Around the World in a Day right after I finished Purple Rain. I didn’t wait to see what would happen with Purple Rain. That’s why the two albums sound completely different. People think, “Oh, the new album isn’t half as powerful as Purple Rain or 1999.” You know how easy it would have been to open Around the World in a Day with the guitar solo that’s on the end of “Let’s Go Crazy”? You know how easy it would have been to just put it in a different key? That would have shut everybody up who said the album wasn’t half as powerful. I don’t want to make an album like the earlier ones. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to put your albums back to back and not get bored, you dig? I don’t know how many people can play all their albums back to back with each one
going to different cities.

What do you think about the comparisons between you and Jimi Hendrix?
It~s only because he’s black. That’s really the only thing we have in common. He plays different guitar than I do. If they really listened to my stufl they’d hear more of a Santana influence than Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix played more blues; Santana played prettier. You can’t compare people, you really can’t, unless someone is blatantly trying to rip somebody off. And you can’t really tell that unless you play the songs. You’ve got to understand that there’s only so much you can do on an electric guitar. I don’t know what these people are thinking — they’re usually non-guitar- playing mamma-jammas saying this kind of stuff. There are only so many sounds a guitar can make. Lord knows I’ve tried to make a guitar sound like something new to myself.

Are there any current groups you listen to a lot or learn from?
Naah. The last album I loved all the way through was [Joni Mitchell’s] The Hissing of Summer Lawns. I respect people’s success, but I don’t like a lot of popular music. I never did. I like more of the things I heard when I was little. Today, people don’t write songs; they’re a lot of sounds, a lot of repetition. That happened when producers took over, and that’s why there’s no more [live] acts. There’s no box office anymore. The producers took over, and now nobody wants to see these bands.

People seem to think you live in an armed monastery that you’ve built in honor of yourself.
First off, I don’t live in a prison with armed guards around me. The reason I have a guy outside is that after the movie, all kinds of people started coming over and hanging out. That wasn’t so bad, but the neighbors got upset that people were driving by blasting their boxes or standing outside and singing. I happen to dig that. That’s one reason I’m going to move to more land. There, if people want to come by, it will be fine. Sometimes it gets lonely here. To be perfectly honest, I wish more of my friends would come by.

Friends?
Musicians, people I know. A lot of the nine they think I don’t want to be bothered. When I told Susannah [Melvoin] that you were coming over, she said, “Is there something I can do? Do you want me to come by to make it seem like you have friends coming by?” I said no, that would be lying. And she just put her head down, because she knew she doesn’t come by to see me as much as she wants to, or as much as she thinks I want her to. It was interesting. See, you did something good, and you didn’t even know it!

Are you afraid to ask your friends to come by?
I’m kind of afraid. That’s because sometimes everybody in the band comes over, and we have very long talks. They’re very few and far between, and I do a lot of the talking. Whenever we’re done, one of them will come up to me and say, ‘Take care of yourself You know I really love you.” I think they love me so much, and I love them so much, that if they came over all the time I wouldn’t be able to be to them what I am, and they wouldn’t be able to do for me what they do. I think we all need our individual spaces, and when we come together with what we’ve concocted in our heads, it’s cool.

Does it bother you that strangers make pilgrimages to your house?
No, not at all. But there’s a time and a place for everything. A lot of people have the idea that I’m a wild sexual person. It can be two o’clock in the afternoon and someone will make a really strange request from the call box outside. One girl just kept pressing the buzzer. She kept pressing it, and then she started crying.I had no idea WhY.I thought she might have fallen down. I started talking to her, and she just kept saying, “I can’t believe it’s )vu.” I said, “Big deal. I’m no special person. I’m no different than anyone?’ She said, “Will you come out?” I said, “Nope, I don’t have much on.” And she said, “That’s okay?’
I’ve lectured quite a few people out there. I’ll say, “Think about what you’re saying. How would you react if you
were me?” I ask that question a lot:“How would you react if you were me?” They say, “Okay, okay?’

It’s not just people outside your door who think you’re a wild sexual person.
To some degree I am, but not twenty-four hours a day. Nobody can be what they are twenty-four hours a day, no matter what that is. You have to eat, you have to sleep, you have to think, and you have to work I work a lot, and
there’s not too much time for anything else when I’m doing that. Does it make you angry when people dig into your background, when they want to know about your sexuality and things like that? Evetyone thinks I have a really mean temper and that I don’t like people to do this or do that. I have a sense of humor. I thought that the Saturday Night Live skit with Billy Crystal as me was the funniest thing I ever saw. His imitation of me was hysterical! He was singing, “I am the world, I am the children!” Then Bruce Springsteen came to the mike, and the boys would push him away. It was hilarious. We put it on when we want to laugh. It was great. Of course, that’s not what it is. And I thought the Prince~Spaghetti commercial was the cutest thing in the world. My lawyers and management are the ones who felt it should be stopped. I didn’t even see the commercial until after someone had tried to have it stopped. A lot of things get done without my knowledge because I’m in Minneapolis and they’re where they are. It’s a good and a bad thing that I live here. It’s bad in the sense that I can’t be a primo “rock star” and do everything absolutely right. I can’t go to the parties and benefits, be at all the awards shows, get this and get that. But I like it here. It’s really mellow.

How do you feel when you go to New York or L.A. and see the life you could be leading?
LA. is a good place to work. And I liked New York more when I wasn’t known, when I wasn’t bothered when I went out. You’d be surprised. There are guys who will literally chase you through a discotheque! I don’t mind my picture being taken if it’s done in a proper fashion. It’s very easy to say, “Prince, may I take your picture?” I don’t know why people can’t be more humane about a lot of things they do. Now when Urn visiting, I like to sneak around and try stuff I like to sneak to people’s gigs and see if I can get away without getting my picture taken. That’s fun. That’s like cops and robbers.

You’ve taken a lot of heat for your bodyguards, especially the incident in Los Angeles in which your bodyguard Chick Huntsberry reportedly beat up a photographer.
A lot of times I’ve been accused of sicking bodyguards on people. You know what happened in LA? My man the photographer tried to get in the car! I don’t have any problems with someone I know trying to get in my car with me and my woman in it. But someone like that? Just to get a picture?

Why isn’ Chick working for you anymore?
Chick has more pride than anyone I know. I think that after the L.A. incident, he feared for his job. So if I said something, he’d say, “What are you jumping on me for? What’s wrong? Why all of a sudden are you changing?” And I’d say, “I’m not changing.” Finally, he just said, “I’m tired. I've had enough.” I said fine, and he went home; I waited a few weeks and called him. I told him that his job was still here and that I was alone. So he said he’d see me when I was in New York. He didn’t show up. I miss him.

Is it true that Chick is still onthe payroll?
Yes.

What about the exposé he wrote about you in the ‘National Enquirer’?
I never believe anything in the Enquirer. I remember reading stories when I was ten years old, saying, “I was fucked by a flying saucer, and here’s my baby to prove it” I think they just took everything he said and blew it up. It makes for a better story. They’re just doing their thing. Right on for them. The only thing that bothers me is when
- my fans think l live in a prison. This is not a prison.

You came in for double heat over the L.A. incident because it happened the night of the "We Are the World” recording. In rospect, do you wish you had shown up?
No. I think I did my part in giving my song [to the album]. I hope I did my part. I think I did the best thing I could do.

You’ve done food-drive concerts for poor people in various cities, given free concerts for
handicapped kids and donated lots of money to the Marva Collins inner-city school in Chicago. Didn’t you want to stand up after you were attacked for “We Are the World” and say, “Hey, I do my part.
Nah. I was never rich, so I have very little regard for money now. I only spect it inasmuch as it can feed somebody. I give a lot of things away, a lot of presents and money. Money is best spent on someone who needs it. That’s all I’m going to say. I don’t like to makea big deal about the things I do that way.

People think that you’re a dictator in the studio, that you want to control everything. In L.A., however, I saw Wendy and Lisa mixing singles while you were in Paris. How do you feel about your reputation?
My first album I did entirely alone. On the second I used André [Cymone], my bass player, on “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” He sang a small harmony part that you really couldn’t hear. There was a typo on the record, and André didn’t get any credit. That’s how that whole thing started. I tried to explain that to him, but when you’re on the way up, there’s no explaining too much of anything. People will think what they want to. The reason I didn’t use musicians a lot of the time had to do with the hours that I worked. I swear to God it’s not out of boldness when I say this, but there’s not a person around who can stay awake as long as I can. Music is what keeps me awake. There will be times when I’ve been working in the studio for twenty hours and I’ll be falling asleep in the chair, but I’ll still be able to tell the engineer what cut I want to make. I use engineers in shifts a lot
of the time because when I start something, I like to go all the way through. There are very few musicians who will
stay awake that long.

Do you feel others recognize how hard you work?
Well, no. A lot of my peers make remarks about us doing silly things onstage and on records. Morris [Day,
former lead singer of the Time] was criticized a lot for that.

What kind of silliness, exactly?
Everything — the music, the dances,the lyrics. What they failto realize is that is exacdy what we want to do. It’s not silliness, it’s sickness. Sickness is just slang for doing things somebody else wouldn’t do. If we are down on the floor doing a step, that’s something somebody else wouldn’t do. That’s what I’m looking for all the time. We don’t look for whether something’s cool or not, that’s not what time it is. It’s not just wanting to be out. It’s just if I do something that I think belongs to someone else or sounds like someone else, I do something else.

Why did Morris say such negative things about you after he left the band?
People who leave usually do so out of a need to express something they can’t do here. It’s really that simple. Morris, for example, always wanted to be a solo act; period. But when you’re broke and selling shoes someplace, you don’t think about asking such a thing. Now, I think Morris is trying to create his own identity One of the ways of doing that is trying to pretend that you don’t have a past. Jesse [Johnson, former guitarist for the Time] is the only one who went away who told what happened, what really went down with the band. He said there was friction, because he was in a situation that didn’t quite suit him. Jesse wanted to be in front all the time. And I just don’t think God puts everybody in that particular bag. And sometimes I was blunt enough to say that to people: “I don’t think ,vu should be the frontman. I think Morris should.” Wendy, for example, says, “I don’t want that. I want to be right where I am. I can be strongest to this band right where I am? I personally love this band more than any other group I’ve ever played with for that reason. Everybody knows what they have to do. I know there’s something I have to do.

What sound do you get from different members of the Revolution?
Bobby Z was the first one to join. He’s my best friend. Though he’s not such a spectacular drummer, he watches me like no other drummer would. Sometimes, a real great drummer, like Morris, will be more concerned with the
lick he is doing as opposed to how I am going to break it down. Mark Brown’s just the best bass player I know, period. I wouldn’t have anybody else. If he didn’t play with me, I’d eliminate bass from my music~ Same goes for Matt [Fink, the keyboard player]. He’s more or less a technician. He can read and write like a whiz, and is one of the fastest in the world. And Wendy makes me seem all right in theeyes of people watching.

How so?
She keeps a smile on her face. When I sneer, she smiles . It’s not premeditated she just does it. It’s a good contrast. Lisa is like my sister. She’ll play what the average person won’t.. She’ll press two notes with one finger so the chord is a lot larger, things like that. She’s more abstract. She’s into Joni Mitchell, too.

What about the other bands? Apollonia, Vanity, Mazarati, the Family? What are you trying to express through them?
A lot has to do with them. They come to me with an idea, and I try to bring that forth. I don’t give them anything. I don’t say, “Okay, you’re going to do this, and you’re going to do that.” I mean, it was Morris’ idea to be as sick
as he was. That was his personality We both like Don King and got a lot of stuff off him.

Why?
Because he’s outrageous and thinks everything’s so exciting — even when it Isn t.

People think you control those bands, that it’s similar to Rick James’ relationship with the Mary Jane Girls. A lot of people think he’s turning all the knobs.
I don’t know their situation. But you look at Sheila E. performing, and you can just tell she’s holding her own. The
same goes for the Family. You and I were playing Ping-Pang; and they were doing just fine.

After all these years, does the music give you as much of a rush as it used to?
It increases more and more. One of my friends worries that I’ll short-circuit. We always say I’ll make the final fade on a song one time and... [Laughs, dropping his headrnadead slwnp]. It just gets more and more interesting every day. More than anything else, I try not to ‘repeat myself. It’s the hardest thing in the world to do there’s only so many notes one human being can muster. I write a lot more than people think I do, and I try not to copy that. I think that’s the problem with the music industry today. When a person does get a hit, they try to do it again the same way. I don’t think I’ve ever done that. I write all the time and cut all the time. I want to show you the archives where all my old stuff is. There’s tons of music I’ve recorded there. I have the follow-up album to 1999. 1 could put it all together and play it for you, and you would go “Yeah!” And I could put it out, and it would probably sell what 1999 did. But I always try to do something different and conquer new ground. In people’s minds, it all boils down to “Is Prince getting too big for his breeches?” I wish people would understand that I always thought I was bad. I wouldn’t have got into the business if I didn’t think l was bad.