most influential people list. Yet apart from a brief period of residence in Los Angeles four years
ago he prefers to live in Minneapolis, his home town in the unpretentious American Mid West.
He used to throw after-show parties which were open to anyone who was on the mailing list of his fan club, yet he has given only three interviews in the past 10 years and is notoriously unforthcoming about his past or personal life. We know little about his two marriages, except that both ended in divorce – the first in the most tragic circumstances after the death of his son in 1997. Baby Gregory was born with Pfeiffer‘s syndrome, a condition in which the bones of the skull fuse together and lived only for a week.Even what we see of Prince the public persona is subject to conjecture. Is he black or mixed race? Is he gay or merely camp? His unusual Christian name is the one his parents gave him but he even dispensed with that for a period in favour of a squiggle
roughly resembling the male and female symbols woven together. This meant hapless announcers were forced to refer to him by the clumsy soubriquet ―the artist formerly known as Prince‖. (The less reverential shortened it to TAFKAP.)
Paisley Park, his home and studio complex in Minneapolis, is awash with purple, his signature colour. Access is strictly limited to those in his inner circle. Tape recorders and cameras are banned and he is not too comfortable with notebooks either, yet Prince is not above carrying out his religious obligations by going door to door with copies of The Watchtower. He has the diva‘s self- absorption and apparent indifference to anything outside his art. Yet his mind snaps into action like a steel trap when discussing ticket sales or the bottom line.
In the Nineties he pioneered the releasing of music via the internet, selling CDs from his own website in 1998 and via a download shop as early as 2001. Now he declares the internet is ―done for‖ and says he prefers to communicate face to face with actual human beings. He has shut down his websites and you will not find any of Prince‘s music on YouTube or iTunes.
―The internet is over,‖ he says. ―I do not need to discuss my opinions with the whole world. I do not learn anything if I sit in front of a flat screen. I only learn from real people.‖
As recently as July Prince told an interviewer, ―I‘m not part of the music industry any more.‖ Yet when he flies over to Britain to perform in The X Factor he will be steeped in that bread-and-butter activity of the music business, touring. So what is the real story of Prince? First he is an authentic musical prodigy who can play 25 instruments. Born in June 1958, his father John Nelson was a pianist and songwriter while his Italian-American mother Mattie was a singer. His father named him Prince Rogers after his jazz band, the Prince Roger Trio. John and Mattie split up a few years later and Prince went to live with his father. By the age of five he was touring with him. John Nelson was a Seventh Day Adventist which means he took a dim view when he caught his 12-year-old son in bed with a girl and threw him out. By then young Prince was already musically active in school bands and was signed up by Warner Brothers straight out of high school.
He wrote and sang all the songs and played all the instruments on his debut album For You but the big breakthrough came in 1982 with the album 1999, which sold three million copies. Two years later Purple Rain sold 13 million copies and made him an international star. The single When Doves Cry stayed at Number 1 for six weeks.
Second Prince is and always has been genuinely odd, as well as blessed with remarkable self-belief. Purple Rain was actually the soundtrack to a self-aggrandising film based on his life when he was still a relative newcomer to fame.
The squiggle years began in 1993 on June 7, his birthday. Prince announced he was shedding his name because his record label had divested him of his identity ―in perpetuity‖. It took him another three years to break away and form his own label, New Power Generation. Throughout the Eighties and early Nineties the diminutive star (he is only 5ft 2in) was linked to a string of glamorous women, including the actresses Kim Basinger and Sherilyn Fenn and the Scottish singer Sheena Easton.
But on Valentine‘s Day 1996 he married Mayte Garcia, one of his backing group. However the marriage could not withstand the trauma of their baby‘s death. Prince threw himself into touring while Mayte retreated to Minneapolis and the couple divorced in 1999. His next marriage in 2001 was to a Mayte lookalike named Manuela Testolini who worked for Prince‘s charity Love4OneAnother. Five years later that was over too.
The guitarist Larry Graham, former bass player with Sly And The Family Stone, is credited with introducing Prince to the Jehovah‘s Witness faith.
Securing Prince‘s services for The X Factor is undoubtedly another feather in Simon Cowell‘s cap. He had just better not bring a notebook with him.