And this doesn’t even get into “Come” or “Sex” or “Orgasm.” Sex was explicit, it was implicit, and it was ever present—at least until Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness in the late 1990s, when he toned it down. “Sexuality” became “Spirituality.” The “Peach” line “the way her titties bounced” live became “the way her thingies bounce.” Whether this is less offensive is a discussion for another book.
But Prince never abandoned sex. His final album includes one song about screwing (“Screwdriver”) and another about “When She Comes”—it’s like a “limoncello ballet” and Fourth of July fireworks. Tick tick bang, indeed.
6. Race
Prince wasn’t multiracial, he wasn’t half Italian, he wasn’t Puerto Rican, and he wasn’t just a-freakin’. He was a black African American. In the early years, he pushed back against his race, insisting he didn’t want to be a black artist but wanted to be a popular artist. He also didn’t hire only male, black musicians because he wanted to construct a diverse band to appeal to blacks and whites, men and women. To compensate, he created the Time as a black band and created “The Black Album” (but didn’t release it).
In the mid-1990s, Prince began to engage race more directly but concluded in “Race” that he didn’t want to know “why those before us hated each other.” But it’s around this time, at the time of the name change, that he starts to see racial issues as political issues. This appears most pointedly in his writing “slave” on his face but also comes through in social justice songs, such as “We March” and “Face Down.” From this time forward, race becomes a common topic, from the extended narrative of The Rainbow Children to “free your mind and your ass will follow” tales such as “Dear. Mr. Man,” “Dreamer,” and “Colonized Mind,” to the overt race and social justice song “Baltimore.”
7. Religion
Prince was brought up a Seventh-day Adventist and drifted toward becoming a Jehovah’s Witness in the late 1990s, a process he called less a conversion than a realization. Many associates—and fans—were put off by this change, but religion had always been an underlying component of Prince’s career. Early on, Gayle Chapman and Dez Dickerson could not reconcile their religious beliefs with Prince’s overt sexuality, so they quit. But by 1988, the tables turned, and other band members were concerned with the overt religious themes on the Lovesexy tour.
Prince complained about having to hide his religious side, but it’s hard to reconcile this complaint with his music. While he may have felt pressure early on to not be as public spiritually as he was sexually, it’s difficult to say religion wasn’t always present when the first song on your first album is a benediction. To be fair, the faith was often buried, as in “1999” or “Let’s Go Crazy,” and didn’t really become obvious until 1987’s “The Cross.”
Ultimately, Prince’s God didn’t want to hurt you; he only wanted to have some fun.
2
Born on a Blood-Stained Table The Pre–Warner Bros. Years
Prince Rogers Nelson was born on June 7, 1958, to John L. and Mattie (Shaw) Nelson. Two days later, the number one US single was Sheb Wool-ey’s “The Purple People Eater.” Coincidence? Since “Purple Rain” stalled at number two, the only other purple number one was “Deep Purple” by the lightweight sibling act April Stevens and Nino Tempo. This song has the notoriety of being the top song when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
The year 1963 was also the one in which Prince began his path to stardom. In Prince’s origin backstory, one discovered through the finely tuned skills of Prince’s early public relations handler Harold Bloom, his mother brought him to a theater to see his father play piano. The younger Nelson loved the pretty women and the attention his father received, and that’s when he decided to be a musician. Within two years, Prince was playing the theme from TV’s Batman and writing his first song: “Funkmachine.” He would return to the Batman theme on January 21, 2016, at Paisley Park.
John L. Nelson
John L. Nelson’s was the leader of the jazz group the Prince Rogers Trio that gave Prince his name. John was born in Louisiana in 1916 and moved to Minnesota in the early 1950s. He was married with three kids and working at Honeywell when he met Mattie Shaw, an aspiring singer with a Billie Holiday–like voice, at a 1956 gig. The two were married in 1957, and Prince arrived the next year. John’s music career was already in the rearview mirror when Tyka, Prince’s sister, arrived in 1960. But John continued to try to pursue his dream, putting a strain on the family. John left the house in 1965, and in 1968 the couple divorced.
After his mother remarried in 1970, Prince moved in with his father. He enrolled at Bryant Junior High School in South Minneapolis and played on the basketball team. He took up saxophone but abandoned it to work on keyboards (allegedly, he didn’t want to play an instrument on which he had to use his lips). Perhaps most important, he took a class, “The Business of Music,” that influenced his professional decision-making process. He also hung around with Duane Nelson, mentioned in “Lady Cab Driver” and later head of Paisley Park security. Prince believed that Duane, who died in 2013, was his half brother, but it was revealed after Prince died that John L. Nelson wasn’t Duane’s father.
Prince and John had usual parent–teen squabbles that bubbled over in 1972 when the elder Nelson caught the younger in bed with a girl. He tossed him out of the house. Prince moved in with his Aunt Olivia and transferred to Central High School.
It’s easy to view Purple Rain as Prince’s attempt to come to terms with his parents, especially his father. And it’s probably not far off the mark, as Prince used the early- to mid-1980s to try to make peace with his father. This resulted in seven writing or cowriting credits and a flow of gifts, including the Kiowa Trail “purple house.” At some point, the relationship again crumbled. John wasn’t invited to Prince’s 1996 wedding, and Prince didn’t attend John’s 2001 funeral. In March 2003, Prince seemed to officially close their relationship by having the Kiowa house demolished, but he played “Unchain My Heart” on January 21, 2016, at Paisley Park in memory of playing the song with his father.
Mattie Shaw
Like Prince’s father, his mother, Mattie Shaw, had been married, had a child, and was an aspiring musician. And, like his father, the arrival of two more children all but shut the door on her artistic dreams.
Perhaps the most important Prince fact about Mattie is that, like her husband, she was a black African American. Stories persist that Prince was of inter-racial ancestry, with his New York Times obituary calling him biracial. The story seems to have started in a Rolling Stone article from February 19, 1981. By June 6, his father was Italian Filipino, and his mother was black. This, in part, led Prince to write “Controversy” for his next album.
While Prince’s childhood nickname “Skipper” didn’t last, another gift from his mother did: a slightly unorthodox sexual education. There are conflicting reports about his mother’s intent, but it’s clear that the preteen Prince had access to pornography, most likely Playboy magazines. The “dirty mind” was primed at an early age.
Prince’s life took a turn for the worse in 1968, at the age of ten, when Mattie married Hayward Baker. When it was good, it was really good, as Baker would give Prince and Tyka presents and brought Prince to a James Brown show and placed him onstage. When it was bad, it was really bad, as Prince claimed that Baker would punish him by locking him in a room and making him pick dandelions for long periods of time. Outside observers saw Prince change from smiling and outgoing to introverted and guarded. It’s assumed that the abusive title character in “Papa” is Baker. Prince moved out in 1970.
Prince