Inside Prince’s Paisley Park: My Amazing Day With the Purple One
Paisley Park was smaller than I imagined. In the Eighties, it must have seemed futuristic, but now in 1999, from the outside, it seemed like a car dealership. I’d interviewed hundreds of stars in my time, but Prince was the Holy Grail of music journalism, the one to boast about. As a courtesy to Arista Records head Clive Davis, who himself was boasting about signing Prince, the artist had agreed to talk to the media to promote his then-new album, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic. It was his first major-label release since he left Warner Bros. in a famously acrimonious dispute over the ownership of his master tapes, and I was about to come face-to-face with my musical hero.
I never usually got nervous before interviews, but I was such a rabid fan that when I stepped into Paisley Park to visit with Prince for a Yahoo.com piece, my stomach churned like a cement mixer. Also, Prince was notoriously unpredictable when it came to the press. Interviews were rare, and those he granted could be cryptic, monosyllabic or vague. I desperately wanted a connection, wanted my Prince experience to be a good one. One of my concerns was what to actually call him. At the time, he was only going by an unpronounceable symbol. No one seemed to offer any cogent advice on the matter.
The inside was much as I imagined. Custom velvet furniture. I recall heart shapes on the cushions and his famous male/female symbol on the wall. There were video cassettes of awards shows and a pair of caged doves.
Although I’d seen him up close in concert many times, I was curious how he’d really look in person. As I was pondering this, Prince appeared in the doorway. And he looked just like Prince. Makeup, high heels and a black-felt tunic-type top. (I remember being surprised by a loose thread dangling from the latter garment – everything about the man was otherwise so immaculate.) He briefly introduced himself and departed for the conference room. Another journalist and a photographer were set to speak to him before me, and I hoped they would give me the heads-up as to his mood.
I didn’t have to wait long to find out. The photographer, an attractive woman, was dismissed after only five minutes. She left the meeting in tears. Earlier, she’d shown me her portfolio. In many of the shots, she was nude. That was her thing. She wanted to take photos of herself nude next to Prince (I assumed by some kind of time-delay mechanism), but Prince wasn’t having it.
Next up was a journalist from Entertainment Weekly. She lasted about 25 minutes. From what I heard from Prince’s publicist, the Purple One wasn’t too happy with her either. She asked him a slew of superficial, celeb-type questions. One was, “Do you go to the movies? Don’t people recognize you?” I was the next and last journalist for the day. I hoped I wouldn’t darken his mood further.