The Purple Reign

I want to start out saying something to all those that are expressing how pathetic it is to be so torn up over the loss of an artist such as Prince. I don't look up to him as a hero or a messiah. I never thought that he could walk on water or make the blind see. I don't intend on building a church in his name. The fact is that he played a major part of my youth. His music expanded my horizon and he opened my eyes to something that moved me. My wife showed me a Tweet from a fan in response to all those that can't seem to grasp it. It said "Thinking about how we mourn artists we've never met. We don't cry because we knew them, we cry because they helped us know ourselves".

Around 1979 I was at a party (which I am SURE that I was not supposed to be at) when I first heard the music of Prince. The song was “Soft And Wet”. My first thought was that Michael Jackson had shed his good boy image and decided to dirty things up. It was the falsetto that made me think it was Michael Jackson. I was shown the album and told it was this amazing guy called Prince. Then “I Wanna Be Your Lover” blasted from the speakers. That was it. I was hooked. This guy played all the instruments, arranged, wrote AND produced his own music. It was the sex of it all that grabbed me. I was around 12 years old and sex was obviously something that was really starting to fog my mind. There were questions to be answered and Prince seemed to step in and introduce me to an alien landscape that opened my eyes…and the girls LOVED him. It wasn’t cool for a young, white, sheltered boy to like Prince yet. It was my secret. It was a secret I kept to myself until 1982 when the album 1999 hit the stores and airwaves and people REALLY started to pay attention to the strange little man. It was a bit safer to start sharing that I was a fan. Those that were just getting into him had missed out on some killer albums. Controversy and Dirty Mind were released prior to 1999 and were filled with some of the funkiest, sexual work that Prince ever released. It was music that you had to listen to on headphones so not to give your parents a heart attack and call a priest in to try and save the soul. My soul was just fine.

Everything changed in the summer of 1984. Purple Rain was released and Prince’s life changed forever. The musical landscape changed as well. Not only did Prince put orgasms to music, but he also rocked like Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and the Stones. It was pure genius. He knew that he had to shock the world in a way that was original yet familiar enough to get the attention of those that were never exposed to music like his. Parents thought he was dangerous and that was enough to make the kids NEED to listen. We listened!

Purple Rain sold 1.5 million in its debut week in the United States alone and spent 24 consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard albums chart. The album established him as a force not to be messed with. Then came the film. Princemania exploded!! Considered to be one of the greatest rock-n-roll movies of all time, Purple Rain was a box office success, grossing $68,392,977 in the United States alone. Elements of funk, dance, and rock music made it easy for the music to defy genre categories. His songs could be heard on rock, country, pop and R&B stations across the country. He did not belong to any specific genre. He was…well…he was Prince.

I now felt safe to come out and announce being the fan that I was. My heavy metal buddies even embraced that this guy could rock. The world took to Prince in a way that I could not have imagined years prior. After years of circling the planet, Prince finally landed. His landing was like a meteor striking the center of the world creating a purple mushroom cloud.

The rest of the decade saw Prince release album after album of wonderful, chart topping pieces of art. Around The World In A Day, released in 1985, was his Sgt. Pepper. A psychedelic vibe flowed through fantastic songs such as "Raspberry Beret", "Pop Life" and "America". This really piqued my interest as to where Prince was now leading us. My first musical love affair was with The Beatles. Around The World In A Day was my cup of tea!

He then followed up with Parade in 1986. The album saw Prince further diversifying musically by adding orchestrations to his music. The song "Kiss' was THE song summer. He was now light years from his earlier sound and I was digging it.

Sign O' The Times, released in 1987, was the album I was waiting for! In my opinion it is his finest recording. The album's music draws on funk, soul, pop and rock. It was a double album that seemed to have everything that Prince represented up to that point. It was universally applauded by critics and the fans loved it. Prince ended the 80s with two more albums, Lovesexy and Batman. It was one hell of ride in a decade that also shot Michael Jackson and Madonna to stardom.

Prince continued to release albums until his passing. He never quite reached the heights he had climbed in the 80s though. That is a shame. Though I did not care much for some of his work in the 90s, he once again blew my mind with his 2004 release, Musicology. It was the sound of Prince reaching back to the artists that inspired him in his youth. What followed was a run of albums that all seemed to honor his past. 3121, Planet Earth, Lotusflow3r, MPLSound, Plectrumelectrum, HITnRUN Phase One and his swansong HITnRUN Phase Two were all fantastic reminders of what made Prince the artist that broke down barriers. He has earned his place on the Mount Rushmore of musicians.

So many wonderful memories are attached to an era when purple was the most cherished color. Many people have reached out to me in the past 24 hours with messages about how they thought of me as soon as they heard of his passing. They too have shared the magic of Prince with me through the years. My lip syncing days to the Purple Rain album was that of legend at the summer camp I attended for years. To this day I will shake my “thang” when a Prince song is played in a club or bar. I will miss the feeling I would get when I would experience a new Prince album for the first time. I have the memories though. I now REALLY know what it sounds like when doves cry!