Prince Pulls A Prince, Deletes All Social Media Accounts
Many artists have woven mystery into their public persona. From the total anonymity of graffiti artist Banksy to the coy concealment of Aphex Twin, a culture figure's self-seclusion can drive fans wild with visions of secret plans and hidden masterpieces. Few musicians fit this description better than Prince--the R&B legend has always cut a delicate balance of half mystic, half marquee name. Rumors of complete, unreleased albums and hours of scrapped studio jams have circulated for decades. Search for rare gems like "Billy" or "Moonbeam Levels" and you might luck out and find a shoddy ripped audio stream online, or, more likely, a Youtube window full of static and the words "This Video Does Not Exist." For the die-hard's, there's even an entire online vault dedicated to keeping up with what Prince is keeping from us.
For Prince fans, this chase after unheard archival funk will always thrill, but ultimately the lack of closure leads to heartbreak. It's practically a given that Prince's full secret stash of recordings will either die with him or else be chopped up into memorial collections and sold to completists for massive profits like we've seen with Jimi Hendrix's late catalog. Time is not on our side, and with the Purple One recently retreating from social media and resorting to a "surprise show" touring approach, it seems as if Prince is prepared to keep us in the dark for the foreseeable future.
But a new report aims to change all that. Drawing on the testimony of former Paisley Park sound engineers Hans Martin-Buff and Susan Rogers, saxophonist and long-time Prince collaborator Eric Leeds and many others, the BBC has assembled a sprawling, brilliant story on Prince's hidden vault of material. In the story, Prince emerges as a relentless worker. "I never knew I had a day off," Martin-Buff told the BBC. "I carried a pager. It could beep at any time of the day or night. If Prince wanted to record, I would set everything up and he would go for it."
Leeds told the British new service a story of an entirely instrumental album that almost was. "We worked on a whole bunch of instrumentals and Prince threw it all to me and said, 'Make me an album.' I actually sequenced the record. There was one 45-minute jam called Junk Music. The project was going to be called The Flesh and it was the greatest thing in the world in Prince's mind. That lasted about three days. Then Prince got bored and the record got shelved."
As the full report continues, stories of beautiful ballads painstakingly recorded--and then erased--emerge, and the piece ends with a note of mystery; the only person who knows the full story is Prince himself. Still, it's a fascinating read, a must for any Prince fan and a glimmer of hope for funk-lovers who hope to live in an even purpler world.
You can Read the BBC's full story here, and listen to the entire 55 minute investigative report here.
