American musician Prince on the cover of his 1993 album The Hits /The B-Sides
Photo: Paisley Park; Warner Bros
Who was the mysterious artist known, among other things, as Prince?
Last year, an epic Netflix documentary was blocked by the late musician’s estate for its too-negative take on this question.
As a fan himself, Prince biographer Matt Thorne is “torn” about never getting to see the film and also sympathetic towards efforts to protect the musician’s image.
“There are fans who just want to see it because it’s like, ‘Great, nine hours of Prince.’ There are fans who desperately don’t want it to be released because they don’t want the general public to have a negative view of Prince.”
In the meantime, he says, the wildly prolific songwriter revealed a lot about himself in his song lyrics.
“He was a very autobiographical lyric writer. He almost always writes about himself… He’ll change things, but he’s really surprisingly direct. Quite often in the second or third verse of a song, you’ll find he’s being very truthful in a surprising way” Thorne tells Charlotte Ryan.
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Matt Thorne, author of Prince: The Man and His Music
Photo: David Jones 大卫 琼斯
Due to the manner of his death – a seemingly accidental overdose of painkillers at 57 – it’s easy to present Prince’s story as a dark one, Thorne says.
From people who’ve seen the authorised Netflix documentary, he’s heard that Oscar-winning documentary director Ezra Edelman seems to take quite a negative view of Prince’s psyche.
“[It seems] there’s an attempt to psychoanalyse Prince and there’s an attempt to resolve him as a mystery. There’s a particular solution that’s presented as resolving the Prince mystery.
“What I understand is a lot of it is about the loneliness and isolation of creativity and how Prince’s parents might have had an impact … his domestic situation as a child may have had an impact on the music that he subsequently created.”
American musician Questlove, who was interviewed for the Netflix film, told the New York Times he had to speak to his therapist after seeing the documentary because it was so disturbing to him as a fan.
Prince biographer John Bream, who was also interviewed, stated Edelman and his producers pressed him to talk about times when Prince was “less than cordial”.
“[Bream] felt that they were sort of digging for a negative perspective or at least trying to say Prince had quite a combative relationship. The director and the producers were presenting it to him like, ‘This must have really upset you,’ and he was just like ‘Oh no, it’s fine. That’s just who he was. That was his character’.”
Prince (aka Prince Rogers Nelson)
Photo: NPG Records
Thorne’s acclaimed biography Prince was published in 2012, four years before the musician’s death.
In an updated edition released this year, he includes stories from Prince’s final years, including a report from a Kiwi woman who saw “sadness” in the late musician during his final 2016 Piano & a Microphone tour.
Of the dozens of Prince acquaintances Thorne interviewed for his book – including managers, confidants and girlfriends – some were frustrated with him or found him annoying, he says, but not many were left really upset by his behaviour.
“I was getting lots of people saying, ‘The time I spent with him was the greatest part of my life and I’ll remember it forever.'”
In interviews himself, Prince was “very cryptic”, Thorne says, and repeatedly said ‘the rearview mirror’s broken off’ to avoid talking about the past.
To him, this doesn’t confirm Prince’s story as primarily a sad one.
“He had an incredible life. He created an incredible body of work. He was so generous. He did so much for his fans. He gave so much to everybody. I think the idea of a documentary that casts him in a negative light doesn’t seem to me to tell the whole story.”
Matt Thorne’s favourite Prince songs:
‘Crystal Ball’
This 1998 track is no less than “Prince’s greatest personal achievement”, Thorne says.
“It was so ambitious, adventurous. He recorded it shortly after Sign O The Times, I believe, with a 40-piece orchestra. It’s about 10 minutes long but it’s still really funky and a really great song … Prince considered it his finest work himself and thought it was the best thing he ever recorded.”
‘Erotic City’
“If I was DJing and wanted to put a song on and get everybody off the dance floor it’s the ‘Erotic City’, which is my absolute favourite song.”
