Music has always been central to my life, it's always on in the car, home and as often as not whilst writing up treatments and stuff whilst working too. However, despite trying and wishing to play a few instruments, just one would have sufficed, the piano, trumpet, drums and the violin, they were not to be. My violin teacher quietly informed my mother that the violin was probably not my thing, especially as I was more keen on keeping biscuits in the handy case compartment that should really should have housed the bow resin.
Amongst an orchestration of talents, Prince was a virtuoso upon any instrument he cared to choose. Astonishingly, he played almost every instrument on all his albums, in addition to writing, producing and performing them too.
For me, I graduated to immersing myself in radio, recording the Top 40 on Sundays and listening to stations all over including RTL, and even the Police, as you could then.
Soon my friend and I pretended to have our own pirate radio station. We recorded our own radio shows on cassettes, rigged the tape player wired to an Exchange & Mart MW transmitter and strapped it up in a bag in the nearest forest.
It was only a short step from here to 1987 where I found myself in Mandela Street setting up MTV Europe and was engulfed in the immense widescreen sounds of the '80's. From Ska to Punk, to Disco to rap to progressive rock to New Age to Independent and er, Chas and Dave. The ever increasing breadth of charts in that period must have accounted for the culling of several forests in order for NME to keep up.
Prince was one of the biggest stars of that period, releasing Sign o' the Times shortly before we went to air. Despite my being a huge lover for all that was the '80's, Prince never quite did it for me. I probably wasn't cool enough, I was more into the unfashionable progressive rock.
However, many moons later Prince did a residency for one month (21 days) at the O2 and a cousin had a spare ticket. It would have been churlish and dumb not to go and I was transformed to a follower.
It was an astonishing performance by someone who was so on top of his game and in control, he was just playing about clearly having a ball and enjoying the freedom of mixing it up throughout the night and every other night. No two nights were the same, many people went to every show and remained struck by the excitement and extraordinary level of his performances at each.
There were two blow away moments, first the sheer number of hits which I had forgotten yet were deeply entrenched in my psyche. These were being teased by Prince, by playing just a few bars before he changed and went to another, then another, then another. He never liked playing old stuff, but the tease was joyous for us and clearly him too.
The second were the aftershows, the encores. The show ended stage lights off etc. then a classic reprise and the band, Prince and light show returned for another short set. But they all went off again and house lights came up, 80% of the audience left and Prince came back on again delivering another 20mins or so and it happened a further 3 times on our night, just Prince with the house lights. Each one was astonishing and pure fun.
The media had painted Prince as being a very inhuman, withdrawn and a self obsessed character. On stage, the very reverse appeared true. In each element of this show, he spoke often, and seemingly ad lib, very charming indeed.
Prince who died today, an astonishing, endlessly creative and immeasurably talented artist. He was so packed full of talent, everything he did appeared effortless.
Enjoy your life, do what you love.
Great Telegraph article by Neil McCormick: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/prince-its-hard-to-accept-well-never-see-him-on-stage-again/