"Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" (Hamlet Act 5 Scene 2)
Prince Rogers Nelson has joined the mass movement among our icons to leave us this year.
Price passed away Thursday morning, April 21, 2016. He was only 57, and there is no irony in "only."
This time we have lost a 7-time Grammy winner, a unique person born with a unique talent over which he labored until it was unworldly.
On everything, he wrote it, he performed it, he produced it. All of it. He was a complete musical world unto himself.
And he was perhaps the most beautiful man whose eyes I have ever looked into. Even through paper or cyberspace, the power of his beauty to knock me down and breathless was overwhelming.
"Purple Rain" from 1985 is the song that was for most people their introduction to Prince although he began performing and recording long before, releasing his first album in 1978. Below in the video of Prince performing this emblematic song "Purple Rain" in a downpour of ordinary rain, though to me no rain is ordinary, at the Super Bowl in 2007. About working in the rain, Prince just said he wished that it had rained harder.
And he was perhaps the most beautiful man whose eyes I have ever looked into. Even through paper or cyberspace, the power of his beauty to knock me down and breathless was overwhelming.
"Purple Rain" from 1985 is the song that was for most people their introduction to Prince although he began performing and recording long before, releasing his first album in 1978. Below in the video of Prince performing this emblematic song "Purple Rain" in a downpour of ordinary rain, though to me no rain is ordinary, at the Super Bowl in 2007. About working in the rain, Prince just said he wished that it had rained harder.
Standing next to Dhani Harrison, George's son, whom you'd recognize anywhere, is Prince during this tribute to George Harrison that took place when he himself was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. Prince has a guitar solo begins around 3:18 and goes to over 6-minute end. That's a three-minute solo. And this is what is called A MOMENT.
If there should be any skeptic out there, Prince in this solo, should wipe you out like "Out! Damn spot! Out I say!" (The Bard's Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 1). The red hat allows you to step off the stairway, right into Heaven.
And then there is this above. "Motherless Child." Paul Robeson sang it. Mahalia Jackson sang it. Odetta sang it. And in 1999, when he was 41, Prince sang it. This performance demonstrates that he belongs in the company of the greats.
There is no way to comprehend how much genius, talent, gift this man who was truly beautiful has taken with him. I'm not even sure we can comprehend all the work he left, so much about to be discovered.
Prince, you have no idea how grieved and shocked we are, the loss we feel. I don't think we have any idea yet either.
Godspeed.
