THE BEAUTIFUL ONES - PRINCE

We were robbed. I knew that before I read this book, but it’s all the more clear now. We knew the moment Prince died (the day before my birthday) that we were robbed a few decades of untouchable, god-level music. People like me had robbed ourselves into never seeing Prince live in-person. In terms of general vibes, the loss has been devastating. However, we’ve now learned that we were also robbed of a great Prince book. Dan Piepenbring (who, I’m just now learning, also helped Tom O’Neill write CHAOS. Get out of my head Dan), the Paris review editor and co-author of this book, met with Prince a few times about the project but Prince passed before anything substantial could be done. Piepenbring illuminates the whole processes of meeting Prince and getting the job and the conversations they had before his passing. Prince talks about how he wants this book to be a guide for musicians to avoid exploitation in the music business, and/or a book about his mom/dad, and/or an annotation of his lyrics, and/or a more traditional autobiography and/or a “guide to the brilliant community” (my favorite, he never explains what “the brilliant community” is. I assume it’s like MLK’s “beloved community” but sexier). Sadly, we get almost none of this, or, to be more generous, a mini-sampler. Prince writes 7 chapters about his early life, which are reproduced in photocopies of the literal pages Prince wrote them on, as well as typed version that includes the Prince idiosyncrasies like using 2’s and 4’s and U’s and 👁. It’s a little hard to read but it’s funny to think that Prince did this always. It’s pretty interesting too. Prince’s first kiss was with a YT girl in racist  Minnesota, his first memory is his mother winking at him, his teachers wouldn’t call him “Prince” (more racism) so they called him “Skipper”. All fascinating, Prince had a good sense of what a reader would be interested in, it’s an immortal wound that we’ll never get to read his thoughts on the heights of his career or his thoughts on his musical peers (though he does shit on Bruce Springsteen, which is wonderful). The rest is filler. It’s photos and bric-a-brac that Piepenbring found at Paisley Park. Prince is like Rasputin or Che in that he never photographs less than perfectly and many are of a young upstart Prince. It was really enduring to see that he photographed the literal “Sunset Blvd” sign, so obviously glamoured by LA. There are some interesting storyboards for Purple Rain, but the whole book can be read in a day and if you only wanted pics, I’m sure there’s no shortage of Prince photo books (to say nothing of google image). Either way, Prince is immortal. 1999 doves.