WWHAHDD

Was the artist “Prince” nice in person?
I don’t think the word “nice” is one I’d use. He could be charming, playful; tender, funny and sometimes remarkably open to people he was close to. He had an ability to get what he wanted.

But he was incredibly demanding; band members, engineers, girlfriends were all in thrall to his talent and their personal lives were severely curtailed by the fact that Prince might call upon them at any time of the day or night to record; sometimes only mere hours after he’d ended a session; he juggled girlfriends, and they were expected to come when he called and if they didn’t, he genuinely could not understand that they might not be content to have their lives revolve around his; and he would just call another; which would put pressure on them to come so that he wouldn’t call someone else; which is hardly a healthy situation and not something that people were able to put up with forever.

He worked with great talent in bands like the Time and Vanity 6; but he paid them very low, about $250 per week; and everyone’s talent was subservient to his and he was not above putting others’ talent down to keep them under his control.

And when they moved towards independence, he usually did not react well. Morris Day, his high school friend, his original drummer and talented frontman for the Time was convinced that Prince was trying to destroy his career after he left the Time.

Oddly, the one thing he could respect is when someone left his orbit for religious reasons: he supported Dez Dickerson, for example who left his band out of discomfort with Prince’s racy lyrics. And there were others with similar issues.

To a musician, or engineer working with Prince, he was an exacting band-leader and producer, and he didn’t deal with others’ mistakes well at all.

He had little patience for unprofessionalism; but he himself would regularly leave people waiting. Engineers would wait for him for hours in the studio after he’d ask them to come to the studio. This was in the age before cell-phones, mind.

When angry he could severely dress down a subordinate; and everyone else would be too afraid to stand up for them. He was very competitive, and if someone was better in ping-pong or basketball and beat him, he would not be happy at all.

He also was not always generous with credits with band members and could sometimes take credit for others’ ideas.. They were usually honored if he used one of their ideas in a song, but some of them felt they deserved more credit. Andre Cymone felt that the early 80s R&B ballad “Do Me Baby”, was completely his own composition and that Prince flat-out ripped him off. Apparently Prince let him use “The Dance Electric” for his 1984 album as a way to pay him back.

At the same time, though, sometimes he would credit co-writers who had had nothing to do with a song.

Not only that, but he was prone to just showing up to friends’ houses at any hour of the night just to hang out, or to play them a new song he’d done or really anything. Everyone was always “on call” with Prince, at least in the early part of his career. IN short, he was capricious, erratic, unpredictable and did things on a whim. He communicated best through music and did not always speak to those around him, even when he was working with them. Despite his virtuosity he lacked the skills to verbally communicate want he wanted from his band. The fact that that he was generally as good if not better than they were on their respective instruments added to this: once he sat down at the drums, bass or keyboards to show them, what he wanted it was over: they would stand there and watch as he just recorded the whole song by himself.

In the end, I think that almost the whole of Prince’s life was spent making music and there was little room for much else; human relationships took second fiddle to making music. He was a force of nature, a neverending whirlwind of musical energy. Had he been “nice”, I don’t think we’d be talking about him.