Prince wasn’t just a beloved musician, he was the king of weird.
The Purple One had a magnetic personality that radiated both on-and offstage — making him a pop-culture icon for the ages.
While he’ll forever be known for hits such as “When Doves Cry,” “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Little Red Corvette,” many people will remember Prince as the man who refused to believe in time, forbade journalists from recording his interviews and enjoyed strange food combinations — including spaghetti and orange juice.
It was this quirky attitude and over-the-top lifestyle that cemented his position as one of the greatest artists ever.
HIS NEW YORK CITY CONNECTION
Prince may be from Minnesota, but he got his big break in the Big Apple.
Wanting to make it in the music biz, he set off for New York City as a teenager — eventually scoring a record deal with Warner Bros. at age 18.
In a candid interview with The Post in 1985, Prince (shown visiting New York City in 1988) described what motivated him to be such a talented — and sexually-charged — musician.
“There is a reason I’m doing these songs,” he said. “I’m coming to grips with myself and I want to tell the truth.”
RELIGION
Despite his raunchy reputation, Prince was a conservative Christian who once went door to door proselytizing on behalf of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Minneapolis-born bad boy converted to Jehovah in 2001 and later, in an interview with The New Yorker, he described reactions he got spreading the good word.
THE SYMBOL
One of the uber-eccentric singer’s most bizarre moments occurred in 1993, when he changed his name to this unpronounceable symbol.
For six years, the legendary guitarist referred to himself as the indecipherable glyph that unified the male and female symbols into the image.
The move stemmed from a dispute with his record label, Warner Bros. — and he was referred to as the “Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”
His publicist at the time, Garvey Rich, told The Post that the change had reporters and p.r. agents pulling out their hair.
“Only Prince could make news by changing his name to a symbol which literally forced the news wires to upgrade their systems to insert the graphic symbol into their text feeds,” Rich said.
Prince went back to his old moniker in May 1999 — after his publishing contract with Warner Bros. ended.
HE HOOPSTER
He pranced around in high heels on stage, but on the basketball court, he was all business.
A newspaper article posted online by the Minneapolis Star Tribune features a photo of the 5-foot-2 musician posing with his high-school basketball team and outlines his career on the court.
“Though music was his calling, Prince mostly hung around with the jocks at Bryant Junior High and Central High,” it reads. “He was good enough as a freshman to make the Central junior varsity basketball team.”
In 2004, Comedy Central aired a sketch on “Chappelle’s Show” that featured comic Charlie Murphy recalling a time when he and his friends got slaughtered by Prince and The Revolution in a game of pickup basketball — and how the singer grilled them all pancakes afterward.
IN HIS PRIME
The release of “Purple Rain” in 1984 was the pinnacle of Prince’s career and started his reign as one of music’s most eccentric style icons — as he donned a purple trench coat and demanded that no one else wear his signature color.
“He was the only one who could wear purple,” designer Cynthia Vargas Sieloff said. “I had to dress his band and The Time [his opening act] in other colors.”
While she was making the star’s trench coat, she discovered she had only plaid. So Prince flew her from Minnesota to Los Angeles, where she purchased $10,000 of purple material in which to dress him.
HIS FATHER AND FAMILY
Born the son of a half-black, half-Italian jazz-band leader and a female vocalist, Prince was one of the most naturally gifted musicians of all time.
His father, John Nelson, met his mother Mattie Della Shaw, in 1956 at a show in Minneapolis. Shaw went on to become the singer in Nelson’s band.
When Nelson divorced Shaw and moved out, he left behind his piano — sowing the seeds for Prince’s love of music. At age 7, Prince taught himself to tickle the ivories and the rest is history.
BOOZER
The rocker rented a West Hollywood mansion from Chicago Bulls player Carlos Boozer in 2004, then did a slew of Prince-style renovations to the home — and wound up paying the NBA star $1 million to smooth things over.
Prince installed a new front gate with his inimitable symbol, turned the master bedroom into a hair salon and ran purple water through the estate’s fountains.
ROLLER SKATING
Prince was an avid roller skater who owned a mesmerizing pair of light-up skates and threw rink parties for celebs.
Questlove, the drummer for and leader of The Roots, recalled in his book, “Mo’ Meta Blues,” that Prince invited him to a skating party “in the middle of nowhere” with a few pals.
After about an hour, Questlove saw Prince arrive carrying a briefcase. “He clicked the lock and opened it, and took out the strangest, most singular pair of roller skates I had ever seen,” Questlove said. “They were clear skates that lit up, and the wheels sent a multicolored spark trail into your path.”
PING PONG
Prince once played ping pong with Michael Jackson in a recording studio and trash-talked the music legend for playing the game like “Helen Keller.”
“You want me to slam it?” Prince taunted Jacko, according to former sound engineer David Z.
“Michael drops his paddle and holds his hands up in front of his face so the ball won’t hit him,” Z said. “Michael walks out . . . and Prince starts strutting [and says], ‘Did you see that? He played like Helen Keller.’ ”
Written By Post Staff
Source: The New York Post
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