When Prince was found early this morning outside his awesome ( but lifeless) body the LA Times must have been half asleep when they put up the following headline and news item in the paper. Online, it went up at 9:30 as if Prince was very much alive. Minneapolis time aside, it was a mistake to put up the piece without talking to the beautiful one. Maybe they could've saved his life. Steven Scott, 32, of Eden Prairie, said he was at Paisley Park last Saturday for Prince's dance party. He called Prince "a beautiful person" whose message was that people should love one another. "He brought people together for the right reasons," Scott said.
My surprise in all this is that he had just announced that he was writing a memoir. This is the wording in the LA Times piece:
Prince is writing a memoir, 'The Beautiful Ones.'
Talk about purple prose. Bertrand Guay / AFP/Getty Images will publish a book about his life (electric word, "life"). He's come a long way from working in that five-and-dime for Mr. McGee. Prince, the pop legend and Minneapolis' favorite son, is writing the story of his life as the publisher announced Monday. The Purple One broke the news Friday at an ad-hoc press conference in a New York nightclub. "The good people of Random House have made me an offer I can't refuse," the singer told the audience, according to the New Yorker. "You all still read books, right?" (Spiegel ; Grau is an imprint of Random House.) The artist formerly known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince told the crowd that his memoir would be called "The Beautiful Ones," which fans will recognize as the title of the third track from his blockbuster album "Purple Rain." Prince, 57, has been known for decades for his unclassifiable music, which blends elements of rock, funk, jazz, pop and rhythm and blues. The musician has sold more than 100 million records globally, and has also starred in four movies, including the hits "Purple Rain" and "Sign o' the Times."
"Prince is a towering figure in global culture and his music has been the soundtrack for untold numbers of people including me for more than a generation," executive editor Chris Jackson said in a news release. "Millions of words have been written about Prince" books and articles, essays and criticism but we're thrilled to be publishing Prince's powerful reflections on his own life in his own incandescently vivid, witty, and poetic voice." The news release from Spiegel & Grau said that Prince's memoir "will take readers on an unconventional and poetic journey through his life and creative work from the family that shaped him and the people, places, and ideas that fired his creative imagination, to the stories behind the music that changed the world." Prince is collaborating on the book with Dan Piepenbring, a journalist who works as the Web editor for the Paris Review. The collaboration has the potential to be fraught, reports Prince's hometown newspaper, the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune. "He's never easy to collaborate with," music editor Jon Bream wrote. "Prince is accustomed to being in control and always getting his way." Bream also speculated that the famously private musician would write a "selective" book. "We're more likely to get an episodic memoir like Bob Dylan's 'Chronicles: Volume One,' a nonlinear, incomplete account of select key moments in his life and career," he wrote. Prince's memoir is scheduled for release in the fall of 2017.
This is probably all up in the air at present. I, for one, hope that it's possible for someone to carry through but I have a distinct feeling that the words, "The Beautiful Ones" may be all we'll get and maybe that's the way it should be. Prince was mostly chic mystique... and great music, of course.
My surprise in all this is that he had just announced that he was writing a memoir. This is the wording in the LA Times piece:
This is probably all up in the air at present. I, for one, hope that it's possible for someone to carry through but I have a distinct feeling that the words, "The Beautiful Ones" may be all we'll get and maybe that's the way it should be. Prince was mostly chic mystique... and great music, of course.
The Castle Lady
