Prince

Oh no. First Bowie, now Prince.

This is what is sounds like, when the doves cry.

It's hard to believe that such a feisty, fabulous ball of energy could be extinguished like that, at the age of fifty seven.

Prince was a creative genius.

He sold over one hundred million records, and not only wrote around one thousand songs in his own name, but hundreds for other artists (Nothing Compares to You and Manic Monday, amongst many others).

Prince didn't have it easy. He had epilepsy as a child, but still managed to write his first song at the age of seven.

He mixed his first album at nineteen, arranging, composing and playing all the twenty seven instruments on the recording.

Prince's first child, Boy Gregory, with Mayte Garcia (his backing singer and dancer), died at only a week old. He never had another baby, or a long term, successful relationship.

I went to see Prince on his Purple Rain tour. I was only fifteen. I remember him being tiny, but his energy filled a football stadium, with oodles to spare.

He danced like a banshee for several hours in six inch heeled boots, only pausing from time to time to throw his microphone to the floor and hump it. I was agog. Blown away.

Prince was a rebel. A true individual.

Not only did he decide to change his name, but he changed it to a symbol, thereby forcing everyone to describe his as 'The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.'

(This caused some hilarity when he eventually reverted to Prince, thereby becoming 'The Artist Formerly Known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.')

Prince also enabled us to share that rebel spirit.

If ever I wanted to feel naughty, wild, out there, all I had to do was to put 'Darling Nikki' on the record player (remember those?) and sing along...

I met her in a hotel lobby

Masturbating with a magazine

(It was that song that encouraged Tipper Gore to found the Parents Music Resource Center which led to 'Parental Advisory' stickers on album covers).

But you know the really amazing thing about Prince?

Creativity, fame, adversity, rebelliousness, individuality, rock and roll - all things we tend to associate with drink and drugs - and yet Price was, by all accounts, completely teetotal. He never touched alcohol.

I guess it figures. How else could he have achieved so much in just fifty seven years?

Prince said, in an NME interview, "I know those paths of excess, drugs, sex and alcohol - all those experiences can be funky, they can be very funky, but they’re just paths, a diversion, not the answer…”

You will always live on for me, Prince. I don't want to think of you as a dead body stuck in an elevator...

....I only want to see you bathing in the purple rain.

Love to you all,

SM x