Dec 31, 2016

PRINCE...and goodbye, 2016.

This will probably be my last entry here for a while, and possibly my last entry in this series, period.  It’s been fun challenging myself within the blogosphere, yet more and more I find I am far too occupied with the business of life to spend much time here.  Which, of course, is not a negative thing.

I thought about several directions and/or approaches I could take with this entry, my usual preference being to write about the best albums of the year.  While 2016 was an unbelievably good time for music, there were so many great records released, I’m not really sure I can narrow it down to a workable “top 20” list, as I’d be neglecting too many necessary selections.  From Childish Gambino to Solange to Tribe Called Quest and so on and so forth, 2016 was a year where revolutionary consciousness fully entered the mainstream again, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.  Yet it also marked the loss of someone who almost certainly had more of a creative and personal impact on me than any other individual from the world of popular music.

Prince.

When Bowie died earlier in the year, I immediately went to work, learning songs of his, putting together a tribute show, and writing an entry here very shortly after his passing.  But Prince?  I’d lived with and inside his music obsessively for most of my adult life, and I can truly say that he is one of the most fundamental reasons I write, play and perform my own music today.  When I found out he was gone, the air left the room.  That evening, myself, my wife, and a very small circle of friends gathered at the house, ostensibly for what I suppose was a sort of Irish wake for the Purple One, listening to his records and even jamming a few of his songs live.  I am thankful for everyone in that room on that night, because I felt as though something had been torn from the very essence of who I am.

When I first heard Prince, I didn’t get it.  His genius was so far beyond my realm of understanding, I may as well have been trying to wrap my head around nuclear physics.  It wasn’t until one of my oldest and closest friends took me aside, and said, “Dylan.  Listen.”  He played me “Bambi,” “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad,” and “Lady Cab Driver.”  I was a serious lead guitar fanatic in those days, and so, as you can imagine, that kind of sealed the deal for me.

I became a man possessed.  I bought every record, sought out every concert, watched every film.  With each subsequent album of his I dug into, I realized more and more the scope of his accomplishments, the versatility of his song-craft, the endless innovation of his musical virtuosity.  Yet more intensely than that, I started to understand things about myself that previously had felt confusing, or convoluted, or in disarray.  People speak frequently about Prince’s penchant for extreme sexuality, and while there’s no denying that aspect of his persona, it was his emotional vulnerability and sensitivity that drew me in.

After this initial flood of catalytic musical inspiration, I went deeper.  The time period where I became a Prince fanatic coincided with the time period where I began finding my own path as a musician, and so after a few years of woodshedding and playing with various bands, I struck out on my own, with a formidable arsenal of Prince covers at the ready.  Learning how to play his songs—solo, and on a bass, no less—led me to new places in terms of my interpretation of Prince and the increasingly large space his music occupied in my life.  Eventually, it opened the door for me to begin writing my own songs, and while the number of influences that pushed me in that direction is ridiculously crowded and diverse, I think I can authoritatively say that, without Prince, I never would have started writing.  Never would have had the confidence.  Never would have thought that I could bare my soul over on-the-one funk.  Never would have spit game at a girlfriend over my own grooves.  Never would have believed that who I was, and who I wanted to be, were valid or viable choices.

Years passed.  Prince became part of the wallpaper of my life, B-Sides and bootlegs overflowing in the crates.  No band that I led would ever play a show without doing at least 2-3 Prince songs in our set.  At Dolly and I’s wedding, our bridesmaids and groomsmen danced down the aisle to “I Wanna Be Your Lover.”  We all wore purple.  My friend Barry—also gone now—and I would talk for hours about our favorite deep cuts, why he liked “Under The Cherry Moon” and why I didn’t, why I felt the need to include “She’s Always In My Hair” on every single mix I ever made.  (That’s an easy answer…it’s my favorite Prince song, of all time, ever.)  I’d play shows with my friend Julian, a frequent Prince impersonator, and he’d bring the house down no matter the venue or crowd, in the style of old-school showmanship that Prince perfected and that seems so rare now.  All this is to say, Prince and his music took on a life of their own within my life, which I know was also the case for so many others throughout the world.  How beautiful, and unlikely, is that?  Some kid from Minneapolis brings the world closer together?

Then—just like that—he was gone.  A magnificent source of love, and hope, was suddenly absent from the universe.  So distant then did immediately seem the days of my own youth, when his music was my solace from all the stillborn relationships, the murky waters of immaturity, the ecstatic sunshine-filled excesses, the dark nights of the soul. 

I can now only say thank you, and I am not quite sure if those words are enough.  I couldn’t have made it here without you, Prince.  I am still figuring out my path through this strange and bitter world, and feel so woefully inadequate at times that I don’t know where to turn.  Then I play one of your records, and it all sort of drifts away, and I hear it as though I’m listening for the first time, and all the heartbreak and joy and love and pain feel exciting again, and I sing and dance and laugh and cry, and I miss you terribly and I never knew you.  I write this for you now and thank you is not enough.

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