Thursday, April 21, 2016

Prince drawn on the pop music maps – Aftonbladet

Just minutes after the death news reached the world wrote the British journalist Tony Parsons the following on Twitter:

“Prince danced like Fred Astaire, played the guitar like Hendrix, wrote as good songs that Dylan and reefs as many barriers as Bowie. “

an equally adept as accurate 140-character summary of a career in very many ways exceptional.

Prince Rogers Nelson from Minneapolis in Minnesota was born June 7, 1958. his mother Mattie Della Shaw was a jazz singer and his father John L Nelson pianist and songwriter with the stage name Prince Rogers.

Started as a seven year old

Even as a seven year old Prince wrote his first song, “Funk Machine”, on his father’s piano. The influence of James Brown was obvious, and something that would come to characterize the whole Princes career.

The high school had the Prince his first band Grand Central, together with your buddies Andre Cymone and Morris Day , both of which would play significant roles in Princes musical career. Even when the band changed its name to Champagne and started writing his own songs was the basis for the open, eclectic approach to music that later became so characteristic of the Prince.

In the early 70s where the boundaries between black and white pop culture was much sharper than today mixed Champagne influences from Sly & amp; The Family Stone and Miles Davis with Carlos Santana Latin rock and Todd Rundgren’s peculiar pop.



First album in 1978

After some time with the band 94 East, where the Prince was able to record the original songs in the studio, he bought only 17 years old manager, with the ambition to make records as a solo artist.

Soon the Prince contract for three albums and the record company back then grabbed his young artist’s talent was obvious. He was given total artistic control and publishing rights to all of their recordings, a rare good deal.

In April 1978, the not yet 20 years old Prince’s debut album “For You”, which he in addition to writing, producing and arranging the songs also played all the instruments.

the disc contained the Princes first minor hit, “Soft and wet”, and already there are very large portions of both the unique PRINCE sound on location – the unique mix that often manages to be soul, funk, rock and pop at the same time – but also the classic Prince falsetto singing with a smart and personal twist on love and sex. Visually played Prince already on the androgynous, an influence from Little Richard , but also from David Bowie .



related to Rolling Stone

A major breakthrough came with the album “Prince” the following year, which went platinum and contained a million seller “I wanna be your lover.”

Early 80s albums “Dirty mind” and “Controversy” aroused some commotion for his sexually provocative texts (it is on the “Controversy” we find “Jack u off”, such as Robyn made an acclaimed cover of much later) and through joint tours to, among others, the Rolling Stones began Prince seriously build its reputation as an extraordinary live performer.

At the height of the 1982 double album “1999″ began Prince call his backing band the Revolution. Together with Michael Jackson “Billie Jean” was the single “Little Red Corvette”, the first video of a colored artist who received heavy rotation on MTV.



in 1984, he became a superstar

But it was in 1984 that the superstar Prince was born. With the album “Purple Rain”, he stopped being a one-man orchestra in the studio and let the band to take place. The classic title song is a live recording from a club in Minneapolis (a video with the breathtaking full-length version usually come and go on Youtube, well worth seeing if you can find it) and it is on this album he really blurs the boundaries between genres and presents something that is best described as simply “the Prince music”. Typical synths and drum machines dropped in and the music gets longer than ever to pop and rock in single hits like “Let’s Go Crazy” and “When Doves Cry”.

To date, the “Purple Rain” sold over 22 million copies.

in order to really sell the entertainer Prince was born the idea of ​​a feature film of the same name, in which the Prince plays his alter ego “the Kid”, but where it is largely about showing up Prince & amp; The Revolution on stage.



The band split

After the “Purple Rain” rolled successes only proceed with the psychedelic tinged abumet “Around the World in a Day”, which contained the hit “Raspberry Beret “and” Parade “, where minimalistfunkiga classic” Kiss “was included.

” Parade also served as the soundtrack to Princes second feature film, “Under the cherry moon,” a low-budget roll including being nominated for the “worst movie “the stinkers Bad Movie Awards.

at the same time shattered Prince the Revolution and assembled a partly new band of musicians before it would become what many critics agree that his artistic highlight: the 1987 double” Sign o ‘ the Times “.

Here are some numbers as the title song,” If I was your girlfriend, “” U Got the look “and” Starfish and coffee “, the very essence of the course, funky, soulful pop, seething emotional and ingenious musical blend that gave Prince a superhuman aura.

Three magical majkvällar at Hovet

Many of the lucky ones who saw the “Sign o ‘the Times” tour any of the three majkvällarna at Hovet in Stockholm that year still claim that they have never experienced anything better.

After the “Sign o ‘the Times” and it quickly made sequel “Love Sexy” became Prince projects more sweeping, more, more eccentric and harder to keep track of. In his Paisley Park studio he recorded boundless amounts of music in different styles to countless albums including several unreleased remained was released several years later or oozed out on bootlegs. He made the film “Graffiti Bridge” and the music for Tim Burton’s “Batman” film.

1991 “Diamonds and Pearls”, with new band the New Power Generation, contained hits like the chilling title track and sexy wayward ” Cream “and” Gett off “.

the following year, an album whose title was a symbol (commonly called” Love symbol “). Later Prince it one step further and made the symbol to its new name. In the absence of symbols called him the media for The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. A dispute with the record company Warner led to a series of albums that were released on her own label NPG.



Jackson, Madonna – and Prince

After his old publishing contracts had expired began Prince recalls the Prince in May 2000.

the 2000s were about the music distributed via the Internet, copyright battles, a number of more or less diffuse released discs of varying quality, an acclaimed Super Bowl gig in 2007, a series tokhyllade tours, including the one that took the Prince to the magical concert at the Way Out West 2011 (some holding it even higher than the Royal Court 1987).

2010 named the magazine Time Prince to one of the hundred most influential people in the world .

It was no exaggeration. Prince is one of the most significant influence on the modern popular music. He’s up there with Madonna and Michael Jackson and everyone who wanted to be both fonky and entertainers on stage have been influenced by him.

And musically deserve Prince de facto an even more recognition than he has already received. For the renowned Prince as a songwriter and singer missed the monumental breadth of his musicality remains removed from time to time, not least by the more rrockpräglade part of the music world.

As Eric Clapton :

– How it is to be the world’s best guitarist? I have no idea, ask Prince.

READ ALSO Markus Larsson: “Prince dead? Please tell me it’s not true “

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