"Everybody Wants Salvation of the Soul" - Religious Roots

I think the most challenging part of tracing Prince’s spiritual journey is gathering information about his earliest religious experiences. Luckily, several sources identify Park Avenue United Methodist Church in Minneapolis as the place where he attended Bible study as a child (I actually included the church in a past blog entry, “‘Around the World in a Day’ – Prince’s Spiritual Landmarks”). It was also the church that Prince returned to when he married his first wife, Mayte Garcia (who, by the way, will star in a VH1 reality show, “Hollywood Exes").

I would love to go through the church records to confirm Prince’s attendance. I also plan to speak with someone about the core beliefs that Prince would have been exposed to by attending the church. There are reports that Prince’s family classified themselves as Seventh Day Adventists, so it would be interesting to get more clarity about exactly where the family stood.

The Minnesota newspaper, Star Tribune, is a valuable source of information about this topic. I’ve found articles about Prince’s wedding and his half-brother’s funeral at the church. The newspaper also interviewed a former youth leader at the church who said the artist attended church camp. In my research, I’ve selected a specific group of magazines and newspapers to study for information about Prince, and how the media viewed him. I am going to think about adding the Star Tribune to that group.

I’ll keep you posted on my church research. Hopefully a trip to Minnesota will be in the near future!

“I Knew This Dude, He Was Very Cool” – Bios, Bios, Bios!

Every biographer knows that you have to check out what has already been written about your subject. When I started my book a few years ago, I made sure that I researched what was what out there on Prince. So far, I’ve read: "Dance Music Sex Romance: Prince: the First Decade" (Per Nilsen), "Possessed: the Rise and Fall of Prince" (Alex Hahn), "Purple Reign: The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" (Liz Jones), "Prince: A Thief in the Temple" (Brian Morton) and "Prince: A Life in Music" (Matthew Carcieri). In my opinion, Nilsen, Hahn and Jones provide the most substantial view of the artist.

Since the publication of the books above, and especially within the past two years, many more Prince books and documentaries have hit the market. Granted, many of them are “unauthorized” or “unofficial,” but it’s very interesting to see that there is still a great interest in Prince’s life. Luckily, none of the authors have tackled the spiritual angle in depth, so there is still room for my book. Also, no author has interviewed Prince for his or her biography, so I can still hold out hope to be the first!

It's that time again to do some reading. Whether or not there is new information remains to be seen, but so far, a lot of reviewers don’t seem to think so. Still there are a couple books that have received a positive response-- "Prince: Chaos, Disorder and Revolution" (Jason Draper) and "Prince: Inside the Music and Masks" (Ronin Ro). I’m also excited to read the more academic treatments of the subject, such as "Prince: the Making of a Pop Music Phenomenon" (Stan Hawkins) and
"The Lyrics of Prince Rogers Nelson: A Literary Look at a Creative, Musical Poet, Philosopher, And Storyteller" (Claude L. McInnis Jr. & C. Leigh McInnis).

Sometimes biographers will help each other out. For instance, Per Nilsen gave Alex Hahn access to his interviews. I would like to, at the very least, chat with some of these Prince authors. Years ago, I shared a little bit of my work with James E. Perone, who wrote "The Words and Music of Prince," and was delighted to hear that he agreed with my analysis of Prince’s spiritual journey. I think it’s great when writers support each other. I’ve reached out to Alex Hahn, but I haven’t heard back. Hopefully I will get to interact with other Prince biographers soon.

What is your favorite Prince biography so far?

“Why Should You Wait Any Longer?”—Getting Back On Track

It’s always humbling and terrifying when I post a new blog entry—especially after being inactive for some time. I am not off to a very good start toward my goal of regular blogging in 2012, but there’s still time!

Obviously, I need to create a schedule. I’ve decided to devote each Saturday to research, and I will summarize my progress/findings in a weekly Monday blog post (eventually, I want to work up to more than one post per week).

So, what’s new? Well, in my absence, I’ve continued my freelance writing, and I got a full-time job managing social media for a customer relationship management company. The position has kept me quite busy, but I hope to apply what I’m learning to my Prince-related social media efforts. I’d like to get more involved with fansites prince.org and princefams.com; podcasts Purple Knights and Peach & Black ; and Prince-related Twitter personalities like @drfunkenberry and @2_tha_9s. If you have any suggestions of others to follow, please let me know!

In terms of interviews, I tried contacting Denise Matthews (a.k.a. Vanity of the Prince-created girl group "Vanity 6") multiple times. Prince’s former press agent Howard Bloom considered Matthews a friend, and suggested that mentioning that I’d interviewed him may help. Unfortunately, she has not responded, and I don’t expect her to. She didn’t respond to Alex Hahn for his biography on Prince; I just don’t think she talks to the press about Prince. Besides, she probably has to parcel out her time carefully; she still does dialysis three times per week, according to her website.

I’m getting a bit anxious about talking to Larry Graham. I’ve been in touch with his management for over a year now. We haven’t been able to set anything up. I know he’s been busy with his “Funk Around the World” tour. Hopefully we’ll get in touch when that winds down.

I was happy to locate producer Chris Moon and engineer Steve Fontano
online. As most Prince fans know, they worked on the artist’s first album. I’d love to interview them. I’m also planning to contact guitarist Mike Scott, who played guitar with Prince during the “Musicology” era.

I was most excited to learn that Jill Jones, Prince’s backup singer during the 1980s is following me on Twitter! I hope to talk to her. I may be wrong about this, but I don’t think she has given any extensive interviews about Prince in recent years.

I’m going to choose one day per week to write interview questions for a few people before I contact them. As I learned from contacting Roberta Burroughs to schedule an
interview a couple months ago, some people may be ready to talk on the spot!

I’ll let you know what happens!

Peace y’all. Stay funky!

Follow me on Twitter: @miss_ethompson

"Let's Work!" - New Website, Chat with Roberta Burrows

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working on my new website, ericawrites.com, and it’s finally done! It primarily showcases my published music articles. I have imported this blog into the website, so you will be able to get “A Purple Day in December” content in two places (I will still remodel the blog site in the near future). As I mentioned earlier, I’m hoping that my website will increase my chances of securing interviews.

I didn’t need any help getting in touch with Roberta Burrows on Sunday. Roberta was director of publicity at Warner Bros., and worked on some of Prince’s early projects. In our interview, Howard Bloom suggested that I contact her. I reached Roberta at the first phone number I called!

Unfortunately, Roberta didn’t have any direct contact with Prince, due to his reluctance to do much publicity. As a result, she wasn’t really able to speak to his spiritual journey. However, she gave me some good tips. She suggested that I try to contact Vanity Fair contributing editor Lisa Robinson, who is an extremely experienced and knowledgeable music journalist. Roberta also suggested music critic Dave Marsh. Based on my experience interviewing Rolling Stone writers about Prince, I know that music journalists can provide a lot of insight about the way Prince was perceived by the media and public over the years.

Roberta really encouraged me to get in touch with journalist Tavis Smiley, a good friend of Prince’s. That is probably the next thing that I should do!

I also need to make a plan for how/when I will go through my list of sources. I’d like to emphasize interviewing during the first six months of this year, and extensive writing during the last half of the year.

Of course all of the major players in Prince’s life are on my list, but do you have any suggestions for people who are easy to overlook?

Thanks for reading!

"Beginning Endlessly"- Continuing the Journey

So, it’s December 31, 2011. I have yet to reach my goal of meeting and interviewing Prince, but I think I’ve achieved a lot. You can check out details of my progress here. To summarize, I have expanded my book through my work in graduate school at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. There’s a lot more to be done, but I’ve added a solid amount based on extensive research on Prince’s media coverage and my interview with Gayle Chapman (I will incorporate what I’ve learned from chatting with Howard Bloom, shortly).

I have yet to secure a book publisher, but in all honesty, I haven’t devoted much time to that. Although going to school, contributing to Billboard and working have kept me away from that task, those experiences have helped me establish credibility as a journalist—something that I hope will help me secure more Prince-related interviews.

With that said, I am revising my goal to further expand my book and to meet the legendary musician in roughly two years, or on "a purple day in December" 2012. Here are just a few of my objectives for the New Year:

1. Redesign website—I am by no means a web design expert; I am learning with everyone else. However, I plan to make some changes to the site and attach it to my personal website with my other articles.
   
   
2. Incorporate more interactive media. I’ve dabbled in this with the Google Map , Twitter chat and audio of my radio interview , but I’d love to take it to the next level to connect more with readers and Prince fans.
   
   
3. Secure more interviews (obviously).
   
   
4. Get in touch with Tavis Smiley. Prince fans will know that the artist is a good friend of the media personality. Ebony magazine secured an interview with Prince with the help of Tavis Smiley, so it’s worth a try!
   
   
5. Turn in 160 pages of the book to my Master’s Professional Project committee at Ohio University.
   
   
6. Devote more time to research potential agents and book
   publishers.
   
   
7. Blog, Blog, Blog! That goes without saying. No more sporadic posts! It’s going to be tough because I always have so many things going on, but nothing worth having is ever easy.
   
   

See you in the New Year!

"Ol' Skool Company" - Interview with Howard Bloom

Here is my long-overdue post about my interview with Howard Bloom, Prince’s press agent during the 1980s. We chatted for about five hours at a coffee shop in Brooklyn last summer. It was amazing!

Bloom was a source for Alex Hahn's “Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince.” It was great to confirm Hahn’s information, and get more in-depth details. “I’m giving you a slightly broader context than I probably was able to give Alex at the time,” Bloom said.

While Hahn provides a general view of Prince’s life and career, I am obviously focusing on Prince’s spiritual journey. Therefore, I kept my line of questioning on that topic. When describing Prince’s “Purple Rain” tour, during which the artist had conversations with God onstage, Hahn quotes Bloom as saying, “Prince had been rebelling against God and morality, and now God and morality were taking him over.”

Through my interview, I learned that Bloom did not necessarily mean “God” in the literal sense, but more as a representation of Prince’s conscience, or more mature self. “In the metamorphoses from adolescence to adulthood, you go from rebelling against your father to becoming your father,” Bloom said. “And who represents the father? Who’s a convenient way to personalize the voice of the father inside of you? God.”

Bloom didn’t deny that Prince may have had a certain spiritual power in mind, but he couldn’t confirm it, especially since Prince never discussed spirituality with him. “My guess is that he was not ideological about any specific religion at all…It would take him some time before he found some specific [religion].”

I did ask him if he saw any evidence of Prince dabbling in the occult, which is a rumor among some fans. “I never saw any signs of it in any way whatsoever,” Bloom said.

He did learn enough about Prince to coach the artist on how to talk to the media, a process he compares to “Dumbo” the elephant using “magic feathers” to fly. “I gave Prince a whole bunch of magic feathers,” Bloom said. “And with those magic feathers, Prince was able to do interviews for three years, much as they went against his nature.” Although Prince began opening up about his spirituality to the media in the mid-1980s, Bloom said he did not prep the artist for that.

Just as I had done in my interview with Gayle Chapman, I asked Bloom if he was surprised that Prince is a Jehovah’s Witness. While Chapman said “No,” Bloom said “Yes,” and offered an equally intriguing response.

Overall, my interview with Bloom will be a valuable part of the book. He has prompted me to think about Prince’s spiritual journey in different ways, and he has been a great resource for my research on Prince's relationship with the media. He also articulated how I feel about the power of musicians:

If people really get into you, they're not going to get into you just because of one little piece of music...they're going to get into you because you stand for something, you liberate something in their life, you validate something that doesn't have a voice outside of you in their lives...And they're going to read stories about you...And who you are is going to give them permission to be a self they couldn't have been without you.

What Prince believes is not the important thing—it’s the story of how he overcame his internal struggles to achieve peace that is inspiring, and that is why I want to tell it.

Thanks for reading!

"Do I Believe in God?" - Rolling Stone Journalists' Thoughts on Prince's Spirituality

A few months ago, I interviewed several Rolling Stone writers for my academic research paper, An Analysis of Rolling Stone's Coverage of Prince. Although that project was not about Prince's spirituality, I did ask some of the journalists a few questions about the subject.

As I've said before, I am covering the media's reaction to Prince's spirituality in depth in the book (see "Prince and the Media," Part I and Part II). As I promised earlier, I am sharing some of what I learned from Rolling Stone writers Anthony DeCurtis, David Browne and Tom Moon:

On journalists' perception of Prince's spirituality in the 1980s and 1990s:

It seems that they really didn't know what to think, especially given Prince's mixed messages in his music and his reluctance to open up to the media.

"For me, it was always a little muddled," said David Browne, who reviewed Lovesexy for Rolling Stone. "It was like he was grappling with it, like how sexual or how spiritual to get, back and forth."

Although the overall message may have been confusing, journalists and fans alike seemed to enjoy Prince's combination of the sacred and profane in his music. Browne appreciated that mixture in Lovesexy, and DeCurtis said that that aspect of Prince's music makes him comparable to other artists in rock: "The other kind of connections between spirituality and sexuality that he was playing around with...in many ways has been true in rock and roll going back to Little Richard."

Do journalists think that Prince is genuine in his Jehovah's Witness faith?

"As far as his spiritual thinking, I think he very ardently believes whatever he very ardently believes that minute," DeCurtis said.

Because Browne and Moon have not followed Prince very closely in recent years, they couldn't really give an opinion, but Moon brought up a good point: "I think he’s one of those people that because he was such a risqué figure for so long, it was easy to sort of say, ‘Oh now he’s just doing this sort of transcendant-seeking, God-seeking sort of atone[ment].'" I really think that is a popular view, and one of my goals is to show that Prince's "God-seeking" is not new at all.

Moon also wanted to know if Prince has actually renounced his old vulgar content. In my opinion, at this point in my research, I wouldn't say he has renounced it, but that he is a different person, more mature and in a different mindset, spiritually. I don't think he is condemning who he was at all.

There will be a lot more from my discussions with those and other Rolling Stone journalists (Robert McNamara, Jim Henke, etc.) and the questions that were raised will be addressed further in the book.

Thanks for reading!