Prince (musician) Quotes (1958-2016)

“Somebody like Prince, who is so impressive as a human being, it is difficult to not completely canonize him. He is amazing, a gift to humanity. But at the same time, he was a guy we worked with every day and it could get really stressful and annoying. One day he'd come in and be all excited and energetic and happy and want to goof around. The next day he'd walk in really somber with a cloud over his head, mumble into the microphone, and be a dick. Evey show we played, he videotaped and made us watch on the bus afterward. He was charming and funny, but also boring, repetitive and self-absorbed.”

“[M]ost of the pop music out today I consider to have become a homogenized product. It gets to the point that so much of what is going on is copying everything else that is out, because there is a businessman that knows what he has just sold millions of records with, and so he keeps trying to get every group that comes in to do it, you know. You know, you approach somebody who is well known as a booker or manager, and the first remark will be, "I love what you do, but you would have to change this to this, and that to that, and this to this, in order for me to be able to sell it." Well, by the time you've changed that, of course, it's like everything else that is out there. And when Prince first started sending me songs, I thought maybe that by the time I had done four arrangements that I would have started getting some sort of a repetitive something or other. I have been extremely surprised to find that each one is as different from the last as the next one is going to be different. Some of them are like little art songs. Some of them have dealt with heavy things like friendship and death. I mean, death of a friend. And yet, some of them are as baudy as...”

“Last night I was watching TV. I was watching Arsenio Hall. And he had Prince on. I wanna— What a character he is! Holy cow! Entertainer. Singer. And he can dance. He's a little bitty guy. He had a weird beard. I tell ya it was— I couldn't explain it.”

“The morning of the game, I opened the curtains in my hotel room, and Oh my God — it was like a scene from Moby Dick''''' — it was like the winds were blowing the palm tress, the rains were one of those Miami rainstorms which would just not relent ... were in this truck, sitting behind Don Mischer, and I remember Don said, put me off the phone with Prince. Don says, "I want you to know it's raining" — and Prince, like: "Yes it's raining" — and "Are you OK?" And Prince was like "Can you make it rain harder?" — and I thought Right on! … To me its about one guy in front of a hundred thousand people, and a hundred million people on television, and its your moment to be "Prince — at the Super Bowl", and Mother Nature is dropping thousands and thousands of gallons of rain. I always thought, how cool'' the guy is — to rise up and to just get stormed upon — and just bring what he brought —  that was so special.'''”

“I think Prince was heads, hands and feet about all the rest of them, I thought he left (Michael) Jackson in the dust. Prince was way beyond that. But how pathetic that he killed himself. Don't kid yourself, that's what he did. Slowly, I'll grant you … but that's what drugs and alcohol is: a slow death.”

“Isn’t the artist’s characteristic to surprise and often to be where no one expects him? What seems certain in any case is that Prince was no exception to the rule. While he was internationally known as a singer, guitarist and dancer, he took the initiative of playing solo piano on stage at concerts held at his Paisley Park studios in Chanhassen, Minnesota, in the United States and Australia. (…) Prince had no alter ego. Neither in his extravagances, nor in his ultra-sophisticated and perfectionist showman performances. Nor even in his final improvisations on the piano..."”