The Songs - Purple Rain
This is another entry in my ongoing “songs that visited me and decided they wanted to stay” series. I hope you like these enough to become a paid subscriber, because I really need you to keep this series going…
Purple Rain - Prince
I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted, one time, to see you laughing
It seems silly even writing this. Prince’s talent was so absurd that it buried everybody else in rubble. He was James Brown and Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones and Mick Jagger and Elvis all rolled into one. He was a giant at 5′ 2″, a man so manically creative that it’s said his vaults contain over 8000 unreleased songs, enough to release a complete album every year until 2824.
My first recollection of seeing him was a dress rehearsal for one of his early tours. I was next to another musician, a couple other guys that were up-and-comers and that thought they were hot shit, and we were watching Prince. The guy turned to me and said, “I’m fucking embarrassed to be alive.”
I remember a little scuffle broke out in front of the stage one night and Prince said, “Stop fighting, you’ll mess up your clothes.”
—Paul Westerberg