by Hahn, Alex
But perhaps the greatest surprise was the reappearance of “Heroes” as a set closer. This time, Prince played the entire song, providing the emotional climax of the set. If his mixing of “Heroes” and “Dolphin” had constituted the beginning of a deeper connection with a recently passed musician, tonight his emotional immersion in Bowie’s signature composition became complete. Singing at first in his most natural register, his midrange, Prince then allowed his voice to crack and briefly reached for his falsetto in the chorus. Aging, loss, sorrow – all of these things seemed bound up in the performance. His voice sounded strained and raw, and the performance came across less as a reflective remembrance, and more an act of will. Several minutes of sustained applause followed before Prince returned to the stage for an encore.
A second show followed at 10 p.m., and covered a similar range of territory. In fact, over the entire tour he had delivered at least a portion of some 130 songs – a staggering amount of lyrical and musical information to integrate and perform.
Prince himself was particularly pleased at how the late show had gone, and immediately expressed plans to release a live recording which had been made. But by the time the evening ended, he was again not feeling well, and changed plans in order to seek medical attention. He advised his tour coordinator that upcoming shows in St. Louis, Nashville, Tennessee, and Washington D.C. (which had been planned but not announced), should be postponed. He then left for Minneapolis on a private jet at 12:51 a.m. on April 15. On the flight were Kirk Johnson, singer and Prince protégée Judith Hill, and a pilot.[58]
Over a meal, looking across a table at Prince, Hill saw him abruptly lose consciousness, according to a report she gave to the New York Times. The plane was diverted to Moline, Illinois, where it landed on the tarmac at 1:17 a.m. Emergency medical technicians administered two shots of Narcan, a drug used to counteract opioid overdoses.[59]
Eighteen minutes later, Prince was taken by ambulance to nearby Trinity Moline Hospital. Seemingly convinced that the crisis had passed, he sought to leave immediately, but was prevailed upon by his companions and medical personnel to remain overnight.
According to Hill’s account, Prince remained lucid and communicative throughout the night. At 8:33 a.m., he used Twitter to broadcast a message to his hundreds of thousands of followers: “I am #TRANSFORMED.”[60] The tweet, which included a location stamp, indicated that it had come from Chanhassen. According to Hill’s account, however, it was not until 10:57 a.m. that the small entourage left by plane for Minnesota.
In all likelihood, Prince had deliberately sought to make it appear that he was already home. He reportedly did not use a cell phone, but rather used a MacBook to surf the Internet. When Twitter is used on the web (as opposed to on a mobile application), it is possible to make it appear that a tweet is coming from another location. It appears that this is what Prince did, the first of a series of highly coordinated actions to demonstrate to fans that nothing serious had happened. And indeed, almost his every move during the coming week would be in service of that goal.[61]
Friday, April 15, 2016
First, Prince laid plans for a “dance party” at Paisley Park the following day. Such events did not obligate Prince to perform, but he typically showed up to greet fans. And that was precisely what he planned – a short, discrete appearance that would indicate not to just the attendees, but also to fans and media outlets around the world, that any rumors about a serious health scare were unfounded.
Prince then contacted Jeremiah Freed, a blogger and podcaster who operated under the name Dr. Funkenberry. Prince had cultivated a personal relationship with Freed via email, phone, and in person in recent years, and had come to rely upon him as a means of disseminating information to fans. After assuring Freed that he had in fact only been suffering from the flu, he asked him to spread word of the dance party and also to attend.[62]
At 3:11 p.m., Freed took to Twitter at Prince’s behest and began, in cryptic fashion, to let fans know that something was afoot. “Thinking @prince should just have a party at #PaisleyPark 2morrow n squash the story that way. Thoughts?”[63]
Some of Freed’s followers expressed concern, suggesting that Prince should not push himself to make public appearances following a health scare. But plans went forward, including for Freed to be flown to Minneapolis.[64]
Saturday, April 16, 2016
At 5:33 a.m. on the 16th, Prince tweeted his support for National Record Store day and name-checked the local store Electric Fetus, where he was known to shop. Next, at 10:02 a.m., Prince tweeted an electronic flyer for the dance party. Later, during the mid-afternoon, Prince left his compound for a bike ride, appearing relaxed and carefree as he cruised around a local strip mall parking lot with a companion. And in the late afternoon, he visited Electric Fetus with Kirk Johnson and administrative aide Meron Berkure.[65] He purchased CDs by some of the musicians that had most influenced his work: Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, and Santana. He tweeted that he had “rocked Stevie’s Talking Book all the way home!”[66]
By the time nighttime arrived, however, Prince was struggling to maintain the illusion of good cheer. He arrived at the dance party at midnight, about two hours after it began. Freed made eye contact with Prince, and saw an unusual blank look. “He looked upset to me, [w]hen I saw him, there was no smile,” he later told the Times.[67] Another fan, Nancy Anderson, told The Star-Tribune that “he looked pasty, weak and frail,” and “[had] trouble walking up the steps to the piano.”[68]
These reports were grimly corroborated by a photo taken of Prince at the event. Wearing a loose-fitting shirt and leaning against the new piano, his intent had clearly been to strike a mellow, relaxed figure. Instead, his body is stiff, and his eyes and face betray fatigue and sadness, with his impish smile nowhere to be found.
Still, Prince gamely tried to work the crowd for the mere five minutes that he remained present. He openly addressed concerns about his health, assuring people that these were unfounded rumors.[69] In an apparent effort at irony, he solicited a round of applause for his doctor. He played a snippet of “Chopsticks” on the piano, after which a recording of his April 14 Atlanta show began playing over the speakers. This, however, simply served a cover for an abrupt exit through a hidden door; as Star-Tribune reporter Sharyn Jackson put it, “Just as quickly as he had first appeared, he was gone.”[70]
Shortly after leaving, at 12:37 a.m., Prince tweeted a photograph of happy fans at the party, an apparent way of giving thanks for their attendance. It was nearly 20 hours after he had begun his day.
***
On the morning of April 17, as if to mitigate the risk that his frailness at the party had been noticed, Prince yet again took to Twitter to again proclaim his good health. In response to a tweet about his Atlanta show, Prince stated that “I’ve barely slept since that nite.” He placed this next to the hashtag “FeelingRejuvenated.”[71]
The next day, April 18, Jeremiah Freed – who remained in the dark about Prince’s actual condition – released a podcast that recounted the dance party. Freed had not spoken to Prince privately, and in fact had been abruptly sent back home the day after the party. But he used the podcast to shoot down rumors that drugs had played a role in the events of the 14th, dismissing such reports as innuendo.[72]
Also on the 18th, Prince spoke to another close friend, the television journalist Tamron Hall. Consistent with the narrative he had presented to the public, he assured her that he was fine. Hall was certainly among a small group of people he might have confided in, but the story Prince offered her was the same: all was fine.[73]
One person who had recently had intimations to the contrary was Prince’s childhood friend Paul Mitchell. Although Mitchell had not seen Prince in decades, in recent months, following the death of their mutual friend Kim Upsher in November 2015, he had started to worry about his old friend. He had planned to make inquiries about how to contact Prince, such as by reaching out to Andre Cymone, another boyhood friend as well as a
former band member. On the week of April 18, Mitchell had put a reminder in his phone to resume these efforts. “I wanted to try to get in touch,” Mitchell said. “I felt like he was all alone.”[74]
Wednesday, April 20
As Prince shaped a public narrative following the emergency plane landing of April 14, a handful of associates worked behind the scenes to provide the help that was so urgently needed.
Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, 40, could not have been better suited to the role of orchestrating an intervention to address Prince’s addiction to prescription opioids. A former labor union executive in the San Francisco area and sometime music manager, she had helped to accomplish his decades-long goal of obtaining his master recordings from Warner Bros. in 2014. Formidable and capable, she was also someone Prince might be willing to listen to.
And yet, she was on the West Coast, and powerless to do more than make phone calls. After becoming aware of the gravity of Prince’s condition, and the profound risk that the overdose of April 14 would be repeated, she contacted Howard Kornfeld, a physician in Mill Valley, California specializing in addiction treatment. Kornfeld, unable to immediately travel, instead dispatched his son Andrew, a non-physician, on a red-eye flight to Minneapolis on the night of April 20. Andrew brought with him a small dose of the drug Suboxone, which is used for opioid detoxification, apparently for administration by a local physician.[75]
That same day, Prince received another visit from Dr. Schulenberg, who reportedly then prescribed medications for opioid withdrawal.[76] Prince picked up the prescriptions at a local Walgreens. From there, Prince returned to Paisley Park. He was greeted by his chef, Ray Roberts, who had prepared Prince a standard vegan meal. The chef was then discharged for the evening and went home.[77]
At night, Paisley Park was not just Prince’s private sanctuary, but something akin to a solitary fortress. The facility had no overnight staff, and typically only one close aide was allowed to hold a key for entry, and usually only when Prince was out of town. A Paisley Park police incident report from 2013 put it this way: “Only Prince had a key and [h]e was the one who would let people in or out.”
In terms of Prince’s isolation, then, the night of April 20 was not atypical. But in other respects, it was unique. Over the previous two weeks, he had cancelled one show for medical reasons. At the rescheduled event a week later, he was not able to complete a set without leaving the stage for several breaks. He nearly lost his life on the return flight from that show, and had twice seen a physician. He had postponed additional shows, and had appeared in public looking frail and sad.
Despite all of this, on the night of April 20, amidst Paisley Park’s 55,000 square feet of recording studios, rehearsal rooms, meeting areas, and offices, Prince remained entirely alone.
***
At 10:07 a.m. on Thursday, April 21, 2016, Prince Rogers Nelson was pronounced dead after being found in an elevator inside Paisley Park.
The cause was later determined to be an accidental overdose of a prescription painkiller, Fentanyl.[78] Whether Prince had known he was taking this extremely powerful and potentially lethal drug is unclear; subsequent reports indicated he had been in possession of mislabeled versions of ostensibly much more benign painkillers.[79] But these ambiguous factual threads would not be disentangled for months, if ever; for now, there was merely disbelief.
The event created shockwaves across the world. By midday, President Barack Obama had issued a statement of condolence and praise. The phones of hardcore fans erupted throughout the day with text messages of the news.
Outside Paisley Park, a common ritual of breathless media attention began. A row of white television vans formed, their satellite dishes pointed toward the gray sky. Reporters in full make-up wore trench coats for shelter from the rain, and practiced their lines using teleprompters which had been tucked under hastily assembled tents. The backdrop to their live reports was a massive, stark white building, surrounded by a chain link fence.[80]
A throng of grieving fans on Audubon Road was the first to begin a makeshift memorial, inserting flowers in the chain link fence. They faced the building expectantly, as if anticipating a message, the emergence of a spokesperson, or a signal – anything at all.
Every so often, the gate slid open, and a City of Chanhassen squad car would emerge. Helicopters hovered overhead. Grass became mud as fans trudged along the fence in the gray rain.[81]
As the day progressed, thousands of fans navigated their way around streets that had been cordoned off, many of them finding parking spaces some distances away. They then made their way to the perimeter of Paisley Park, wearing shirts bearing Prince’s likeness and carrying offerings: bouquets of flowers, balloons, notes, stuffed animals, photos, clothing, and even boxes of Bisquick for the pancake-loving icon. The mementoes would soon swath the chain link fence.
At around 5 p.m., the rain slowed to a trickle. Suddenly, gasps arose from some of the onlookers, who gestured toward the sky.
Over Paisley Park, from behind the gray skies, emerged a perfect rainbow.
***
The last year of Prince Rogers Nelson’s life left in its wake the same sort of contradictions and conundrums that characterized his entire career. With Prince, nothing was simple or self-evident. Mystery and misdirection were central to his personality, constituting a coping mechanism and a manner of being, and these same traits were central to his concluding months.
When examining the events of 2016, pictures swirl together in our minds in a manner not unlike that caused by a Thaumatrope, an optical toy popular in the 19th century, which uses a small disc with pictures on both sides. When twirled quickly, the pictures appear to blend into one – a dove is placed in a cage, or a happy face begins to weep.
The images from Prince’s last months intermingle in just this way. The evidence can’t be ignored that Prince was suffering from an escalating addiction to opioids that not only caused two overdoses but had, even before that, been playing havoc with his health. But does he exit the stage as stereotypical self-destructing star, his gifts deteriorating before our eyes? To the contrary, the piano tour only solidified Prince’s reputation as arguably the greatest performing musician of his time. Despite the tour’s retrospective qualities, it had far transcended mere nostalgia. He had not just played his standards, but had visited the most obscure precincts of his canon. In paying tribute to musical forefathers like Ray Charles and Bill Withers by covering their songs, he had shown gratitude and grace.
And of course there are other paradoxes of his last months, including the most central one: why had this happened? How can it be that Prince was allowed to erect a facade of robust health and sunny optimism in the last weeks of his life, when so clearly help was needed?
The answer may ultimately lie in Prince’s own psychology, rather than some blameworthy failure to act by others. “If you were to stand up to him, he was the type that could easily shut you out,” noted Samantha McCaroll-Hyne, a Minneapolis-based blogger who regularly attended events at Paisley Park and frequently observed Prince at close quarters. “I believe it’s foolish to think that anyone else is responsible for his actions.”[82]
There are also any number of fans who argue that Prince was conscious of, and even planned for, his impending demise. Why do the lyrics of “Way Back Home” seem like such an obvious goodbye? Why does “Big City,” the final song on Prince’s final album, end with the line “That’s it!” Why did he, so soon before he died, reach out to old friends to whom he not spoken in over a decade, such as former bandmates Andre Cymone and Dez Dickerson?
Such coincidences and serendipities are haunting, but ultimately unsatisfying as an explanation. The blogger Jeremiah Freed, who was aware from his private communications with Prince of many specific plans ahead, used his podcast to dismiss out of hand the notion that Prince had foreshadowed his death. And Samantha McCaroll-Hyne was aware that Prince had planned to host dance parties each weekend of summer 2016 at Paisley Park. And even at the fin
al event on April 16, she felt a sense of energy and hope emanating from him.
“He was in high spirits,” she said, recalling the sense of wonder he displayed over his new guitar and piano. Indeed, as far she could tell, a happy summer lay ahead for Prince and his local fans. Paisley Park would percolate with new instruments, new musicians, and new ideas. The next classic song, the next searing guitar solo, the next ethereal piano line, the next patented Prince scream, were all just around the corner.
“He seemed extremely excited for the future,” she said. “He was looking forward to it.”[83]
My Lord calls me;
He calls me by the thunder;
The trumpet sound within my soul,
I ain’t got long to stay here.
-“Steal Away” (Negro Spiritual)
1. Migration
“10,000 Lakes,” the phrase that graces Minnesota license plates, evokes the pristine landscape discovered by the Franciscan friar Louis Hennepin in 1640. The state’s name, which means “sky-tinted water” in the language of the Dakota Indians who once lived there, reflects its natural beauty. Even today, the state’s main urban center, Minneapolis, retains a surprisingly unspoiled aspect.
The phrase also evokes a semi-mythical Midwestern heartland – a wholesome and healthy place governed by traditional American values and earnest hard work. It is not surprising that such territory would produce, as it did, a sincere folksinger like Bob Dylan. Nor is it an unlikely origin for a quintessentially American novelist like F. Scott Fitzgerald or a populist politician like Hubert H. Humphrey, both Minnesota natives.
Far less expectedly, it would also serve as the home and lifelong base of a mercurial, meteoric African-American composer, singer, and instrumentalist – a protean talent who would become the most prolific pop composer of his era. Ultimately, no pop musician of the past one hundred years would be more associated with his home state than Prince Rogers Nelson, known to the world simply as “Prince.”