Prince may have been the greatest popular musician of our times. He was certainly the most multi-talented. He could play every instrument he touched to impossibly high levels, recording many of his albums completely solo.
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His grasp of musical styles was astonishing, spanning rock, soul, jazz, funk, disco, gospel and sensitive singer-song writing, blending them all into something uniquely his own. His singing voice was incredible, shifting gears from rasping soul to sweet falsetto to screaming heavy metal roar. He was an innovative producer, a masterful band leader and an audacious songwriter.
The '80s was Prince's best decade, when he rivalled Michael Jackson for superstardom. I went to see Prince every time he toured, and was always certain to be amazed. I stuck with Prince during his lean years, when he described himself as a slave of the music industry, changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and started spewing out vast volumes of unfocused music under the guise of The Artist Formerly Known As. He was still great even when the world wasn't paying attention.
But every time he performed, we were confronted again by this one-man phenomenon, an individual who seemed to channel music through his very being. He had the guitar swagger of Jimi Hendrix, the funky eccentricity of Sly Stone, the raw-throated electricity of Little Richard, the sexy intimacy of Al Green, the deep grooves and nimble moves of James Brown. He was the ultimate rock star.
He was also as mad as a box of frogs, living his life around some kind of personal mythology equating sex and spirituality, dressing in purple, holing up in his Paisley Park Minneapolis mansion from which he occasionally ventured out to call on neighbours as a Jehovah's Witness. But who ever wanted rock stars to be normal?
This has been a terrible year for the deaths of rock stars, as the first generation of pop legends start to fall to old age and infirmity. But Prince was only 57 and seemed ageless, still handsome and physically toned, and still working at a high level. His guerrilla gigs of 2014 were among the best shows I have ever seen and the four albums he has released since then are as good as the albums he made in his hit hey-day. When we mourn Prince, we are not just mourning what he once meant to us, but what has been so cruelly snatched away.
_Neil McCormick