Publication: London Mail On Sunday [UK]
Date: May 31, 1992
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Title: "Prince Of Mystery"
Written By: Pete Clark

(1) Poser or Poseur? The very private man who never drops his guard.
(2) The purple reign a pretender who rules on the world's stages

PUBLIC figures have been trying to keep secret their private lives since long before the advent of the ex-directory telephone number.

The famous person who can remain truly mysterious is a rare creature, flaunting the laws of nature and of the media being akin to a double first in philosophy and prizefighting.

Howard Hughes pulled off the trick by wrapping himself in tissue paper and living in the middle of a desert. It would be tempting to describe Prince as a pop music version of Hughes, were it not for the fact that he parades his mystery in front of hundreds of thousands of people each year.

But following Prince around Europe last week, it soon became clear the mystery was not available for explanations. You can go where Prince goes, you can haunt his every known environment, but until the curtain comes up, he will not be revealed. Then you see him - for the rest of the time, you don't.

PRINCE Rogers Nelson is a pop star, but that is almost irrelevant. He would be an extraordinary figure in any walk of life, from hot dog salesman to high executive.

In fact, Prince does run a corporation, called Paisley Park based in Minneapolis. It produces records and makes films. but more than anything it controls the image of Prince.

You can watch him on the small screen and the big screen, you can even pin him to your wall, but you will never, ever, see him play a note or strike a pose that has not been thoroughly vetted. The amount of Prince that you see in public has been exactly determined beforehand in private.

This is an astonishing feat. Since people started becoming over-excited at popular culture, their need for idol gossip has been insatiable. In ancient magazines, stars answered questions on their favourite food. Now they answer questions on how they plan to save the world.

Prince has answered no questions at all, leading the world to speculate that he lives on bubble gum and lollipops and sees the future happening on Saturn.

Furthermore, the mystery of who he really is is guarded by the enigma of his public self. For Prince is the most controversial pop star the world has seen, his every gesture a writhing mass of contradictions.

His lyrics, his stageshow, his LP covers, his videos all proclaim one thing: Prince is an orgy waiting to happen. Yet, he is capable of a truly religious fervour, of composing gospel music which rings with the love of God. In the truest sense, Prince is a curate's egg.

Madonna has mixed sex with religion, Michael Jackson has spiced dancing with extra-terrestrial oddness, but no one has ever offered a Pandora's Box of weirdness such as that opened by Prince. And then refused to explain it. The beginning of the answer to these questions lies in Prince's background. A childhood muddled by divorce followed by adoption resulted in precocious musical development nurtured in private. When Prince signed a record deal in 1977, it was on condition that his employers, the mighty Warner Bros, gave him full control over the finished product. At the age of 19, Prince assumed full control and never relinquished it.

Since those early days, his conviction that if things were worth doing, they were worth doing his way, has never faltered. His first appearance in the UK was in 1981 at a sparsely attended Lyceum Ballroom in London. Clad in floor-length mac and jockstrap, he delivered a blistering show, then punished absentees by cancelling the rest of the tour and not returning for five years.

The world quickly came to see it his way. In 1984, the film Purple Rain and its soundtrack album intruded into the public consciousness and Prince became a star in minds other than his own.

The image of a man of below average height controlling his own destiny while grappling with impossibly sexy women touched a chord which the music served to amplify. Prince was a gifted student of music and a successful stud.

While subsequent releases have not matched Purple Rain's ten million sales, Prince has not lacked commercial success.

Apart from his own hit singles and albums, he has written and produced hits for the likes of Madonna, the Bangles and Sinead O'Connor. He also, for inscrutable reasons, helped to make a star of Sheena Easton.

His abnormal creativity and output have resulted in another Prince figment of fact: he sleeps for only two hours a night.

That is, of course, unless he's touring, in which case he doesn't sleep at all. ' Prince's overwhelming appeal is as a live performer, the closest an admirer will ever get to the man himself. His Paisley Park empire is funded by his lucrative tours, his legend enhanced by them. The man thinks nothing of playing a concert lasting two-and-a-half hours and going to play a secret gig until dawn at a neighbourhood club. A rumour that one of these desirable events is to take place can fill every seedy bar in the vicinity.

Prince is now on tour in mainland Europe. He comes to Britain, long since forgiven, for ten dates in mid June. The tour, which started in the Far East and Australia, will play to one million people, and that's not counting America.

Thirteen huge trucks ferry 200 tons of equipment around, including 20 wardrobe cases containing 1,000 costumes which help to keep the fantasy alive. These are all produced in the wardrobe department in Paisley Park, a round-the-clock operation which caters exclusively for Prince's astonishing sartorial whims.

There is an entourage of 137 and, unfortunately for the lollipop and bubblegum theorists, they include Prince's chef who cooks meals fit for one of that ilk.

Last Monday in Brussels and for the following three days in Rotterdam, all this equipment and nearly all the people were in evidence as part of the organised chaos which characterises a major rock tour.

The notable absentee was Prince, the man who set the whole unwieldy machine in motion and who orchestrates its tiniest moving part. Apart from his time on stage, it was as if he had ceased to exist in mundane, human terms.

Prince does not stay in the same hotel as his band, the New Power Generation, and when the show reached Rotterdam, his hotel was in a different town.

His mode of transport was a black Mercedes 500 with the smokiest of glass. That was not to be seen either. His daily routine, if it can be described thus, was to appear each afternoon behind the locked doors of the concert hall for rehearsals and the performance, then disappear into the night air.

To preserve this sleight of hand, Prince employs security men capable of being heavy of hand. Those who might wish to lift the veil of secrecy are vigorously discouraged. Photographers are objects of particular mistrust: like the savage who fears the camera will steal his soul, Prince shies away from the careless lens. Except in his case, he fears it will detract from the perfection of his image.

From these observations of secrecy and the exercise of remote control, a picture might begin to emerge of Prince as some kind of monster, invisible yet omnipresent.

During the Rock In Rio concerts last year, Prince upset the city and its Press by bringing in from the US every item he would need right down to the pillows on which he might perch for a second. Between his two appearances, spread over three days, he returned to America rather than stay in Brazil.

On the current tour, a representative of Prince explained that he never requires a contract rider, an obligation of the promoter to provide the artist with whatever pleases them in the way of backstage facilities, from Smarties to crates of whiskey. The reason is that Prince knows his exact requirements and rather than risk disappointment, brings them along himself.

In fact, any requirements would be modest. For a creature of such Dionysian aspect, the man is clean living - no drinking, no smoking, no drugs. His only discernible relaxation is to indulge in the love of a good woman or three.

Ironically, his prodigious workrate and dislike of destructive excess mark him out as the possessor of a Puritan work ethic, rare in the decadent halls of rock and roll.

But he still walks in those halls by virtue his attachments to beautiful women. From his early days, Prince has relished the chance to work with some of the world's most outstanding figures, often bringing them along as proteges. The list includes the all-girl group Vanity 6, Wendy & Lisa, Sheila E, Apollonia, Jill Jones and Cat.

The only liaison that ended in tears was the much publicised entanglement with Kim Basinger, both of them having worked on the Batman movie. Basinger was to star in the third Prince film Graffiti Bridge, but departed the set in an abrupt fashion. Unsurprisingly, nobody came forward with an explanation.

Given that the royal He is unavailable for comment, the only way to get to him is through those who work with him. Access to them is surprisingly easy, for it would be simple for a man of obsessive privacy to forbid them to speak.

But speak they do, and they all have the same story to tell: Prince is a hard taskmaster who expects the best at all times, but is a delight to work with. He is possessed of no monstrous behavioural tics, sits with the rest backstage and shares a joke or two. Quite apart from a different attitude to Josephine, Prince is obviously no Napoleon of the boards.

Another interesting facet is his work for charity. He has played numerous concerts in aid of handicapped children and the homeless. When a 17-year-old fan was killed by a car while queueing for concert tickets, Prince established a scholarship in the boy's name. He does not court publicity in these matters.

He is also fanatically loyal to his home town. Having established his musical empire far from New York and LA, he has no intention of diluting it by hiring unnecessary outside help. Most of the band and nearly all the crew are from Minneapolis. Prince is a homeboy and the loyalty that inspires serves only to increase his power.

Tony M, rapper with the New Power Generation, puts it succinctly: ' Prince is the hardest working man in show business. It used to be James Brown, but there is no way even James could work as hard.'

The evidence is there in concert. Of his many tours, this is the most impressive. From the moment Prince rises at the back of the stage, silhouetted in a purple-lit capsule, the action during the two-and-a-quarter-hour show is relentless.

Driven along by the thunderous drumming of the enormous, African-robed Michael Bland, the band fizzes through a selection of Princely fare. The range is breathtaking, from the gentlest ballads to the hardest rap and rock, detouring into jazz or new age with matchless confidence.

Diamond and Pearl are the main visual counterpoint, dancers of vim, humour and erotic glee. They are complemented by Mayte, an 18-year-old ballet dancer discovered by Prince, who whirls delicately during the more lyrical passages. Prince is shadowed by three male dancers - Tony M, who also raps, Kirk Johnson, who also percusses, and Damon Dickson, who just dances. The non-stop action is lit by a cascade of lights, fireworks flash, streamers burst into