New Yorker: Prince had grand plans for his autobiography but only a few months to live

[New Breed Leader]

[link:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/the-book-of-prince?irclickid=RnLRgG3ilxyJT080MvSyQWlBUklSFFVfNRoyRU0&irgwc=1&source=affiliate_impactpmx_12f6tote_desktop_adgoal%20GmbH&utm_source=impact-affiliate&utm_medium=123201&utm_campaign=impact&utm_content=Online%20Tracking%20Link&utm_brand=tny|

The Book of Prince

On January 19th, Prince chose an editor—Chris Jackson, of Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Penguin Random House—and started the search for a co-writer. A few days later, he put on his first-ever show without a band, “Piano & a Microphone,” at a soundstage at Paisley. He’d pared down his songs to their essential components and reinvented them on the fly. He’d been practicing there into the night, playing alone for hours on end, his piano filling the vast darkness until he found something that he described, to Alexis Petridis, of the Guardian, as “transcendence.” In a recording of the concert, which I watched a year later, Prince shared some of his earliest musical memories with the audience. His mother, Mattie Della Shaw Baker, was a jazz singer; his father, John Lewis Nelson, who went by Prince Rogers, was a musician and a songwriter. “I thought I would never be able to play like my dad, and he never missed an opportunity to remind me of that,” Prince said. “But we got along good. He was my best friend.”