Verwandte Artikel zu I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon

I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon - Softcover

Touré

 
9781476737409: I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1476737401 ISBN 13: 9781476737409
Verlag: Atria, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

An expansive and insightful exploration of one of the most iconic and electrifying artists ever, this book reveals the stunning, multi-generational influence and appeal of Prince and his revered music—from celebrated journalist, author, and host of the popular podcast The Touré Show.

Infused with Touré’s unique pop-culture fluency, I Would Die 4 U is as passionate and radical as its subject matter. Building on his lifelong admiration for Prince’s oeuvre and interviews with those closest to the late artist, including band members, his tour manager, and music and Bible scholars, Touré deconstructs the life and work of the enigmatic icon who has been both a reflective mirror of and inspirational force for America.

By defying traditional categories of race, gender, and sexuality, but also presenting a very conventional conception of religion and God, Prince was a man of profound contradictions. He spoke in the language of 60s pop and soul to a generation fearing Cold War apocalypse and the crack and AIDS epidemic, while simultaneously being both an MTV megastar and a religious evangelist. He creatively blended his songs with images of sex and profanity to invite us into a musical conversation about the healing power of God and religion. By demystifying Prince as a man, an artist, and a cultural force, I Would Die 4 U shows us how he impacted and defined a generation.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Touré is an author who has published six books, including I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon and Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book. He was a TV host at MSNBC, MTV, and BET, and a correspondent at CNN. He hosts the podcast Touré Show. He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, The Nation, Vogue, and many other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children. Follow his Instagram @Toure.

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I Would Die 4 U Introduction
IMAGINE A FIELD THE SIZE OF AMERICA. The field is filled with people. They represent all the people who care about American popular culture, people who feel American popular culture speaks to them and helps shape and define their lives. In the middle of the field is a stage the size of Nebraska. Many people are on the stage dancing and singing and rhyming and acting and saying, “Look at me!” These people represent stars in American popular culture. Then, someone comes strolling through the field toward the stage holding a large, open umbrella, even though it’s not raining. As this person walks onto the stage, the audience wonders, “Why is he holding an umbrella? It’s not raining.” A moment later, it begins to rain. The rain represents the feelings of the people in the audience—their dreams, fears, anxieties, and longings. It adds up to the ethos of the generation. The rain is the Zeitgeist. And the person who had the umbrella open before the rain is an icon. That person knew what the generation was feeling before they really knew, before they were able to fully articulate their feelings. When the icon takes their place on the stage they don’t say, “Look at me!” They say, “When you look at me, you’ll also be looking at you.”

Stars entertain us. Icons do something much more. They embody us. They tell us something about who we are and who we want to be. They are both a mirror and a shaping force. Zeitgeist is German for the spirit of the times, the general cultural, intellectual, and political climate within a nation, or a specific group, in a particular period. You could call it the collective consciousness of a given people at a certain time. Icons can see and feel the Zeitgeist of their generation more clearly than the rest of us. They have the antennae, the sensitivity, and the intellect to become a thermometer of their era, and they have the talent to reflect the Zeitgeist through their art. For generation X, one of those icons was Prince.



There are truths about the soul of a generation that icons can see, as if they’re mystics, because they have vision and because they’re immersed in the culture. They are in the clubs and the bars and on the streets and they have their antennae up and they’re picking up signals about what’s going on in the world faster and more clearly than everyone around them. This not a skill that can be taught. It’s extraordinarily difficult to make statements that will resonate deeply with several million people in your generation, but that’s what icons do. They are not only mirrors, showing the generation who they are: they are connectors, bringing together a giant tribe, and sometimes they are sculptors, inspiring the generation to become something. Prince rose in the 1980s to become the mirror, connector, and sculptor of a generation, and he knew it. In 1998, I interviewed him for a cover story for Icon magazine and asked, “Do you realize you’ve changed a generation with your music?” Prince became defensive. His body stiffened. The thought of it was too much. “I don’t think about that,” he snapped. “Why would I? There’s no gain in that. Being in control of someone’s thoughts? You’ll second-guess your writing.” He didn’t see the value in being conscious of his influence, but he didn’t deny that it was true.

Of course, it takes more than antennae to become an icon. Prince developed every skill that would make him become a rock star. He learned how to write timeless songs in a range of genres with masterful construction. (Questlove, the drummer for the Roots who has worked with Prince, says Prince’s best albums were built with the dramatic structure of Shakespearean plays: rising action, comic relief, climax, and denouement.) He could sing in a unique, spellbinding way. He could play music in an unforgettable way; he was not just a guitar virtuoso but the master of many other instruments including drums, percussion, bass, keyboards, and synthesizer. He could dance in his own compelling style. He could perform with a rare intensity, and demonstrated a stage generalship that outshone all of his contemporaries except, perhaps, Michael Jackson. He had presence and was spine-tinglingly sexy if you were inclined to be attracted to him and, even if you weren’t, he still seemed devastatingly cool. He conveyed a sense of mystery, and had an ineffability about him that left you unable to fully sum him up or feel as though you really knew him, keeping you intrigued. All this was powered by a superhuman work ethic. He knew the importance of sweat equity as a kid. In Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince by Alex Hahn, a cousin reports that Prince as a young teenager told him, “I’m going to practice my behind off like James Brown’s band, and I’m going to have everything so tight that you’re not going to be able to say anything about it.”1 He would grow up to be constantly working. His ex-wife Mayte once told London’s Daily Mail, “Being with him was like being at the centre of a twenty-four-hour creative machine. If we weren’t on stage, we were rehearsing. If we weren’t rehearsing, we were in the studio.” That’s why Prince, for a long time, put out an album per year while most artists were releasing one every two years, and Michael Jackson once every four years, like a president. These are albums he wrote, produced, and played most or all of the instruments on. He was legendary for working day and night, an inexhaustible music monster. As he says in “All the Critics Love U In New York”: “Body don’t wanna quit. Gotta get another hit.”

Several people told me Prince often worked sessions that lasted twenty-four or even thirty-six hours. Chuck Zwicky, one of his engineers, told me, “I’ve always admired the diligence and discipline that Prince has and his work ethic. He just kept going and kept working until he had it. I’ve had more than one forty hour day with him. Pretty intense. He’s extremely hard working and, much to the chagrin of women, he’d rather spend his time working on his music than hanging out in a club.” Zwicky said that Prince’s time in the studio was almost always spent efficiently, moving at a rapid pace compared to his music-business peers. “He never spent an inordinate amount of time on one song,” Zwicky said. “I’ve worked with artists who will agonize over a single song for many, many days. I’ve never seen Prince do that. He’s got a very, very clear idea in his head about what the song needs to do, what it needs to sound like and he could get through it very quickly. So, typically, a session started with three written songs and ended with three completely mixed songs. He never second guesses himself and he never scratches his head. He never says, I wonder if this is good or not?”

Alan Leeds, who was from 1983 to 1992 Prince’s tour manager and vice president of Paisley Park Records, said, “This is a guy who has studio diarrhea. Like you go to an office every day from nine to five, well, he goes to the studio every day. What am I gonna do today? Well, I wrote these lyrics last night in bed so I’ll make up a song. Then, he’ll sit with that song and say does it fit with what I’ve been doing? If it doesn’t, then it gets thrown in the vault. But he’s constantly, constantly creating songs. So, for every song on Purple Rain, there’s probably thirty or forty or fifty that didn’t make the cut because they just didn’t fit.” Zwicky once told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “He was so prolific, by...

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Verlag
Atria
Erscheinungsdatum
2019
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1476737401
ISBN 13 
9781476737409
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
176
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

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Utrecht
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