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I was probably more deeply wounded than he was by my classmates’ response to Graffiti Bridge. “I’m sorry,” I said with a lump in my throat. “They just didn’t get it.” “Nah, it’s okay.” He sighed heavily. “You can’t look at yourself through other people’s eyes. When you’re working at a certain level, you find that people live through you, and if you don’t act like they expect you to, then you’re the bad one.”
In Prince’s mind, there was never a hard line between the visual and the musical; it was all one. We all came together—dancer, drummer, keyboard, lights—to transport the audience into an experience that was already a reality inside Prince’s head. I think that’s part of the chemistry that made him a megastar; he brought all this game along with his musical genius at the perfect moment in music history—the moment when “video killed the radio star.” All of which is to say, Prince saw his dancers as part of the band. He always talked about the impression James Brown’s backup dancers made on him
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on one off day I arrived wearing sweatpants, and Prince made me go home and change. I was annoyed and humiliated, but he knew how to get me laughing again when I came back in spandex. I did understand where he was coming from. He never left the house unless he was done up pretty. “Marilyn Monroe never left the house without full makeup,” he told me, as if no other explanation was needed. Sneakers were for basketball, period. He always showed up for rehearsal in high heels, makeup, good hair—the works. There were no jeans, ever, around Paisley Park in my era. He wore a jean jacket on “Sign o’
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Another hazard of the touring life: proximity burn. We were ready to take a break from all that togetherness.
