The Day I Got Lucky Enough To Gain Access to the World’s Most Mysterious Musical Genius
Prince himself summoned me backstage at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim arena—now renamed the Honda Center—in Anaheim, California, with the casual authority of a secret society extending a rare invitation.
I had arrived hours early before his show to catch his rehearsal. I slipped into the 15th row of the empty Pond and soaked up my private audience with royalty. Prince, the venerated music genius of our generation, was conducting his elite musicians with precision.
“We’re adding a new section,” Prince directed, his voice cutting through the cavernous space. “It sounds too bright to me.”
His band may have sounded flawless to mortal ears, but this was not a god who settled for good enough. Prince, a multi-instrumentalist, “took music to a whole other place,” Stevie Wonder wrote in an article he penned for Rolling Stone magazine after the musician’s death in 2016.
How Did I Get Here?
The path to this moment was simple enough. Prince was on tour, and I think of myself as the best celebrity interviewer of my time, so naturally I asked Prince’s people if he wanted to talk to me. They weren’t amused. Prince didn’t do interviews. But his team floated the idea of an email interview. I declined. They asked what I could possibly say to convince their titan to take my call.
“Tell him I own every record on vinyl, cassette and CD. Tell him I have every film on VHS and DVD, including Under the Cherry Moon, which I saw in theaters twice. Tell him I’ve chased down every underground bootleg,” I replied with my truth as a lauded popular journalist and superfan. “Tell him I stood in line overnight for the Lovesexy Tour in 1988. You tell Prince he owes me.
How Have I Gotten All the Great Interviews?
I’ve captured the time and respect of the world’s top superstars, not by groveling and not by demanding, but by proving who I am—or who I think I am (same thing). I’ve never approached icons as a solicitor. I meet them as a peer; calm, direct, treating them as human beings enshrouded in myth and mystery.
Celebrities appreciate my proven equality. Prince was no different. The day after I told his people he owed me, his invitation came: Anaheim.
He spotted me after rehearsal and came to me with quiet confidence. Eye contact. Firm handshake. And a “Hi.” I told him his band sounded immaculate. He nodded, as if to say: Of course they do. Then he led me down arena halls to a waiting golf cart. He slid behind the wheel and drove us through labyrinthine corridors, completely in control of his kingdom. Fast. Flawless. Unflailing.
What Was It Like To Be Around Prince?
His dressing room smelled of lavender—rich, calming, expensive. Purple candles flickered. The color of royalty. He motioned for me to sit on the couch while he took the chair opposite. Then, with a glance over his shoulder, he told the hovering publicist she could leave.
“What?” she asked, startled that Prince trusted a journalist this much.
“It’s OK,” Prince said calmly.
For the next 90 minutes, the most private superstar of our time opened up. He was animated, razor-sharp, and fully present—eyes locked, smiling. We chatted about politics and music, then he flipped open his songwriting journal to show me handwritten lyrics. I held the pages of this sacred text. In that moment, genius wasn’t abstract. It had a scent, a voice.
In my time, I’ve stood before presidents and billionaires, but none filled the space around them with the indelible presence of Prince. He’d reshaped music and culture through rock, funk, pop, jazz, sexuality, spirituality and fashion. And yet, our conversation flowed with the ease of old friends of like mind.
All Good Things Must End
As the arena filled, Prince walked me to the door. He paused, reached somewhere I never saw and handed me a Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet. The gesture was so unexpected, it landed like one more confidence in me and my soul.
I studied him. Everyone knows he was short. What struck me was his narrow frame—elegant, not fragile.
This was a slender man of unbound stature, fearlessly dominating music and style and good taste, bending genres and expectations at will.
His power? He knew who he was and what he wanted to do, and he never paused to do it doubtlessly.
We smiled goodbye, he shut the door, and so closed our moment—this rarest of heavens. I had a fleeting feeling that Prince and I were kin, untouchable egos, just a few breaths away from the din of another worthy crowd.
