When you?re a child, you might not be accepting of things like cauliflower, bedtime, or the lack of the latest, greatest Tonka truck in your life. But a guy swathed in eyeliner and lace on a purple custom Honda CB400A" That?s perfectly fine. Totally bad-ass, even. That the man funked as hard as anybody has ever funked, and shredded on an off-brand Telecaster as ridiculously and face-meltingly as anybody has ever shredded on any guitar, made complete sense out of what should?ve been a tangle of incongruities. It was Prince, after all.
The last six months or so has seen America unpack a heavy parcel of meaningful celebrity death. Lemmy Kilmister, David Bowie, Abe Vigoda, Phife Dawg, Harper Lee, Merle Haggard. If you weren?t necessarily a metal person, chances are still good that you liked Motörhead. If you liked popular music at all, there?s a good chance a piece of Bowie?s career resonated. Vigoda?s passing shook the jokey foundation of the internet. College students of a certain age held up A Tribe Called Quest?s The Low End Theory as a totem. What American hasn?t read To Kill a Mockingbird in school" Even the Nashville brosephs Haggard couldn?t stand loved the man?s oeuvre. After all, ex-con Merle stood as a totem of authenticity. But Prince" Prince is universal in a way that none of the rest were. Musicians of all stripes loved Prince. Thugs loved Prince. The normiest of normcore suburbanites loved Prince. People who couldn?t stand Michael Jackson loved ...