Rant #1,657: A Singing Death

Here, I was going to write about the first night of Passover, an eight-day Jewish holiday which begins tonight at sundown.

Well, instead of writing about Passover, I have to write about a passing.

Prince left us yesterday. We are being told that he had "flu-like" symptoms, and had been ill lately.

The guy was just 57 years old, so you really have to wonder what exactly he died of, was his immune system already compromised, did he have some other disease that the public did not know about ... ?

But that was Prince. Nobody knew too much about him to begin with, other than the fact that for a time in the 1980s, he was the only true rival to Michael Jackson as that era's most successful pop artist.

Prince Rogers Nelson seemed to come out of nowhere, first as a young wunderkind in the late 1970s and early 1980s with songs like "I Wanna Be Your Lover" and "Controversy," and then really hitting his stride in 1982 with "1999" and for about a dozen years after that, never looking back.

From his Minneapolis, Minnesota, base, he combined so many different facets of music into one that it almost belied his smallish stature, that one guy could cram so much into his music, seemingly all at once.

Rock, pop, gospel, funk, rhythm and blues, disco, soul ... they were all found in Prince's music, and he developed a wide audience with both white and black kids, much like Sly Stone had done in the late 1960s.

He got played on rock stations, pop stations, album oriented rock stations, disco stations ... there was a point in time where you really couldn't turn on the radio without hearing one of his songs.

And those songs ... "Little Red Corvette," "Delirious," and his entire soundtrack from the film "Purple Rain," including the title song, as well as "When Doves Cry," Let's Go Crazy," and "I Would Die 4 U," made him a star of stars during this period in time.

He mentored other acts, including The Time and Sheila E., and he even gave away some of his songs to others, who had hits with them, including "Manic Monday" by the Bangles, "Sugar Walls" by Sheena Easton, and "Nothing Compares 2 U" by Sinead O'Connor.

The hits kept on coming through the mid 1980s through the early 1990s, led by "Kiss"--later covered by Tom Jones and the Art of Noise--but his music began to get a bit angrier, and his personality began to take a turn into the bizarre.

Due to a variety of reasons, including his own growing eccentricity, he went under a symbol rather than his name for several years, so nobody really knew what to call him for a spell.

He continued to have hits, less in the rock vane and more pointed at the black community, into the 1990s, with singles like "7," "The Most Beautiful Girl In the World," "Cream" and "Diamonds and Pearls" topping the pop charts.

And he also had the No. 1 "Batdance," which completely defies categorization.

He was rumored to have been married, not married, a father, not a father, had supposedly become a Jewhovah's Witness, but one thing that everyone knew was that there was new music to be released by him each and every year, and he released a wealth of singles and albums to this very day, with varying levels of success.

And now, he is gone, also under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

I am sure in the coming weeks and months we will find out a lot more about these circumstances, but right now, Prince remains an enigma to the public, even in death.

Incredibly, the two brightest music starts of the 1980s--he and Michael Jackson--are now gone, and both were enigmas to the very end of their lives. Jackson has continued to befuddle people in death, and I am sure Prince will, too.

Yes, doves are crying now, but what a life this guy had while he was with us.

Speak to you again on Monday. And Happy Passover to those who celebrate the holiday.