Few people had ever seen the kid perform. But everybody in the local music community was talking about him.

“Hey, have you heard those tapes by that Minneapolis teenager who played all the instruments by himself?“

(…)

“I’m nervous“

Prince said with a sheepish smile.

“I’ll be terrified, because it’s gonna take a while to block out the fact there are people out there. I find it extremely hard to perform for people”

(…)

Prince paused and looked down, displaying the reserve that has, in the past, led him to shun interviews and public appearances. He talks slowly, without a great command of the language. He stops in mid thought, and suddenly, his big brown eyes peek out under the bill of his cap and he continues in soft-spoken monotone

(…)

“I’m really free and open once I get to know a person. But when I first encounter something, I’m a little laid back and cautious. People constantly call me shy. I don’t feel shy, but I guess I sometimes come off that way to people”

(…)

(A proposito del brano “Soft and Wet”:)

What does it mean?

“Are you asking me?”

Yeah.

“Do you want to hear my new song? . . . [It means] Whatever you can draw from it. They asked me about it on the radio, and I told them it was about deodorant. I don’t think they believed me”

(…)

When you write your stuff, what instrument do you right on

“Lately it’s been coming through dreams. I’ll dream something, and if you dream something and go back to sleep, you forget it. But if you wake right up and stay up with it, you’ll remember it and maybe get something out of it. I did that last night. I dreamt that my dad wrote a song and it was really a nice song. I remember that I woke up and realty liked it, but I couldn’t stay awake. Sometimes I write them on a guitar. I’ve written songs on everything. I’ve written songs on drums”

When did you first start writing songs? How old were you?

“Five. I didn’t really write it, but I just sang it and remembered it, kept singing it. I wrote that on the rocks. I had two rocks—that’s how I wrote that”

Then you progressed.

“Yeah, I moved on to bigger rocks, bricks”

(Jon Bream, The Minneapolis Star, 5 gennaio 1979)