Siamo nel giugno del 1981. Poco dopo l’uscita di un album che stava creando sconcerto e scandalo. All’interno di un tour che stava generando reazioni simili a quelle generate dall’album.

Nel corso di questa lunga chiacchierata con Chris Salewicz, giornalista di NME, Prince mette giù chiari e netti, già a questa data, molti degli elementi cardine del suo pensiero.

Quelli da cui non si sarebbe mai discostato nel corso di decenni di carriera.

Parla di sé, persino. Lo avrebbe fatto ancora per poco, a dire il vero. Di lì a poco, sarebbero state bandite le domande sul suo passato, sul suo privato.

Quasi su tutto.

Cercando di separare bene le cose vere da quelle false e/o posticce che troviamo in queste righe, leggendo le sue schermaglie – spesso molto divertenti – con il giornalista, possiamo consolidare il quadro generale che è possibile farsi su di lui e sulla sua personalità. Nel 1981.

È evidente una strana contraddizione (solo apparentemente): punti fermi e stabili – che diventeranno cardini inamovibili – all’interno del percorso di un personaggio che è e sarà sempre in continua evoluzione. Preda dell’esigenza di cambiamento.

Fino alla fine.

Questa intervista arriva, come altre di quello stesso periodo (metà 1981), a ridosso dell’uscita di Dirty Mind. Ne capta gli echi, le suggestioni, infatti. È permeata dalle reazioni allibite del pubblico e della critica a testi così diretti, a situazioni tanto scabrose, messe giù, senza tanti complimenti.

Mai visti prima di allora. Quei testi.

Quel ragazzo, inoltre, si esibiva davanti a tutti mezzo nudo e/o coperto da un impermeabile, in tutto e per tutto identico a quelli dei guardoni nei parchi: li aveva lasciati davvero a bocca aperta.

E non sarebbe stata la prima volta, né l’ultima, a dirla tutta.

(che li avrebbe lasciati a bocca aperta, voglio dire)

(nel frattempo, zitto zitto, Prince stava preparando Controversy, ma tutto questo lavoro è ancora inespresso, dietro le quinte, qui: nessuno sospetta delle novità in arrivo, nessuno lo avrebbe capito neppure lontanamente, ascoltando le risposte che Prince dà qui alle domande del suo interlocutore, che arriva da NME, una delle più prestigiose riviste di musica di allora)

Il Prince di Controversy sarebbe stato un movimento ulteriore, lo scarto imprevedibile del camaleonte, quello che aveva appena iniziato a manifestarsi, in quel 1981.

Ma – almeno in quel giugno del 1981 – ancora nessuno ne aveva avuto contezza. Pochi avevano capito davvero chi fosse quel ragazzo che si presentava in veste quasi dimessa alle interviste.

Le reazioni del giornalista davanti a questo ventenne che dà risposte evasive e provocatorie allo stesso tempo sono spesso quelle stesse che molti altri in quei mesi avevano avuto: lo guardano e lo descrivono tra il divertito e l’ironico.

Prince era dunque un animale che – almeno fino a quel momento –  pochi erano riusciti ad identificare davvero e a classificare in qualche modo, inserendolo dentro un contesto familiare per chi scrivesse, all’interno di una cornice già nota, familiare, almeno per gli addetti ai lavori.

(e lui – va detto – faceva di tutto per scoraggiare queste manovre, tutte volte ad incasellarlo: egli non voleva essere incasellato e questa è rimasta una costante della sua intera vita)

“Meglio prenderla a ridere!” – devono avere pensato in molti, tra i giornalisti, osservandolo, ascoltandolo. Meglio fissare una volta per tutte questo giovane, strano ragazzo nella categoria “weird guys”.

Il nostro Chris, dunque, inizia la sua intervista in modo garbatamente ironico, perché è la prima cosa che gli viene in mente di fare.

Sarà un principe ereditario (quello inglese, magari) quello che ha di fronte? Chi potrebbe mai dirlo con certezza? – si dice.

(…)

“This fellow sitting across the table from me in an uptown Manhattan Holiday Inn room may be a Prince but he ain’t no Charlie”

“On the other hand, this ’20-year-old Prince is just as much a lad with the ladies as is our prospective monarch: in the musicality of his speaking voice, which is much lower in tone than the high pitch you’d expect from listening to his records, there is a slur that comes from lack of sleep”

(quel ragazzo ha ovviamente intorno a sé già l’allure dello sciupafemmine che tuttavia – zitto zitto – si sta prendendo anche il ruolo che rivendica già da tempo: quello di monarca della musica-tutta)

(…)

(la voce di Prince dopo il risveglio mattutino, al netto delle prove del giorno prima, del concerto, di eventuali after-party, poteva risultare molto al di sotto delle aspettative, molto diversa da quella che si poteva ascoltare sul palco, diversa dal suo già celebre falsetto: il giornalista nota questo particolare e lo fissa su carta)

E lui – Prince – se ne scusa quasi.

“I haven’t been to sleep for a couple of nights … Well, I’ve been to bed, but not for sleeping” – he adds meaningfully

(forse che sì, forse che no: chi può dire cosa sia davvero successo nella camera di Prince nelle notti precedenti?)

“‘Ho-ho-ho!’ I spontaneously chuckle with disrespectful satire, miming macho rib-nudging”

(…il giornalista non vorrebbe dare troppo credito a questa fin troppo palese ostentazione di machismo)

“Such lack of awe for the Big Willie talk that is such an essential part of Prince’s everyday mood and music obviously pisses him off a bit. But, really, what does he expect? Stiff, not a bad lad when all is said and done”

(è già iniziata – di sicuro – da parte di Prince la selezione tra giornalisti affidabili e malleabili (da una parte) e tutti gli altri (dall’altra), quelli giudicati ostili e poco manipolabili da parte sua: avrebbe sempre avuto una predilezione decisa per i primi, a scapito di tutti gli altri, quelli che rifiutavano di piegarsi alla sua lettura dei fatti, alla sua analisi della realtà, al prince-pensiero, da accettare in blocco, quindi)

(presto avrebbe preso – a questo proposito – decisioni che avrebbero sorpreso e scandalizzato molte persone, ma mancano ancora dei mesi)

(…)

“Prince has flown in to New York from his home-town of Minneapolis, Minnesota for this interview. This is just the beginning of a lot of mileage he’s going to be putting under his belt. This week he also jets to Europe for a series of dates that includes one London show, at the Lyceum”

(in vista di tour-uscite-di-dischi-promozioni-di-film questa sarebbe stata la sua norma: gruppi infiniti di cronisti convocati e lasciati spesso lì, a bivaccare, ad attendere pazientemente il loro turno: sarebbe accaduto a NY, come a MPLS, a partire dalla realizzazione di Paisley Park, con i suoi immensi spazi di lavoro)

(…)

“In the jargon of the trade. Prince is ‘working’ his Dirty Mind album, released at the end of last year. Like his first two Warners LPs. For You and Prince, Dirty Mind was produced, arranged, written and almost entirely performed by Prince alone”

(questa è in realtà una non-notizia, anche se è ogni volta sorprendente leggerla: Prince ha sempre-sempre lavorato in questo modo, facendo tutto da solo, a partire dall’ispirazione, fino ad arrivare alla produzione finale del brano)

(…)

“In America, Dirty Mind is an ‘underground’ hit, which means that via word of mouth and exceptionally favourable press coverage it has notched up a more than healthy half-million sales. Radio play has been virtually nil, this being due to much of the subject matter of, the LP, which contains the kind of lyrics that might have come out of a few heavy sessions of Freudian dream analysis. Amongst other topics, the album deals with oral sex, troilism and incest. It also concerns itself with direct political matter, however, Dirty Mind climaxes with the song, ‘Partyup’, and an atmosphere of militant defiance that insists ‘you’re gonna have to fight your own damn war cos’ we don’t wanna fight no more’”

(la circolazione dell’album, come già sappiamo, è stata semiclandestina, almeno all’inizio, legata per lo più al passaparola, visti i temi ed il linguaggio presenti al suo interno: le radio avevano rifiutato fin da subito di passare temi e testi così espliciti)

(…)

“There is a weird mist about the body music made by the green-eyed, sensually slack-jawed Prince, as there is also about the multi-instrumentalist himself. An academic analysis of his intensely immediate sounds indicate their origins lie in areas as far apart (and as close together) as pre-Disco Philly, Eddie Cochran’s primal rock’n’roll rhythms, The Beatles, and the inevitable Jimi Hendrix, who seems to have provided much of the spiritual source material for the notoriously lascivious, wild spectacular which Prince enacts every time he steps out onstage. Yet the hypnotic accessibility of this compound belies a mysterious, vinegary cold within the cool of its core”

(in quel periodo – inizi anni Ottanta – sono in molti quelli che si affannano a trovare radici/precedenti/antenati per la sua musica, pochi, quelli che arrivano subito a capire che la sostanza di quella novità sta proprio nel mix di anime diverse, nella sintesi, nell’intersezione perfetta tra generi che lui era riuscito a realizzare, rimescolando poi abilmente le cose, in modo da cancellare ogni traccia del misfatto)

(…)

“Whatever, Prince dislikes suggestions that he is re-defining R&B. Or that his first two, less cohesive LPs were an interpretation of disco in rock terms”

‘To me disco was always very contrived music. It was all completely planned out for when the musicians were recording it in the studios. Basically, what I do is just go in and play. It’s easy for me to work in the studio, because I have no worries or doubts about what the other musician’s going to play because that other musician is almost always me! All the other musicians on the record are me. Disco music was filled with breaks that a studio musician would just play and fill up when his moment came. But I don’t do that at all I just play along with the other guy’

(ecco un tema che gli sarebbe sempre stato caro: rivendicare l’importanza della musica realizzata con estrema cura, artigianale, in opposizione a quella pianificata e realizzata con tecniche che già allora apparivano ai suoi occhi come artificiali/artificiose , capaci solo di distruggere ogni magia, ogni mistero)

(accanto a questo, ancora una volta, si fa strada il suo grande senso dell’umorismo: in studio Prince non aveva problemi di relazione con chi realizzava le varie tracce di ogni canzone, questo è certo, perché, a parte i tecnici, in sala di incisione c’era solo lui)

(…)

“Prince’s voice, which lies in a region occupied by Michael Jackson and Smokey Robinson, also has its curious edge. Too much that of a beautiful young boy, it is like the silky near-castrato of a choirboy beneath whose starched, spotless surplice is a body crawling with crabs. Maybe that’s what Prince is about the twin sides of human nature”

‘Sin and salvation – says the man who dedicates to God Dirty Mind, a record that promises -‘incest is everything it’s meant to be’

(peccato e salvazione: due temi che lui ha amato molto, di cui ha molto parlato nei suoi testi)

(il tema dell’incesto, invece, meriterebbe un approfondimento a sé stante e forse ci ritorneremo)

(…)

(una serie di osservazioni importanti riguarda un’altra preoccupazione importante, all’interno del Prince-pensiero: il timore di essere costretto a ripetersi, solo per rientrare in quelle che sono le aspettative del mercato, del business su di lui)

(il timore di diventare anche lui uno di quei fenomeni artificiali che  si comportano in un certo modo solo per il bisogno di creare piccoli, ma prevedibili, scandali, quelli che gli altri si attendono da loro, quelli che seguono stancamente moduli previsti e prevedibili)

“But Prince has a lot more going for him than the majority of his compatriot contemporaries who have experienced any measure of significant success”

‘All the groups in America seem to do just exactly the same as each other, which is to get on the radio, try to be witty say the most sickening things they can think of and gross out the interviewer. They think that’s going to make them big and cool!They’re a little too concerned’ – says the man who claims he’s given away most of the cash he’s made to friends and acquaintances in need, with keeping up the payment on the Rolls Royce when really they should be busying themselves with doing something that’s true to their own selves”

“Obviously the new wave thing has brought back a lot of that greater reality. There are so many of those groups that there is just no way many of them can make it in those vast commercial terms. So they have no choice but to write what’s inside of them”

‘I think it’s all getting better, actually’

(…)

(ancora una volta appare chiara la duplicità della sua natura, sotto e sopra il palco, quasi si trattasse di due persone diverse)

“Such a subdued, low-key character offstage that one feels it certainly must be his alter ego that takes over in performance. Prince all the same remains always a natural communicator. He waxes warm and cold, though – just like his two-edged music. But it’s his prerogative; he’s very much his own man, working on his terms in a similar manner to that insisted on by other of black America’s genuine musical artists like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder”

“He dislikes being considered a prodigy:

‘I don’t even know what the word really means’ – he shrugs – ‘I’m just a person’

(non gli piace l’idea di essere considerato un prodigio: è soltanto una persona, dice lui)

(…)

(quel non-prodigio, quella persona normale, tuttavia, suona – e benissimo – 27 strumenti diversi, a poco più di venti anni)

(potrebbero diventare molti di più, a pensarci bene, stando alle sue parole)

“Prince also bristles uncomfortably at PR descriptions of his fluency with 27 separate instruments”

‘That came about because that was the exact number of instruments I played on the first album. But actually there are a lot of instruments which if you can play you can also play another six related ones’

(…)

(la copertina di Dirty Mind racconta molte cose di lui, anzi: del personaggio che lui interpreta sul palco)

“The black and white front cover shot on Dirty Mind is an exact representation of the persona Prince presents onstage the army surplus flasher’s mac (which he is wearing in the Holiday Inn at this very moment: ‘It’s the only coat I’ve got’), the dark jockstrap-like underpants. The photograph has been cropped at pubis level, missing out the bare thighs and leg warmers that complete Prince’s androgynous stage-wear.

This image, though, is far from the soft-focus colour job of the horseman astride his winged white steed that graced the rear of Prince. Pretty dodgy stuff, enough to make a strong man weep”

(niente in quella copertina, come in tutte le altre che l’avrebbero seguita, era stato lasciato al caso: Prince ha sempre curato la grafica dei suoi dischi fin nel minimo dettaglio)

“It was his need to extend the autonomy he’d already gained in production and arrangement terms that led to Prince breaking with his Minneapolis-based management, following the release of Prince, and signing a deal with the former managers of Little Feat.

‘I think I’ve always been the same. But when you’re in the hands of other people they can package it in a way that is more… uhhh … acceptable. All along I’ve had the same sort of ideas that came out on this record. It’s just that my former management had other thoughts about it all’

His voice curls downwards”

(…)

(segue ancora un passaggio che fa riferimento alla estrema libertà con cui ha lavorato durante la realizzazione dell’album)

‘The songs on Dirty Mind were originally just some demo tapes that I recorded and took to LA to play to my new management. Even they weren’t too happy with them. We also had long talks about what I felt was me getting closer to my real image, and at first they thought that I’d gone off the deep end and had lost my mind. Warners basically thought the same, I think’

‘But once I told them that this was the way it was, then they knew they had no choice and they’d have to try it, because they weren’t going to get another record out of me otherwise’

‘I know that I’m a lot happier than I was. Because I’m getting away with what I want to do. With the other two albums I feel I was being forced to suppress part of myself – though also I was younger’

(i testi di questo album raccontano il passato di Prince, fanno riferimento a momenti reali, drammatici del suo passato, anche se il suo presente, in quel momento, nel momento dell’intervista, ha un carattere totalmente diverso)

(…)

“This grabbing of greater control of his own destiny was probably inevitable, considering the production and arrangement autonomy Prince already had”

‘I just turned down all the producers that Warners suggested to me for the first album. Even when they finally agreed to let me produce myself they insisted I had to work with what they said was an Executive Producer, who was really just an engineer. And that caused a whole lot of other problems, because he was versed in short-cuts and I didn’t want to take any – though (laughs) that was why it took five months to make’

‘The recording’s become a little easier these days. I used to be a perfectionist – too much of one. Those ragged edges tend to be a bit truer’

(molto, molto difficile, avere a che fare con lui e con il suo perfezionismo in sala di incisione: i poteri che gli derivavano dal fatto di essere quasi libero da ogni controllo gli hanno consentito di lavorare in assoluta libertà, con i suoi modi, i suoi tempi)

(…)

(seguono notizie sulle sue radici, la sua famiglia: abbastanza vicine al vero alcune, inventate, altre)

“Prince is the third youngest in a family of four brothers and four sisters. They are not all of the same blood:

‘There was a lot of illegitimacy – different fathers, different mothers’

Prince’s father, who obviously christened him as he did because he knew he’d need to team how to fight, was an Italian-Philipino leader of a mid-west pro jazz band. He left his son’s black mother when the boy was seven.

‘That’s when I first started playing music’ – he says – ‘He left the piano behind when he left us behind. I wasn’t allowed to touch it when he still lived with us’

His background, he says, was”

‘essentially middle-class, though our financial position took a big down swing when he went’

(glissa un poco su quella che è stata la sua reale condizione di povertà dopo che il padre era andato via di casa)

“Around the age of nine. Prince started spending much of his out-of-school hours in his mother’s bedroom, poring over her substantial porn collection”

‘She had a lotta interesting stuff. Certainly that affected my attitude towards my sexuality’

(le solite notizie sui romanzetti porno amati da sua madre)

(seguono gli anni delle peregrinazioni in casa altrui)

“His mother’s choice of replacement for his father also affected him. At the age of 12 Prince moved out of the family home and into that of one of his sisters”

‘It’s very difficult having a step father – basic resentment all the way around. Nobody belongs to anybody’

(importante, quest’ultima osservazione: “nessuno appartiene a nessuno”)

(…)

(gli anni delle band giovanili, anni di intenso allenamento a suonare, da solo ed in gruppo)

(i primi testi provocatori)

“During this time, up until when he graduated from high school at 17, Prince played in a succession of high school bands, notably one called Champagne”

‘It was all Top 40 stuff. The audiences didn’t want to know the songs l was writing for the group. They’d just cover their faces, largely because of the lyrics. I remember I had this song called ‘Machine’ that was about this girl that reminded me of a machine. It was very explicit about her, urrhhh, parts. People seemed to find it very hard to take. There was quite a lot of Sly Stone stuff we used to do. I really liked it when he’d have a hit, because it would give us an excuse to play them’

(…)

“It was also this spell of living with his sister that was to inspire the ‘incest is all it’s meant to be’ line.

‘I write everything from experience. Dirty Mind was written totally from experience’

So he’s experienced incest?”

‘How come you ask twice?’ (chuckles)

(un argomento – quello dell’incesto – che imbarazzava sia l’interlocutore che l’intervistato, una volta giù dal palco)

(…)

(appare qui – forse per la prima volta – una questione su cui si è discusso a lungo: il rapporto di Prince con le sue radici afroamericane. Forse, almeno all’inizio, egli ha cercato di mimetizzare, di non farne una sorte di bandiera. È stato accusato di non esserne stato abbastanza orgoglioso, almeno all’inizio)

“Oh well, one often hears it’s far more common than is popularly imagined. For someone who is sold heavily as a primal black artist. Prince visually is hardly black at all”

(a vederlo, non sembra black, osserva il giornalista)

‘Though they say that even if you’ve just got one drop of black blood in you it makes you entirely black. But in fact I don’t necessarily took on myself as a member of the black race – more a member of the human race’

(se hai anche una sola goccia di sangue black, sei black, ma lui più che appartenere alla black race, sente di appartenere alla human race)

(la violenza della società, un tema che gli è stato sempre caro, dall’inizio alla fine)

“The perspective on the apparently obsessive sexuality of Dirty Mind is shifted by the non-specific politics of Partyup”

‘I was in a lot of different situations when I was coming up to make that record. A lot of anger cane up through the songs, it was kind of a rough time. There were a few anti-draft demonstrations going on that I was involved in that spurred me to write ’Party up’”

“Really, that song is just about people who’d rather have a good time than go and shoot up one another. That’s all – it’s pretty basic. I just seem to read about a lot of politicians who’re all going to die soon and I guess they want to go out heavy, because they’re prepared to make a few mistakes and end up starting a war that they don’t have to go out and fight. I just think the people should have a little more to say in some of these foreign matters. I don’t want to have to go out and die for their mistakes. Thank God we got a better President now’  – Prince continues, rather startlingly – ‘with bigger balls’ – the reader may note the recurrent sexual imagery – ‘than Carter, l think Reagan’s a lot better. Just for the power he represents, if nothing else. Because that also means as far as other countries are concerned. He also has a big mouth, which is probably a good thing. His mouth it his one big asset’

(spero che la sua fosse solo ironia, però)

(…)

(nella parte conclusiva dell’articolo, il giornalista si sofferma sul Minnesota, terra da cui sono arrivate molte personalità, anche importanti, prime di Prince)

(a Prince Minneapolis piece proprio perché è così isolata)

(si può lavorare in una condizione di pace pressoché assoluta)

“Perhaps this is Prince’s Minneapolis background coming out. Who else has Minnesota turned up in recent years? Only Prince, Bob Dylan, Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey. Which is at least a healthy bit of yin and yang. Prince says he still lives in the city in which he was born precisely because it is so isolated. Ask Prince about his musical influences and he’ll go all coy on you. You don’t hear anyone, he’ll claim, if your home is in Minnesota. All the radio stations play is C&W music, he says. In fact, he genuinely doesn’t appear to have heard, or even heard of, a large percentage of acts with whom one might assume he would be familiar”

‘Listening to the radio there’ – he insists -‘really turned me off a lot of things that were supposedly going on. If they did pick up on something they’d just play it to death, and you’d end up totally disliking it So I missed out on a lot of groups’

“There was a certain amount of deliberate choice operating here”

‘When I started doing my own records l really didn’t want to listen to anybody, because I figured I should just disregard what anybody else might be doing. Though I suppose subconsciously I might have been Influenced just by the mood that was going on around me. I can only be a product of my time.Unless I cut myself off totally.Though that’ –  he adds, purposely enigmatic – ‘is soon to come’

(…)

(segue un fuoco di artificio di risposte spiritose e tutte, tutte sue:)

“From what’s he going to cut himself off?

‘The world’

What does he intend to do?

‘Just write music, and things like that. Hang around in my head. And just make records. I don’t think I’ll perform anymore. I don’t want to do this too much longer’

Is it stopping being fun?

‘It’s still fun. But I get bored real fast. Yeah, it’s still fun. But I can’t see it going on for too much longer in the same fashion’

And so Prince strides off into the sunlit Manhattan streets, heading for that last plane to Minnesota”

Fonte:

– Chris Salewicz, “Half a million dirty minds can’t be wrong about this man”, NME, giugno 1981