Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Music Legend Prince Dead at 57. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired April 21, 2016 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:30:00] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Paul Vercammen is at a record store -- to you.
PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, this is the Prince display. People coming in and snapping up all sorts of Prince CDs, DVDs, even vinyl. It's so popular. They're getting a lot of calls at the store. I'm trying to get a copy of "Purple Rain" on vinyl. They have had so many calls they're refusing to hold anything for anybody, especially saying you have to come on down in person.
And a person that did that, a huge fan, Kalenna.
Kaleena, what does Prince mean to you?
KALEENA ZANDERS, PRINCE FAN: The future. He's changed music, everyone in music, influenced every person. I believe that he represents our future and kind of died with him in a way.
VERCAMMEN: You said to me earlier that you're crying on the way over here in the car and why? I mean, what impacted you so much?
ZANDERS: Well, impacts may lot because my mom used to play his music a lot when I was young and how learned how to play music. I play guitar and drums and so him -- this means a lot to me, especially watching the movie "Purple Rain." My mom covered my eyes on the silly parts. And means a lot to me because I was young and I remember him most then.
VERCAMMEN: You bought prized possessions. Spent $173 on Prince CDs, vinyls and more. This is your "Purple Rain" on vinyl.
ZANDERS: Yes. Very excited to have this again because it's a childhood memory that I'll be able to forever hold. I don't actually have a record player but I'm going to get one today just for this.
VERCAMMEN: Thank you so much for taking time out. Appreciate it.
Well, as you can tell, Brooke, people very, very inspired by Prince. They're coming out here to try to get a little piece of Prince's life, memories, and Kaleena spending $173 and debating to get a turntable.
Back to you now, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Tears today and people in shock.
Paul Vercammen, thank you so much. I can't believe I talked to Latoya Jackson, and saying it brings back
memories of my own brother passing away.
We want to hear more from Prince. We sat down with our own Larry King live in 1999. Here's a little bit more of that interview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LARRY KING, FORMER HOST, LARRY KING LIVE: Do you still have a fondness for Minneapolis?
PRINCE, SINGER & SONGWRITER: Oh yeah, absolutely.
KING: What was it like growing up there? Not many blacks in Minneapolis, right? Talking to Dave Winfield. 1 percent maybe.
PRINCE: Yeah. It was interesting for me because I knew up getting wide array of music -- I grew up with Santana and Larry Graham and Fleetwood Mac. All different kinds of things, you know? That was cool.
KING: Good place to grow up?
PRINCE: Yes, sir.
KING: You had a rough childhood, didn't you?
PRINCE: In some respects.
KING: That affect your music?
PRINCE: I don't think so. No. I think it probably helped me to look inside to know that I had to do for self.
KING: You had a rough time with -- that's all resolved now, but a rough time with your father, right?
PRINCE: I wouldn't call it rough. He was a very strict disciplinarian but all fathers were. I learned the difference between right and wrong. So I don't consider it so rough.
KING: Would you look back and say you were glad he was that way?
PRINCE: Well, you know, as I go through this, you know, I don't look back much at all. I try to stay in the now and live in the now. I think it keeps you young.
KING: You're not a reminiscer?
PRINCE: No.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
PRINCE: That a word, Larry? KING: No. I invented it. Maybe that's my symbol.
PRINCE: A hip brother.
(LAUGHTER)
I like to learn but, you know.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: Good point. When did you decide music would be a career?
PRINCE: Wow. I learned early on this was what I wanted to do, maybe about 12 years old. I knew this is what I would want to do the rest of my life.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I mean, I heard the news and devastating. I was just here Saturday night. I only started coming here, like, the last year. And huge fan. Live down the road. Never came here over the years. A huge fan, and back in college. And started going. I just thought, well, this is awesome. I felt 20 years younger every time I walked in that door.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE QUESTION)
[14:35:11] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel so young. So I was here Saturday night. And I had decided every time he has something here I am going. I am going to enjoy it. And I was thinking about him this morning. And yet, he was probably gone by that time. So -- but it makes sense because he was more connected to us Saturday night than I had ever seen. I wrote about this on my Facebook. And I was telling people that he came out and he spoke to us about what happened. And it was very cool. It was like, I always felt like we were his family. There were only 200 of us there. And he would walk around. No big deal. With us. And it was always very laid back. So he talked about what happened and he said he was OK, and said don't waste your prayers on me right now. And, you know, wait a few days.
But there was something about it. He said, I have a couple surprises for you. Got on over to the other performing area and he had a brand new -- brand new purple grand piano that Yamaha gave him, and so he pulled off the blanket and thing was just gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. So he seemed like a kid, like doing Show and Tell. And you could tell he really liked it. And I told people, the piano looks like it came from another world, like from heaven because it is so gorgeous, the way it glows, the finish on it.
So then he had another surprise and pulls out this guitar and it's purple case. Unlike anything I've ever seen. A purple case and he said, just look at this case. I mean, look at this case. I mean, it's spectacular looking for a case. And so, he opens it up, pulls out a guitar. And it, again, same thing. It looks like it came from heaven. Absolutely gorgeous, and never seen anything like it. It had a silvery feel to it and purple and gold and incredible.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Obviously, just really -- (INAUDIBLE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, I'm practically shaking. I feel bad for my other friend, Mark, who came here religiously. He's not here tonight, or today. And he can't make it. I can't imagine how he feels.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Wow. OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: All right. We are pulling away from that.
Let me give you a little bit of context. So again, the world is just grieving over the loss of Prince. He's passed away age 57. And that was just a fan who had showed up at the Paisley Park studio area where he has been, where Prince was born and raised. People are showing up, bringing flowers. They want to be there.
And on a point he made, let's bring in Eric Deggans, media critic for NPR.
Eric, I don't know if you're listening closely, how closely you were listening to that, that fan, saying that Prince sort of up and showed. The last big official concert a week ago today in Atlanta. But over the weekend, at an event called Paisley Park after Dark, Prince just up and showed up, was a very intimate setting. And the fan said something like, Prince said, save your prayers at least for a few days for me.
Do you know anything about that private small show and any context of that?
ERIC DEGGANS, MEDIA CRITIC, NPR: No. I don't know anything about that.
BALDWIN: OK.
DEGGANS: Fans know that he had organized a series of concerts, just him and a piano, and a way of him showing off his musicality and showing off his ability to command a room by himself, with just his voice and just his music. And I think fans were looking forward to seeing more of those concerts this year and so they were disappointed when one of them was canceled for illness. And now to hear he's gone, of course, strikes a blow to so many inspired by him.
BALDWIN: Gut wrenching. You know, to hear that fan describing how Prince came out on the stage and like he was a little kid unveiling a gorgeous, new, purple, Yamaha, purple, and then this new, purple guitar. He has been -- his first album I believe, late '70s. The original manager we were talking to. The fact that, Eric, he still loved performing. He ate it up.
[14:40:08] DEGGANS: Oh yeah. That's obvious. You know, I had a chance to meet with him. I was among a select few journalists who were invited back behind the scenes at Paisley Park last year to talk with him about his decision to move most of his music to Jay-Z's streaming service title and talk about the music business and the record industry. And one thing that's interesting about him, A, he seemed to eat, sleep and drink music. We meet him in the control room of Paisley Park, it looked like mission control there, it was so much gear. Right next to a well-stocked rehearsal room, and living quarters that seemed to be right inside the studio. And but he was a mixture of down to earth and sort of eccentric at the same time. He could talk very knowledgeably about the music business and was very witty. Also, a little shy. Had two twin assistants dressed exactly the same trailing after him. And we met in a conference room with doves in it. It was quite an interesting experience.
But those who have had the good fortune of meeting him, of course, watching him perform knew that he lived music a way that I think very few other artists did.
BALDWIN: It was in him, in his bones. He had musician parents. I have only had the pleasure of seeing him perform once. It was actually when he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and opened the show and had the boots on and the heels and the colorful, you know, flamboyant dress and jumping up and down and gave it everything. He gave it everything. And one and only time I got to see him.
DEGGANS: Exactly.
BALDWIN: Yeah.
DEGGANS: You know what was great about Prince is combining the music and performance in one, you know, potent sort of dose. So he had the big band sort of flavor, the funk flavor of a James Brown. You could tell there were many points in the show he had kind of taken from the godfather of soul to the next level and he had a rock and roll flavor. He was a rock guitarist and also he had this very traditional R&B style to return to for ballads, for example, and croon in a way to make women swoon and guys envious and the dance moves.
BALDWIN: He had it all.
DEGGANS: A way of getting his whole band to join in on those dance moves and combined a lot of things into one potent image and a dose of entertainment.
BALDWIN: We talk about the music. I want to hear it. Here's a little bit more of Prince.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SINGING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Oh my goodness.
Music legend Prince, on your screen. So many of us still in shock, those of us who are music lovers. Just, he passed away age 57. That is the word we have from his publicist here.
So many artists reaching out.
Michaela Angela-Davis, who we have talked to a number of times, a dear friend of the show, for all the times I've spoken with you, I had no idea you were Prince's stylist and toured with him. Please, tell me a story.
MICHAELA ANGELA-DAVIS, CULTURAL CRITIC/WRITER & FORMER PRINCE STYLIST: Oh. Brooke, I am shaking actually. You know, the most prolific thing to me about Prince was not only was he the most vibrant example of black genius that I have ever seen, but he was able to negotiate god and sex in his subject matter in a way that we had never seen before. Every song was either a prayer or foreplay. You know? And like on "Wild Cat Martha in a celibate rage, I want you alone in my dirty little cage."
BALDWIN: Wow. Ooh!
[14:45:04] ANGELA-DAVIS: Right? This is what came out of him. He was a prophet. He was a pimp. He was purple, Midwest, magical. He was funny. He was so black. He -- he walked through this world like he believed he was free, like a free artist, a free man. You know? He put slave on his face to challenge the entire music industry at a time when they were getting everybody's everything.
I saw him one day -- we were at Paisley Park, a magical place. And, you know, I just saw that fan talk about being at Paisley Park. He would have the pop-up shows all the time, invite the community, and he would play for 75 people with the same brilliance that he would play for 75,000 people.
BALDWIN: He brought it for whoever was there.
ANGELA-DAVIS: For whoever, because he was playing for the music. He was the music. He literally told me that he thought in music. He said, you know, you think in words, Michaela. Say I'm having a conversation with you, Brooke, and start thinking about lunch or my child. He's like, I hear music. So sometimes you could be at lunch with him and he would get up and leave because there was a melody so urgent, a music so real that he would go to the studio to put it down. And beautiful artists come through all the time. Like he would just give artists that call. And they would come to Paisley Park and jam. So the amount of music in his archives is -- I can't even imagine what there's left for us to hear.
But he -- you know, it's funny. I was interviewing George Clinton one time and I said, you know, you are the father of funk. Who do you think is funk? He said, Prince is the funkiest "ugh, ugh" I ever met. So, you know, this is really difficult because we weren't prepared. You know?
BALDWIN: No.
ANGELA-DAVIS: And there's so much, you know, denial going on, on social media. But again, I think the thing that is so profound -- because we have had lots of profound artists, you know, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, but this idea of how he made spirituality and sex coexist. He made us deal with it. And the biggest things in so many people's lives. He unearthed it and put it in your face and funky and fabulous and you had to deal, you had to deal. And yeah.
BALDWIN: I'm almost speechless just even talking about it. What a privilege for you to be able to just share, you know, the same oxygen with this man for so many years.
Chris Rock's tweet, "Say it isn't so."
Boy George, "Today's the worst day ever. Prince RIP. I'm crying."
You know, Spike Lee, "I miss my brother. Prince was a funny cat. Great sense of humor."
ANGELA-DAVIS: Very funny.
BALDWIN: Let's hear --
ANGELA-DAVIS: Very funny.
BALDWIN: Let's hear more of Prince. Here's more from his body of work.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SINGING)
(SCREAMING)
(SINGING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Oh my goodness. This is bringing me back. Heard that song so many times in my bedroom as a kid!
Let's bring in Mathieu Bitton, Grammy-nominated art director, who has known and worked with Prince since 1998.
And the "Batman" movie was 1999, and right around the same time. How are you feeling today?
MATHIEU BITTON, ART DIRECTOR (voice-over): Well, I'm completely devastated. And just to clarify, I've done projects over the year but I met him in 1988. I was just a teenager in Paris. And my dad snuck me into a club and got to talk to him. At that point, I think I was 14 or something and decided, OK, I'm moving to the states. I just watching Prince perform completely changed my life and his music always, you know, just changed everything. Greatest performer of all time because it's the years I grew up in Paris and then moving to the states, it was all about Prince, and I was obsessed with his music. I collected the records and a lot of projects I ended up doing were thanks to that collection. And, you know, he was just -- I'm in so much shock and my phone never
blown up like it has today. Hundreds of messages of people who I guess as soon as they heard they thought of me because they know how much he meant to me. And I think, you know, this year has been crazy -- Bowie -- I mean, I don't know.
[14:50:45] BALDWIN: Bowie, and even some years ago, Michael Jackson. I was talking to Latoya, it brought it all back for her.
Can we go back? Your dad got into the club and, as a 14-year-old, you got to see Prince? Can you please tell me about that? What was that like?
BITTON: Well, the first time I saw, I was 13.
BALDWIN: 13.
BITTON: The zenith in Paris. The parade tour and I was a fan already. I was really into him. But when I saw him live in '86, this is the parade for me. This was the -- I mean, this is the best ever. And the beginning of maybe the greatest live phase he ever had. He just could not miss. He was the greatest performer I ever seen. But to see him live on stage in Paris, a little guy on stage, controlling 6,000 people in the show. But I realized, you know, I didn't know that was possible. I never got to see James Brounl (ph) in the heyday. I wasn't in the old days and Sly Stone and Hendrix and Duke Ellington and Mozart. He was all those guys combined with his own twist. His lyrics were like nobody else's. He invented texting, basically with the "2"s and "U"s and "I"s, and he really revolutionized everything. I can't believe we're here talking about this.
BALDWIN: It's the thing about Prince, though. He brought it altogether musically. When you talk to anyone, I know a couple people in the music business, you talk to a rock and roller, blues, jazz, country, folk, rap, hip hop, R&B, everyone has been touched by this man.
BITTON: Oh yeah. I woke up. My first Facetime call the morning, I work with Lenny Kravitz. We basically connected in the '80s because of Prince's music. Like we were family friends and he would say, oh yeah, "Dirty mind." You like that? I'd say, listen to the B-side of this record. And this morning my first Facetime call with Lenny, who was so devastated, and same time, you mentioned, Chris Rock, and we have listened to Prince music together and talked about Prince. We're all -- quest love. All fanatics. But Lenny was really devastated and kept saying this can't be true. Please find out. This is a hoax. Because for him, Prince was also such an inspiration. You know? He wanted many to share this with you guys that, you know, this was, you know, this was so devastating to him. He was like a brother and a friend to him. And Prince is somebody -- we were in Rome I guess a couple of years ago now and had dinner with Prince after one of his shows and I remember I was always very shy around Prince. You know? And us walking on eggshells because he was a surreal figure to me and we talked about music. And whenever Prince started to talk the eyes glow and the body language would change and saw he was living music. It was after the concert. In his hotel room, and here he is with a cane pointing to all of the performers in the video, telling the band, you came in one-twelfth second late on this song. Such a perfectionist. He does a three-hour show and sits for three hours after the show with the band, what they can do better and him, and he was pulling up chairs for us. We thought, OK, we will have dinner. We had to wait a couple of hours to watch the show again with him in the room and the discipline that he had was incredible. You know? And I have no words really. I can't believe this is happening. Wake up from the dream.
BALDWIN: So many people do. You are not alone. That is perfectionism, discipline, professionalism. Hearing somebody do it for decades and decades and still care about the details of the performance and everything that goes into it.
Let me ask you to stick around.
I want to hear more of Prince in Prince's own words. He sat down with Larry King for a "Larry King Live" back in appropriately 1999. Here's more of that interview.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
[14:55:11] KING: The highest risk someone would think someone who gets famous to take is to drop the name that got them famous.
PRINCE: That's a thing I dealt with. I searched deep within to find out the answer to whether fame was most important to me or my spiritual well being. And I chose the latter.
KING: Was it difficult? To not be what you had become known as.
PRINCE: You mean --
KING: I think, well, a famous -- only other famous person that did that Cassias Clay. Changed his name to Mohammed Ali due to a faith belief and he was in the ring and as long as he won it sold. You, though, person show business is almost dependent on recognition. You stopped being Prince.
PRINCE: Well, that's a good point. I pretty much wanted to be dependent upon God. And when you get the inner calling to do something and you know it that you're being inspired by God, you pretty much know you better answer that call or suffer the consequences.
KING: Do you think this was God inspired, as well?
PRINCE: I do believe, yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Prince in his own words talking to Larry King.
And now, we have Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent. He just sat down with me to make sense of what happened. We knew he was ill. What do we know about him, medically speaking?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, we don't know a lot about his medical history overall. He's walking with a hip. He had some hip problems. Two weeks ago from today he canceled some shows and that time we were told it was the flu. A week later to the day he did them here in Atlanta and you interviewed some people there at the show he looked great.
BALDWIN: He killed, for 90 minutes.
GUPTA: That night back to Minneapolis, they had to make an emergency landing. He was taken to a hospital that night. We're talking about last week. In the hospital for three hours and then discharged and back home and again it was said to be flu. He needed to get some treatments for flu. Really nothing more than that. Over the weekend, he was seen. He performed a little show on Saturday night.
BALDWIN: Pop by.
GUPTA: Sunday riding a bicycle we hear, and then, you know, obviously, today, we don't know much about the earlier part of the week. Today, a sudden death. So it's a very unusual situation. It's hard to piece it altogether.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: How do you piece it altogether?
GUPTA: Well, you know, if it was flu, what can sometimes is a flu and keep in mind it kills tens of thousands of people a year, but typically older, or people who are very young. So he's 57 years old.
BALDWIN: Not people putting on shows for an hour and a half.
GUPTA: Exactly. Very active.
BALDWIN: Very active.
GUPTA: And the demanding activity he was doing, can you develop a secondary sort of infection or something, if that what was starting him really sick a week ago and then sort of got progressively ill over this early part of the week. We don't know. Was there something else affecting the immune system? Typically, fight the virus and something to make the system weaker in some way? That's a possibility. Were there medications, anything else involved? Was it a heart thing that ultimately led to all this? We don't know. May be more answers over the next few days.
But I tell you, Brooke, sometimes you just never really know for sure still, even after you look at everything.
BALDWIN: It's possible he had conditions he was unaware of.
GUPTA: That's very possible. And sometimes with some of these conditions first time you really get an idea you're even sick is you're very sick or maybe have sudden death. I think that you're going to hear a lot of speculation and too early. All we have heard with some degree of certainty is this notion of the flu a couple of weeks ago and then admitted to the hospital for three hours a week ago with the same sorts of symptoms. But we don't know more than that. We have to wait and see. Was there something else underlying all this with Prince?
BALDWIN: Very slow --
GUPTA: Yeah.
BALDWIN: -- intentional with the reporting. Make sure we cross the "T"s, cross the "I"s.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you very much.
GUPTA: Thank you.
BALDWIN: We are approaching the top of the hour. You're watching CNN.
Let's just reset.
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SINGING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
