Prince giant pop and funk, has died – Le Figaro

DISAPPEARANCE – US musician was found dead Thursday in the elevator of her home. Singer and multi-instrumentalist genius, this man band dominated the 1980s with blows of tubes and extravagant shows.

April 14 in Atlanta for what was to be the last concert of his long career, he sang, rappelling, Heroes , the famous song by David Bowie, who died on 10 January. It was after this performance that the private plane that brought him to his home had had to land in Illinois for an emergency hospitalization. His entourage had then referred the Kid of Minneapolis was suffering from a simple flu. Very thin recently, he announced to tackle the writing of his Memoirs , which does not fail to amaze his fans, who knew his excessive taste for secrecy.

Prince, 57, was found dead Thursday in the elevator of recording studios from his home in Chanhassen, southwest of Minneapolis, from unknown causes. It is there that he had built the complex Paisley Park, home recording studios, rehearsal rooms and offices, in 1988, the peak of his popularity. Ten years after the release of his first album, For You , on which he played all the instruments, while Prince sat in the firmament of the most acclaimed musicians. In the 1960s, the question burning rock fans lips was: Twenty years later, their children Prince Michael Jackson opposed with equal ardor “Are you a Beatles or Rolling Stones?”.

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If it never reached sales peaks of younger family Jackson, he left a considerable imprint on popular music today. tubes composer for him ( Purple Rain , Raspberry Beret , Kiss , Sign o ‘the Times , Cream , Sexy Motherfucker …) as for the other ( Manic Monday to the Bangles, Nothing Compares to You ), head orchestra, guitar virtuoso, he was one of the most impressive musicians a decade which produced little geniuses of his caliber.

it breaks down the barriers between black and white music

Born in 1958 in Minneapolis union of pianist and composer John L. Nelson Sunday and amateur jazz singer Della Mattie Shaw, Prince Rogers Nelson manifest early aptitude for music, composing his first song ( Funk machine ) at the age of 7 years on the family piano. In his high school band, Grand Central, he alternately takes the guitar and the piano and quickly noticed in the clubs of the region. The prodigy built his musical style based on those of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana and George Clinton, pursuing the ideal of diversity advocated by Sly & amp; the Family Stone, which can be considered the heir. Like him, he breaks down the barriers between black and white music, deemed irreconcilable few years earlier.

At 18, one of its models attracted the attention of several record companies. He signed with Warner, for creative freedom it brings him. He will leave with loss and crash in the mid 1990s, whereas it is in the meantime become the slave of the multinational. Yet it is production for the brand that will lead to the sky.

At first, cleverly combining funk, rock and dance songs in the dirty words he portrays a provocative character, imposing a unique voice and virtuoso guitar playing. In 1984, the album Purple Rain soundtrack of a friendly autobiographical turnip, devotes When Doves Cry and the title track becoming global tubes.

The 1980s are his. He did not hesitate to highlight his colleagues, including Wendy and Lisa, launched his label, many artists and produced his own career prospered wildly with bulimia. Each of its outputs is a major event: around the world in a day betrays his fascination with the Beatles, Parade is the soundtrack of another nanar, Under the Cherry Moon , turned on the French Riviera, but the double album Sign o ‘the Times , published in 1987, holding the rank of masterpiece work in his discography. Despite the boldness of Lovesexy and success of the soundtrack of Batman of Tim Burton, Prince starts a slowdown that will amplify

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A showman

Prolific ad nauseam, he began to sabotage his own production fault sort the wheat from the chaff among the pieces that it consists twenty-four hours on twenty-four. It depletes different groups, requiring total availability from them, and began to tire his most loyal suddenly albums triple and undercooked concepts. Accompanied by a producer of the caliber of Quincy Jones, Prince would have sold far fewer references but would probably have kept a better musical level. We will remember the polished movie of the decade 1982-1992, next to which his later discs are pale.

Unlike his discography, including interest fades over time, Prince remained an artist of fascinating scene to the end. Since the 1980s ambitious shows to the intimate concerts last year, his incredible charisma, despite its small size (1.57 m) will be a major attraction.

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unprecedented flexibility, rule ballets set to the wire, with escorts handpicked, caregiver sets and held with an unhealthy perfectionism. inexhaustible musician, jazz musician at heart, he took the habit, after filling large venues, give appointment to his fans a few hours later in a club to indulge his delight: jammer, forgetting representation and sometimes cumbersome celebrity.

in November 1999, after his performance at Zenith, he had thus turned the Bataclan, under the very eyes of people like Carla Bruni and Jean-Jacques Goldman, delivering chorus inspired guitar on covers of his favorite artists, happy as a kid to put forward his hero Larry Graham. It was at that time, having abandoned his stage name, it is designated by an unpronounceable Love Symbol created by him and gives shape so convoluted with his guitar.

A man devoured his art

Internet pioneer, he denounced before everyone Web giants’ stranglehold on music, experimenting with alternative ways to distribute his music. He insists occur in beautiful places. Thus seen at the Grand Palais in October 2009, three months after entering the Montreux Festival with two concerts in one evening. Or the New Morning, where, in summer 2010, he gave a historic concert of nearly four hours.

In the capital, where he owned a pied-a-terre, we lent more adventures in this womanizer, who married twice: first with one of his backup singers, which he gave in 1996 a boy died a week after his birth, then in 2001 with the Canadian Marina Testolini, whom he divorced in 2006. longtime Vegetarian, he joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses on the advice of bassist Larry Graham in 2001 rewriting the way the texts of his most scabrous songs. It leaves the image of a man consumed by his art. Miles Davis, who greatly admired, had defined as “a mix between Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone and Little Richard.”