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PEOPLE & ARTS Thursday 31 OcTOber 2019
Prince's anticipated, posthumous memoir is ready for fans

By LEANNE ITALIE doodles and cartoons,
NEW YORK (AP) — Panic, along with lyrics Prince of-
joy, shock: Dan Piepen- ten wrote on whatever was
bring felt them all when handy, including a brown
Prince plucked him to col- paper bag.
laborate on his first memoir, There's a photo album
followed by more shock Piepenbring unearthed at
and profound sadness Paisley Park that a sleep-
at news of the superstar's less Prince decided to put
death while the book was together in 1977 at age 19,
in its early stages. only days from complet-
Though the project was ing his debut album, "For
thrown into chaos when You." With witty remarks
Prince died on April 21, written in pencil, Prince sits
2016, of an accidental on the hood of his first car
drug overdose, his estate in one shot. In another, he
ultimately decided to press snapped his first paycheck
on, allowing Piepenbring from Warner Bros.
and his publishing team There's also an early out-
free access to the pieces line he wrote for the 1984
of his life left behind at his film "Purple Rain" with an
beloved Paisley Park, in- even darker story line than
cluding the contents of his the one that made it onto
vault. screens. The film, based
Now, the highly antici- loosely on his life, won
pated collaboration, "The Prince an Oscar for best
Beautiful Ones," is ready original sound score. In the
for Prince fans to read as 1982 treatment, "The Kid"
many continue to mourn, character Prince plays is a
propelling the 33-year-old diagnosed schizophrenic
journalist into the spotlight who as a child watches
to explain how he sorted it his mother shoot his father
all out. dead, then turns the gun
"There was a sense even on herself.
from the start that it Prince had envisioned play-
couldn't really be hap- In this Feb. 4, 2007, file photo, Prince performs during the halftime show at the Super Bowl XLI foot- ing both his mother and
pening," Piepenbring told ball game in Miami. father in flashback scenes.
The Associated Press of his Associated Press The finished film, not written
involvement. "It felt very by Prince, involves a suicide
surreal. There was also beautiful, fun-loving party of brokenness that he's al- past with a level of detail attempt with a gun that the
just a sense of joy, I think, girl with a stubborn, irratio- ways working to repair." and specificity that maybe father survives.
at the possibility of meet- nal streak — and a sneaky Prince writes that his first he had avoided before," Many of the photos in the
ing someone that I held in flair, as Prince wrote: memory was his mother's Piepenbring said. "He had book are familiar to hard-
such high regard, someone "She would spend up what eyes, describing her habit come to the realization core fans and it includes a
whose music had been the little $ the family had 4 sur- of throwing conspiratorial that he really was in many heavy dose of previously
soundtrack to the better vival on partying with her winks his way. ways the sum of his mother published interviews with
part of my youth." friends, then trespass in2 my "Sometimes when my fa- and father and they were Prince. From the start, it
The book out Tuesday from bedroom, 'borrow' my per- ther wasn't playing piano the, sort of, two poles of his was clear to Piepenbring
Spiegel & Grau includes no sonal $ that eye'd gotten he'd say something 2 my being." that Prince envisioned him
bombshells, though Prince from babysitting local kids, mother & she would wink Prince wrote on other sub- as something more than a
very much wanted to pro- & then chastise me 4 even at me. She never told me jects as well, including pu- ghostwriter.
vide some, and a mere 28 questioning her regarding what it meant and some- berty (his stepfather took Prince was looking for a
memoir pages written in his the broken promises she times it would be accom- him to R-rated movies at a second voice to bring his
elegant script and quirky made 2 pay me back." panied by a gentle caress drive-in as a stand-in for the vision alive in print, almost
style, replacing the word The tumultuous nature of of her hand 2 my face. But birds and bees talk), the "like a sounding board,"
"I'' with a drawing of a hu- his parents' relationship had eye am quite sure now this blackouts and seizures he said Piepenbring, who is
man orb, for instance. All a lasting impact. is the birth of my physical had as a child and his first based in New York and was
told, Piepenbring spent 12 "The wound of Ur parents imagination." kiss, with a girl of just 5 or 6. working for Paris Review
to 15 hours face-to-face fighting is chilling when U're Prince had big ideas for the They'd play house. when, at age 29, he was
with Prince in Minneapolis, a child," Prince wrote. "If it book, considering at one Piepenbring wrote a chosen for the book.
New York and on tour in happens 2 become physi- time a "how to" on making lengthy introduction ex- As for what might have
Melbourne. cal, it can be soul-crushing." it in the music business with- plaining his encounters with been, Piepenbring said, "I
Their last conversation was Their conflicts, divorce out selling your soul. At an- Prince and how the book think we would have got-
just four days before Prince when he was 7 and the other point, he suggested was completed. He wasn't ten more of his story than
died. It was focused on his dual impact on Prince and that he and Piepenbring allowed to take notes dur- we've ever seen, and I think
parents and their conflict- his work is the book's pre- figure out a way to end ing their first meeting so he we would have gotten not
ing influences in his life. His vailing theme. racism. At still another, he was forced to reconstruct just this book but a number
father, John L. Nelson, was "So much of his writing is wanted to focus on the im- the conversation. Some of books from him. He told
a disciplined, God-fearing about division in some way portance of creative free- of their chats are printed me that he wanted to write
jazz musician with an ex- and the fight to make one- dom. as marginalia in the book. a lot of books, and I really
plosive temper. His mother, self whole again," Piepen- "I think he was really in the There's an abundance of think he was serious about
Mattie Della Shaw, was a bring said. "There's this kind process of excavating his hand-drawn childhood that."q