Before he passed away in 2016, Prince was in the process of putting together a memoir with writer Dan Piepenbring, an editor at the literary journal Paris Review.
“From my first encounter with Prince I knew he was a master storyteller,” he wrote in a pitch letter, which he shared with The Guardian. “To help him tell his stories in a new mode would be a once-in-a-lifetime honour.” In an interview with the UK newspaper, Piepenbring shares his three-month experience at Prince’s Paisley Park complex in Minnesota, which he describes as “bizarre” and “surreal” … and an experience detailed in The Beautiful Ones, out October 29.
A few things stood out: Prince was not a fan of interviewers or writers, the latter being referred to as “mamma-jammas wearing glasses and an alligator shirt behind a typewriter.” However, the musician and Piepenbring did bond, with Prince referring to his editor as “my brother Dan.” They attended concerts, parties and movie screenings (Kung Fu Panda 3!) together and discussed his schooling, childhood epilepsy and the death of former girlfriend Vanity. Prince also shared high school comic strips and early photo albums.
They also discussed making the book a work of two distinct voices (Prince and Piepenbring) that merge over the narrative. “The fact that he wanted to produce something so formalist and postmodern and strange was the most surprising thing,” says the writer. Sadly, the singer passed away three months after the collaboration started, but shortly after Piepenbring as granted access to Prince’s vault and estate so he could continue the book, now an anthology with photos, scrapbooks and even reproductions of Prince’s handwriting.
And a bit of the Purple One’s own music criticism: “We need to tell [music media conglomerates] that they keep trying to ram Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran down our throats and we don’t like it no matter how many times they play it,” he says.
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