PROFILE PRINCE: The maverick singer is coming here as part of yet another farewell tour - but we should appreciate him now, in case he means it this time.
The latest biography of the artist most commonly known as Prince concluded that his life story was "so much concerned with rumour, counter-rumour, carefully confected legend, fallings out, gagging clauses and plain nonsense" that it was difficult to separate truth from myth when it comes to the man known as "the black Bob Dylan".
There is only one constant in any exploration of Prince's life: he is an undisputed musical genius whose songwriting ability has been placed on a par with Lennon and McCartney, whose work as a guitarist draws comparisons to Jimi Hendrix and whose incendiary live performances are up there with the very best moments of James Brown.
"A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" is how Winston Churchill once described Russia and many music observers would regard that form of epitaph as somewhat of an understatement in Prince's case.
The latest news from Planet Prince is that he is shortly to embark on a tour to play his greatest hits "for the very last time". This tour includes a June 16th show at Croke Park.
Depending on who you want to believe, Prince is either leaving music to embark on a Bible studies course or his much-overworked hip has finally given out and he has to have it replaced. Either way, he has made these sort of "last ever time" announcements so many times over the years that one day it's actually going to be true.
As some indication of his box-office appeal, he managed to sell out a 21-night run at London's 20,000 capacity 02 Arena last year - and not only were the shows rapturously received, Prince also played a series of second "aftershow" concerts most nights.
"I've got too many hits, y'all can't handle," he said one night from the 02 stage before beginning a song sequence that included Raspberry Beret, Nothing Compares 2 U, Kissand Little Red Corvette. Clutching his phallic-shaped guitar, whirling like a dervish and displaying an almost old-fashioned sense of showmanship, he certainly lived up to his reputation as "the eighth wonder of the musical world".
A cryptic remark later the same night - "I'm going to keep you all confused" - might have had as much to do with his plans for the setlist that night as it had to do with his life and times so far.
BORN PRINCE ROGERSNelson in Minneapolis in 1958, he was named after the Prince Rogers Nelson jazz trio, in which his father played.
Depending on what mood he is in, he either describes both his parents as African-American, or in some cases, his father as being black and his mother being Italian-American.
Aged five, and just after his parents divorced, he got his first taste of "the road", when his father took him on tour with his band. There was an epiphany of sorts when, aged 10, he attended his first James Brown concert. This obviously left an indelible impression on the young man - he has liberally "borrowed" from the James Brown stage show bag of tricks.
No one disputes that he was a child prodigy: he had mastered somewhere in the region of 25 instruments by his early teens, but his early musical excursions saw him playing very derivative pop funk. HOwever, Warners saw something more to him and, despite a few early failures, he broke through globally in 1982 with the 1999album.
He had a carefully cultivated salacious image in the early years - boasting that his father had thrown him out when he was 11 for sleeping with an 18-year-old woman - and his lyrics were of the tantalisingly indecent variety. Al Gore's wife, Tipper, bought his 1984 album, Purple Rain, and was shocked by the lyrics to one of the songs, Darling Nikki, which included the lines: "I knew a girl named Nikki/I guess you could say she was a sex fiend/I met her in a hotel lobby/masturbating with a magazine."
She was moved to set up the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), a lobby group which called for stricter restrictions on the use of explicit sexual imagery in popular music. The group's warning message "to inform and educate parents" about the nature of the songs their children were listening to somewhat backfired when musicians reported that the PMRC was one of the best things to happen to rock music because, if they disapproved of a song, that meant it was warmly embraced by disgruntled children everywhere.
While his record label wanted to carefully nurture Prince as the "edgier" alternative to Michael Jackson, the musician soon developed very strong ideas about how to manage his own career. As a freeform type of musician with strong roots in jazz, Prince was always loath to release his albums to suit a record company's schedule.
He has always remarked that, for him, music is something "primaeval", and he insisted that he allowed to write for other acts and release his own material under a different name.
When he informed the label that he wanted to release a new album under the name "Camille", the relationship broke down and Prince took to describing himself as a "slave" and changed his name to a squiggle. He became "the artist formerly known as Prince".
His career became fitful as he was locked into a no-win battle with Warners. In his "wilderness years", he had moments of candescent musical brilliance and released some of his most over-indulgent work.
Always ahead of the posse, he experimented in the 1990s with releasing albums direct to his fans via the internet on his own NPG label. He has now entered into a type of uneasy truce with the music industry - he uses its machinations when necessary, but at other times, he will give away free copies of new albums with a newspaper, as he did with the Mail on Sundaylast year.
Just as things seemed to have quietened down in his life in the late 1990s, Prince announced that he had become a Jehovah's Witness. He began to censor some of his own explicit lyrics and even went so far as to edit various "biblically inaccurate" religious references in his songs.
To this day, people report their surprise to answer their door to a small man dressed in a satin suit and wearing stacked heels asking them: "Would you like to talk about Jesus?"
Just last year, in a Hollywood nightclub, he offered to pay the resident lap-dancers double their night's wages if they stopped performing.
He claims to be a changed man these days, saying: "I was a different person before. I pushed the envelope as far as it needed to be pushed, and now it's on the floor and people seem to want it to stay there."
IN BETWEEN THElegal battles with the music industry, his two divorces and his religious conversion, there have always been moments of musical excellence. At the 2004 Grammy Awards, he opened the show with Beyonce Knowles playing Purple Rain, Let's Go Crazy, Baby, I'm A Starand Crazy In Lovein one of the most memorable musical moments of the past 10 years. The appearance kick-started a renewed interest in all things Prince.
But, just as his career was in resurgence, he caused controversy and outrage again when he started to sue his own fans.
An innocuous video on YouTube, which showed a baby dancing in his mother's kitchen while a Prince song was on the radio in the background, prompted the musician to get the video removed for "copyright violation". Not stopping at unauthorised use of his music on YouTube, Prince then enlisted a small army of lawyers to trawl through internet fan sites and purge them of all photographs, images, lyrics, album covers and anything linked to his likeness.
These fan sites, which are run for free by devout fans do, strictly speaking, infringe his copyright by showing Prince pictures and using lyrics from his songs. However, most musicians work in tandem with these sites, viewing them as valuable promotional resources.
A coalition of Prince fan websites, calling themselves Prince Fans United, reacted angrily, saying that the threat of legal action "is not being made in an attempt to enforce valid copyright as Prince alleges, rather we believe they are attempts to stifle all critical commentary about Prince. Prince claims that fan sites are not allowed to present any artwork with Prince's likeness, to the extreme that he has demanded removal of fans' own photographs of their Prince-inspired tattoos and their vehicles displaying Prince inspired licence plates."
You can be a hero of sorts in the music world for taking on your record company, but taking on your own fans is a whole different matter. Prince said that he was not suing his fans, but "simply looking to provide fans with exclusive message and images entirely free of charge". He ended his message by saying: "I love you all, but don't you ever mess with me no more."
The 49-year-old, who has never really learnt how to draw the line between perfectionism and being a control freak, rarely offers any real insight into his modus operandi. On those very rare occasions when he does give press interviews, he bans tape recorders, pens and any discussion of his past.
"So much has been written about me and people don't know what's right and what's wrong," he has said. "I'd rather let them stay confused."
In an era of blanded out, PR-polished rock stars, Prince remains an intriguing maverick. Whether being a slave, sex symbol, Jehovah's Witness or just a plain old wilfully idiosyncratic and unpredictable presence, he has always kept a firm possession of what can only be described as a musical genius. And these days in the music world, any genius will do.
CV: The Prince File
Who is he?Currently trading as Prince, but this is subject to change.
Why is he in the news?His Purpleness will descend on Croke Park on June 16th this year when he will bring his greatest hits tour to Ireland for, he says, the very last time.
Distinguishing characteristics:He's "sex on a stick" according to Kylie Minogue, but Boy George rather cattily describes him as "a dwarf who's been dipped in a bucket of pubic hair".
Should I go?It will be a soul-funk-rock extravaganza by a man with one of the best back catalogues in the business, but be warned: with Prince, expect the unexpected. The usual terms and conditions do not apply.
