Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince [Paperback]

Alex Hahn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2004

Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince is the definitive biography of one of the most talented and enigmatic musicians of our time, a figure who has seized international attention for decades and will continue to do so, both for his artistic talent and his bizarre behavior. While a handful of quasi-biographical efforts have been undertaken on Prince, Possessed is the first full-length, full-scale biographical treatment. Drawing on sources unavailable to other authors, it is the first book to fully analyze the creative legacy and unveil the psychology of this tortured, messianic artist whose ceaseless reinventions have at times rendered him a profoundly original artist and at other threatened to make a mockery of himself and his music. Blending biographical storytelling, pop cultural history, and music scholarship, the book will appeal to a broad general audience as well as to music fans.

Author Alex Hahn, a journalist who has written for The Boston Globe and The San Francisco Chronicle, taps key sources - such as friends, employees, and industry insiders - to place readers at the scene of some of the artist's most important recording and song writing sessions; relate how his compulsive sexual behavior led to revolving-door romances with Kim Basinger, Carmen Elektra, Vanity, and others; reveal that Prince on many occasions plagiarized band members' musical ideas; and explain why he has become such a paranoid, vindictive, and isolated figure. The book also draws upon the hundreds of interviews given by Prince over his career.

The book contain 30 high-quality photographs of Prince and his associates from all points of his career.

Possessed also contains the most detailed appendix of song and recording session information ever assembled for a pop musician, including information about Prince's vast canon of unreleased music and the hundreds of songs he has written for other pop artis

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The alien androgyny, the spiritual eroticism, the royal conceit: the outsized persona of the artist currently known as Prince fascinates on numerous levels. In this detailed biography by journalist and attorney Hahn, anecdotes of a personal nature mix with close readings of Prince's musical output, producing few big secrets but plenty of insight. Prince's early days are recounted as a frenzy of musical education, with influences ranging from the funky dexterity of Sly Stone, to the tight perfectionism of James Brown, to the spiritual yearning of Stevie Wonder. (Hahn also names a less obvious influence in Joni Mitchell, whose lyrics Prince apparently purloined sometimes whole cloth.) The young Prince also absorbs the mechanics of the studio like a sponge. When the child prodigy meets with early success, signing to Warner Brothers at age 19, he blossoms into the personality of flamboyant and controlling self-absorption that fans have now watched mutate for over two decades. Constructed from interviews with producers, sound engineers, journalists and publicists, though not as frequently with Prince's inner circle, the book portrays Prince as a kind of outsider artist, eccentric and self-centered to the extreme, rarely leaving the enchanted, Minneapolis garden of his childhood, where he has managed to build himself into a living, protean god. This is a truly American story of cranky self-invention. B&w photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

In the late 1970s, Minnesotan Prince Rogers Nelson began releasing funk-fortified albums on which he was the only musician and singer. First as an underground phenomenon, then as a much-hyped purveyor of a new kind of excruciatingly danceable, sexy music, he became a pop phenomenon. He shed two-thirds of his name, formed a series of bands, made some movies, and eventually dropped his name entirely, preferring to identify himself with an unpronounceable symbol. Then he feuded with his record company, inaugurating a series of negative career moves that rivaled Mike Tyson's in self-destructiveness and rendered him little more than fodder for late-night TV wisecracks. Hahn covers this ascent and descent in gritty detail, thanks to sources that include many Prince collaborators, though not the incredibly funky Apollonia, Morris Day, or George Clinton (whose career Prince restarted in the 1990s). Considering the longevity of rock careers these days, Prince might rebound yet. Still, he has left his mark on rock style as well as music, and Hahn has given us the arc of that mark. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Billboard Books (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823077497
• ISBN-13: 978-0823077496
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #631,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hold the line, everybody, August 17, 2003

By 

Don Karnage (Denver CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince (Hardcover)

If you're a devoted, got-everything, member-of-npg-online Prince fanatic, skip this book. It paints Prince as a fallible human being, and you don't want to hear that.

For the rest of us (I'm a fairly big Prince fan), this is an enlightening look at Prince's career through 2002. I didn't find the reporting to be tabloidesque - both Alex and the people interviewed (including such vital players in the Prince saga as Alan Leeds and Dr Fink) paint Prince as a fascinating and incredible human being, both with strengths (mostly musical and visionary) and weaknesses (mainly in business and interpersonal relationships, as well as the "always taking credit but never taking blame" facet that is common to many people in his position). None of what I read contradicts what I knew about the man, and reading the book threw him into sharper focus. I don't entirely agree with Alex's reviews of particular Prince albums or songs, but his insights prove very engaging reading to any Prince fan, and I think the overall picture he paints is fascinating.

I do think there's a major flaw in the book, and that's its division into two halves: Rise and Fall. Alex's basic premise is that Prince was on an upward climb until around 1988 (around the time Black Album was due to be released) and been falling ever since. Due to this, everything that's happened in Prince's career is seen as confirming this theory. So "Controversy" (which was more or less a sidestep) is treated as an artistic consolidation, "Diamonds and Pearls" as a commercial sellout (which it may have been, but it still returned him to the public eye), and "The Gold Experience" as a commercial flop (while it didn't sell too well, it was a critical success). This coloring of the facts doesn't really detract from the book as a whole, but it does make Prince's career look more like a mountain (up then down) rather than the peak-and-valley rollercoaster ride it has actually been.

I don't think this flaw should detract any less-than-fanatical Prince fan from reading and enjoying this book. Lots of interesting information, and almost none of it of the "juicy" nature - most having to do with unrelease tracks, abandoned projects, and so forth. Pick it up if this sounds intriguing.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From someone who has been around the Paisley Camp.., May 16, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince (Hardcover)

This book hits things right on the nail. From someone who has personally been around the Prince Camp (1994-2001) as a fan and supporter with the hope that Prince would pull out of his self destructive pattern, this is the book to get. The only downside of this writing is that everything couldn't get covered. There was much more hell than this book has reported. Nothing mentions the relationship between Prince and Sheena Easton. None of you know about the many winter jams Prince invited us to that were held at Paisley that found fans waiting for 2+ hours outside in below zero weather. He could have let people inside to get warm until the show started, most of the time it was only 50 to 60 people and we were all regulars, they knew us. People don't know how Revlon offered Prince a deal to promote a perfume around "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" and he turned it down feeling he could do better with his own brand which was "Get Wild" that ultimately bombed. The treatment of his staff and fans is stuff of legend. We all put him where his is but I challenge any of you who are not of female gender to get close enough to him to say `hello'. He will not acknowledge your jester, kindness is not in him. "What's with the Ocean" is his term for any hiss he may hear in a recording session, believe me engineers caught hell. I'm saying all this not to put Prince down but to confirm this book as being a truthful depiction of the life and times of this music legend. I for one am not getting paid a cent but it's great to finally see someone tell it like it really happened. Too many times we want to make people into what we want them to be and refuse to acknowledge the truth. Stars build fancy propaganda around themselves that's totally false. Prince has serious problems emotionally even though he is a wonderful artist. And anyone who has been around him to witness his actions first hand has a truly amazing story to tell you, I personally could go on and on. It's really scary the kind of people we choose to look up to and follow. This book is a must have for anyone wanting to know the truth of how things started and got to the point they are today in Prince's life. Get this book....

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Everything Makes Sense Now..., May 11, 2004

By 

Anthony Ian "anthony_ian" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince (Paperback)

A warning to Prince die-hards: this is not a flattering portrayal of him whatsoever. We all knew he was a mercurial control freak, and that he was essentially a one-man band, but I had no idea to what lengths he would go to alienate people. I also never realized that he had a tendency to not credit others with writing (wait 'till you read about "Kiss").

For me, I bought the book because I wanted the answer to a burning question: why did the Revolution break up? Let's face it, that was his most interesting period, his best band (if not chops-wise, certainly taste-wise) and the departure of Wendy & Lisa seemed to end an era. You'll get the answer here, and it's pretty disturbing. Only one Revolution member parted with Prince on amicable terms--drummer Bobby Z.--and that was when Prince fired him to replace him with Sheila E.

As I've found with most idols, when you look behind the talent, at the person, you most often will be disappointed. As a person, Prince is disappointing. Still, his music endures and there's plenty of fascinating stories here about the creation of his classic albums and singles, not to mention his endless side projects, both good (The Family) and bad (Carmen Electra, Vanity 6, etc.).

The irony of this book is that it ends on a sour note; it was published before his big comeback this year, and as I'm reading it the Rolling Stone arrived yesterday... with Prince on the cover.

It should be retitled The Rise, The Fall, the Return.

A must-read if you're a Prince fan. You'll also find out some amazingly interesting stuff about The Time, the whole Purple Rain phenomena, the diastrous Under the Cherry Moon, and just about everything else--including his self-immolating war with Warner Bros., who actually come out here looking pretty sympathetic.

I could not put it down.