…and parties weren’t meant to last.
It was now five years ago now. It was a vivid memory that will be with me forever.
Thursday, April 21st, 2016.
I was sitting at a gate at the Baltimore/Washington airport, having just passed through security, waiting to board the American Airlines Eagle flight with my wife and me to JFK, which would eventually take us home.
My wife was looking at her iPhone. I was sitting there, facing the gate entrance, and then my wife turned to me and said: “Prince is dead.”
I looked at her and asked, “Oh, what prince?”
“Prince.”
I looked at her, and she nodded. She gave me some of the publicly available information at that time. He was found in an elevator, dead for a while, at Paisley Park, and it was a probable drug overdose. That was all they knew.
Following that, I was in a bit of a fog . We had to board, so we boarded, and I took my iPhone out, plugged in my headphones, and played “1999.”
I wanted to listen to Prince—a Prince song. To be honest, I don’t know what drew me to “1999.” But then the lyric arrived: “I was dreamin’ when I wrote this, so sue me if I go too fast. But life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last.”
And that hurt. It really hurt. Yes, I loved Prince.
I got out of it by the time the flight landed at JFK (I think the trip wasn’t even an hour). But then, the rest of the day, I was unable to really function. Usually, before traveling home, I’d spent the day working on my laptop or emailing, tweeting…., or something.
I walked into the American Airlines Admiral’s lounge and remember seeing the TV screens all with the headlines and banners: “At age 57, singer/songwriter and musician Prince is dead of unknown causes”.
I didn’t read, sit, or watch the news. I didn’t have to, and I didn’t want to.
I don’t need to go into depth regarding his legacy or do a top ten countdown of my favorite albums of his (although I easily could). Others have and will again. I’d seen him twice at a concert in London. He was fantastic. I pretty much only played his music for three months after his death.
“Rock & Roll Love Affair” on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Oct 24th, 2012 (CityPages.com)
What upset me the most was that Prince had started making good stuff again. In 2014, he re-signed with Warner Brothers and released Art Official Age, followed soon after by HITnRun: Phase One and HITnRun: Phase Two.
My inner Prince vitals spun in circles when I saw him again in the “Rock & Roll Love Affair” music video. He was making cool stuff again, and he looked like he was having fun. He was enjoying it. “Plectrumelectrum” with 3rdeyedgirl was a funky rock album that, while not perfect, was just an enjoyable listen.
So, I felt robbed. He was only 57, and I think a lot of people had written him off as a recording artist. But I sensed a revival with his latest output, and seeing him in action again was fantastic. This came after a gap where he perhaps lost track and became a bit… difficult. But Prince has always been Prince, so I always forgave him for doing weird stuff, like giving away CDs with the Daily Mirror. That eccentricity was one of his appeals.
As he sang in one of his last songs, “Baltimore”:
“Maybe we can finally say
Enough is enough, it’s time for love
It’s time to hear
It’s time to hear the guitar play, guitar play.”
There’s always time for love, and Prince, I will miss hearing your guitar play.
Prince performs during the halftime show at the Super Bowl XLI football game at Dolphin Stadium in Miami on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2007. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)
[Author’s note: updated April 17th, 2021]