Morris Day: He would stop by my house and knock on the front door. If it was late I might try and duck him, act tike I wasn't home, but he'd go from the front door to the window to banging on the back door. You'd think I stole something from him, but he just wanted to come in and record. That went on all the time. He's hollering for me, and it was all because he had a song in his head that he wanted to record, and he just wasn't giving up on the idea of that. Dez Dickerson: We were in LA and we were in a break between shows. Prince sat everybody down and said, "Ok, here's what we're going to do. Everybody in this band is going to have a distinct personality and identity.
I'm going to portray pure sex." Those were his exact words. Wendy Melvoin: We used to have personality names for him. Steve was the guy we really liked. He was sweet, funny, quiet, engaged, playful, available, touchy feely, huggy-wore tube socks that came up over his knees. Then there was Fred Sanford. He was impatient, annoyed, aggressive, and mean. Fred Sanford was going to kick someone's ass.
There was Marilyn Monroe-seductive, quiet, and just full of sexual energy. And there was Shaft. He would go on stage with us. He was ready to kick some ass like a vigilante. Morris Hayes: I remember once he did something really crazy. He played two instruments at once. He was playing his guitar and a keyboard at the same time, and I said, "Man, I can't do anything like that! That's impossible!" Really quietly, he said, "Morris, if you want to stay here, I don't accept impossible. I don't accept, 'No.
' We figure out how to win. If you want to stay here, you'll figure out how to win. I don't care how you do it, hieroglyphics, whatever you've got to do to figure it out, but you will figure it out, or you'll be gone." Jill Jones: My mom said, "You know the only time a pimp ever sleeps with a woman is when he's trying to get her back in check." My mom always thought that when Prince was sleeping with women it was actually to control them. And when he wasn't sleeping with you, you were working. She said, "He's the best pimp I've ever seen." She said he was like the Iceberg Slim of his day.
Book jacket.