Throwback Thursday: Rest in Peace, Prince

Prince Only Wanted to See Us Laughing in the Purple Rain

So back when "Purple Rain" came out in 1984, I was a preteen in a small, conservative, Catholic town in a New England state. My town had one movie theater with two screens—no megaplex—and everybody knew everybody, so getting in to see an R-rated movie was something that needed to be coordinated carefully. My friend Mary and I wanted to see this Prince movie and we had to lie to our parents and bribe the teenage ticket seller with a stolen bottle of peach Schnapps to get into to see one of the biggest, most influential rock and roll movies ever.

Totally worth the risk.

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He was a troubled, young musician in this movie who had parents who did not understand what he was doing with his creativity, and I just drank in everything he sang and everything he said. He presented sexuality as being an intensely creative thing and as something that deserved a full exploration and appreciation for the pleasure it could give. It was the first time that I had ever heard these ideas and I was forever changed. I bought every Prince album he put out.

I almost got grounded for buying and owning "Lovesexy" shown above. Turns out that my father was angry that I had an image of a naked black man in my bedroom, even if you couldn't actually see his cock. It was that incident that told me that I needed to get out of there and go explore what Prince promised was possible in his songs. I did, and I hope you reading this think that it worked out OK. I would probably not be writing this right now without that forbidden movie viewing.

Thank you, Prince.