Prince’s anticipated, posthumous memoir is ready for fans

Panic, joy, shock: Dan Piepenbring felt m all when Prince plucked him to collaborate on his first memoir, followed by more shock and profound sness at news of superstar’s death while book was in its early sts.

Though project was thrown into chaos when Prince died on April 21, 2016, of an accidental drug overdose, his estate ultimately decided to press on, allowing Piepenbring and his publishing team free access to pieces of his life left behind at his beloved Paisley Park, including contents of his vault.

w, highly anticipated collaboration, “ Beautiful Ones,” is rey for Prince fans to re as many continue to mourn, propelling 33-year-old journalist into spotlight to explain how he sorted it all out.

“re was a sense even from start that it couldn’t really be happening,” Piepenbring told Associated Press of his involvement. “It felt very surreal. re was also just a sense of joy, I think, at possibility of meeting someone that I held in such high regard, someone whose music h been soundtrack to better part of my youth.”

book out Tuesday from Spiegel & Grau includes bombshells, though Prince very much wanted to provide some, and a mere 28 memoir ps written in his elegant script and quirky style, replacing word “I″ with a drawing of a human orb, for instance. All told, Piepenbring spent 12 to 15 hours face-to-face with Prince in Minneapolis, New York and on tour in Melbourne.

ir last conversation was just four days before Prince died. It was focused on his parents and ir conflicting influences in his life. His far, John L. Nelson, was a disciplined, God-fearing jazz musician with an explosive temper. His mor, Mattie Della Shaw, was a beautiful, fun-loving party girl with a stubborn, irrational streak — and a sneaky flair, as Prince wrote:

“She would spend up what little $ family h 4 survival on partying with her friends, n trespass in2 my bedroom, ‘borrow’ my personal $ that eye’d gotten from babysitting local kids, & n chastise me 4 even questioning her regarding broken promises she me 2 pay me back.”

tumultuous nature of his parents’ relationship h a lasting impact.

“ wound of Ur parents fighting is chilling when U’re a child,” Prince wrote. “If it happens 2 become physical, it can be soul-crushing.”

ir conflicts, divorce when he was 7 and dual impact on Prince and his work is book’s prevailing me.

“So much of his writing is about division in some way and fight to make oneself whole again,” Piepenbring said. “re’s this kind of brokenness that he’s always working to repair.”

Prince writes that his first memory was his mor’s eyes, describing her habit of throwing conspiratorial winks his way.

“Sometimes when my far wasn’t playing pia he’d say something 2 my mor & she would wink at me. She never told me what it meant and sometimes it would be accompanied by a gentle caress of her hand 2 my face. But eye am quite sure w this is birth of my physical imagination.”

Prince h big ideas for book, considering at one time a “how to” on making it in music business without selling your soul. At ar point, he suggested that he and Piepenbring figure out a way to end racism. At still ar, he wanted to focus on importance of creative freedom.

“I think he was really in process of excavating his past with a level of detail and specificity that maybe he h avoided before,” Piepenbring said. “He h come to realization that he really was in many ways sum of his mor and far and y were , sort of, two poles of his being.”

Prince wrote on or subjects as well, including puberty (his stepfar took him to R-rated movies at a drive-in as a stand-in for birds and bees talk), blackouts and seizures he h as a child and his first kiss, with a girl of just 5 or 6. y’d play house.

Piepenbring wrote a lengthy introduction explaining his encounters with Prince and how book was completed. He wasn’t allowed to take tes during ir first meeting so he was forced to reconstruct conversation. Some of ir chats are printed as marginalia in book. re’s an abundance of hand-drawn childhood doodles and cartoons, along with lyrics Prince often wrote on whatever was handy, including a brown paper bag.

re’s a photo album Piepenbring uneard at Paisley Park that a sleepless Prince decided to put toger in 1977 at 19, only days from completing his debut album, “For You.” With witty remarks written in pencil, Prince sits on hood of his first car in one shot. In ar, he snapped his first paycheck from Warner Bros.

re’s also an early outline he wrote for 1984 film “Purple Rain” with an even darker story line than one that me it onto screens. film, based loosely on his life, won Prince an Oscar for best original sound score. In 1982 treatment, “ Kid” character Prince plays is a diagsed schizophrenic who as a child watches his mor shoot his far de, n turns gun on herself.

Prince h envisioned playing both his mor and far in flashback scenes. finished film, t written by Prince, involves a suicide attempt with a gun that far survives.

Many of photos in book are familiar to hardcore fans and it includes a heavy dose of previously published interviews with Prince. From start, it was clear to Piepenbring that Prince envisioned him as something more than a ghostwriter.

Prince was looking for a second voice to bring his vision alive in print, almost “like a sounding board,” said Piepenbring, who is based in New York and was working for Paris Review when, at 29, he was chosen for book.

As for what might have been, Piepenbring said, “I think we would have gotten more of his story than we’ve ever seen, and I think we would have gotten t just this book but a number of books from him. He told me that he wanted to write a lot of books, and I really think he was serious about that.”