Stars Who Couldn't Stand Prince

Singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor became a superstar in 1991, when her breakup ballad "Nothing Compares 2 U" hit No. 1 on the U.S. pop chart. O'Connor's version was a cover — Prince wrote it in 1985 for The Family, a band that he'd signed to his vanity record label. A few months after the song's success, O'Connor accepted an invite to visit Prince at his home outside of Los Angeles. After silently staring her down in his kitchen for a few minutes, O'Connor recalled in her memoir "Rememberings" that Prince suddenly chastised her for using curse words in interviews. O'Connor's response: "'I don't work for you,' I tell him. 'If you don't like it, you can go f*** yourself.'" That irritated Prince, who disappeared elsewhere into the house and re-emerged later to bully a servant and start a pillow fight with O'Connor. 

That allowed Prince to assault the singer. "On the first thump I get, I realize he's got something in the pillow, stuffed down the end, designed to hurt. He ain't playing at all," O'Connor wrote. She then demanded to be driven home. "You've got to be crazy to be a musician," O'Connor said, "but there's a difference between being crazy and being a violent abuser of women," O'Connor later told The New York Times of Prince.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

As the founder and sole permanent member of Nine Inch Nails, industrial rock musician Trent Reznor is a lot like Prince; both could play a lot of different instruments and they executed a clear, singular vision of their work in the recording studio. Reznor was once a huge fan of Prince, but when they met in the early 1990s during the latter's era in which he was known as an unpronounceable symbol, the adulation instantly dissipated.

"I was in this studio and I heard Prince was coming in. There was a time when I thought he was awesome, but what a f***ing creep!" Reznor recalled to Select Magazine (via NIN-Pages) in 1994. In advance of the visit, Reznor received a rundown of stipulations for when interacting with the star. "You were never to say the word 'Prince,' you had to write down that symbol. You were never to look at him, or talk to him unless he approached you first," Reznor recalled. When Prince finally appeared, he did so in a pink suit and high-heeled shoes while sucking on a lollipop and reeking of perfume.

Prince wanted Reznor and his associates to remix a song for him, but when the time came for the two musicians to actually meet, it didn't happen. "He walks right past me. I couldn't believe it," Reznor said.

Prince and Madonna mutually ruled the pop music scene in the mid-1980s, and in 1985, they briefly consolidated their professional powers with a personal relationship. The two dated that year and kept things cordial enough after the breakup to write and record "Love Song" for Madonna's 1989 album "Like a Prayer" together.

Any connection between the two icons apparently severed in the early 1990s, ascertained from a 1994 Madonna interview with the Los Angeles Times in which she compared herself to Prince and Michael Jackson. "I could never say that either of them were friends. I've spent a good deal of time with both of them," she said. "And they have these manners and they're just so careful about what they eat and what they say. I had dinner with Prince once, and he was just sipping tea, very daintily. I was stuffing food down my face and I was like, 'Aren't you going to eat?'" Prince did not eat. "I have this theory about people who don't eat. They annoy me. It's something about being in control."

The pair must have patched things up. In 2011, Madonna agreed to be a guest performer during a Prince show at Madison Square Garden in New York.

An 18,000-square-foot estate in Los Angeles stands six stories high, a glass-and-steel architectural marvel built in 1953 with a roof garden, man-made beach, and a pool housing an underwater cave. Once the home of movie producer Ted Fields, NBA all-star Carlos Boozer bought the property in 2005. Because he was playing for the Utah Jazz at the time, Boozer couldn't live in the mansion full-time, and to earn back some of the money he dropped, he agreed to rent it at a rate of $95,000 per month to a tenant who asked to remain anonymous.

Sometime later, Boozer learned that the mysterious stranger living in his home was Prince, something he would have instantly assumed when he paid a visit to his house and discovered that the musician had extensively renovated the place and with zero permission to do so. Gold lion statuettes that flanked the entry gates were out, and Prince symbol ornaments were in. Among other changes: Prince replaced the carpets with purple ones, converted a bedroom into a private hair salon, and turned a weight room into a dance studio.

Boozer threatened to sue, but when Prince received the paperwork, he jumped into action to avoid the costly legal proceedings. He sent the basketball player $500,000 as a good faith payment, swearing he'd restore the rental home to its original state by the time he moved out. Prince did just that, and the lawsuit was dropped.

Rising to prominence in the post-punk era, Jah Wobble was among the most in-demand British musicians from the late '70s until the mid-1990s. He brought his bass guitar and funk-and-reggae-influenced sound to side projects recorded by members of Can and U2, while also playing on influential and popular albums by Primal Scream and Public Image Limited, formed by Johnny Rotten after the Sex Pistols broke up.

Musical superstar Prince counted himself among Wobble's fans, but the feeling was decidedly not mutual. While they played a gig together in 1983, the two musicians met backstage at another Wobble show. Prince approached Wobble and told him that he really enjoyed his bass guitar stylings. In response, Wobble turned to his manager and spat out, "'Get this f***ing little s*** out of here now!'" musician and conversation witness Natacha Atlas told music journalist Percy Howard in 1999. "Wobble doesn't care, even though Prince was famous. He thought Prince was a pretentious a**hole."

Prince's main rival in 1980s musical dominance was Michael Jackson, and their relationship was fueled by competitive bitterness. Prince enjoyed a commercial breakthrough in 1982, when his "1999" record sold more copies than any of his other albums to that point. A month later, Jackson unleashed "Thriller," eventually the best-selling album in history.

When Lionel Richie organized the 1985 session to record the charity single "We Are the World," he wanted all of the biggest stars to participate. Jackson co-wrote the song; Prince said he might show up but ultimately didn't, ostensibly because of Jackson's presence. Later that year, Prince won an Academy Award for the music from "Purple Rain," which left Jackson, who wanted to be a movie star, privately angry. Nevertheless, Jackson reached out to Prince to duet on the title single from his 1987 album "Bad." Prince refused, because he didn't like the supposed sexual undertones of the opening line, "Your butt is mine." 

When they'd run into each other in the late '80s, Prince derisively called Jackson "Camille," and once tried to get his limo driver to run him down. In 2006, Jackson went to a Prince concert in hopes of mending their feud. Prince saw Jackson sitting near the stage, went up to his seat and aggressively slapped his bass guitar inches from his head. "Why was Prince playing the bass in my face?" Jackson rhetorically asked his concert-mate, Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas (via The Telegraph). "Prince, he's always been a meanie."