“The guy is just weird”: Five artists who hated Prince
The comedian Joe Pera is of the opinion that Prince is firm proof that God doesn’t exist. In his view, there is no way that the Almighty could create the world and everything in it, then happily wait over 4.5 billion years with a creation like Prince up his sleeve. The virtuosic diva could play around 30 instruments, invented a few of his own, and knew everything about music from the top to the bottom of the industry. He was certainly one of God’s own prototypes.
That being said, his flamboyant artistry, sassy disposition and penchant for self-indulgence often rubbed folks up the wrong way. On the other hand, this carried an inherent hilarity that only added to his endearment for many fans. A perfect paradigm for this arose when he punted Kim Kardashian up her ample hinny, booting her off ‘his’ stage. For some, this was one of his many masterstrokes, for Howard Stern, it was further evidence of everything wrong with the little guitarist.
“He seems to be an arrogant asshole lately,” Stern said in light of the incident on his radio show. “The guy is just weird; he gives concerts with the lights out.” And he felt Kim Kardashian was innocent collateral in his unfurling weird antics. “Apparently, she’s supposed to dance like a stripper for him, and she just stood there not knowing what to do,” he continued. “He throws her off the stage because she can’t read fucking Prince’s mind. He’s a bullshit artist. I’m done with him.”
He wasn’t the first to lose patience with the magical little fellow, either. Over the course of the ‘Purple Rain’ singer’s life, he rubbed up a roster of stars the wrong way. Some of the slings and arrows he faced you can simply put down to jealousy, and others just didn’t get it. In fact, one of the few criticisms that does hold up came from David Bowie when he was comparing himself to Prince and claimed that the key similarity was that they both wrote too much for their own good.
So, with that in mind, let’s look at some of the more damning comments that others wrote and said about Prince… about which you imagine he could not have given a single fraction of a damn.
Five artists who hated Prince:
Keith Richards
The Rolling Stones certainly liked Prince enough to take him out on tour with them in 1981. Afterwards, drummer Charlie Watts commented that he was one of the few geniuses he had the privilege of working with. Keith Richards didn’t exactly see him like that. “An overrated midget,” the scathing guitarist stated. “Prince has to find out what it means to be a prince. That’s the trouble with conferring a title on yourself before you’ve proved it.”
His gripe was that he didn’t meet the audience halfway, treating them with an individualistic indifference that precluded his potential as a support act. “His attitude when he opened for us,” Richards explains, “Was insulting to our audience. You don’t try to knock off the headline like that when you’re playing a Stones crowd. He’s a prince who thinks he’s a king already. Good luck to him.” Yeah, break a little leg, kid.
Jah Wobble
English bassist Jah Wobble is revered for his creativity by many musicians. Prince was one of them. They even seemingly jammed together in 1983. However, any mutual respect was short-lived. The musician Natacha Atlas recalls being backstage at one of Wobble’s gigs when a rather fiery encounter unfurled. “He had come to see Wobble play, because he was a fan of Wobble, many people were in the music world, even though he wasn’t wildly popular to the public,” she told Percy Howard.
Prince, of course, had a backstage pass and approached the bassist. According to Atlas, Prince said, “Oh man, I love your bass, hot and sticky, just how I like it.” Jah Wobble batted the compliment away, barely looked at Prince and bluntly told his manager, “Get this fucking little shit out of here now!” An awkward moment passed, and he reiterated, “Get this fucking little motherfucking shit out of here now!” Maybe this is why Prince was so dismissive of The Flaming Lips during a backstage encounter years later; he had learned from the best.
Sinéad O’Connor
Prince lauded Sinéad O’Connor‘s cover of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ publicly; however, she alleged that things were far different behind closed doors. She hadn’t met him prior to the song – which was wildly written about his cleaner – becoming a smash hit, but later agreed to it when it raced up the charts. She later told The Times it was doomed from the start because “Prince didn’t like people covering his songs.”
“Secondly, he had all these female protégés, and he was annoyed that I wasn’t one of them,” the Irish star continued. “Thirdly, my manager Steve Fargnoli had been his manager, and they were involved in a legal case. On top of all this, he was a woman-beating c**t. I’m certainly not the only woman he laid a hand on.” The latter refers to her claim that their meeting turned into a violent fight. Her staunch opinion never softened over the years, and the late star maintained her dislike for the Minnesotan musician.
Rick James
Controversial musician Rick James is said to have felt intense jealousy towards his fellow funk progenitor throughout their careers. However, according to James, this all started because of one specific incident. “Prince had dissed mom,” he wrote in his memoir, Glow, “and that I was gonna kick his scrawny ass”. The ‘diss’ he refers to is when the ‘Raspberry Beret’ star apparently refused to sign an autograph for James’ mother. This was the start of a long-running feud that saw James take several swipes at Prince’s music over the years.
The battle never stopped for reckless Rick; he even wrote the huge hit ‘Party All The Time’ for Eddie Murphy to simply “stick it in Prince’s ear”. But perhaps his biggest diatribe regarding the music arose when he told Blues and Soul in 1983: “I can’t believe people are gullible enough to buy Prince’s jive records.”
He added: “He’s out to lunch. You can’t take his music seriously. He sings songs about oral sex and incest.”
Trent Reznor
In the case of Nine Inch Nails bandleader Trent Reznor, the source of hatred stemmed from the old adage, ‘Never meet your heroes’. Reznor was overjoyed when he heard that his “idol” wanted his new music to sound like Broken so he hired an adjacent studio in 1994. Sadly, when Prince arrived the shine quickly wore off. “I was in this studio and I heard Prince was coming in,” Reznor told Select.
“There was a time when I thought he was awesome, but what a fucking creep! The rules were, you were never to say the word ‘Prince‘, you had to write down that symbol,” he continued. “You were never to look at him, or talk to him unless he approached you first, shit like that. So he shows up in a limo, wear a fluorescent pink jumpsuit, giant haft, a cane, huge heels and a lollipop. And he‘s wearing the worst women‘s perfume you‘ve ever smelt.” The extent of their interaction over the course of their extended period in the same building was the little ‘Purple One’ simply snubbing Reznor in a corridor. “I don‘t care who you are, that‘s bullshit,” he said. His respect for his artistry waned thereafter.
