(For other local brushes with fame, the death of squared circle stalwarts Ali and Dusty Rhodes — and a Hudson man at a Cemetery Walk where actors went back well over 100 years — are revived for posterity in this web site’s Notes From The Beat department).
How did Prince die? An overview of that cause was well-known by certain musicians with local ties only days after his death — well before the local Medical Examiner recently made his reports.
Between sets at a concert within a week after Prince was found dead at his Paisley Park home, a musician source who plays locally and who requested to remain anonymous, said that Prince had been taking large amounts of painkillers to deal with the toll that years of spinning stage moves had taken on his 57-year-old body. The one that was mentioned as being the crux was Percocet — far more benign then the accidental overdose by self-injection of Fentanyl that was later listed as the cause of death.
The same source said he’d been in touch with a third musician, who knew Prince, by phone about two weeks before the death, and who said that he and the superstar musician had recently experienced a falling out. The reason for the disagreement was not broached.
It also was said at that time that Prince had been checking out several metro area chain-store pharmacies shortly before his death. His reason for doing so was not certain.
It should not be surprising that Prince was found in an elevator after he died, as sources said that his home was sprawling and consisted of more than one studio used for recording, making it a chore to get around, especially for someone who is ailing. One source who is a contractor said similarly, that almost 20 different shower heads were specially installed in its bathrooms to meet specifications of the sometimes quirky musician. The contractor said that Prince, true to his reputation, didn’t speak as much as he sings, and upon meeting someone would only be addressed by name if he was the one introducing the greeting. You didn’t call him by name (Symbol?) or talk directly to him.
All this is not to throw Prince under the bus after his untimely and unfortunate death. Indeed, this view is based on my own medical history, specifically Tourette Syndrome and its accompanying symptomology. I understand both the need to take medication for chronic pain — to the point where you occasionally say to yourself that you need to DO SOMETHING within a few seconds to get relief or you will have no choice but to kill yourself, as many with my medical circumstances eventually do — and the way it feels to be a bit different, misunderstood and thusly analyzed by people where if they knew the back story would not be nearly so suspicious.
However, Prince’s demise underscores the wisdom of holding off as long as feasible before resorting to taking pain medication, gutting it out for a while first.
I suspect that the reason Prince overdosed was that he’d been in too much pain, with too little medication, for too long and when he finally found a way to remedy it, erred on the side of relief and took too much. So it may be our society and government’s partial paranoia concerning drug usage — and inability to distinguish between use and abuse — that eventually killed Prince, or at least contributed to his death.
— First there were the round of tribute shows and memorials to Prince, and then came the special magazine editions. One of them, from an Indie publication in Minneapolis, talked and memorialized about one of Prince’s first bands, interestingly enough called 94 East. How far east on the freeway one might add? Hudson, perhaps? It was during that era, as was mentioned earlier on this site, that a friend Jean saw Prince play at a rally at her high school. “He looked like any other teenager,” she said. However, the aformentioned publication, Insight News, said that especially at that point early in his career, he stood out because of his flamboyant style of dress and hair.
— This is a new take on “Raspberry” Beret. Indeed, it involves a horse of a different color. A longtime local bartender — you’ll know her from various venues — is in the latter stages of beating breast cancer through undergoing chemo. She looks just great in her new beret. You go girl!