Glyph? TAFKAP? Sir? Yo? • I Forgot I Interviewed Prince

• Whatever you called him, he was a giant, and gone too soon

• At CNN, a two-part update on the artist formerly known as Prince

• You’d think I would remember, right?

I forgot I interviewed Prince.

I’m not sure how, but I’ll try to explain.

The other day I got a message from Scott Leon, former executive producer of CNN’s Showbiz Today. He said he came across, on YouTube, an episode of the show from July, 29^th, 1997. It includes the first of a two-part report on Prince by yours truly. It was four years after Prince Rogers Nelson changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol. Sitting down with him at what I believe was the Trump International Hotel on Central Park West, among the things I wanted to know was: how did one get his attention?

As I watched the whole 2:13 package, which will be down at the bottom of this post, it dawned on me: I had made a list of all the things I wanted to write about on this blog and all the people I’ve interviewed, and – unbelievably — he was not on it. I had not thought of the late R&B genius from Minneapolis. In fact, if someone had asked me if I’d ever crossed paths with him, I might have said, “No…..I think he might be one who got away.”

On top of that, there’s Showbiz Today co-host Jim Moret calling it a “rare” interview. It was! How on earth could this have slipped into the dim recesses of my memory?

Here’s the best I can do:

I loved Motown music. I loved James Brown, Stax-Volt, Al Green, Philly Soul. I got into radio, though, when it was beginning to segregate music. The eclecticism of Top 40 radio was giving way to Album Rock stations, Easy Listening stations, R&B (or Urban) stations, and so forth. And, from my vantage point, doing news on Album Rock stations, I “sided” with Steve Dahl, the Chicago DJ who, the ‘70s, held a “Disco Demolition” night, urging rock lovers to bring disco records to Comiskey Park, where he blew them up between games of a White Sox doubleheader.

When Prince came along, I was at network radio and I covered his appearances at Grammy Awards shows and MTV Video Music Awards shows (where, if I recall correctly, he didn’t do a lot of backstage interviews, if any). But honestly, he hadn’t become one of my favorite artists. I didn’t feel he was “talking” to me, for one thing; I felt like I wasn’t really his musical audience. Now, however, his music is firmly planted in my listening landscape and I thoroughly understand how frivolously I had undervalued it and him.

So, maybe I suppressed the memory of our interview out of some buried guilt over not embracing him wholeheartedly from the get-go. That’s about as deep into amateur self-analysis I’m going to go. I’m embarrassed enough as it is.

You recall, right, that there was more than a little derision cast his way when he wrote “slave” on his cheek and in effect substituted a logo for his name as he fought to get out of a record company contract? I was likely harboring a little skepticism going into the interview. Maybe leaning toward making light of it all. As I look at the full package (I don’t have Part 2), it reminds me that in person he was impressively thoughtful, soft-spoken and quietly commanding of respect. A prince of a guy, you might say.

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