Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince

There are jealous people who will understand genius and greatness. This writer looked for things to sensationalized the book 📚 for sales. He sought after former employees of Paisley park to say bad things about Prince. This book never became what the writer hoped it would be. Never reached New York times best seller list. This is a writer looking for 💰 and fame off the success of prince 🤴. Shame on the nameless faces to not includ their name on the dirt of prince 🤴.

As another reviewer wrote, if you don't want to see anything negative written about Prince, don't read this book. But again, if you don't pick up and read this well researched and written work, you will truly deprive yourself and miss out on something great. Furthermore, if you really love Prince, you will accept his rough behind the scenes side as well as his stage image. Sure, we want to see our idols as flawless, but realistically, that is not the case. The book takes you on a fantastic journey of highs and lows throughout the artist's personal and business relationships, financial hardships, and his creative triumphs and failures. There were times during my reading of the book that I actually despised him for his treatment of others, especially those who really cared about and stood by him, but then again, that's his personality, and who am I or anyone else to judge? The scary thing is, I see a lot of myself in him, not musically, but personality wise. I really felt bad after reading about how he lost his child. In fact, that was the most heartbreaking part of the book to me. After finishing the book, I watched "Purple Rain" again for the umpteenth time , and it is strange how my perspective of the film was altered by the bio. Some of the content will be shocking and downwright offensive, and upon completion of the book, you will either love Prince or hate him. Either way, the fact remains that Prince, no matter what his faults or weaknesses are, is one of the best artistic geniuses of our time and has left a permanent footprint on pop culture. Even his worst detractors give him credit for his abilities. Frankly, I couldn't imagine what life would be like without his music. I now have a newfound respect for Prince, in the sense that he is as human as the rest of us. Get this!

The epitomy of the classic "rock star", Prince has seemingly taken an inspired career and turned it into a sort of ironic mystery...author Alex Hahn presents this theory using an amazing access to personal subjects and un-released music to destroy the mystique and bring Prince into the general public's eye for all to scrutinize. What we find is a sort of mini-demagogue who remains brilliant musically, but suffers from many years of petulant behavior to systematically reduce his faithful following and, unfortunately, become nothing more than a cult figure.Back in 1985, however, the thought of Prince being anything but a major musical influence and icon would be inconceivable...this was following the final push to superstardom that "Purple Rain", the record and movie, provided and the country/music industry was agog at what the next Prince project might be. Of course, the underwhelming and self-aggrandizing "Around the World in a Day" was the next release and this started the downward spiral that continues to this day. Author Hahn attempts to analyze this with "Possessed" and he brings it off with an amazing balance...remaining true to his literary responsibilites, he paints a realistic and forthcoming picture of the tortured musician. At once brilliant in the conceiving and performing of cutting edge music while at the same time displaying a curious bewilderment at the ever changing face of popular music, Prince remains the mystery that he so fervently relishes and in the process has virtually destroyed any fan base that could resurrect his career. A stunningly comprehensive biography, Hahn shows the entire Prince career from his childhood up to and including the 2001 release of "The Rainbow Children". Riding the emotional and psychological roller-coaster that was Prince, we see the meteoric rise and subsequent demise of this influential artist and also the human waste he laid as a side product...his (Prince's) treatment of "friends and associates" is disturbing and speakes to (in my opinion) a lingering psychosis. Conversely, Hahn, again using amazing access to unreleased recorded material, shows Prince to be prolific and brilliant in his conception of and performance of many major turns in his musicianship. Indeed, the few unreleased tracks that I have personally heard would make for a great album and it's hard to conceive that this level of great music is still "in the vault".Hahn covers all the important episodes in this star-crossed career...even sharing some new information that former "hard-core" fans never knew...the homosexual relationship of Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman was new to me and I was a fan at the inception of the "Revolution"...the interaction of fellow musicians and subsequent denial of artistic credit (i.e. Rosie Gaines and Melvoin) is part of this afore mentioned disturbing psychotic behavior and was also a surprise to me. What astounded me the most, however, was the continued denial on the part of Prince towards the burge

This book hits things right on the nail. From someone who has personally been around the Prince Camp (1994-2001) as a fan and supporter with the hope that Prince would pull out of his self destructive pattern, this is the book to get. The only downside of this writing is that everything couldn't get covered. There was much more hell than this book has reported. Nothing mentions the relationship between Prince and Sheena Easton. None of you know about the many winter jams Prince invited us to that were held at Paisley that found fans waiting for 2+ hours outside in below zero weather. He could have let people inside to get warm until the show started, most of the time it was only 50 to 60 people and we were all regulars, they knew us. People don't know how Revlon offered Prince a deal to promote a perfume around "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" and he turned it down feeling he could do better with his own brand which was "Get Wild" that ultimately bombed. The treatment of his staff and fans is stuff of legend. We all put him where his is but I challenge any of you who are not of female gender to get close enough to him to say `hello'. He will not acknowledge your jester, kindness is not in him. "What's with the Ocean" is his term for any hiss he may hear in a recording session, believe me engineers caught hell. I'm saying all this not to put Prince down but to confirm this book as being a truthful depiction of the life and times of this music legend. I for one am not getting paid a cent but it's great to finally see someone tell it like it really happened. Too many times we want to make people into what we want them to be and refuse to acknowledge the truth. Stars build fancy propaganda around themselves that's totally false. Prince has serious problems emotionally even though he is a wonderful artist. And anyone who has been around him to witness his actions first hand has a truly amazing story to tell you, I personally could go on and on. It's really scary the kind of people we choose to look up to and follow. This book is a must have for anyone wanting to know the truth of how things started and got to the point they are today in Prince's life. Get this book....

Some Prince fans have greeted this book with howls of injured outrage, but they may not have read Oedipus Rex or Hamlet. The author has. He knows Oedipus is a powerful, important king with a fatal blind-spot, a world-shaker whose pride, wrath, and failure-to-listen lead to his fall. He knows Hamlet is a brilliant, philosophical young prince who is also a manic-obsessive, tormented by indecision, tortured by his ingrown intellect as much as by circumstance, by his ego as much as by his enemies. Thus Hahn is able to discern and reveal the universal patterns in the story of Prince.Prince zealots retort that their idol is alive and well, thank you, producing music and retaining a loyal fan base. But at his peak Prince combined the vast fame of a chart-busting pop mega-star with the critical esteem of a Miles Davis, while today, though his work continues, he is known to the general public mainly as a footnote, a man who became an unpronounceable symbol, a house-hold name who faded from view. What happened, and why? This book tells the story.Neither sensational nor humdrum, the book relies on the method of a sound investigation: patient, probing, persistent. It will appeal to a wide range of readers, from those alert to pop culture to those attuned to the universal relevance of a rise-and-fall trajectory, whether tragic or ambiguous, aware that the best and brightest of us carry in ourselves the seeds of a potential undoing. This is what gives Hahn's important book its larger resonance.

I loved this book. I have been an avid (artist formally known as) Prince fan for years, and I found this the best book on him to date. I got so much insight into Prince's life, music, and psyche! It is well written and riveting. Its clear that it was very well researched; I feel even with everything I already knew about Prince that I was learning new information. Excellent read!