I do. I want to remember it all: twenty-five years—more than half my life—of soaring highs and crushing lows, creation and loss, elation and sorrow, the sound and fury that happened onstage in front of millions of people and the silent journey only our two souls will ever know.
When I was a kid, I kinda liked his music, but my sister was the real fangirl. When I was sixteen, I saw him perform live in concert, and my world was never the same. What’s most incredible to me is that he said the same thing about his world after he saw me dance. We fell into an immediate—and entirely innocent—infatuation that set us on a path neither of us could have imagined. First and foremost, we were friends. Two years later, he became my boss. Eventually, we crossed the line, and I was “his girl.” From that moment forward, he molded my persona and shaped my life experiences.
Between 1990, when Prince and I first met, and 1996, when we got married, I participated in 129 performances on five world tours, plus a couple hundred aftershows and one-off concert gigs, dozens of music videos, album tracks (credited and uncredited), many national television appearances, countless photo sessions, radio interviews, and press junkets. It’s a little mind-blowing to take stock of it all now, as I try to make sense of what we were to each other. Not one day since I met him, not one night out of the past six thousand, has passed without some thought of him.
He said many times, publically and privately, that his love for me changed him as a man and influenced much of the music he made during the years we were together. I never pretended I was the only woman he ever loved, but for better or worse, the experience we shared as husband and wife and as parents took us both to a place neither of us was ever able to share with anyone else.
Prince passed away so suddenly. I wasn’t ready. It’s been years since I last saw him, but I have always cherished what we had and honored his privacy. After his death, so many things surfaced—mysteries and questions that linger unresolved, like a frustrating unfinished octave, for me and so many others who loved him. I’m hungry to hear stories about his life that fill in some of the gaps. I honor the power of mystery, and yes, there are things I’ve chosen to keep private, but mystery can be a lonely place. I want to peel back the layers and let you know the man I loved—the good, the bad, the sad, and the beautiful.
I will never fully close this chapter of my life. I struggled with the idea of writing this book because, even after all this time, part of me still needs his approval. I hope that in reflecting on all that happened, I’ll be able to shed some light and provide some insight as we each decide for ourselves how to best remember him.
I’ll remember him as a hopeless romantic and a devoted father who longed to be the dad he never had. Only I saw the look on his face when our son was born. A moment I’ll never forget. I wish I could draw it. I wish it could be danced. I’m not sure there’s a way to express it in words, but words are what I can offer you now. I can laugh with you about the funny things he said and tell you about how he wore my clothes and swiped my mascara and woke up every morning in a tangle of loving arms and perfumed sheets with a little dog barking to go out and a long day of hard work ahead. I can tell you that, while we were so normal about so many things, we lived his belief that life itself should be a work of art.
Everyone who knew this extraordinary man—friends, family, and fans—has their own stories to tell, and I hope they tell them, though some will be painful for me to hear. I hope some scholar of music history will write a book that spans the incredible depth and breadth of Prince’s work, all the remarkable people he collaborated with, his influence on the music industry, his lasting handprint on pop culture, and his contribution to the art of rock and roll. This is not that book.
This is my story—a private love story that belongs to me alone—and I need to share it my own way, just as he shared it in his. He was a private man, but through his music, he’s already said more than people realize. Beneath the rhythms and between the lines, you hear the love and fate and heartbreak. It’s not as easy to hear the echoes of strength and closure and hope, but they are there.
The story I’m about to tell you now is the story I’ll tell Gia someday: the story of my life with Prince and my life without him, the career I forged before we met, my struggle after we separated, and how I had to make sense of it all in order to move forward. When I was younger, I thought it was the story of how I found my soul mate, the true husband of my heart. When my heart was broken, I tried to make it the story of how I found myself. But seeing my daughter outside the doors at Paisley Park, I finally understand: it’s the story of how we all found each other.
At the beginning of the music video for “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” a woman’s voice cuts through the static.
You have just accessed the Beautiful Experience, she says. This experience will cover courtship, sex, commitment, fetishes, loneliness, vindication, love, and hate.