Prince: the Minneapolis kid who played it all himself | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

PRINCE left a vault full of songs, and on 21 April 2026, ten years to the day after he died, his estate released one called With This Tear. It was the first of several unreleased recordings planned for the year. A Purple Rain stage musical, which premiered in Minneapolis in 2025, is due on Broadway in 2027.

For most of his career he insisted on producing and playing on his own records. A decade on, the vault is still giving up songs.

Early life and training

Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis on 7 June 1958 and grew up in the south of the city. Music was the family trade. His father, John Nelson, led a local jazz band, and his mother, Mattie, sang in it.

He taught himself on his father’s piano, picking out TV theme tunes like Batman once his dad had moved out. His estate’s Becoming Prince archive tells that story in his own words.

His best friend from junior high was André Anderson, later known as André Cymone, and at Central High School the two of them had a band called Grand Central. It started with Prince, André and Prince’s cousin Charles Smith. André’s sister Linda, Terry Jackson and William Doughty joined later, and in 1974 Morris Day took over on drums. They played community centres on the North Side, then proms and school dances across the city.

He was picking up studio work too. In December 1975 he played guitar on a session for 94 East, a group led by Pepé Willie, an early mentor.

He was making demos at about 16. The way in started at Moon Sound, a small studio in south Minneapolis where he recorded in 1976. The studio’s owner, Chris Moon, played one of his tapes to Owen Husney, who became his first manager, had a new demo and press kit made, and took them to the labels. In 1977 Warner Bros. signed him, on what was reported as a three-album deal.

Career chapters

1. 1977Signed to Warner Bros.
2. 1978For You, his first album
3. 19821999, the first album with the Revolution’s name on the cover
4. 1984Purple Rain, the album and the film
5. 1985Academy Award for the Purple Rain score
6. 1987Paisley Park completed
7. 1993Changed his name to a symbol
8. 2000Went back to Prince
9. 2004Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; Musicology
10. 2007Super Bowl XLI halftime show
11. 2016Died at Paisley Park, aged 57

Minneapolis to the Revolution 1978 to 1982

His first album, For You, came out in 1978, and the self-titled Prince followed in 1979. I Wanna Be Your Lover got to number 11 on the Hot 100. Dirty Mind arrived in 1980 and Controversy in 1981.

The breakthrough was 1999, in 1982. It was the first album with the name of his band, the Revolution, on the cover, and it has sold more than four million copies in the US.

The Revolution grew out of the band he first put together in 1979. By Purple Rain, the first album billed to Prince and the Revolution, the line-up was Wendy Melvoin on guitar, Lisa Coleman and Matt Fink on keyboards, BrownMark on bass and Bobby Z on drums.

Purple Rain 1984 to 1985

Purple Rain was an album and a semi-autobiographical film. The album spent 24 weeks in a row at number 1, according to AAP, and the RIAA counts 13 million US sales. When Doves Cry was number 1 on the Hot 100 for five weeks, and Let’s Go Crazy followed it there for two. The title song stopped at number 2.

His Cloud guitar was made for the film. The original white one was custom built in Minneapolis.

On 25 March 1985 he won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score. He also won three Grammys for his 1984 work.

Paisley Park and the hits 1986 to 1992

Prince directed and starred in Under the Cherry Moon in 1986. That same year Parade, the last album with the Revolution, gave him another number 1 in Kiss. In 1987 he finished Paisley Park, his studio complex in Chanhassen, Minnesota.

The albums kept coming: Sign o’ the Times in 1987, Lovesexy in 1988, the Batman soundtrack in 1989, Graffiti Bridge in 1990 and Diamonds and Pearls in 1991.

Two more number 1s came: Batdance in 1989, and Cream, with the New Power Generation, in 1991.

All the while he was writing for other people. I Feel for You went to Chaka Khan, Manic Monday to the Bangles and The Glamorous Life to Sheila E. Sinéad O’Connor took Nothing Compares 2 U to number 1 in 1990.

The symbol years 1993 to 2000

On his 35th birthday, 7 June 1993, Prince announced that his name was now a symbol. He was in a dispute with Warner over how fast he could release music, and he appeared in public with the word “slave” written on his face. The press settled on calling him the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.

His former lawyer, L. Londell McMillan, summed up the stance: “if you don’t own your masters, your masters will own you.” Prince left Warner in 1996 and sold Crystal Ball online in 1998. When the Warner contract ran out in 2000, he went back to being Prince.

Musicology and the comeback 2004 to 2008

In 2004 he opened the Grammys and went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted by OutKast, André 3000, Who’s Who number 27 in · Ultimate Hip Hop Reunion (story coming soon) and Big Boi, Who’s Who number 26 in · Ultimate Hip Hop Reunion (story coming soon), with Alicia Keys. Announcing his new album, Musicology, he said, “School’s in session.” It reached number 3, and the 77-date tour took US$87.4 million, with more than 1.4 million tickets sold. Two more Grammys came in 2005, for Call My Name and Musicology.

In 2007 he won a Golden Globe for The Song of the Heart, from the film Happy Feet. In 2008 Future Baby Mama won him another Grammy.

Last years 2014 to 2016

In 2014 Prince signed with Warner again, ahead of the 30th anniversary of Purple Rain. On 8 February 2015 he presented Album of the Year at the Grammys and told the room, “Albums still matter. Like books and black lives, albums still matter.” NBC counts 37 albums in 37 years, the last of them HITnRUN Phase Two. His last performances were at Paisley Park in January 2016.

Craft, sound and style

Prince wrote, produced and played his own records, and he fought to keep it that way. His fight with Warner in the 1990s was about the same thing: who owned the music, and how fast it could come out.

He’s in a painting of guitarists for a reason. At the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony he joined Tom Petty, Who’s Who number 2 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon), Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood and Dhani Harrison for While My Guitar Gently Weeps. It’s George Harrison’s, Who’s Who number 44 song from The Beatles’ 1968 recording, which had Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3, on lead guitar. That night Prince took the lead, and Guitar Player’s write-up of the clip calls it one of the greatest guitar solos in music history.

Tom Petty, Who’s Who number 2 in · Ultimate Eagles Reunion (story coming soon), who inducted Harrison that night, felt Prince deserved more than an eight-bar solo. He remembered nodding at him to keep going. “He just burned it up,” he told the New York Times in 2016.

The guitar on that solo, Guitar Player says, was his Hohner, the Telecaster-style guitar fans call the Mad Cat. It was built in Japan by Morris, with Strat-style pickups and a hardtail bridge, and only a little over 500 were made. He got it late in the 1970s, and Premier Guitar puts it on Purple Rain, 1999 and Musicology.

The Cloud

Dave Rusan built the Cloud in 1983 at Knut-Koupée Music in Minneapolis, for Purple Rain. Prince wanted it white with gold hardware, and the body was copied from a bass he owned. It has active EMG pickups, a single coil at the neck and a humbucker at the bridge, on a 9 volt battery, and a hard rock maple body with a 24.75 inch scale. Premier Guitar says the neck runs through the body and Guitar.com says it’s a set neck, and they tell the story of the bass it was copied from differently too. Rusan says he made four. Prince threw Clouds at the ends of songs on the 98 date tour, so they kept needing repairs. By January 2000 he said his Cloud was “painted blue now”. Sotheby’s calls the Mad Cat a Telecaster knockoff, “albeit a good one”, and his most used guitar, and says the story that he bought it for $30 from the boot of a car is apocryphal.

The Symbol and the Vox

From 1993 he had a guitar shaped like his symbol, made by luthier Jerry Auerswald. He said an Auerswald was one of two guitars, both through Leslie speakers, on the title track of Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic in 1999. On the Baby Knows solo he played a Telecaster through a small amp, trying to channel Chuck Berry, Who’s Who number 36. On So Far, So Pleased the guitar went through a Boss vibrato and flanger. On Man O’ War he left a Cry Baby wah cracked halfway open and doubled the guitar part on keyboard. In the 3rdEyeGirl years, up to 2015, he played a semi-hollow Vox HDC-77 in blackburst, including at the White House in June 2015. Donna Grantis says its percussive attack suited funk, and that it fed back easily.

The picking hand

Wendy Melvoin of the Revolution says the real magic was his picking hand. In rhythm parts he could go from picking to hiding the pick between two fingers. She calls his soloing “super impassioned” and says he was great at writing guitar hooks. In 2000 he named Sonny T., Freddie Stone and Tony Maiden as the guitarists who shaped his funk rhythm. In the studio he used punch-ins and spot erasing as a way of writing, and sometimes sampled a guitar part and doubled it on keyboard. Rolling Stone’s 2026 list of guitar solos puts the end of Purple Rain at number one.

Stories people still tell

1. Super Bowl XLI, in the rain.

   On 4 February 2007 Prince played the halftime show at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, through heavy rain and wind. The set ran 12 minutes. It opened with a burst of Queen’s We Will Rock You and took in All Along the Watchtower, Bob Dylan’s song, made famous by Jimi Hendrix, Who’s Who number 6. Rolling Stone ranked it the best halftime show of all, and it’s often listed among the best.

2. The name nobody could say.

   From 1993 to 2000 he went by a symbol, not a name. He never called himself the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. That was the media’s label.

3. The Cloud.

   The white Cloud guitar he played in Purple Rain was custom built in Minneapolis for the film.

Legacy

Prince had 47 entries on the Hot 100 and 19 top tens, by ABC13’s count. The RIAA, as reported by AAP, credited him with more than 36 million albums sold in the US.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame lists artists connected with him, including Madonna, Who’s Who number 11 in · The Ultimate Reunion (story coming soon), Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, The Weeknd, Janelle Monáe, D’Angelo and Lenny Kravitz, Who’s Who number 39. The same page also names Hendrix, Who’s Who number 6 and David Bowie, Who’s Who number 16 in · The Ultimate Reunion (story coming soon).

On the day he died, President Obama said, “Today, the world lost a creative icon.”

The Purple Rain musical is due to start Broadway previews at the Majestic Theatre on 12 March 2027 and open on 12 April.