Throughout his life, Prince and his fans always had something of a handshake agreement: Let's keep this thing a mystery, shall we?
Prince spent his life crafting and promoting an image of himself, a timeless piece of rock star perfection that remained fresh from the moment he broke onto the scene in the mid-1970s all the way until his untimely death in April at 57.
But for some people, namely the people who worked with him, Prince was also many other things besides a mystery. He was a boss, and a friend, and a goofball, and a taskmaster. At times, he could be distant and silent, other times kind and warm, still other times almost impossibly demanding, expecting the people around him to push themselves just as hard as he pushed himself, so they could together create what became the Prince catalog.
Many of the people under Prince were women. More so than most men in the music world, Prince famously enjoyed working with and mentoring female musicians and engineers. To get a sense of what it was like to work closely with Prince, we talked to three women who did: Susan Rogers, the engineer behind "Purple Rain and "Sign o' the Times"; Sylvia Massy, a legendary engineer and producer who has worked with artists including Prince, Tool, Johnny Cash and Slayer; and Támar Davis, an artist who toured with Prince in the 2000s.
Susan Rogers, Sound Engineer (1980s)
Worked with Prince on projects including "Sign o' the Times" and "Purple Rain"
Given the choice between a man and a woman who were equally qualified, I think he’d choose the woman.
Susan Rogers
Susan Rogers had just celebrated her 27th birthday when she went to work for Prince as a technician.
A young woman from Southern California, Rogers had wrapped up work with Crosby, Still & Nash, but always felt more drawn to R&B, soul and funk music, and so considered the chance to work with Prince a dream.
"I was delighted with the music, I was entranced, I was grateful every single day, and that’s what fueled me despite how exhausting it could be," Rogers said.
Rogers eventually earned Prince's trust, and was promoted to engineer. It was the gig of a lifetime, but it also became clear that if you were one of the few people who worked full-time for Prince, your life came second to his.
"There was no life outside of my life for him, so in that sense it was like a tour of duty. I belonged to his army," she said. "You’d be up for 24 hours, sleep for two hours, then get a phone call that said, ‘I need you to come back to the studio’ -- you didn’t negotiate. You just came back to the studio."
There was never a day off, never an hour to yourself if Prince wanted that hour for his art. The process, she said, was, "exhausting," so much so that she once snapped at him. Prince would occasionally fine his band and employees if they made a mistake or otherwise weren't up to snuff. One day at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, Rogers was setting up a piece of equipment "as fast as humanly possible," she said, but it wasn't fast enough for Prince.
"That’s it Susan, you’re fined," Prince said.
"Something snapped in me," Rogers remembers now. "I just went a little bit nuts."
"I’m fined? You want money from me?" Rogers recalled saying.
She grabbed her purse in the control room, opened her wallet and said, "Here, Prince, you already have my life, now you can have my money."
Rogers was standing over Prince, who was sitting in a chair in the control room. She took all the cash in her wallet and threw it at Prince, bill by bill.
"There’s your fine," she said. "I’ve given you everything, now I’ll give you even more." She threw some more money and walked out, maybe twenty paces, before she realized what a mistake she had made and walked back in.
"I’m really sorry, I just went a little bit nuts there,'" she said. Prince forgave her, and not anothe