by Whitney Phaneuf
Like the rest of the world, I’m reeling from the news that . His cause of death remains unknown, but there are reports of him being hospitalized with the flu last week.
I was born in the late ’70s, and Prince was the soundtrack of my youth. was the first R rated movie I ever saw (thanks mom and dad). I remember when he became “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince” and his “Love Symbol” became the butt of many jokes (it was actually an f-u to his then-label Warner Bros.).
What I don’t remember anyone ever taking about — when I heard him on the radio, watched him on MTV, or laughed at the jokes about him changing his name to a symbol (sorry Prince) — is that the man was an incredible guitarist. When I saw Prince in 2013, I was blown away by his playing (read more ).
Though he wasn’t known to pick up an acoustic guitar very often, I did find this clip of him from 2004 where, during an MTV special called Prince: The Art of Musicology and taped at New York’s Webster Hall, he performs a bluesy rendition of his 1991 hit “Cream” on a purple (what else!) acoustic guitar. Prince is playful and funny, stopping at one point to comment, “You know I wrote this while I was looking in the mirror, right?”
