MY LIFE IN THE PURPLE KINGDOM

The bassist for Prince during the Purple Rain era provides glimpses into the kingdom.

BrownMark—who was born Mark Brown in 1962—describes his rise from a single-parent home in a city of racial discrimination (Minneapolis) to success with the musical supernova. Yet there were plenty of bumps along the way. For example, in 1982, even a big raise only brought his salary to $425 per week; later, he quit after discovering that his Purple Rain Tour bonus that he’d imagined might be $1.5 million was in fact only $15,000. Those looking for a memoir awash in sex, drugs, and the seamier sides of Prince’s private life will instead discover hard work and rigid discipline under a stern taskmaster, an artist who became what he was through minute attention to detail as well as genius. The author ably chronicles his own life growing up Black in a city so White he thought of it as a “Scandinavian Mecca.” As a boy, his family didn’t have a TV, and his early experiences playing music involved a makeshift guitar constructed out of a shoe box and rubber bands. Before he auditioned for Prince, he had never been to the suburbs, and before he joined the band, he had never been on a plane. His life changed dramatically at a time when the world of music was changing, as well. Disco was breaking down walls between Black and White, and punk was bringing a new edge and urgency. As Prince’s star was ascending, he demanded the full spotlight and resented any response his young bassist was generating. The author left the band in the mid-1980s feeling that he lived “in a world of filth, greed, and deception.” Still, the connections and impressions he made as a member of The Revolution launched his career, and he notes that “working with Prince was like going to the finest music school in the land.” One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.

A memoir of vivid detail and understandable ambivalence.