THE BEAUTIFUL ONES

A legendary musician and the co-author he chose three months before his death sketch a tantalizing half-finished self-portrait in both words and images.

When Prince died in 2016, he left behind 30 pages of a memoir that his co-writer, Paris Review advisory editor Piepenbring (co-author: Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, 2019), had annotated with the singer’s own expansions and that Prince had intended as a “handbook for the brilliant community: wrapped in autobiography, wrapped in biography.” Remaining scrupulously faithful to that vision, Piepenbring pieces together Prince’s memoir fragments with never-before-seen memorabilia the editor helped excavate from the singer’s Paisley Park vault in Chanhassen, Minnesota. The book opens with Piepenbring’s warm remembrances of their brief association and statement of mission. Though unfinished, the memoir, which is divided into four parts, was to have set forth what Prince called an “an unconventional and poetic journey” that celebrated the creative freedom he prized above all else. Prince remembers the glamorous parents who raised him and whose interpersonal conflicts later fueled much of his creative output. He also reminisces about his hometown, Minneapolis, his worship of his musician father, and his first loves, music being chief among them. The second section, “For You,” consists of photographed images—at once funny and supremely personal—of a scrapbook Prince kept in the years preceding his first album, For You (1978). In “Controversy,” Piepenbring traces the creative work that followed For You and preceded Purple Rain (1984) with images of both the singer and lyrics—complete with Prince’s doodles and corrections—to such classics such as “1999.” The final section, “Baby I’m a Star,” features both handwritten treatments for Prince’s semiautobiographical film, Purple Rain, and Piepenbring’s typewritten version. Laced throughout with quotations from Prince interviews, this visually stunning labor of love reveals the shy, vulnerable man behind the glitz and controversy without ever “punctur[ing] the veil of mystery around him.”

A poignantly intimate, revelatory read for Prince fans and music lovers.