Prince & the Revolution – Raspberry Beret
Yesterday was a fairly normal Thursday. Here at the end of the semester I was busy trying to finish up grading papers in between teaching. As I came back to my office, with about an hour of grading to squeeze into my office hours, I quickly checked Facebook and was thrown into shock at the passing of Prince.
Over 24 hours later, it’s still difficult to process the fact that Prince is no longer in this world. He seemed beyond age. Immortal. Eternally beautiful. That he could be gone so suddenly and without any warning doesn’t seem real. I don’t even know how to fully gauge the influence of Prince in my life. There are loads of memories connected to his songs and performances (though I regret never being able to see him live, something that I was sure I would be able to do soon, with his performances in Oakland and Atlanta seemingly setting the stage for Los Angeles). When Denise Matthews aka Vanity passed away around Valentine’s Day I mused on the fact that Prince’s taste in women, especially Apollonia, Shiela E., Sheena Easton, Sinead O’Connor and Jill Jones, had a major influence on my own (though when I’ve thought of my “dream girl” throughout most my life, she’s been closest to looking like Vanity). When MTV showed Purple Rain late last night I thought about how the very first “home video” my family got and played on our very first brand new VCR was Purple Rain, and I can still remember the big white shell case, taking the plastic off, popping the VCR in and being mesmerized once the movie started on our own TV…So many memories.
But more than anything else, when I think of Prince I think of my mother. There’s no other song that makes me think of my mother in the way “Raspberry Beret” does…back in the days before CDs and a “repeat” button, she actually had me record and re-record the song on both sides of a cassette so that she could endlessly listen to it as she drove around. In the years since her death, whenever the song would come on, the radio, in some store, on tv, wherever, I’d immediately think of her.
Along with “Take Me With U” it’s my favorite song from Prince, it finds him at his most whimsical (and both songs taken together might be his most romantic work). Though the original video had more of a Sgt. Pepper’s feel to it, I’ve always felt that the sound and structure of the song was the one that most showed Jimi’s influence on Prince’s songwriting. After Vanity’s passing, I read that she was supposed to originally have played the lead in Purple Rain, and that when she left the project, aspects of the story changed, including a love scene in a barn, that clearly relates to this song. Given that “Beret” was written in 1982, it’s entirely possible that the song may in part be inspired by Prince and Vanity’s love affair. I’ve long felt that Vanity was the love of Prince’s life, and after losing her, many of the women he found himself with were attempts at replacing her. Though there is so much to still learn about his passing, the romantic in me wonders how her passing, also at 57, may have affected him…Prince was such a private man, it’s possible we’ll never really know. What we do know is what he left behind, the effect that he had on so many of us, simply by being his utterly unique self. May he forever rest in peace…