INTERVIEW

Alan Light has been a music journalist for some twenty years now. A senior editor at The Rolling Stone magazine and the founding music editor and editor-in-chief of Vibe, Light talks to Guardian 20 about his new book Let’s Go Crazy, on the late popstar Prince and that great milestone of his career, Purple Rain — the song, the album and the film.

Q. For how long did you research before actually getting down to write this book?

In some ways, I feel like I had been doing the research for this book since discovering Prince before Purple Rain was even released — his work has been a bit of a life-long obsession for me, and I was drawing on incidents and experiences that went back to my high school years. But in terms of specifically focusing on Let’s Go Crazy as an actual book, I worked on it (researching and writing) for about a year; it was a little more rushed than I might have liked, but I had to place a pretty strict deadline on myself to get it out in time for the album’s 30th anniversary.

Q. How many band members did you interview and how was the experience? A.

I met with three of the five members of the Revolution — Wendy, Lisa, and Dr. Fink. They were all great and all very generous with their time. I drove around Minneapolis (in a snow storm!) with Matt Fink, and he pointed out some of their old rehearsal spaces and residences, and we went to the First Avenue club together. Lisa and Wendy spent a long day with me at their studio in Los Angeles. Having seen them play back in the ’80s, and of course watched them on screen in the movie over and over again, it was certainly a thrill to have that time with them. I also met with or spoke to various other musicians who worked with Prince during the Purple Rain era, including Jill Jones, Dez Dickerson, and Susannah Melvoin.

Q. Did you personally meet Prince? How was the experience? A.

I had met and interviewed Prince numerous times over the years, for several lengthy magazine profiles, which I describe in the book. There’s no short why to describe what it was like — it really wasn’t like anything else, being with someone who had music coming out of them so constantly, and who truly constructed a world that allowed him to create anywhere at any time. I very much enjoyed my conversations with him — he was bright and funny, provocative and charming, and in some ways much more relatable than his image (for a guy who did multiple costume changes on days when he didn’t even have a show). There is nothing I’ve ever done that will compare with talking to him on stage during sound check, while he played guitar, or sitting on a piano bench with him as he played a new song. I feel privileged to have gotten that