A postmortem examination began on Friday on the body of Prince, who died at his Paisley Park home aged 57, leaving behind him a gaping hole in musical genres as diverse as R&B, rock, funk and pop.
The autopsy, which began at 9am local time, will seek to determine the cause of Prince’s death, less than 24 hours after first responders found him unresponsive at his estate.
Prince was found collapsed in a lift at the premises outside Minneapolis, which doubled as his music studio. According to a transcript of a 9.43am emergency call released on Friday, an unidentified male caller said he was dead and replied: “Yes, it’s Prince� when asked if he was with the person. Prince was pronounced dead at the scene at 10.07am on Thursday.
No details were immediately given for the cause of death, though last week he was rushed to hospital apparently recovering from a bout of flu that had forced his private jet to make an emergency landing in Illinois. At the time, a representative for Prince assured fans that he was feeling much better and was resting at home in Paisley Park.
The Midwest medical examiner’s office said on Friday morning that it could take days to determine the cause of death, and weeks to receive the results of toxicology tests.
The autopsy was being conducted in Ramsay, Minnesota, by the office’s chief medical examiner, Dr A Quinn Strobl, a forensic, anatomic and clinical pathologist, who will collect any information on Prince’s medical and social history that is “relevant to the investigation�.
Just five days ago the singer made an appearance at a dance party held at the estate where he told fans: “Just wait a few days before saying your prayers.�
The sudden death of the diminutive man who became such a towering musical figure, selling more than 100m records in a career of virtually unparalleled richness and unpredictability, prompted an emotional response across the music world. Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, former members of Prince’s band, the Revolution, said they were “completely shocked and devastated by the sudden loss of our brother, artist and friend, Prince�.
On Twitter, fellow musicians and celebrities vented barely contained grief. Boy George called Thursday “the worst day ever�; Katy Perry said: “And just like that … the world lost a lot of magic.� The Minneapolis-St Paul radio station 89.3, The Current, played his music on a permanent loop.
Barack Obama, who was flying from Saudi Arabia to London on Air Force One when the news broke, said he was mourning along with millions of fans. “Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. As one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all.�
The US space agency, Nasa, tweeted a picture of a “purple nebula, in honor of Prince, who passed away today�.
Hundreds of fans gathered outside the singer’s Paisley Park home on Thursday to pay their respects to the superstar and musical pioneer. Some wore purple as others spread purple flowers across a makeshift memorial protected by volunteers at the compound.
The road outside the house was blocked off as news trucks gathered and fans came to pay their respects. A sign in the middle of the memorial read “RIP Prince� with a broken heart drawn between each word.
Vehicles were parked in and around the compound despite the local county sheriff department’s best efforts. A barrier was erected between the memorial and the crowd, fans said, out of respect for the family.
A poster hung along the fence was signed by fans reflecting on why the music legend was important to them. One read: “Thank you for teaching me to dance.� Another: “Your music always plays in our hearts.�
Kristin Doolittle, a resident of the nearby town of Chaska, visited Paisley with her daughter Anna. She recalled first hearing Purple Rain when she was 13 – a “magical moment�, she said. “I took a dance class and I did a tap routine to Delirious,� Doolittle said. There isn’t an equal counterpart to Prince in music history, she added, recalling a concert she attended about 10 years ago.
“It just brings back memories of all those songs,� she said of the Prince show. “And it just reiterated to me that he belongs on the stage. He was wonderful and magnificent, and very home on stage.�
The Minneapolis mayor, Betsy Hodges, posted on her blog: “Prince was a child of our city and his love of his hometown permeated many of his songs. Our pride in his accomplishments permeates our love of Minneapolis.�
At First Avenue, the Minneapolis club where Prince filmed the live show scenes for Purple Rain, fans began leaving floral tributes – mostly purple – at the foot of a wall decorated with a star bearing his name. The club announced it was opening for a free all-night dance party in honour of the city’s music hero.
Prince had lived life to the fullest right up to his early demise. If anything the workaholic, who regularly slept three hours a night and would play impromptu concerts until dawn, was accelerating the pace of his hectic schedule when he died.
He cut four albums in his last 18 months, and had let it be known he was writing a memoir that would be released next year. Hours after he was released from hospital on Saturday, the singer announced that he was going to throw a dance party at his music complex that he dubbed “Paisley Park After Dark�.
Standing just 5ft 2in tall, Prince truly had an outsized influence on the world. Born in his beloved Minneapolis on 7 June 1958, his sprawling musical tastes, androgynous style, genre-bending imagination, sexual outrageousness and flirtation with religion left fans forever guessing where he would go next.
His wry, almost satirical relationship with fame, combined with his masterful skills at self-projection, led him to play with his own name. He was christened Prince Rogers Nelson after his father’s stage persona, Prince Rogers.
In 1993, Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, causing momentary panic across newspapers and publishing houses who scrambled to find ways to replicate it. Their distress was eased when a way out was found with the description “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince�.
That moniker remained until 2000. But far more important was his equal willingness to shatter norms and conventions in music. His love of songwriting stretched right back to childhood – he penned his first song aged seven – and while he was still a teenager he recorded his first demo tape at Moon’s Studio in Minneapolis, earning himself a contract with Warner Bros.
Over the next 40 years he made 40 albums and won seven Grammy awards in a flood of musical output that left even the artist himself bamboozled. Last year, he told the Guardian he had decided to dispense with a band and with a huge back library of previous songs because he found it so hard to marshal.
“Tempo, keys, all those things can dictate what song I’m going to play next, you know, as opposed to, ‘Oh, I’ve got to do my hit single now, I’ve got to play this album all the way through,’ or whatever. There’s so much material, it’s hard to choose. It’s hard.�
His breakthrough came with the 1979 album Prince, which hit the top of the Billboard R&B charts and contained the smash singles Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad? and I Wanna Be Your Lover. Dirty Mind (1980) and Controversy (1981) both managed to attract musical admiration but also, as the latter title suggested, provoke a firestorm of criticism for their edgy interplay between religion and sexuality. With every cleverly concocted row, Prince’s star shone brighter.
But it was in 1984 with Purple Rain that he really captured global adulation. Purple Rain was not so much an album and film, it was a cultural phenomenon. The song of the same name, with its first verse dedicated to his father and recorded over a daring 13 minutes in the First Avenue club in Minneapolis, went on to provide the skeleton structure for both album and movie.
Prince was rewarded with 13m sales of the album. The film, featuring a central character called “The Kid� who leans heavily on Prince’s own life story, won him an Oscar for songwriting.
While other artists who cut their teeth in the 1970s have settled for repetitive revivals of their past glories, none of that would satisfy Prince. With the passing of the millennium, his creative production and desire to explore new pastures only grew more intense.
In 2007, he performed a 12-minute set at the Super Bowl that has widely been credited as the greatest half-time show ever at the footballing event. Then, from February 2014 to June 2015 he went on a series of Hit N Run tour dates, wreaking havoc across 15 cities for 39 gigs in a little over a year.
Flanked by his band 3rdeyegirl, the Purple One’s guerrilla gigs would be confirmed sometimes no sooner than a few hours before via Twitter. Stopping in at locations from London to Louisville, Paris to Montreal, his epic sets would take place in a litany of shapes and sizes, at jazz clubs and arenas.
Those who witnessed his most intimate performances were rewarded, after hours standing in snaking queues, with a greatest hits funk extravaganza, with the likes of Let’s Go Crazy, 1999 and Little Red Corvette performed so close you could stare into the whites of his eyes.
His final shows were last week at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, where a strict no photos or video rule was in place for two consecutive sets. Billed as the Piano and a Microphone tour, Prince played solo at a purple grand piano.
Before concluding with Kiss, his third encore performance in the earlier show, Prince sang Heroes in tribute to David Bowie, who died in January. Back on stage within the hour for his final late night show, he ended with three encores and a medley of Purple Rain, The Beautiful Ones and Diamonds and Pearls.
When the Guardian visited him in Paisley Park last year, he described spending the previous night just playing to himself for three hours without pause.
“I just couldn’t stop. That’s what you want. Transcendence. When that happens … Oh, boy.�
