Prince and First Avenue

Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis on June seventh, nineteen fifty-eight, and spent most of his life within a few miles of where he grew up. That geography mattered. Minneapolis is not Nashville or Los Angeles or New York. It is a mid-sized Midwestern city with a cold climate and a music scene that, in the late nineteen seventies, was built almost entirely around one club.

First Avenue opened in nineteen seventy as a Greyhound bus station renovation and became the central venue in the Minneapolis music scene through the decade that followed. It was, and is, a large converted space with a black exterior and silver stars painted on the outside wall bearing the names of artists who had sold out the venue. Prince's star was repainted gold as a tribute after his death, and it remains the only gold star on the wall.

Prince signed with Warner Bros. Records in nineteen seventy-seven, at age nineteen, one of the youngest artists in the label's history to negotiate complete creative control over his recordings. His first albums sold modestly. His fourth album, nineteen ninety-nine, released in nineteen eighty-two, broke him nationally. His fifth album, Purple Rain, released in July nineteen eighty-four along with the film of the same name, made him one of the most commercially successful recording artists in the world.

Purple Rain was largely filmed in Minneapolis. First Avenue appears in the film. The character of the Kid, played by Prince, performs at First Avenue in the film's climactic sequence. The movie won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score, the only Oscar ever won for a music score that was performed by the artist responsible for the film.

Prince built Paisley Park, his recording and performance compound, in the suburb of Chanhassen in nineteen eighty-seven. He worked there until his death on April twenty-first, two thousand sixteen. The cause was an accidental overdose of fentanyl. He was fifty-seven. Paisley Park is now a museum.