Rock star Prince announces he is publishing his memoirs

He has sold 100 million albums and created the soundtrack to countless lives. Now he’s writing his own story.

Prince performs at Sydney’s Olympic Park as part of his 2012 Australian tour.

Prince has sold more than 100 million records worldwide and continues to electrify crowds more than 40 years after his debut. Now the Minneapolis artist is joining other top-tier rock stars by ­announ­cing a deal to write his memoir.

The book will be published next year by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House. He announced the book deal at a raucous pop-up performance on Friday night at a nightclub in New York City.

Prince, in true rock-star form, appeared hours late to announce his book deal and later returned to play a blistering 45-minute set — short, by Prince standards. Too short. The show included his All the Critics Love U in New York, which took on a new meaning given his writing aspirations. In brief remarks before his set, wearing a shiny Mylar-type outfit, Prince asked the crowd, which ­included Harry Belafonte and Trevor Noah: “You still read books, right?”

He said the working title of his book was The Beautiful Ones. Prince said the book would cover “from his first memories up to the Super Bowl”. He played the big game’s halftime show in 2007.

“Prince is a towering figure in global culture and his music has been the soundtrack for untold numbers of people — including me — for more than a generation; his creative genius has provided the musical landscape of our lives,” says Spiegel & Grau executive editor Chris Jackson.

Spiegel & Grau acquired world rights from Esther Newberg and Dan Kirschen at ICM Partners. Newberg says she has high hopes for the book. “I think it will be one of the great music memoirs,” she says. “Like Dylan, he writes his own songs, so of course he will write a wonderful book.”

She says Prince has already submitted 50 pages of the manuscript. He is working on the book with Dan Piepenbring, who has been associated with the Paris ­Review. Prince referred to his collaborator as “Brother Dan”.

Rock memoirs have proved a lucrative niche for publishers as baby boomers snap up books by their favourite performers. The gold standards in terms of both sales and literary quality include Life by Keith Richards (776,683 print copies sold, according to ­Nielsen), Chronicles by Bob Dylan (560,706) and Just Kids by Patti Smith (466,635). Bruce Springsteen recently announced plans to publish his autobiography, Born To Run, in September.

The volcanically gifted Prince has long been one of music’s ­most intriguing figures. One mystery that will probably be addressed is the enormous amount of unreleased music the artist is sitting on. PrinceVault.com lists 26 unreleased albums and the “unreleased Prince projects” Wikipedia entry lists hundreds of songs and goes on for pages.

Another key chapter Prince may shed light on is his epic legal battle with record label Warner Bros. At one point, he scrawled “SLAVE” on his face to protest the company’s dealings with him.

Prince, who was born Prince Rogers Nelson, a musical pro­digy, signed his first record deal at age 17. On his debut album, Prince is credited with playing more than two dozen instruments.

Prince, 57, gave a hint of both his political views and his nascent interest in publishing at the Grammys in 2015, when he said: “Like books and black lives, ­albums still matter.”

The Wall Street Journal