Prince has announced that he is writing a memoir, to be released in the fall of 2017 by Random House imprint Spiegel & Grau. This will be the artist’s first original book, described as “an unconventional and poetic journey through his life and creative work – from the family that shaped him and the people, places, and ideas that fired his creative imagination, to the stories behind the music that changed the world,” according to Pitchfork. The memoir will be called The Beautiful Ones, also the name of the third track on Prince’s 1984 album Purple Rain. “He said it will span from his first memory to when he played the Super Bowl XLI halftime show in 2007,” Pitchfork continued. A press release from Spiegel & Grau Executive Editor Chris Jackson states:
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. Millions of words have been written about Prince — books and articles, essays and criticism — but we’re thrilled to be publishing Prince’s powerful reflections on his own life in his own incandescently vivid, witty, and poetic voice.
Prince wrote his first song “Funk Machine” on his father’s piano when he was only seven years old. The Purple One was already hard at work in the studio during the mid 1970s. He shot his cult rock musical Purple Rain in 1984, featuring his Minneapolis band, The Revolution. His many romantic ties to celebs like Madonna, Vanity, Carmen Electra, and Susanna Hoffs were the stuff of headlines, as well as his controversial name change (to a symbol), religion (Jehovah’s Witness), and contract drama with Warner Bros. We fully expect all that “funk” and more to be included in the upcoming title.