Prins Jehova witness

Prince and his Jehovah's Witness Adventures

Book Review: Prince: Chaos, Disorder, and
Revolution by Jason Draper
By Glen Boyd, BLOGCRITICS.ORG
Published 09:31 p.m., Wednesday, June 29, 2011
PARTIAL QUOTE:

Danny: Glitter boy needs to renounce his new religion, don't you think?



Prince Finds Islam Orderly
from Illume, June 26, 2011


Danny says, Hey babe it's fun being celeb apostate Prince - I would be
disfellowshipped in an instant especially since JWs are being persecuted even
beheaded by Muslims. Michael and Jermaine Jackson had connection with the
Brothers of Islam as well. Author Firpo Carr praised their resemblance. Maybe JW
women will be wearing burkas next!


Prince respects the order of Islamic countries...
The 'Purple Rain' singer believes Middle Eastern countries that dictate what their
citizens can do and wear cannot just be dismissed as oppressive and wrong. In an
interview with The Guardian newspaper, Prince - who has been a Jehovah's Witnesses
since 2001 - said: We can't do what we want to do all the time. If you don't have
boundaries, what then? It's fun being in Islamic countries, to know there's only one
religion. There's order. You wear a burqa. There's no choice. People are happy with
that.

When asked what he would say to Muslim women who are unhappy to be forced to
wear burqas - which cover the wearer's entire body apart from their eyes - he replied:
There are people who are unhappy with everything. There's a dark side to everything.
I don't want to get up on a soapbox. My view of the world, you can debate that
forever.
That's the saddest thing of all - Prince lost his
mojo by being lame and getting scared of
death and dying.


The Popstar Prince of Daftness
Thursday November 4, 2010 by Anna Pukas SOURCE
HE'S become a door-knocking Jehovah's Witness who paints all his rooms purple and wears high
heels. So let's hope the X Factor finalists who he's set to star with don't turn out like him.
Forget the cast-iron contracts, the manipulation of our emotions and the total control he exerts
over every aspect of his vast and growing empire in the manner of a latter day Kubla Khan. For
incontrovertible proof of the power of Simon Cowell we need only look ahead to December and
the final of The X Factor.
It was reported yesterday that Cowell has lined up Prince as the headline guest star. If the
diminutive rock enigma does indeed grace The X Factor stage in seven weeks time it will be a
true testament to Cowells uncommon powers of persuasion in bringing the famously eccentric
superstar together with what he professes to despise most about the music industry.
It was Prince, after all, who appeared in public with slave scrawled on his face to protest about
what he saw as the unreasonable demands of his record company and the submission of
creativity to the corporate creed. Yet the music business does not get more corporate than The X
Factor with its choreographed hysteria.
More recently Prince bemoaned the derivative character of the current music scene. All this
Eighties dance revival stuff. All so plain, so simple, so obvious. The same old synthesisers, the
same old chords. Yet there is no bigger platform for safe music, no place less experimental than
the Saturday night talent show broadcast at peak viewing time.
But then Prince has always been a mass of intrigue and contradictions. He has released records
with sexually explicit lyrics, even touching on the ultimate taboo of incest, yet says he is a born-
again prude since becoming a Jehovahs Witness. Not only does he claim to have been
celibate for a decade but he has also been known to visit lap-dancing clubs and offer the girls
double their nights wages if they stop working.
His singing voice is high but his speaking voice is a manly baritone. Now 52 he has racked up
nearly 30 years of global superstardom and umpteen awards and appears on Time magazines
most influential people list. Yet apart from a brief period of residence in Los Angeles four years
ago he prefers to live in Minneapolis, his home town in the unpretentious American Mid West.
He used to throw after-show parties which were open to anyone who was on the mailing list of
his fan club, yet he has given only three interviews in the past 10 years and is notoriously
unforthcoming about his past or personal life. We know little about his two marriages, except
that both ended in divorce the first in the most tragic circumstances after the death of his son in
1997. Baby Gregory was born with Pfeiffers syndrome, a condition in which the bones of the
skull fuse together and lived only for a week.
Even what we see of Prince the public persona is subject to conjecture. Is he black or mixed
race? Is he gay or merely camp? His unusual Christian name is the one his parents gave him but
he even dispensed with that for a period in favour of a squiggle roughly resembling the male and
female symbols woven together. This meant hapless announcers were forced to refer to him by
the clumsy soubriquet the artist formerly known as Prince. (The less reverential shortened it to
TAFKAP.)
Paisley Park, his home and studio complex in Minneapolis, is awash with purple, his signature
colour. Access is strictly limited to those in his inner circle. Tape recorders and cameras are
banned and he is not too comfortable with notebooks either, yet Prince is not above carrying out
his religious obligations by going door to door with copies of The Watchtower. He has the divas
self-absorption and apparent indifference to anything outside his art. Yet his mind snaps into
action like a steel trap when discussing ticket sales or the bottom line.
In the Nineties he pioneered the releasing of music via the internet, selling CDs from his own
website in 1998 and via a download shop as early as 2001. Now he declares the internet is done
for and says he prefers to communicate face to face with actual human beings. He has shut
down his websites and you will not find any of Princes music on YouTube or iTunes.
The internet is over, he says. I do not need to discuss my opinions with the whole world. I do
not learn anything if I sit in front of a flat screen. I only learn from real people.
As recently as July Prince told an interviewer, Im not part of the music industry any more.
Yet when he flies over to Britain to perform in The X Factor he will be steeped in that bread-
and-butter activity of the music business, touring. So what is the real story of Prince? First he is
an authentic musical prodigy who can play 25 instruments. Born in June 1958, his father John
Nelson was a pianist and songwriter while his Italian-American mother Mattie was a singer. His
father named him Prince Rogers after his jazz band, the Prince Roger Trio. John and Mattie split
up a few years later and Prince went to live with his father. By the age of five he was touring
with him. John Nelson was a Seventh Day Adventist which means he took a dim view when he
caught his 12-year-old son in bed with a girl and threw him out. By then young Prince was
already musically active in school bands and was signed up by Warner Brothers straight out of
high school.
He wrote and sang all the songs and played all the instruments on his debut album For You but
the big breakthrough came in 1982 with the album 1999, which sold three million copies. Two
years later Purple Rain sold 13 million copies and made him an international star. The single
When Doves Cry stayed at Number 1 for six weeks.
Second Prince is and always has been genuinely odd, as well as blessed with remarkable self-
belief. Purple Rain was actually the soundtrack to a self-aggrandising film based on his life when
he was still a relative newcomer to fame.
The squiggle years began in 1993 on June 7, his birthday. Prince announced he was shedding his
name because his record label had divested him of his identity in perpetuity. It took him
another three years to break away and form his own label, New Power Generation. Throughout
the Eighties and early Nineties the diminutive star (he is only 5ft 2in) was linked to a string of
glamorous women, including the actresses Kim Basinger and Sherilyn Fenn and the Scottish
singer Sheena Easton.
But on Valentines Day 1996 he married Mayte Garcia, one of his backing group. However the -
marriage could not withstand the trauma of their babys death. Prince threw himself into touring
while Mayte retreated to Minneapolis and the couple divorced in 1999. His next marriage in
2001 was to a Mayte lookalike named Manuela Testolini who worked for Princes charity
Love4OneAnother. Five years later that was over too.
The guitarist Larry Graham, former bass player with Sly And The Family Stone, is credited with
introducing Prince to the Jehovahs Witness faith.
Securing Princes services for The X Factor is undoubtedly another feather in Simon Cowells
cap. He had just better not bring a notebook with him.



When heroes get religion
Jessica Reed, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 August 2010 12.06 BST

Prince performs onstage on March 28, 2009 in Los Angeles, California.
Photograph by Kristian Dowling/Getty Images
And worst of all Prince, whom I had followed compulsively since my childhood,
announced in 2001 that his faith had take a new direction: he had chosen to become a
Jehovah's Witness (going as far as handing out pamphlets door-to-door, leaving a trail
of gobsmacked people in his wake).
Why this feeling of superiority (some might say bigotry-lite) on my part? Does
knowing that a favourite creator has a faith I disdain change the quality of their
output? In most cases, religious conversion doesn't put me off so much that I give up
buying their art entirely (that is unless they really go overboard see John
Travolta's Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000, one of the worst received
movies ever). Prince's music, for example, has always had the imprint of his bizzarre
brand of religious mysticism, and for the most part it has helped his music pop
masterpieces such as his song The Cross wouldn't exist otherwise.
It does, however, change my perception of them as people. Christians have to live
with (and defend themselves from) stereotypes that contain grains of truth: a lot of
Christian denominations are closely associated with anti-choice, anti-science and anti-
gay mindsets, which is why it breaks my heart to see my heroes joining their ranks.
By evangelising while also not voicing their disapproval of some traits associated with
Christianity, they add their tacit approval to groups perpetuating systems of
oppression. The same goes for communists who are uncritical of their movement's
past, for gender activists who don't acknowledge how feminism has historically failed
working-class and minority women, or for libertarians unwilling to analyse the
limitations of free speech.
In other words, I find myself put off when believers of any kind broadcast their faith
without any critical appendix. But Rice's pronouncement has also made me take a
look at my own response to religion: when news of her statement came through, I
assumed she'd come back to atheism and let out a small whoop of joy. In fact, she's
still into Christ, but has made it clear she hates some of the baggage. That's a stance I
can actually admire (though I still wish she'd come clean about Lestat and those other
vampires). It's a rare thing when famous people get to explain their thinking in detail
(and when they do, it can bepainful), but I'm glad Rice has chosen to do so.

Prince believes in Angels
The Bosh (7/21/10)
"Prince whose conversion to Jehovahs Witnesses was his mother Mattie Shaws dying
wish goes out door-to-door to spread the word about his faith and try and get others to convert.
"Although most people are surprised to have a pop superstar call at their house to talk about God,
Prince insists most individuals are cool with him."
Prince Disguises Himself On Jehovah's
Witness Rounds

July 6, 2010 from contactmusic.com
Religious singer PRINCE often dons a disguise when he embarks on door-to-door preaching
campaigns in a bid to stop fans recognising him.
The Purple Rain hitmaker famously became a Jehovah's Witness in 2001, and admits he often
"freaked out" householders when he arrived on their doorstep to talk about his faith.
But Prince now changes his appearance so his superstar status is not detected.
He tells Britain's Daily Mirror, "Sometimes people act surprised but mostly they're really cool
about it...
"My hair is capable of doing a lot of different things. I don't always look like this."
And the star's mentor, former Sly & The Family Stone star Larry Graham, admits Prince has
become so interested in the word of God, he can pore over details of the Bible for up to eight
hours every day.
He says, "Prince is a spiritual man. Sometimes we study for hours - six, seven, eight hours a day.
We sit down and get into the scriptures."

Wow, Prince, how will you feel when you
wake up and smell the coffee? You'll only be
seen as a fool who lost his mojo.


Prince with a cross around his neck?

from the Daily Mirror article:

Prince and
Jehovah's
Witnesses

"All the signs are present for a
typical conversion to Jehovah's
Witnesses: disaffection with the
system of things (the world and
especially its entertainment), the
intolerance of other religions or
world views, disassociation with
one's previous persona and
habits, and an active evangelistic
tone."