Prince: A Sign 'o' the Times by
John McKie
My rating:
3 of 5 stars
I came to this book because my mother knew the writer a few years ago (my mother passed in 2021), and a sibling told me about it. And, of course, I'm a Prince fan, have been since I was 14 years old. Utterly devoted, all my life. Since Prince's death I have read several books, some I have liked, some less so. This sort of fits a bit in the middle.
There is some new content in this book, lots of anecodes, lots of name dropping and comparison to other artists, but also some really cool stories about meet ups and collaboration, lots of things I've not heard before. It gets very technical about music in places, and the last chapter is devoted to the people he worked with saying he was a great musician. As with many of the books about him, the focus is on his success in the 80s and events and anecdotes from that time, much less about his albums, tours, events in the next three decades. There was a touch here and there, but it's a shame as I would have liked to have known more about those eras.
But the downfall of this book is in the structure and editing, or the lack thereof.
McKie tried to use Sign of the Times album as a sort of structure, putting the chapters around the songs from the album, after making the somewhat arbitrary statement that this album was Prince's masterpiece and everything paled against it. I am in completely disagreement, as Parade was far more fluid, as was The Gold Experience, Art Official Age, even Hit N Run Phase one. But another fan might mention any other album too. Mostly because all of Prince's albums had a different feel and spoke to people in different ways. Sign of the Times always felt disjointed to me, a mish-mash of songs. Some were superb, and some were less so.
But the problem for me, as an editor and proofreader is how badly it was all put together. It should have had a developmental editor, and then a copy editor and then a proofreader. It is overly wordy, sentence flow is ruined by a side mention or comment on whoever the author is about to quote, and paragraphs aren't put together cohesively. I appreciate to put topics together can be difficult with so many stories, but it needed serious reschuffling and also honing down significantly. And then comes the errors.
On page 43 Prince's date of birth is wrong! It says the 7 April 1958 - everyone knows it's 7th of June. It's even stated earlier in the book. And then the array of brackets that aren't either opened or closed, speech marks that are in the wrong place, and a litany of other errors that make this an arduous read. There are also factual errors too about smaller things, which should have been fact checked. It's like no one actually bothered. Maybe they were in a rush to get it out, or maybe they just didn't want to pay someone. But it is totally unprofessional. I feel badly for the author as it's not strictly their responsibility. I would recommend the publisher get it proofread properly and update it. As an author myself, I know it's not hard to do.
This could have been something quite special, but in the end it felt like a money-grab book. We are awash with them since Prince's death. I personally recommend either Mayte's book, or Morris Day's. They have been my favourites so far. People that actually loved him and aren't just trying to make money off his name.
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