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Great Lives

Comedian Sindhu Vee on Prince

Great Lives

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.21.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Comedian Sindhu Vee has loved Prince ever since she was a young girl in India - when her sister gave her illicit cassettes recorded from US radio.

A pop polymath and global superstar, Prince was also a man of extreme contradictions and multiple personas.

Hearing his music changed Sindhu's life forever, and seeing him perform influenced her career as a comedian.

Sindhu discusses the life of Prince Rogers Nelson with Matthew Parris.

They’re joined by BAFTA-winning investigative journalist Mobeen Azhar (who saw Prince live 54 times!)

Produced at BBC Bristol by Eliza Lomas.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2019.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

0:05.0

Imagine yourself just for a moment as a teenage songwriter.

0:09.0

You have big dreams.

0:12.0

You're approached by a major record label. Surely it wouldn't occur to you to turn them down.

0:17.0

Well, a young musician from Minneapolis living in a friend's basement turned turned down three record deals from major US labels,

0:26.2

and finally accepted a $300,000 deal with Warner Brothers.

0:30.9

On the condition, he had complete creative control.

0:34.3

I ain't got no money.

0:36.3

I'm thankful for guys you hang round.

0:41.2

It's kind of funny. Once in the recording studio that same precocious teenager was so shy he had to lie down on the floor and cover himself in a blanket in order to sing into the microphone. Who was this person of extreme

1:05.4

contradictions and multiple personas? joining me in the studio today is the stand-up comedian Sindhoor v. who has nominated Prince Rogers Nelson, otherwise known as Prince,

1:27.0

otherwise known as the artist formerly known as Prince, as her great life.

1:32.0

Sindhu you grew up in India. What was Prince's music out there in

1:37.4

your world when you were growing up? Absolutely not. I grew up in India when the economy

1:41.8

was still closed so we didn't have access to

1:44.5

Western music or Western TV and I came across Prince because my sister was living abroad

1:51.0

she'd gone to university in America and so I used to beg her to bring me some,

1:55.0

and of course because she was my elder sister, she's fundamentally driven by a desire to make me unhappy.

2:00.0

She never bought me any music, but what she would do, she would put a cassette She would

2:04.0

put a cassette into the radio and just record as she could

2:08.0

record as much as she could on the day that she was leaving.

2:11.0

And then she would come and chuck this cassette at me and say here you go and I would

...

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