The Unspoken Rule Prince's Staff Was Forced To Follow
Working for a pop icon like Prince must have been a dream job, right? Well, maybe — but there was at least one rule you'd never, ever want to break.
Transcript
00:00Working for a pop icon like Prince must have been a dream job, right?
00:04Well, maybe, but there was at least one rule you'd never, ever want to break.
00:08Prince was a unique person, to say the least.
00:11Eccentric, completely over the top, and one heck of a guitar shredder,
00:15Prince is often considered one of the greatest musicians of all time.
00:19He sold more than 150 million albums worldwide,
00:23recorded a staggering 39 albums over four decades,
00:28and is often treated as a straight-up god by his fans.
00:32Oh, how rude of me. I haven't given you enough time to freak out yet.
00:36You may do so now.
00:38It should come as no surprise that such an irrepressible personality
00:42had more than their fair share of quirks.
00:44For example, he owned a hair salon on his property
00:47that no one but him was allowed to use, not even his wife.
00:51His wife also wasn't allowed to call him on the phone.
00:54Additionally, he liked spaghetti paired with orange juice,
00:57followed the Jehovah's Witnesses,
00:59and, for some reason, kept a garden gnome in his bedroom.
01:08But none of these eccentricities compares to the no-eye-contact rule.
01:11This tale has resurfaced time and again over the years.
01:15It's been repeated, denounced as false, hyperbolized,
01:18lambasted for being hyperbolic, and basically everything in between.
01:22But by some accounts, it's true.
01:24These accounts claim that Prince was notoriously hard on staff and fellow musicians,
01:28even to the point of insisting that they never look him in the eyes.
01:31The story about Prince's no-eye-contact rule
01:35has circulated so much at this point
01:37that it's practically impossible to nail down an original source.
01:41One source, at least, is Liz Frey,
01:43a graphic designer who worked with Prince in 1992.
01:47Frey is the one who drafted Prince's love symbol
01:50that he used from 1993 to 2000,
01:53plus a circle and cross on top drawn by Prince.
01:56As Prince himself once told her,
02:04After Prince's death in 2016,
02:06Frey spoke up about her experience with him.
02:09According to her, Prince's rule was simple.
02:11Never look into his eyes directly.
02:13Also, his staff had to call him boss.
02:16Despite such harsh rules,
02:18Frey told Page Six that it was a joy to work with Prince.
02:21She said,
02:25Similarly, Prince's hairstylist, Kim Berry,
02:28cited the same rule, plus a couple of others,
02:30such as don't touch his ears.
02:32However, Berry heard of these rules from other members of Prince's entourage,
02:36rather than Prince himself.
02:38When she actually asked Prince about the no-eye-contact thing,
02:41he reportedly told her,
02:48Lest you think that only two of Prince's assistants
02:51have mentioned his no-eye-contact rule,
02:53Ultimate Classic Rock describes an instance
02:56in which Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar ran into the same rule.
03:00At the 27th Grammys in 1985,
03:03Hagar wanted to say hi to Prince
03:05through Prince's guitar tech, Zeke Clark.
03:08Hagar asked Clark for an introduction,
03:10and Clark allegedly replied,
03:15When Hagar pressed for more information,
03:17Clark revealed that he had to communicate with Prince
03:20through handwritten notes.
03:21Clark simply said,
03:23Hagar concluded by saying what many of us may be thinking,
03:29Indeed, Prince was notoriously tough on musicians and techs he worked with.
03:33Sound engineer David Rivkin once described Prince
03:36unleashing his wrath from time to time.
03:39He told Sunset Sound Recorders,
03:41He liked to keep people under his thumb.
03:43It was a control thing.
03:51Mojo magazine quotes Prince saying that exact same thing,
03:55albeit in Prince's own way of saying it.
03:57The star once said,
04:03To Prince fans, this is all par for the course.
04:06A thread on the prince.org community forum
04:09even contains several anecdotes from those who met Prince,
04:12all featuring the infamous no eye contact rule.