Prince’s Addiction and an Intervention Too Late
Prince, during a 2011 concert in Budapest. Last month, friends
sought urgent medical help, alarmed by his hidden dependency on painkillers.
Prince appears to have had a problem with pain pills, one that grew so acute that his friends turned to an addiction doctor just before his death.
CHANHASSEN, Minn.
— Prince Rogers Nelson had an unflinching reputation among those close to him
for leading an assiduously clean lifestyle. He ate vegan and preferred to avoid
the presence of meat entirely. He was known to eschew alcohol and marijuana,
and no one who went on tour with him could indulge either.
But Prince
appears to have shielded from even some of his closest friends that he had a
problem with pain pills, one that grew so acute that his friends sought urgent
medical help from Dr. Howard Kornfeld of California, who specializes in
treating people addicted to pain medication.
Dr. Kornfeld, who
runs a treatment center in Mill Valley, Calif., sent his son on an overnight
flight to meet with Prince at his home to discuss a treatment plan, said
William J. Mauzy, a lawyer for the Kornfeld family, during a news conference on
Wednesday outside his Minneapolis office.
But he arrived
too late.
When the son,
Andrew Kornfeld, who works with his father but is not a doctor, arrived in
Chanhassen, the Minneapolis suburb where Prince lived, the next morning, he was
among those who found the entertainer lifeless in the elevator and called 911,
Mr. Mauzy said. Emergency officials arrived but could not revive Prince. He was
dead at 57.
As law
enforcement officials continue to investigate exactly what killed the pop and
rock icon, there is mounting evidence that he had become seriously dependent on
painkillers, something sure to rattle some of those who knew him well. Many
have insisted in recent days that they never even saw Prince take pills, let
alone abuse prescription medication, even though some knew he had had hip
surgery years ago.
When his private
jet had to make an emergency landing in Moline, Ill., in mid-April after he
went unresponsive, friends decided they may need to intervene, according to a
person with knowledge of the situation. Prince assured his friends in the
following days that nothing was wrong. He had the flu, his publicist said.
“I’m doing
perfect,” Prince told his lawyer, L. Londell McMillan, two days after the
emergency landing. Three days after that conversation with Mr. McMillan,
though, Prince’s representatives were looking for help from an addiction
doctor.
Prince in 2010 in Rome. For
his final acts, he shared more intimate performances.
A Very Private Star
Prince’s penchant
for privacy may help explain how he kept his secret from so many. At the
Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall near here, where Prince was a worshiper,
congregants scoffed at the first reports that Prince may have been abusing
painkillers.
And rarely did he
let the musicians who toured with him know how much his hips actually hurt from
decades of high-voltage performances, jumping onstage in platform heels. They
would only notice small things, like that he stopped doing splits.
“There wasn’t a
tour we did where he wasn’t sometimes performing in pain,” said Alan Leeds,
Prince’s former tour manager in the 1980s and later the president of the
singer’s Paisley Park Records. “He was that kind of old school, the-show-must-go-on
guy, so the idea of him medicating himself in order to perform isn’t strange to
me.”
But Mr. Leeds and
others said Prince never discussed pain pills with him. And questions about how
he felt would often be met with a shrug or an assurance that he was O.K.
Unlike many stars
of his magnitude, who are known to employ extensive entourages and teams of
staffers to handle everyday business, Prince was also surprisingly autonomous,
friends and associates said, often driving himself around and making
appointments without the knowledge of his assistant. Such insistence on
maintaining his independence may have made keeping a secret easier, they said.
Many of Prince’s
closest friends, relatives and associates have declined to answer questions
about his health. So it is unclear who contacted Dr. Kornfeld, but a person
with knowledge of the situation said the musician had willingly sought
treatment.
The younger Mr.
Kornfeld was sent to Paisley Park to try to get Prince’s condition stabilized,
Mr. Mauzy said. Dr. Kornfeld then contacted a doctor in the Minneapolis area
who cleared his schedule on the morning that Prince was found dead so that he
could have time to meet with and assess Prince, Mr. Mauzy said.
“The hope was to
get him stabilized in Minnesota and convince him to come to Recovery Without
Walls in Mill Valley,” Mr. Mauzy said. “That was the plan.”
Dr. Kornfeld
“felt it was a lifesaving mission,” Mr. Mauzy said.
Prince began
taking painkillers for his ailment years ago and ultimately decided to have hip
surgery in the mid-2000s, after which he was prescribed more pain medicine,
according to a person who worked with him and requested anonymity because of
the nature of the case.
Jason Kamerud,
chief deputy at the Carver County Sheriff’s Office, which is investigating the
death, said that investigators are looking into, among other things, whether
Prince may have overdosed from painkillers at his residence. But Deputy Kamerud
declined on Wednesday to comment on Mr. Mauzy’s statements. The sheriff’s
office has said that it did not believe suicide or murder were to blame for
Prince’s death.
Officials with
the Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Attorney’s Office
announced Wednesday that they were joining the investigation.
The mystery of
Prince’s death mirrors the enigma of his life. He shunned the selfie culture
and didn’t allow people to take his picture at his estate. Yet at the same
time, he regularly opened his doors here and invited the public in for house
parties where he would address the crowd.
On the Saturday
before he died, Prince had done just that, giddily unveiling a new purple
guitar and piano before about 200 guests. He had just started on his memoir,
tentatively titled “The Beautiful Ones.” He had tour dates lined up in eight
cities across the country.
Fans have visited Paisley Park, Prince’s home and studio in
Minnesota, to remember him.
Talk of Depression
Yet people who
knew Prince wondered whether he was in a malaise, his ailments limiting his
ability to tour, and battling melancholy after the death in February of Denise
Matthews, also known as Vanity, a former girlfriend and collaborator. In
Australia during a show on Feb. 16, the day after she died, he became
emotional.
“Someone dear to
us has passed away,” Prince told the crowd before dedicating the song “Little
Red Corvette” to her, according to local news media accounts of the show.
Later, he told the audience, “I’m trying to stay focused, it’s a little heavy
for me tonight.”
Concerned friends
said they had recently been discussing Prince’s emotional state. He had told
some people that he was feeling depressed, and some suspected he was going
through a period of professional stagnancy.
In fact, Prince
shunned an $85 million offer to do a large-scale world tour in favor of smaller
shows, said Kim Worsoe, his tour coordinator. “I don’t do tours, I do events,”
Mr. Worsoe recalled Prince telling him.
Others said they
did not detect any depression. His small concerts, said Damaris Lewis, a friend
and dancer, were an indication that he had found peace with himself. “His fans
were his family,” she said.
For his final
acts, Prince, who on New Year’s Eve had given a powerful show in the Caribbean,
shunned his high-energy performances with a big band for something more
intimate and less taxing: just himself, playing piano and singing. The “Piano
and a Microphone” tour, he called it.
In March, he held
a last-minute party and performance in New York to announce his memoir. He held
three concerts in Canada before returning home on March 23 and attending a
service at his Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall, dressed in a suit and tie, his
hair slicked back.
Prince was
baptized into the faith in 2003 under the guidance of Larry Graham, a bass
guitarist whose band regularly performed with Prince and who moved his family
to Minnesota to be near the entertainer. As a witness, he would go door to door
with a fellow congregant in their three-suburb territory, quoting the Bible and
introducing himself as Rogers Nelson.
“He was very into
spiritual things,” Mr. Graham said. “He already had been interested in the
Bible and a love for God.”
Associates said
that Prince’s dedication to religion, in addition to his commitment to pure
living, may have contributed to a sense of shame about his growing dependency
on medication.
Prince’s next
scheduled tour dates were two back-to-back shows on April 7 at the Fox Theater
in Atlanta. But as she was brushing her teeth around 10 on the morning of the
show, Lucy Lawler-Freas, the Atlanta promoter, said she got a call from Mr.
Worsoe: Prince was sick with the flu.
“He can barely
speak; his voice is really hoarse,” she recalled Mr. Worsoe telling her.
It was the first
time in the more than a quarter-century that he had worked with Prince that the
artist canceled a show, Mr. Worsoe said.
But two days
later, Prince rescheduled the show for the 14th.
On the
rescheduled date, Prince landed in Atlanta late day and needed a police escort
to make it to the theater on time. He said he was still feeling sick, but back
in the dressing room where water and fresh fruit was awaiting Prince, Mr.
Worsoe said he did not notice any visible signs of illness.
With his Afro
picked out, Prince took the stage, sidling up to his purple piano and
surrounded by candelabras. He performed two sets, at 7 and 10 p.m.
“He was epic,”
Ms. Lawler-Freas said. No signs of the flu.
Prince said it
was his best show ever, Mr. Worsoe recalled. But afterward, Prince said that
his stomach hurt. Prince wanted to go back to Minneapolis to get checked out by
a doctor, Mr. Worsoe said, and asked to postpone shows in St. Louis, Nashville
and Washington that were scheduled, but not yet announced, for the next week.
The authorities on duty at Paisley Park, Prince’s home and
studio, the day after he died. The Carver County Sheriff’s Office is investigating
the death.
Midair Medical Crisis
Prince and two
other passengers boarded his private jet, which left at 12:51 a.m. Eastern on
the Friday after his Atlanta show. Just over an hour in, the pilot radioed to
air traffic controllers that he had an unresponsive passenger on board. The
plane, only about 48 minutes from its destination of Minneapolis, turned around
and quickly landed in Moline, touching down at 1:18 a.m.
Prince’s
bodyguard carried him off the plane to emergency responders waiting on the
ground, according to city records. They rushed him to a hospital. Prince was
treated with a Narcan shot, typically administered to those suffering from an
opioid overdose, according to published reports. But he stayed at the hospital
for only a few hours before flying back home.
A master of image
control, Prince started shaping the narrative right away.
He hastily
organized a party at his home for the following evening. Later, he casually
rode a bicycle in a stripmall parking lot.
Prince’s
representatives asked Jeremiah Freed, a blogger who runs drfunkenberry.com, to
help spread the word of the party on Saturday night. Before that night, Mr.
Freed said, he never really had any concerns about Prince’s condition, though
he was struck by something that the musician told him in January. Prince spoke
of David Bowie’s death, Mr. Freed recalled, saying he was having lucid dreams
in which he communicated with people who died.
When Prince first
strolled into the party, before he was in full view of the public, “He looked
upset to me,” Mr. Freed recalled. They locked eyes, he added. “When I saw him,
there was no smile.”
Other friends
reached out to Prince over the weekend, concerned about what had happened to
him on the plane. He had a resounding message: I’m O.K.
Knowing how much
Prince, who didn’t use a cellphone but was constantly surfing his silver
MacBook, valued his privacy, friends said they did not press him.
On Monday, April
18, Ms. Lawler-Freas, the Atlanta promoter, said that Prince’s representatives
told her to hold off on confirming the eight tour dates she had arranged for
him. He was going to take a break that week, and they would get back to her the
next Monday, April 25, to confirm the concerts.
Prince seemed to
lead a mundane life from there, stopping by a show at the Dakota Jazz Club in
Minneapolis on Tuesday, April 19. The next day, police said, someone dropped
him off at his compound at about 8 p.m. He was found dead the next morning,
setting off the sweeping investigation.
“If we really
want to be accurate and get it right, I think you have to pump the brakes,”
said Deputy Kamerud of the Carver County Sheriff’s Office. “Some investigations
are like 50-piece puzzles, some are like a 10,000-piece puzzle. This one is the
latter.”
Mr. Freed, the
blogger, said he could hardly believe reports of the painkiller dependency.
Prince, he said, would help anyone in his band with a drug problem and even pay
the cost of their recovery.
If you abused
drugs, he said, “You weren’t going to work with him. You didn’t have a job.”
Source:
NYTIMES
Reporting was contributed by Sheila M. Eldred, Christina
Capecchi and Matt Furber in Minneapolis; Lori Rotenberk and Dirk Johnson in
Moline, Ill.; Ben Sisario and Colin Moynihan in New York; Ian Lovett in Los
Angeles; and Stephanie Seymour in Mill Valley, Calif. Susan C. Beachy and Elisa
Cho contributed research.
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