Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Dark side of Prince
Ex claims rock star beat her
WHEN Jill Jones sat down to share her memories of pop icon Prince for a Netflix documentary series, she had no idea of the firestorm she would unwittingly release.
The musician was well placed to speak. She had worked with Prince, providing backing vocals on his masterpiece 1999, and had a long, complicated relationship with him.
But her testimony, along with dozens of others, has never been aired.
The whole series, directed by Oscar-winner Ezra Edelman, was shelved after the singer’s estate decided it would cause “generational harm” to his image. Fingers were then pointed at Jill amid claims that she had spoken about Prince violently attacking her.
Now, on the 10th anniversary of his death this week, Jill is ready to reveal what really happened – and why her story, and their relationship, is far more complex than it has been portrayed.
She says: “My intention was to talk about the man as he is. He was lovable, adorable… but he could be hateful too.”
So what happened? In 1984, Jill says she and a friend went to see Prince at a hotel where an argument broke out.
Jill was jealous after he started kissing her friend, prompting her to slap him.
She claims Prince responded by punching her repeatedly in the face.
Jill wanted to press charges but was warned against it by Prince’s circle at the time.
And going to hospital was out of the equation too, in case the story leaked.
APOLOGY
“I was told I would ruin his career,” she says. “They saw him as just money for them. They could make a lot of money. It just shows me how many people benefit.”
The money-spinning Purple Rain tour was set to start later that year.
Jill says: “Had I come forward... it wouldn’t have happened. But basically, after that, we made up because I had a surgery and he gave me a ton of toys, and this is how the apology was – balloons, toys and candy.”
She adds: “It was really hard for us to not be around each other. He always thought I would be there. He would always say, ‘I’m always gonna know you.’”
Jill has been wrestling for more than four decades over whether to open up about what happened. She admits: “I’d been holding on to it for so many years, I think, because I was waiting on an apology.
“See, this is the craziest thing with domestic violence. You wait for an apology sometimes from someone that you love, you think they’re going to and they want to move on and not talk about it… and you allow it.”
Jill says she witnessed violence growing up, while Prince’s parents, John Nelson and Mattie Shaw, had a volatile relationship. She says: “It was an era of time where men did knock around their wives. It was just something that happened.”
Of her own experience, she adds: “It took me years to maybe get over that. But I also forgive him for that, because he’s just a product of a time, although I’m not trying to make excuses.”
She also recalls her reaction years later when Prince came out to defend singer Chris Brown after he assaulted his then-partner Rihanna.
“I heard that [Prince] had given advice to Chris Brown a little bit and I was like, ‘wow, he must have forgotten’,” she says.
Others have made similar claims about Prince, including the late singer Sinead O’connor, who alleged Prince attacked her at his Hollywood mansion. Jill, who also did backing vocals for Sinead, says she wishes she had spoken out in solidarity, but she wasn’t ready. “I felt like a coward in so many ways, because I do feel like I should have been there to stand beside her,” she explains.
“I never saw anything happen to her, but I could have told my story. But then again, nobody wanted to hear. Nobody cared.”
For all that, she insists their relationship can’t be reduced to that violent moment alone. Jill was just a teenager when she first met Prince in 1980 during his Dirty Mind tour, while singing backing vocals for opening act, Teena Marie.
“I was 17 or 18 and had a mouth on me,” she says. “We met in the hallway and everybody else was like, ‘oh, nice to meet you,’ but as I was just new to this game, I gave him a lot of shade. From that moment, it was electric because he couldn’t believe anyone would be that outrageous.”
At the time she had no inkling he would become such a huge megastar, but her mum thought otherwise. She says: “On tour, my mum said, ‘He’s going to be a huge star. You should stop being really rude to him.’
“She knew I had a massive crush on this little guy, but I was such a kid.”
Prince later invited Jill to Sunset Sound studios in 1982 to sing backing vocals on 1999, where she was credited under her initials JJ.
She appeared in videos for 1999 and Little Red
I felt like a coward... I could have told my story. But nobody wanted to hear. Nobody cared
Corvette and later worked with Vanity 6 as a backing singer before moving to Minneapolis as their relationship deepened.
Despite releasing her debut self-titled album Jill Jones via Prince’s Paisley Park Records label, she often felt trapped in the star’s orbit.
“My career wasn’t heading anywhere,” she says. “I was singing for everybody and feeling very neglected because I literally sang behind a curtain.”
Eventually, she walked away, although it wasn’t easy to break the news. She recalls: “I Fedexed back a whole bag of the jewellery he gave to me and the conversation wasn’t great. It was flaming hot. It was epic.
“I was in New York and I had fallen in love with someone.”
She later moved to Europe, trying to rebuild her life away from the music industry and the pull of Prince’s world. But despite everything, their story did not end there.
A few weeks before Prince died, she saw him again at an after-party following a US show at 1am. It was the first time they had properly spoken in years. “It was really great to see him, because his face just lit up,” she says. “I did want to see him and I thought that it was important to be there. I was nervous and it felt like slipping a glove right back on your hand.”
But something about Prince unsettled her. She says: “He was so thin and so little. I said, ‘Oh my God. I hope we’re not coming to his funeral next.’” It wasn’t long before her worst fears were realised.
She was watching CNN and speaking to her daughter, who was living in London, when the first reports of his death came through.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, oh my God. They found a body at Paisley Park,’” she recalls. “I said, ‘Yes, they found a body. It’s him.” He was 57. The shock was immense, but so too was the grief for what might have been.
Jill, 63, explains: “It was devastating because I thought we were all at the point again where we were able to talk to each other now that we’re all so much older.”
That is why she remains so frustrated that the documentary was shelved amid reports the estate found it to be “sensationalised” and had withheld the use of Prince’s music.
For Jill, the truth about Prince was never simple. And trying to erase parts of it, she believes, does him no favours.
She explains: “They want to keep him in a little bag… a little category. And they are actually making it more than what it was, because when you deprive people of knowing something, it eventually comes out.”