When you’re a genius, people tend to make allowances for strange behaviour. It’s often referred to as being eccentric.

Prince was certainly a genius. And he was certainly a little odd.

He spent a few years with no name, for example.

Kevin Smith has videos on YouTube where he shares stories about Prince’s oddness.

But the strangest story about Prince must surely relate to the time shortly after he and his wife Mayte Garcia-Nelson lost their son, Boy Gregory, to Pfeiffer syndrome just a week after his birth. Obviously this was very tragic and was difficult for both of them to deal with.

The strange part of the story is that Oprah interviewed Prince and Mayte a few days later in Paisley Park and when Oprah asked Prince about the health of his son, he answered: “Well, our family exists. We’re just beginning it. And we’ve got many kids to have, a long way to go.”

Now that is very weird. And very sad. You can see it here:

A number of surprises have emerged since Prince’s passing.

One is that he died from a drug overdose, albeit an accidental overdose of the painkiller fentanyl.

Prince died with a will, and a sister and five half-siblings are in line to inherit his estate. But other claimants have emerged also:

• One man claimed to be a son until DNA tests proved that he was not
• One man claims to be an adopted son
• One man claimed to be a son and now claims that he’s not
• There are rumours that a musician named Jordan Nelson a.k.a. Capriccio Caesar may be his son. You can watch his video for Freak Show here

Here is a picture of Prince performing Purple Rain at the Grammy Awards in 2004.

It’s been a tough year for losing icons of music.

On January 10th we lost David Bowie, just two days after his 69th birthday and the release of his album Blackstar.

On January 18th we lost Glen Frey of the Eagles, at just 67.

On the 19th my friend Peter sent me an email saying “Prince could be next!”

I replied saying that Prince was only 57 so there were lots of people to go before him.

I couldn’t believe my ears on April 21st when I learned that Prince Rogers Nelson had indeed passed away!

As he said in his song “Sometimes it snows in April” and “all good thing they say never last”.

The man was a genius. I was lucky enough to see him live in Malahide Castle in 2011.

It’s sad to think that a man like that was alone when he died and was only found the following morning.

There have been a number of surprises since his death which I will cover in a future post. But for now here is a clip of him playing in Malahide, including the aforementioned “Sometimes is snows in April”:

More videos available here

Sometimes I feel so bad, so bad
Sometimes I wish that life was never-ending
But all good things they say never last