TMZ Presents Prince Fatal Secrets (2022) - full transcript
(electronic music)
- We broke a story that shook the world.
- This has gotta be some
kind of publicity stunt.
- I didn't believe it, he was just here.
- [Narrator] But it was true.
Prince was dead, dead in his mansion.
- At the end of the day,
he's alone in an elevator.
That killed me.
- [Narrator] April 21, 2016.
Prince became the latest
victim of a dope-sick nation.
- He got the Vicodin pills and
it was laced with Fentanyl.
- [Narrator] Turns out
prince became a drug addict
after suffering a terrible injury.
Hard to imagine because
of his public image.
- He scorned people who
took recreational drugs.
- [Narrator] Prince was a health nut.
Deeply spiritual.
He hid his addiction from everyone.
- He even hid it from
me, and I'm an expert.
- [Narrator] Fact is,
days before his death,
alarm bells rang, but they got muted.
- [Flight Control] What's
the nature of the emergency"
What's the condition-
- An unresponsive passenger.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Prince was at
a crossroads in his life.
- He knew, this run that
he had had, was ending.
- [Narrator] Did he have a
premonition of his own death?
- It's just such a loss,
I can't, I'm sorry.
- Prince dying doesn't compute,
because there's so much of him
that still exists to this day.
- [Narrator] TMZ presents...
(dramatic music)
"Prince: Fatal Secrets".
(siren wailing)
- [Dispatcher] Two one car for a medical,
Paisley Park, 7801 Audubon Road,
7801 Audubon Road, for a
male down, not breathing.
- About 9:43, we received a medical call
at Paisley Park in Chanhassen.
They found an unresponsive
male in the elevator.
- [Chief] Dispatch from
Chanhassen Chief one.
CPR started.
- CPR was initially started,
but was unsuccessful.
He was pronounced deceased at 10:07.
We have identified him
as Prince Rogers Nelson.
- We are following the breaking news
of a death at Paisley Park in Chanhassen.
TMZ has confirmed
that it is Minnesota music legend, Prince.
- TMZ reported his death
probably about an hour ago.
Fox News is now confirming that.
We're still learning more about
what actually caused his death today.
- On April 21, 2016,
we broke a story that shook the world.
Prince, one of the most accomplished,
eccentric, and admired
performers in the world
died alone in an elevator
at his suburban Minneapolis
home, Paisley Park.
He was just 57.
- This has gotta be some
kind of publicity stunt
or something like that,
'cause it can't be real.
- The world mourned and his
legion of fans were heartbroken.
- I didn't believe it, he
was just here Saturday.
He was just here Saturday.
He was fine.
- [Reporter] What was it
that you're gonna miss the most about him?
- Everything.
I just can't believe he's gone.
(mysterious music)
- I'm feeling, heartbroken,
joyful, memorable.
I have a lot of emotions right now.
- The people closest to Prince
were shocked and devastated.
- At the end of the day,
he's alone in the elevator.
That killed me.
That killed me.
That really hurt.
- The cause of death, an
accidental overdose of Fentanyl,
the powerful synthetic opioid
that has plagued the country,
and it unlocked a mystery.
How could someone who was so
health conscious and anti-drug
become so profoundly addicted?
- Prince didn't think that
he was taking Fentanyl
from the evidence that we had.
We don't believe that he knew
that the Vicodin he sought out and took
was laced with Fentanyl.
It was a counterfeit pill
and that's what's horribly tragic,
'cause it was preventable.
- None of it made any sense,
not even to those in
his tight inner circle.
- See, Prince was a health nut.
He rarely ever drank,
never smoked,
banned meat from even being around him,
and threatened to fire anyone
who did drugs when he was on tour.
- I mean, you know,
Prince was an extraordinarily
healthy person.
Look, from his teens and his early 20s.
He's very much like "I don't do drugs
"and I don't want people
doing drugs around me."
He was like, "I want to
be in control of myself
"and my surroundings at all times."
So in the '80s, when like, everybody,
especially everybody in rock and roll,
is doing cocaine, Prince is like,
"If you find anybody on this
tour who's doing cocaine,
"we're gonna fire them."
- I was lucky enough to
see Prince in concert,
half a dozen times, and I gotta tell you,
this guy was not just athletic on stage,
he was absolutely acrobatic.
Jumping, dancing, and always
in his signature platform shoes.
("Little Red Corvette")
- His performances on stage
were not that different
than the performances you would
see in the recording studio.
His performances in the recording
studio were always 100%.
He performed every time he had
an instrument in his hands.
He played piano very much like a drummer,
a very percussive style with his fingers.
You hear it in his fingers.
You hear the percussive nature
of the attack in his fingers.
(energetic piano music)
♪ Somebody say, woo-hoo-hoo ♪
- Same thing when he played bass,
when he played guitar,
when he played drums,
his whole body
was like a musical interface.
(upbeat music)
- It was those hard-hitting performances
that may have started
his long downward spiral
and his dependence on
powerful pain killers.
His famous moves may have
slowly destroyed his body.
(upbeat music)
- He been dancing around
in heels for a while
and that does take its toll, you know,
wearing high heels on stage
and jumping and dancing.
- He was in chronic pain,
but needed to keep going
because music and
performing was all he had.
That's the only way he had of
interacting with other people.
(blues guitar wailing)
So when you're in chronic pain
and the only way to interact
with people is through music,
you have to do whatever it is you can do
to get back to playing music,
otherwise you're completely
shut off from the world.
- Prince was suffering in private
and very few people knew about that
or how he managed his pain with drugs.
It was a closely guarded secret.
- You know that little groove
we was working on earlier...
- Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah...
(indistinct) Yeah, Simon, let's do that.
He even hid it from me,
and I'm an expert...
(laughs)
from back in the day, okay?
I'd be able to tell if anyone was in pain.
♪ All you've got to do is ♪
♪ Snap your fingers ♪
- Toward the end of his life,
signs of real trouble started to emerge.
The Purple One became a
shell of his former self.
Ravaged by health
issues, opioid addiction,
Prince was withering away in secret.
- Prince was like a human skeleton,
weighing just 112 pounds.
He was temperamental,
forced to cancel shows,
something was seriously off.
- [Detective] In the last couple weeks,
how's his personality been?
- [Meron] Well, he's
just been kind of quiet.
- [Detective] Kind of quiet,
is that normal for him?
- [Meron] Well, not really.
- [Detective] Not really?
- [Meron] He usually emails us, normally,
throughout the day,
but because he wasn't feeling well,
that's what I got out of it.
- So it all came to a head
about a week before he died
when a private plane
Prince was traveling on
was forced to make an emergency landing.
Prince had ODed on Percocet.
- [Flight Control] What's
the nature of the emergency?
What's the nature of the condition?
- [Pilot] An unresponsive passenger.
- [Flight Control] Was it a
male or a female passenger?
- [Pilot] Male passenger.
- He survived, but just barely,
and this really should have
been a red alert for everyone.
But instead, it seemed that
people did not wanna believe
that Prince had ODed, and
things would only get worse.
Six days later,
one of the world's most electric
performers would be dead.
- It was all so baffling.
How could a man who seemed
like the picture of health
who showed unbridled energy on stage,
who was loved by millions,
die so young from an opioid addiction
no one seemed to know about?
- Well, if you think Prince had
no one to blame but himself,
it was far more complicated than that.
Somewhere along the way,
someone had to have enabled him,
whether it was a doctor
or someone on the streets.
- Even if anyone had
stepped in to help him,
he was probably too far gone.
- So this story begins in Prince's youth.
He was a small kid
from predominantly
black North Minneapolis,
but even back then, he was
not afraid to speak his mind.
- Are most of the kids in
favor of the picketing?
- Yep.
- How come?
- I think they should get a
better education too, 'cause,
and I think they should
get some more money.
'cause they worked big,
working extra hours for us
and all that stuff.
- Music was in his DNA.
His mom was a jazz singer and
his dad was a piano player
who did gigs at topless bars.
But there were health problems early on.
He battled epilepsy, and
when he would have seizures,
his classmates would bully him ruthlessly.
- I've been having to
deal with a lot of things,
getting teased a lot in school.
And you know, early in my career,
I tried to compensate for that
by being as flashy as I could
and as noisy as I could.
- The seizures stopped by age seven.
Prince says it was because
of divine intervention.
- I've never spoken about this before,
but I was born epileptic
and I used to have
seizures when I was young
and my mother told me,
one day I walked in to her
and said, "Mom, I'm not
gonna be sick anymore."
And she said, "Why?"
And I said, "Because an angel told me so."
- When Prince was a kid,
he was bused to an
all-white elementary school
where he experienced racism firsthand.
A kid called him the N
word, Prince punched him.
- Back at home, his family
life was less than perfect.
- By all accounts, Prince had
a rough sort of childhood.
His parents, there may have been
some domestic violence in the home,
so when he is about 13,
he's kind of homeless.
I don't think he was
sleeping on the street,
but he was kind of like,
sleeping on different people's couches.
I think the thesis of Prince's youth
is that he felt rejected by his parents
and he decided, "I will become a rockstar
"to show them that I
am a worthwhile person
"and that they made a
mistake, letting me go."
- Prince, as a young man
growing up in Minneapolis,
wanted to be famous.
He wanted to be known.
He worked so hard.
I hear these stories from friends
and they would tell stories of,
kids come home from school,
they throw down their books,
they run outside and play.
Prince would head straight
down into the basement
where there was a little recording set up,
little cassette recorder, I think,
and he had musical instruments there,
and Prince would work all night.
What kid does that?
I mean, one night maybe,
but on a consistent basis,
night after night, after
night, after night?
Prince knew that he was talented
and he wanted to make
his mark in the world.
- He had all these new songs
written, that were great,
and he had recorded every part
on this little hand cassette machine.
And he recorded,
he hummed the piano part,
and then he hummed the drum beat,
and then he'd hum the guitar part,
and he had planned it out,
and he was able to execute it all himself,
which is really rare,
to be that objective
over your own playing
and not sound like it's one guy.
He didn't sound like it was one guy.
He managed to put different personalities
on different instruments.
- When I was younger, I always said
that one day I was gonna
play all kinds of music
and not be judged,
for the color of my skin but
the quality of my work.
- Amid all the chaos,
Prince still dreamed of a better life,
but he knew he could only
accomplish it one way,
through music.
- By the time Prince was a teen,
he'd taught himself to play
every instrument he could get his hands on
and had formed bands in his neighborhood.
Before long, he was
hunting for studio time.
And once Prince got a taste
of being a recording artist,
go figure, it left an impression.
(funky bass guitar music)
- Yeah!
I mean, listen to that.
I mean, that is tight!
I mean, who told him to do that?
I didn't!
(laughs)
- 16, huh?
- 16 years old.
This is the first time
he was in the studio.
- I was observing one of
the great musical geniuses
of our time, at work, and I
wasn't aware at that time,
just how extraordinarily creative he was.
To use his own lyrics,
those kinds of cars
don't pass you every day.
- I started with a lot of
appearances I was doing
in and about Minneapolis and
word just spread about me.
- [Larry] So you were a local name.
- Yeah, what I could do.
A lot of people knew about me,
'cause I was, I used Stevie
Wonder as an inspiration.
Back then, I used him as a role model
in trying to play all the instruments
and be very self-contained
and keep my vision clear.
So, word spread very quickly
about what I could do.
A lot of people knew about it, yeah.
- Prince was destined for greatness
and he achieved it pretty quickly.
After gigging in the
local Minneapolis clubs
and scratching for a record deal,
it finally happened for him in 1977.
Warner Brothers signed
him, he was just 18.
- Prince, through Owen
and my cousin Cliff,
got a chance at Warner Brothers
'cause Cliff was the promotion
man for Warner Brothers.
And they took the tape
to Russ Thyret there,
and he flipped out.
He couldn't believe it was one guy.
- This was a solo artist who got signed
to a pretty big record
deal with Warner Brothers,
and that's pretty rare.
And he was signed as a solo artist.
It wasn't like a member of a band
like The Rolling Stones
or The Beatles, or Queen.
On top of that, this young
kid was from Minneapolis,
so he didn't have anyone guiding him.
Michael Jackson had Berry
Gordy, and had the Supremes,
and had his whole family.
Prince was all alone.
- Prince's first record deal comes about
because he meets a
studio owner, Chris Moon,
who lets him basically
move into the studio
and live there, so he's up,
surely, all day and night,
figuring out the whole studio thing.
He makes some songs.
Chris Moon calls a manager and was like,
"Oh my God, you have to hear this."
The guy listens to it and
he says, "Who is this band?"
And they're "No no, it's one guy!"
Like, "What are you talking about?
"This can't be one person,"
and that leads to them
getting him a record deal.
Now, Prince chose
not the deal that would've
gotten him the most money
because he wanted the
most creative control.
- His first album wasn't a hit,
but music execs saw potential.
So Prince kept at it, and in 1979,
he released his self-titled
album, "Prince",
and as they say, the rest was history.
- The album's first single,
"I Wanna Be Your Lover"
soared on the billboard
charts, peaking at number 11,
and going to number one on the R&B chart.
At long last, Prince had arrived.
(funky upbeat music)
- What made Prince a superstar
is he could do everything.
He was a guitarist, he was a songwriter,
he was a producer, he was
an incredible performer,
every aspect of being
an amazing entertainer,
he had on lock better than
perhaps anyone in the world.
- He would walk into the studio,
sit behind a drum kit
and start playing drums.
He's playing an entire song,
just hearing himself on the drums,
and he's got all the parts
and all the breaks all worked out.
Then he'll pick up the
bass and put the bass on,
and then he'll go to the keyboards,
he'll get a vocal mic,
then he does his lead vocal
and his backing vocals,
and we worked that way, constantly.
- I love Prince, I love
Prince, I love Prince!
- Suddenly, Prince was everywhere.
His music, his lyrics, and his voice
were all the buzz of the record industry,
and so was his hypersexual style.
- Is that your man?
(fans screaming)
- [Toure] Prince wanted to be titillating.
- Tell me, baby, what, would
you consider that man fine?
(fans screaming)
- Wanted to be sexual,
he wanted to be noticed.
- Tell me, baby, does that
man have an ass like mine?
(fans screeching)
I didn't think so.
- And he wanted the world
to pay attention to him.
Pushing the envelope in terms of
how he was sexually
relating to the audience
was just so electric for him.
- In 1982, he released
his fifth album, "1999",
another smash hit.
- [Reporter] Places like Sam Goody
have seen a sudden interest in the song.
- [Caller] I'd like to request 1999, Rich.
- [Radio Jock] Well,
I can do that for you.
- [Caller] Okay!
- [Reporter] DJ Rich Davis says
they are playing the song
three or four times a day.
- A typical day in the studio for us
would often be 24 hours long.
That was fairly typical.
We'd all work together,
we'd record rehearsals,
and we'd finish that song that night.
Go to bed early in the morning,
six o'clock in the morning,
sleep for a few hours
and start all over again.
Now, some people can do
that for a day or maybe two,
even a week.
Prince did that every day.
- He loved staying up and playing
because for us it wasn't work.
We enjoyed being in the studio
and we would stay up all night.
If you're having fun, why stop?
- Prince's career is now on fire
and it absolutely exploded
in 1984 with "Purple Rain".
- [Announcer] The star of "Purple Rain,
- Oh my god!
- Please welcome,
- Oh, Prince!
- His Royal Badness, Prince!
(fans screaming)
- [Fan] Oh Prince, Prince,
Prince, I love you!
- "Purple Rain" is what
launches Prince forever
into the top level of
global elite super stardom.
It's not just that...
Well, it's partly that,
finally he's made a rock and roll album.
So now urban radio is all about it
because we love Prince
and rock radio is all about it
because we love great rock and roll,
so he's getting it all there.
MTV loves it because it's rock, he's big,
he's beautiful, these songs are great.
And of course he said,
"I need to make a movie about
myself to accompany this",
because he saw the
power of MTV right away.
- With the success of "Purple Rain",
Prince is ready to go on tour.
(upbeat music)
(fans chatter excitedly)
- These tickets are gold!
(upbeat music)
- I ain't just talking about
any old kind of temptation.
(fans scream)
I'm talking about the kind of temptation
that'll make you do things.
(fans scream)
- I thought he was absolutely spectacular.
He has this amazing energy
and this amazing feeling,
and the show went on and on.
I think he must have done over four hours.
It was stupendous,
and one of the best shows
I've ever seen in my life.
- And by then, of
course, he'd become known
for his extreme athleticism on stage.
(upbeat music)
- But for this tour,
he was about to take it
to new heights, literally.
- One of the moments on
the "Purple Rain" tour,
there's a bathtub,
and he's sort of like, you know,
performing in the bathtub,
what have you, right?
And in one of the
rehearsals, the bathtub...
The manager, Alan Leeds,
told me the story,
the bathtub fell, and Prince
took a quite long fall,
and it was painful for him
and had to go to the hospital,
and this he marks as potentially
the beginning of chronic pain.
- The bathtub incident
left Prince in a bad way,
but he carried on with the tour anyway,
with the same high voltage
energy he became known for,
wearing those platform shoes, no less,
as he suffered through the injury.
- I never had any inkling
that he was in pain.
In the over four years that I knew him,
I was with him nearly
every day of that time.
I never had any indication
that he was in any pain.
When I was with Prince,
he did not want to
admit to any weaknesses.
- There were other
performance-related injuries
over the years.
- I swear to God,
I watched him wear those
high heels every day.
Every day; I couldn't do
it, I couldn't have done it.
He wore all those high heels every day
and he never complained.
Never once.
- All of his shoes basically
looked like this, pretty much.
- [Narrator] In fact,
nearly all of Prince's
3000 pairs of shoes are identical,
with the exception of color.
Each pair had to match
the fabric and shade
of the clothes he was wearing.
- Every time he was jumping
up to do the splits,
I was holding my breath, hoping
the heel doesn't break off.
- There was clearly an
almost athletic grinding-down
of the body over many, many years.
So I mean, at the point at which
most athletes are like,
"I'm in my late 30s,
"I've lost a step, I'm going
to walk away from the game,"
Prince is not doing that,
he's still out there performing globally,
long tours all the time,
so yeah, over time, the hip,
potentially the lower back,
the knee, start to really bother him.
He's not one to complain.
He's not one to talk
about his sort of pain.
- Now many believe this was the beginning
of Prince's downward spiral
and possibly when he started
using high-powered painkillers,
all for the sake of his music
and for the sake of his fans.
(fans screaming)
- We want Prince!
We want Prince!
We want Prince!
We want Prince!
We want Prince!
- From the outside looking in,
Prince was on top of the world.
His music was killing it
and his performances were
as electric as his songs,
but internally, he was suffering,
keeping it mostly to himself.
- When a, especially a young person
is trying to figure out how
to navigate being a celebrity,
they have to create kind of
a psychic shell, a barrier,
that protects themselves,
their inner selves,
from an audience, from judgment,
and he created that psychic barrier
early in his career
and it protected him well.
You set up a barrier
between yourself and
the rest of the world,
so you can preserve that
most precious thing you have,
which is your own inner thoughts,
your own inner creativity.
But, in the world in which we live,
we are obligated to rely on other people
to solve some of our problems for us
or answer some of our questions for us.
I imagine, if you've
become so self-reliant,
that you only trust your own counsel,
you're at risk of making
some really bad decisions.
- Prince was certainly not
letting everybody around him know
how much pain he was in,
or that he was taking
medication for the pain.
He certainly was like, keeping that quiet.
So then to find out that, later in life,
he had turned to medication
to deal with chronic pain,
which had come from working
so hard to be a rockstar,
was heartbreaking and surprising,
in that, early on rejecting of drugs
the first half of his life,
like, completely rejecting of drugs,
and then the second half of his life
falling into something else.
- Years of intense physical dance moves
on top of that bathtub mishap
took its toll on Prince's body,
but he never complained about it
or said what he was
doing to mask the pain.
If you looked at him on any given day,
he seemed fine.
- Here's another thing.
Part of the reason no one suspected
Prince was on hardcore meds
is because he was a total health nut,
and opiates seemed totally contradictory
to his entire being.
- Being around Prince
made everybody else want to be healthy
because that was the example
that he set, all the time.
- For starters, he was either
a vegan or a vegetarian
for most of his life.
He believed meat eaters
were living a, quote,
"barbarian lifestyle"
and filling their bodies with bacteria.
- He was not a health nut
when I worked with him in the '80s.
He lived on Doritos,
Constant Comment tea with a
ridiculous amount of honey,
Five Alive in the morning,
fruit drink, beverage.
No, he was not a health nut.
He became one around the time of the film,
"Under the Cherry Moon".
You're aware that you're not young anymore
and if you wanna continue to look good,
you have to eat well.
But I did observe that he
changed his eating habits
in the late '80s.
- Are you, you're vegan
or you're vegetarian?
- Vegetarian.
I don't mess with no red meat though.
- No, no, no, no,
you wanna live!
- Well, somethings...
- At Paisley Park, his edicts
were strictly enforced,
no booze, no drugs,
and definitely no meat.
- There were times when
he was very serious
about being a vegetarian,
to where he wanted the
band to also be vegetarians
and people would go along
with it while he was there
and then when he wasn't there,
they'd eat whatever they wanted to.
- We were not even allowed to eat meat
inside of the building.
There's a shopping
center near Paisley Park
where we used to go Subway,
and outside of Paisley Park
there are patio table and chairs.
We had to eat it outside
and throw it away outside.
He didn't even wanna smell it.
- [Chris] I dunno how you
take care of yourself,
but I promise you,
he probably took care
of better than you do.
What he ate, like, what
he put in his body.
He would never put McDonald's,
or you're eating this,
or you're eating that.
He changed up most of the people's diets.
People who came and start work for him,
most of them became that
way, you know what I mean?
From hanging out with him.
- His strict rules weren't
just limited to his home.
When he went on tour,
he expected everybody,
everybody, to abide by them.
- [Cat] First of all,
Prince did not allow drugs
on the set, on the tour, around anyone.
No one's ever done drugs
on tour with Prince.
Period.
No one.
- It's true.
Prince was notoriously anti-drug
and it goes all the way back to his youth
when, then too,
he wouldn't touch a thing
that gave him a buzz.
- He scorned people who
took recreational drugs.
He thought that it was a
sign of weak character.
- [Chazz] All musicians experiment
and they lyin' if they say
they don't, but Prince did not.
He was 100,000,000% against
anything or everything
And he used to look at
me and go like, he said,
"Man," he said, "people
that smoke that stuff, man.
"People could sneak up on
'em and do shit to 'em."
And I was like, "That's
exactly how I'd put it"
and he'd go, "I ain't never doing that."
- Well, Prince kept up
that sobriety in stardom
and he ran a tight ship
when it came to people using drugs,
Members of The Revolution said
he wouldn't tolerate even
the smell of cigarette smoke
and get this, he supposedly
had spies on tour.
- He had people on the tour, to back up,
on our "1999" tour, he had
people observing us on the bus.
All of a sudden there
was strangers on the bus,
like, getting jokes and
learning our personality.
And you know, it was like a Big Brother
kind of a shadowing thing.
- On top of all of this,
he was devoutly religious.
Prince made it known he was a man of God.
- You certainly would not think of you
as a great believing soul.
- Well...
- [Larry] True or not?
- I don't believe that to be true.
- [Larry] Always were.
- Oh, I've always known
that God was my creator
and that without Him,
boy, nothing works.
It works to a point, and then
it just kind of deteriorates.
Entropy takes place.
- In 2003, Prince was baptized
as a Jehovah's Witness.
He regularly attended services
at a local Minnesota chapter
and even went door to door to proselytize.
He also sent members
to close friends of his
to try to get them to convert.
- He's like, "What's really
gonna help me do this,
"and for us to work
together again," is he said,
"us being brothers, we have
to be on the same page."
And he said, "I can't do this
"unless I can bring you into the religion
"unless we can pray together
"and believe, have the same
beliefs" and all of this.
And at that point,
even though my arms
are probably like this,
but my arms were crossed,
because I'm like,
"I'm not trying to do that.
"I've never understood
Jehovah's Witness enough
"to subscribe to it."
And then, after that, he
had 'em coming to my door
in Atlanta, like twice a week.
- [Interviewer] Oh, he would
send Jehovah's Witnesses...
- Oh yeah!
- To your door?
- To your door.
You know, because that's
part of their thing.
In order to be a Jehovah's witness,
you have to spread the word.
So you gotta go knocking, door to door,
and I guess he considered himself
doing it through his musical circle.
- Awards are wonderful,
but all praise and glory is
due to the true God, Jehovah.
- Prince's piety knew no bounds.
In his later years, he reigned
in his provocative image,
toned down some of his
oversexualized lyrics,
and even censored some
of his old material.
- I've evolved by the simple
fact of working on my spirit
as a human being.
I've been studying the Bible as of late,
and it's begun to play
a major role in my life
so it's going to affect
everything, especially the music,
'cause the music is so dear to me.
- [Interviewer] So
spirituality is helping you,
not only musically, but
affecting you lyrically as well?
- Yes, yes sir.
- And get this, at some point,
he even swore off swearing
and he didn't like anybody around him
using foul language either.
- I'm not using profanity
because of our connection.
- Mm-hmm.
(audience laughs)
- I have chosen to use the
word artichoke, instead.
- If I can stop swearing,
everybody can stop swearing.
(all laugh)
- I like that.
If you have a mishap in
the middle of the night,
if you kick the edge of
your bed, what do you yell?
- Artichoke.
(audience whoops)
- So now the question, how did a man
so devoted to living a
healthy, pure, God-fearing life
become a drug addict
and how did he keep it
a secret for so long?
- So Prince was living on
the straight and narrow,
but eventually, all of
this intense performing
caught up with him.
In addition to that, he was
dealing with a nagging hip
and ultimately resorted to drugs,
but it was a closely guarded secret.
Even people in his inner circle
had no idea what was going on.
- [Chris] I never saw any
signs of any addiction.
I know the signs.
I know what it looks like.
- [Detective] So you're saying
you never saw anything at all
regarding being addicted?
- [Chris] I never even saw
any drugs in his belongings.
I would have to make sure that he was up,
make sure everything was together.
When we were on the road and stuff like,
you know, wake him up, help
him get his stuff together.
I never saw anything like pill bottles,
pills, stuff like that.
If you're taking pills,
opioids, or whatever,
you're gonna be drowsy all the time,
you're gonna be like slurring your words,
but never seen any of that.
This guy had more energy
than all of us put together.
- [Detective] You've never seen anything,
you only have gotten him food.
Nothing that you've ever seen
was suspicious or strange circumstances.
- [Renville] No, that's (indistinct).
- Okay.
- Yeah, I've never seen him
take anything of that nature.
- [Andrew] Some people have even asked me
about drug use, and this and that.
And I don't know if I was
that naive at the time,
but I didn't recognize, I
didn't recognize anything.
The only thing that was a little oddball
about was the hours he kept.
He was a night owl, for sure.
- [Kim] He was always traveling.
He was always working.
He had an incredible work ethic.
I mean, he was just...
Worked like a dog.
- [Detective] You said you
didn't have any knowledge
of any use, drug use, or
anything like that by him at all?
- [Kim] No, that's why I was so shocked
when all this came out.
He was very, very meticulous
about his diet and what he ate.
So, yeah.
- But clearly, at least
some people had to know.
- Princess's ex-wife, Manuela Testolini,
actually told investigators
she knew he was using narcotic pain pills
during their marriage in the early 2000s.
- Another ex in Prince's life,
and one of his closest collaborators,
Sheila E told detectives
something similar.
Although she says she
was aware of his drug use
dating way back to the '80s.
- His ex tour manager, Theo London,
told cops a story that, in retrospect,
had all the warning signs.
- [Theo] Prince asked me once
to get him some pills for pain
and so I went out and bought some,
I guess it was Tylenol or something,
and he got very upset with me
and he said, "This isn't what I want,
"I need something stronger."
- While it's impossible to pinpoint
exactly when he got hooked, and on what,
what we do know is that, in 2009,
as his hip pain worsened,
Prince was prescribed Percocet.
This according to multiple family sources.
- I'm not blaming someone,
'cause everyone is responsible
for their own lives,
but I think it's just so
easy to just go and get
prescription drugs, that, it's scary.
- The Percocet alone
wasn't doing the trick.
In 2010, Prince finally
went under the knife
for a hip replacement,
and it was a big deal.
Fact is, this procedure usually requires
a blood transfusion,
and that's something that
Jehovah's Witnesses frown upon.
- There's some people who
talk to me about telling him,
"You should get hip surgery.
"You should get knee surgery.
"These things can alleviate your pain."
But by this point in his life,
he's a Jehovah's Witness,
they don't believe in surgery,
so that is against his beliefs.
Now, some people told me
he may have gotten the surgery anyway,
but he was struggling with
his religious principles
as well as chronic pain
that was hampering him.
- Unfortunately, it was
far too late for him
on the drug front.
He was deep down a rabbit
hole, before and after surgery,
and for him, there was no turning back.
- [Fan] Prince, huge fan, sir.
- [Man] Prince, love you, buddy.
- As we look back,
it should have been easier
to connect the dots,
to understand what was
really going on with Prince.
In 2016, just weeks before his death,
a sequence of events came together
that cost Prince his life.
- On the morning of April 7, 2016,
one of Prince's closest
friends and associates,
Kirk Johnson, was deeply concerned
about the singer's health.
We know that because he
reached out to his own doctor,
Michael Schulenberg, and
he asked for a house call
to treat Prince for numbness and nausea.
- An hour later, Schulenberg
showed up at Paisley Park
to treat him.
Schulenberg says he didn't
prescribe anything that day,
but he did tell Kirk
Prince didn't look well.
- Later that same day,
Prince canceled two shows,
something he hadn't done in 25 years.
The stated reason, a bout with the flu.
- Prince was supposed to hold
back to back performances
at the Fox tonight, at 7:00 and 10:00.
I've been in touch with theater officials.
Just about five minutes ago, they told me
they're still working on figuring out
the rescheduled date
for both of those shows.
But meanwhile, the musician's illness
is no doubt disappointing
hundreds of fans.
- The next day, April 8,
Prince called Dr. Schulenberg
to say he was feeling better,
and the two of them started talking
about a course of action
to address whatever he was dealing with.
- Now, this is where
things get interesting.
Six days later, on April 14,
Dr. Schulenberg writes a
prescription for Percocet,
not under Prince's name, though.
It was made out to Kirk Johnson.
- That same day, Prince got on a plane
to do the shows that were
canceled the week prior.
- Once again, I'd like to
apologize for the cancellation.
I was a little under the weather.
(crowd cheering)
But we're here now.
(crowd cheering)
I wanna take this time to thank you,
each and every one of you, for coming out
and enjoying this night with us.
- He performed back to back
that night, to rave reviews.
♪ Went to the doctor,
guess what he told me ♪
♪ Guess what he told me ♪
- All seemed well on the surface,
but backstage trouble was brewing.
Singer Judith Hill,
who had just started
collaborating with Prince,
was with him backstage.
She later recalled her mentor seemed off.
- Judith told investigators,
"He was saying things like
"he had done all that he was
supposed to do on Earth."
He also seemed really depressed,
which unsettled Judith.
- In the music business,
these careers are short.
If you reach the highest level of success,
realistically, you can figure on
a good five years at the
top of the music business,
but that rare air that you breathe
at the very top of the music business
is much, much shorter than
a career in acting, I think,
so he knew, this run that he had had
was ending, and now he had a
different problem to solve.
Not the problem of,
"Can I get them to believe
that I'm a great artist,"
but the problem of
"Can I get them to believe
I'm a legacy artist."
- Judith was concerned,
but she didn't know the
depth of the crisis.
Just hours later,
Prince would be at death's
door in a private jet.
- Prince's downward spiral
reached a peak in April 2016.
The blow-by-blow of those final days
demonstrates just how far
his addiction had gone
and why it might have
already been too late.
- Shortly before midnight on April 14,
right after his Atlanta shows,
Prince, Judith Hill, and Kirk Johnson
board a private plane back to Minneapolis.
- Once the plane took off,
Judith says Prince actually
became more upbeat,
but about an hour into the flight,
Prince walked to the back of the plane
and fiddled with his travel bag,
came back to his seat, and fell asleep.
Judith wasn't alarmed until she saw
water from a bottle he was holding
spilling all over the floor.
- She wakes up Kirk, who
then tries to wake up Prince,
but he's unconscious.
They alert the pilot, who
radios Air Traffic Control
telling them they need to make
an emergency landing immediately.
- [Flight Control] What's
the nature of the emergency?
What's the nature of the condition?
- [Pilot] An unresponsive passenger.
[Flight Control] Was it a
male or female passenger?
- [Pilot] Male passenger.
- Six minutes later, Prince's
plane makes a rapid dissent
and touches down in Moline, Illinois.
Paramedics are standing by and
they ask if he's on anything.
Kirk Johnson says he
may have taken Percocet.
- The medics gave Prince a dose of Narcan
right on the tarmac.
The so-called save shot
for overdose victims,
but it wasn't enough.
Prince started to convulse,
so they hit him again.
This one worked.
Prince was awake now and
rushed to the hospital.
- [News Anchor] TMZ had
reported, apparently,
that he had had some sort of
medical emergency on April 15
that forced his private jet
to make an emergency landing in Illinois.
- It's now April 15
and word has gotten out
about the emergency landing.
Prince's team spun it as
another episode with the flu.
- [News Anchor] Prince performed a concert
on Thursday night in Atlanta.
He was flying back when his private jet
had to make an unscheduled
landing in Moline, Illinois,
because he had been stricken
with what was described
as a severe bout of the flu.
He was hospitalized and then released.
- At 10:33 that morning,
Prince sends out a tweet,
quote, "I am transformed."
When doctors come to see Prince,
he tells them all he
had taken was Aspirin,
but he refuses to take any
tests to confirm what was wrong.
Privately, he tells Judith Hill
he mixed up his meds and fell asleep,
insisting he would've been fine
if it wasn't for those Narcan shots.
- Prince is obviously in denial.
Doctors want to keep him in the hospital,
but he demands to be released.
He goes home that very day
as if everything is fine,
but just six days later, he would be dead.
(tense music)
- The day after Prince was
released from the hospital,
he was eager to show
everyone all was well.
He seen out and about all over town,
riding his bike, going to record stores.
That same night, he hosts a
dance party at Paisley Park
and it would be his
last public appearance.
- By now, his inner
circle is in panic mode.
They realize Prince's addiction
is far worse than they imagined.
They need to get him help.
- On Sunday afternoon, Prince tweeted
that he was feeling rejuvenated.
- Prince's camp pumps the brakes
on scheduling more concerts
for the time being.
Kirk Johnson also reaches
out to Dr. Schulenberg
to apologize for requesting the Percocet
four days earlier, because he now realizes
Prince has a big problem.
- On the advice of his team,
Prince agrees to take some
time off from performing.
That night, he joins friends
for dinner and a movie.
He later hits up a jazz
club, a pretty normal day.
The next one, however
would be anything but.
(tense music)
The last full day Prince is alive,
his team believes they finally found
a solution for his drug use.
They contact Dr. Howard Kornfeld,
a California addiction specialist,
who they think can be Prince's savior.
- Kornfeld is known as one of the best
in the rehab business,
but he was too busy to drop everything
and fly out to Minnesota for Prince.
And this is where it
gets a little strange.
He sends his son Andrew in his place.
Andrew's not a doctor.
He's a medical school applicant
who worked in his dad's clinic.
- The plan is supposed to go like this.
Andrew will act as his dad's proxy,
make contact with Prince
and get him to a doctor in Minnesota.
- Once Prince was stable,
the next step was to
get him to the Bay area
and check him into
Kornfeld's rehab clinic.
Obviously, it didn't work out that way.
- As all these plans are in the works,
Andrew was getting ready to
take a red eye to Minnesota.
Prince is still desperate for relief.
Kirk says he was jittery and anxious.
He demanded something that
would calm his nerves.
At 5:00 PM, they headed back
to Dr. Schulenberg's office.
- This would be Prince's
last doctor's visit.
Schulenberg gives him an IV,
blood pressure meds and antihistamines.
He also sends him off with
a prescription for Valium.
but warns him, "Only use
it as a last resort."
- That instruction goes
out the window immediately.
At 5:45 in the afternoon,
they stop at a Walgreens
to get some Valium.
Surveillance video shows
Kirk going into Walgreens.
Meanwhile, we got a photo
of Prince pacing in the parking lot.
Witnesses told us he
was extremely fidgety.
Now the mystery deepens,
because they apparently left Walgreens,
but less than an hour and a half later,
Kirk returns to Walgreens to get something
and then goes back to Paisley Park.
- Around 8:00 PM, Prince heads up
to his quarters on his own.
It is the last time he'll
be seen alive by anyone.
Kirk stays downstairs to meet
with Prince's other
assistant, Meron Bekure,
to plan the next day.
- Remember Andrew Kornfeld,
the rehab doctor's son,
is set to arrive at the crack of dawn
with what the team hopes
is a life-saving Hail Mary,
a real plan of action to get
Prince detoxed and healthy.
- It was a plan that
will go down in flames.
- It's the morning of April 21, 2016.
Kirk and Meron try reaching
Prince by phone, but no luck.
Around 9:30 in the morning,
they drive to pick up Andrew at his hotel.
Then drive back to Paisley Park.
Once they're inside, Kirk
and Meron try to find Prince.
Andrew stays behind.
- They went looking for Prince,
couldn't initially find him.
They saw the staff representatives
apparently found him in
an elevator, unconscious.
One of the staff members
started screaming.
Andrew heard the screams
and went to the elevator
where he saw that Prince was unconscious.
- Prince was lying on the
floor of the elevator,
still wearing the same
clothes from the night before
and showing no signs of life.
At 9:43 AM, Andrew dials 911,
telling the operator he
fears Prince might be dead.
- [Dispatcher] Paisley
Park, 7801 Audubon Road,
person down, not breathing.
Chanhassen Chief one, 9:45.
- [Chief] Copy that.
Chanhassen Chief one, CPR started.
- [Dispatcher] 10-4, CPR started, 9:49.
- First responders rush to the scene.
They arrive within five minutes.
(horn blaring)
(siren whoops)
Just before 10 in the morning,
paramedics tried
desperately to revive him,
but it was too late.
At 10:07 AM, Prince was pronounced dead.
- 90 Minutes later, TMZ broke the news.
- Hey everybody, it is Harvey and Charles
and we have very sad news.
Prince has died.
We just broke the story on the website.
He was 57 years old.
- That triggered an absolute media frenzy.
- TMZ, that broke this story this morning,
is reporting that maybe his
death was not unexpected.
- TMZ has been around a long time
and there are a handful of stories
that just gives me pause
every time I think about them
and Prince is one of them.
- I will always remember what
it was like in this newsroom
the day we broke that story.
- I remember as we got a tip
that something bad happened to Prince.
- It was just a feeling it was true.
We had broken the story
about his overdose on the plane,
so we were aware that there were issues.
- And we made phone call after
phone call after phone call,
and the picture became clear
and it was hard to
process, but it was true.
And I remember turning
to Charles and saying,
"We have to publish this story."
and it was heart wrenching.
- On a personal note, for me,
it was the saddest story
that I've ever had to report.
And I distinctly remember,
once we confirmed it,
and double confirmed it,
triple confirmed it,
that he was indeed dead,
and I remember Harvey looking at me
and saying, "Publish it."
And I hit the button and published it.
And I walked away and I cried.
- Word spreads quickly.
Friends, family, and fans start to gather
outside the gates of Paisley Park
to mourn their idol.
Millions of others are
grieving around the world.
(melancholy music)
(uptempo music)
(people cheer and clap)
(indistinct)
- Oh my God, I was devastated.
I couldn't believe it, I'm still in shock.
I still can't believe it.
- It's just such a loss,
I can't, I'm sorry.
- Ask just about anyone,
and they'll tell you they remember
exactly where they were
when they found out Prince was gone.
- I remember so clearly,
exactly where I was when I heard the news
that Prince was gone, that he was dead.
I was driving my car and I
was listening to the radio
and I, literally, I teared up.
It was so hard to believe
and hard to fathom.
But then I also remember
people just spontaneously
coming out into the community
in downtown Minneapolis,
outside of the iconic First Avenue,
and gathering together.
Literally thousands of people
and singing "Purple Rain" and
"Nothing Compares To You".
♪ Purple Rain, Purple Rain ♪
- [Senator] And you just got a sense
of how much he touched people.
- I was in Detroit, giving a
speech about one of my books
and I looked at my phone and it had,
the number of texts and calls
was far higher than I'd ever seen.
There's all these people in
front of me who were like,
"Sign your book, say hi to me."
And then, and I'm going
through all these people,
and one of them said, "Prince died."
And I was like, "Get the fuck outta here,
"Prince didn't die."
And then I look at my phone
and the numbers were absurdly
high, texts and calls.
And then I looked at this woman
and she's like, "No, he
really died, this is real."
And I'm like, "Oh my God."
And I get out of the hall
where all the people were
and all these calls are coming in.
"Come on this show!"
"Talk to this interviewer," whatever.
And it was...
Quite heavy, sort of like,
I have to help other
people put this in context.
- As the bombshell news is processed,
it's not long before there's talk
about a possible overdose,
especially after TMZ reported
that he had suffered one
on the plane ride back from Atlanta.
Even then, many were skeptical.
- Breaking tonight, TMZ reports
that legendary singer songwriter Prince
may have received treatment
for a drug overdose
just six days before
his death this morning.
- [News Anchor] Prince's
representatives will only say
that he'd been suffering
flu for several weeks.
We know that, two weeks ago,
Prince also cited the flu
as the reason for
canceling a couple of shows
from his "Piano and a Microphone" tour
and the official explanation
as to why his plane
had to make an emergency
landing in Moline, Illinois
is because Prince was
suffering severe dehydration.
Clearly, TMZ is not
buying that explanation.
- That has not been independently
confirmed by Fox News.
That is TMZ reporting.
They are also the ones who broke
the accurate news this
morning of Prince's death.
- Meanwhile, the investigation
into Prince's death
gets underway.
- Because this was an unwitnessed death
of a middle-aged adult,
the decision was made
to process the scene.
- Detective's interview members
of Prince's inner circle
and a common theme emerges.
Just about everyone on his staff claims
they had no idea Prince
was hooked on pain meds.
- [Renville] I was very surprised-
- [Detective] Okay.
- [Renville] That, you
know, he was on any of that
because, like I said, he leaves
it all on the stage, right?
He gives his all.
- Two years later,
officials announced what they'd found,
and it was shocking.
- The investigation has
determined the following.
On April 21, 2016, Prince died
from an overdose of Fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a very
powerful synthetic opioid
that is 30 to 50 times
more potent than heroin
and 50 to 100 times more
potent than morphine.
- The details were almost
too incredible to believe.
There were more than a hundred pills
scattered throughout the house,
in bottles that had nothing to
do with the pills themselves.
There might be a pill
in an Aspirin bottle,
not an Aspirin, and so on.
- But investigators zeroed
in on dozens of pills
that were stamped with
the code Watson 853,
a common identifier of Vicodin.
- 15 of the prescription pills
that had the Watson 853 imprint on it
were located in Prince's dressing room.
Another 64 and a half of these pills
were located inside a (audio skips) bottle
and 20 and a half pills
were located inside an Aleve bottle
on the nightstand next to Prince's bed.
Another loose pill was
located in Prince's bed.
Law enforcement found numerous pills
throughout his residence at Paisley Park
and some of the pills had
Lidocaine and other agents
and then other pills in the
same bottle had Fentanyl.
- But then, a stunning revelation.
Those Vicodin pills were
counterfeit and laced.
- Representative samples
taken from Paisley Park
of the counterfeit Vicodin pills
tested positive for Fentanyl.
He got the Vicodin pills
probably through the internet
and it was laced with Fentanyl,
and so people are playing Russian roulette
if they're getting drugs
that are not prescribed by a physician
and it's on the street.
- As Carver County made clear as day,
most of Prince's Vicodin
was essentially poisoned with Fentanyl,
which is up to 50 times
more powerful than morphine.
But the question remained,
where did Prince get them?
And did he know they contained Fentanyl?
- Nothing in the evidence suggests
that Prince knowingly ingested Fentanyl.
In addition, there is no evidence
that any person associated with Prince
knew Prince possessed
any counterfeit pills
containing Fentanyl.
In all likelihood, Prince had no idea
he was taking a counterfeit
pill that could kill him.
Prince didn't think that
he was taking Fentanyl,
from the evidence that we had.
We don't believe that he knew
that the Vicodin he sought out and took
was laced with Fentanyl.
It was a counterfeit pill.
- In addition to the laced Vicodin pills,
there were more meds found.
Nearly all of them were prescribed
to someone other than Prince,
including Kirk Johnson,
but officials insist
those weren't the ones
that led to his death.
It was all about the Fentanyl.
- In light of all this information,
authorities decided not to prosecute
anybody over Prince's death.
They just couldn't pin it on anyone.
The criminal investigation
into Prince's death
lasted two years.
In the end, no one was prosecuted
because the culprits
just proved too elusive.
- We ultimately determined that
there wasn't evidence to
charge anybody in that case,
based upon an exhaustive and
painstaking investigation
by multiple jurisdictions.
There is no evidence
that the pill or pills
that actually killed Prince
were prescribed by a doctor.
There is also no evidence to suggest
any other sinister motive,
intent, or conspiracy to murder Prince.
There is no doubt that the actions
of individuals around
Prince will be criticized,
questioned, and judged in
the days and weeks to come.
But suspicions and innuendo
are categorically insufficient
to support any criminal charges.
In making the determination
that no one would be criminally charged,
that was based upon the evidence
and that, after this exhaustive
and thorough investigation,
that law enforcement was
never able to determine
where these counterfeit pills came from.
- Dr. Schulenberg was really the only one
who suffered consequences.
He paid a $30,000 fine to the feds
for his shadow prescriptions,
and an additional $4,600 to
the Minnesota Medical Board
for unethical conduct and
mismanaging medical records.
- Some of the people closest to Prince
shut down any questions
about accountability.
- Is there anything that you
wish you had done personally
to stop his drug use?
(chuckles)
- Oh my goodness.
Next.
- You don't feel like people enabled him?
- Next.
- Opioid addiction is such a big
topic of conversation.
- Next.
- Prince's family filed
a wrongful death lawsuit
against Walgreens, against Moline Hospital
where he had been
treated six days earlier,
and against Dr. Schulenberg.
- This morning, the family of Prince
is suing the star's former doctor
and several healthcare groups.
Six of Prince's brothers and sisters
filed a wrongful death lawsuit
against Dr. Michael
Schulenberg and Walgreens.
The family claims all of
the defendants had a chance,
but failed to diagnose and help Prince
with his opioid addiction before he died.
- All of these cases were dropped.
That is an indication they settled.
- While the family may have come to terms
with Prince's death, many of his fans,
even six years, later have not.
Prince just didn't fit
the traditional narrative
of a rock star who ODs.
His drug addiction came from
an unwavering commitment
to perform for all of us,
so there's something
tragically poetic here.
- Yeah, it could be somebody
that's as famous as Prince
and, on the outside, had this appearance
of living a very healthy life,
and he's not your typical drug addict
that you would say, "Well,
he's shooting up heroin."
He was using painkillers and medication
to treat his injuries and to
treat the pain that he was in.
- But this is not about rockstar hedonism.
It's not about cocaine
or these sort of things
that we hear about rock stars doing.
This is about doing like opioids,
like the drugs that guys
who work at the plant
or women who are nurses
or waitresses or whatever,
people who have chronic pain,
but need to get up to go
work at UPS or whatever,
are taking so that they can keep going.
And he was in chronic pain,
but needed to keep going
because music and
performing was all he had.
That's the only way he had
of interacting with other people.
So he's taking these sort of drugs
so that he can get up and go perform
and interact with people that way.
That was his entire identity.
So that's sort of the tragedy of it,
that he's not taking drugs to
have trippy fun experiences.
He's taking drugs so that
he can get up and work,
just like so many Americans.
- But my strong hunch
is that Prince never took pain medicine
for recreational purposes.
It seems highly likely
that Prince was taking drugs
in order to manage pain,
severe physical pain,
pain that he may have not been willing
to fully disclose to
the people close to him.
I've talked with quite a few
folks from my Prince days,
and it seems a little bit to me
like looking at a blank
screen with just a few pixels.
So you see these dots,
you get these dots of information;
a technician observed this,
a girlfriend observed that,
a band member observed this,
an operations manager observed that,
we all observed different aspects,
fleeting aspects of a very
complex person's life.
He was incredibly private.
There were things going on that
were beyond anyone's reach.
- And yet, Princess's legacy will hold up
as one of the most fondly
remembered in music.
Fact is, he'd left his mark in this world.
- Prince's death was
one of the most shocking
of the 21st century, partly
because he was so beloved
and partly because what happened to him
was the exact opposite of his image.
- Even Prince's incredible
Super Bowl performance
was memorialized by none
other than Justin Timberlake,
who honored the late legend.
- Bottom line, the guy
was, without a doubt,
idolized by his fans and
contemporaries alike.
He just had that shine about him.
And it's this memory of Prince's life
that stands in sharp contrast
to the dark reality of his death.
- You could say it was a
classic case of a double life.
On the surface, Prince was colorful,
flamboyant, and seemingly
clean as a whistle,
but underneath lurked a dark addiction,
one that had been simmering for decades.
- I didn't have a clue,
and if I had had a clue,
I'd like to think he might
still be with us today.
I could have talked to him.
I could have addressed
his issues in another way,
or in a way that would've been...
Healthier, for him.
I would've definitely tried.
I mean, it still affects me.
I'm still affected.
I still miss him very much.
Well, what can I say?
I still really, really, really miss him.
I just pray that he's happy.
I hope and pray that
he's happy and at peace.
- It almost like, doesn't really compute,
like, Prince dying, because
the notion of Prince
is so large and the music is so timeless.
His body is not with us anymore
and there's no new music,
but like there's so much of him
that still exists to this day,
that it's like there is so
much of him that is with us.
- I think it's highly likely
that that private shell
got harder as he got older.
So I would assume
that, later in Prince's life,
he found himself
perhaps more isolated
from other, than he had ever been before.
That's an assumption.
I think there's always the possibility
and other Prince colleagues
and I have talked about this,
that Prince knew exactly
what was waiting for him
at the end of the road he was on
and that he chose to travel that road.
I think there's a possibility
because I knew a man
who was always in control
of his own decisions
that maybe he knew
exactly what he was doing
when he was using pain medication,
when he knew he was in
deep trouble with it,
he may have just opted to
continue and go forward.
- Prince was just one of
tens of thousands of people
who die from Fentanyl
overdoses every year.
But his death was so shocking,
it opened the eyes of America.
- It was shocking for people that knew him
and certainly for his fans,
that the drug addiction
oftentimes is so hidden
and that the public health
officials have indicated
that the way to address this
is to start with the premise
that no one is safe.
And what I mean by that is
that this can affect anybody.
If Prince can die from a drug overdose,
with his belief system and
his focus on his health,
then certainly anybody can be affected
and die from a drug overdose.
- Hopefully there are
lessons to be learned here.
If you're struggling,
don't suffer in silence.
Reach out for help.
If only Prince had done so,
he might still be here today.
- He was in the grip of addiction.
If anything, we could blame addiction
and the struggle that we have as a society
of dealing with that, the
stigma that we place to that,
which makes a lot of people say,
"I don't want to tell people.
"I don't want people to know.
"I don't want to deal with it."
I mean, there's other diseases
that are okay for us to deal with.
Addiction is a sign of
weakness, supposedly,
and it's a failure, supposedly,
and it's not, it's a disease.
But the addict is not going
to be able to be saved
until they are ready to be saved.
- Despite his fortune and fame,
Prince sadly became yet another statistic.
He was one of 42,000 people in the U.S.
who died of an opioid overdose in 2016.
If nothing else, his death highlighted
this profound problem
which persists today.
- The opioid crisis has been said
by public health professionals
as the greatest drug crisis
we've had in America.
I think in connecting
this with the Prince case,
if I could, is that perhaps
shined the brightest light
on the tragedy.
He was so beloved on a
national, on a world level.
- There still exists in this country,
deep stigma around
addiction and mental health
and it makes it that much more difficult
for people to admit that
they have a problem,
for people to go and get
the care that they need.
But it's also important to
see individuals like Prince,
so gifted, such a complex person,
in their full complexity
and not to just see him as
a two-dimensional character,
What ended up taking his
life, at the end of his life,
this terrible addiction is
certainly part of his story,
but I don't think it
overshadows his genius
and the love that so
many millions of people,
especially people in
Minnesota, feel for him.
- Prince Rogers Nelson, a trailblazer,
a beloved figure to millions.
In the end, he was, just
like all of us, imperfect.
(dramatic hammering)
(sonic whooshing)
(logo chimes)
- We broke a story that shook the world.
- This has gotta be some
kind of publicity stunt.
- I didn't believe it, he was just here.
- [Narrator] But it was true.
Prince was dead, dead in his mansion.
- At the end of the day,
he's alone in an elevator.
That killed me.
- [Narrator] April 21, 2016.
Prince became the latest
victim of a dope-sick nation.
- He got the Vicodin pills and
it was laced with Fentanyl.
- [Narrator] Turns out
prince became a drug addict
after suffering a terrible injury.
Hard to imagine because
of his public image.
- He scorned people who
took recreational drugs.
- [Narrator] Prince was a health nut.
Deeply spiritual.
He hid his addiction from everyone.
- He even hid it from
me, and I'm an expert.
- [Narrator] Fact is,
days before his death,
alarm bells rang, but they got muted.
- [Flight Control] What's
the nature of the emergency"
What's the condition-
- An unresponsive passenger.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] Prince was at
a crossroads in his life.
- He knew, this run that
he had had, was ending.
- [Narrator] Did he have a
premonition of his own death?
- It's just such a loss,
I can't, I'm sorry.
- Prince dying doesn't compute,
because there's so much of him
that still exists to this day.
- [Narrator] TMZ presents...
(dramatic music)
"Prince: Fatal Secrets".
(siren wailing)
- [Dispatcher] Two one car for a medical,
Paisley Park, 7801 Audubon Road,
7801 Audubon Road, for a
male down, not breathing.
- About 9:43, we received a medical call
at Paisley Park in Chanhassen.
They found an unresponsive
male in the elevator.
- [Chief] Dispatch from
Chanhassen Chief one.
CPR started.
- CPR was initially started,
but was unsuccessful.
He was pronounced deceased at 10:07.
We have identified him
as Prince Rogers Nelson.
- We are following the breaking news
of a death at Paisley Park in Chanhassen.
TMZ has confirmed
that it is Minnesota music legend, Prince.
- TMZ reported his death
probably about an hour ago.
Fox News is now confirming that.
We're still learning more about
what actually caused his death today.
- On April 21, 2016,
we broke a story that shook the world.
Prince, one of the most accomplished,
eccentric, and admired
performers in the world
died alone in an elevator
at his suburban Minneapolis
home, Paisley Park.
He was just 57.
- This has gotta be some
kind of publicity stunt
or something like that,
'cause it can't be real.
- The world mourned and his
legion of fans were heartbroken.
- I didn't believe it, he
was just here Saturday.
He was just here Saturday.
He was fine.
- [Reporter] What was it
that you're gonna miss the most about him?
- Everything.
I just can't believe he's gone.
(mysterious music)
- I'm feeling, heartbroken,
joyful, memorable.
I have a lot of emotions right now.
- The people closest to Prince
were shocked and devastated.
- At the end of the day,
he's alone in the elevator.
That killed me.
That killed me.
That really hurt.
- The cause of death, an
accidental overdose of Fentanyl,
the powerful synthetic opioid
that has plagued the country,
and it unlocked a mystery.
How could someone who was so
health conscious and anti-drug
become so profoundly addicted?
- Prince didn't think that
he was taking Fentanyl
from the evidence that we had.
We don't believe that he knew
that the Vicodin he sought out and took
was laced with Fentanyl.
It was a counterfeit pill
and that's what's horribly tragic,
'cause it was preventable.
- None of it made any sense,
not even to those in
his tight inner circle.
- See, Prince was a health nut.
He rarely ever drank,
never smoked,
banned meat from even being around him,
and threatened to fire anyone
who did drugs when he was on tour.
- I mean, you know,
Prince was an extraordinarily
healthy person.
Look, from his teens and his early 20s.
He's very much like "I don't do drugs
"and I don't want people
doing drugs around me."
He was like, "I want to
be in control of myself
"and my surroundings at all times."
So in the '80s, when like, everybody,
especially everybody in rock and roll,
is doing cocaine, Prince is like,
"If you find anybody on this
tour who's doing cocaine,
"we're gonna fire them."
- I was lucky enough to
see Prince in concert,
half a dozen times, and I gotta tell you,
this guy was not just athletic on stage,
he was absolutely acrobatic.
Jumping, dancing, and always
in his signature platform shoes.
("Little Red Corvette")
- His performances on stage
were not that different
than the performances you would
see in the recording studio.
His performances in the recording
studio were always 100%.
He performed every time he had
an instrument in his hands.
He played piano very much like a drummer,
a very percussive style with his fingers.
You hear it in his fingers.
You hear the percussive nature
of the attack in his fingers.
(energetic piano music)
♪ Somebody say, woo-hoo-hoo ♪
- Same thing when he played bass,
when he played guitar,
when he played drums,
his whole body
was like a musical interface.
(upbeat music)
- It was those hard-hitting performances
that may have started
his long downward spiral
and his dependence on
powerful pain killers.
His famous moves may have
slowly destroyed his body.
(upbeat music)
- He been dancing around
in heels for a while
and that does take its toll, you know,
wearing high heels on stage
and jumping and dancing.
- He was in chronic pain,
but needed to keep going
because music and
performing was all he had.
That's the only way he had of
interacting with other people.
(blues guitar wailing)
So when you're in chronic pain
and the only way to interact
with people is through music,
you have to do whatever it is you can do
to get back to playing music,
otherwise you're completely
shut off from the world.
- Prince was suffering in private
and very few people knew about that
or how he managed his pain with drugs.
It was a closely guarded secret.
- You know that little groove
we was working on earlier...
- Oh, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah...
(indistinct) Yeah, Simon, let's do that.
He even hid it from me,
and I'm an expert...
(laughs)
from back in the day, okay?
I'd be able to tell if anyone was in pain.
♪ All you've got to do is ♪
♪ Snap your fingers ♪
- Toward the end of his life,
signs of real trouble started to emerge.
The Purple One became a
shell of his former self.
Ravaged by health
issues, opioid addiction,
Prince was withering away in secret.
- Prince was like a human skeleton,
weighing just 112 pounds.
He was temperamental,
forced to cancel shows,
something was seriously off.
- [Detective] In the last couple weeks,
how's his personality been?
- [Meron] Well, he's
just been kind of quiet.
- [Detective] Kind of quiet,
is that normal for him?
- [Meron] Well, not really.
- [Detective] Not really?
- [Meron] He usually emails us, normally,
throughout the day,
but because he wasn't feeling well,
that's what I got out of it.
- So it all came to a head
about a week before he died
when a private plane
Prince was traveling on
was forced to make an emergency landing.
Prince had ODed on Percocet.
- [Flight Control] What's
the nature of the emergency?
What's the nature of the condition?
- [Pilot] An unresponsive passenger.
- [Flight Control] Was it a
male or a female passenger?
- [Pilot] Male passenger.
- He survived, but just barely,
and this really should have
been a red alert for everyone.
But instead, it seemed that
people did not wanna believe
that Prince had ODed, and
things would only get worse.
Six days later,
one of the world's most electric
performers would be dead.
- It was all so baffling.
How could a man who seemed
like the picture of health
who showed unbridled energy on stage,
who was loved by millions,
die so young from an opioid addiction
no one seemed to know about?
- Well, if you think Prince had
no one to blame but himself,
it was far more complicated than that.
Somewhere along the way,
someone had to have enabled him,
whether it was a doctor
or someone on the streets.
- Even if anyone had
stepped in to help him,
he was probably too far gone.
- So this story begins in Prince's youth.
He was a small kid
from predominantly
black North Minneapolis,
but even back then, he was
not afraid to speak his mind.
- Are most of the kids in
favor of the picketing?
- Yep.
- How come?
- I think they should get a
better education too, 'cause,
and I think they should
get some more money.
'cause they worked big,
working extra hours for us
and all that stuff.
- Music was in his DNA.
His mom was a jazz singer and
his dad was a piano player
who did gigs at topless bars.
But there were health problems early on.
He battled epilepsy, and
when he would have seizures,
his classmates would bully him ruthlessly.
- I've been having to
deal with a lot of things,
getting teased a lot in school.
And you know, early in my career,
I tried to compensate for that
by being as flashy as I could
and as noisy as I could.
- The seizures stopped by age seven.
Prince says it was because
of divine intervention.
- I've never spoken about this before,
but I was born epileptic
and I used to have
seizures when I was young
and my mother told me,
one day I walked in to her
and said, "Mom, I'm not
gonna be sick anymore."
And she said, "Why?"
And I said, "Because an angel told me so."
- When Prince was a kid,
he was bused to an
all-white elementary school
where he experienced racism firsthand.
A kid called him the N
word, Prince punched him.
- Back at home, his family
life was less than perfect.
- By all accounts, Prince had
a rough sort of childhood.
His parents, there may have been
some domestic violence in the home,
so when he is about 13,
he's kind of homeless.
I don't think he was
sleeping on the street,
but he was kind of like,
sleeping on different people's couches.
I think the thesis of Prince's youth
is that he felt rejected by his parents
and he decided, "I will become a rockstar
"to show them that I
am a worthwhile person
"and that they made a
mistake, letting me go."
- Prince, as a young man
growing up in Minneapolis,
wanted to be famous.
He wanted to be known.
He worked so hard.
I hear these stories from friends
and they would tell stories of,
kids come home from school,
they throw down their books,
they run outside and play.
Prince would head straight
down into the basement
where there was a little recording set up,
little cassette recorder, I think,
and he had musical instruments there,
and Prince would work all night.
What kid does that?
I mean, one night maybe,
but on a consistent basis,
night after night, after
night, after night?
Prince knew that he was talented
and he wanted to make
his mark in the world.
- He had all these new songs
written, that were great,
and he had recorded every part
on this little hand cassette machine.
And he recorded,
he hummed the piano part,
and then he hummed the drum beat,
and then he'd hum the guitar part,
and he had planned it out,
and he was able to execute it all himself,
which is really rare,
to be that objective
over your own playing
and not sound like it's one guy.
He didn't sound like it was one guy.
He managed to put different personalities
on different instruments.
- When I was younger, I always said
that one day I was gonna
play all kinds of music
and not be judged,
for the color of my skin but
the quality of my work.
- Amid all the chaos,
Prince still dreamed of a better life,
but he knew he could only
accomplish it one way,
through music.
- By the time Prince was a teen,
he'd taught himself to play
every instrument he could get his hands on
and had formed bands in his neighborhood.
Before long, he was
hunting for studio time.
And once Prince got a taste
of being a recording artist,
go figure, it left an impression.
(funky bass guitar music)
- Yeah!
I mean, listen to that.
I mean, that is tight!
I mean, who told him to do that?
I didn't!
(laughs)
- 16, huh?
- 16 years old.
This is the first time
he was in the studio.
- I was observing one of
the great musical geniuses
of our time, at work, and I
wasn't aware at that time,
just how extraordinarily creative he was.
To use his own lyrics,
those kinds of cars
don't pass you every day.
- I started with a lot of
appearances I was doing
in and about Minneapolis and
word just spread about me.
- [Larry] So you were a local name.
- Yeah, what I could do.
A lot of people knew about me,
'cause I was, I used Stevie
Wonder as an inspiration.
Back then, I used him as a role model
in trying to play all the instruments
and be very self-contained
and keep my vision clear.
So, word spread very quickly
about what I could do.
A lot of people knew about it, yeah.
- Prince was destined for greatness
and he achieved it pretty quickly.
After gigging in the
local Minneapolis clubs
and scratching for a record deal,
it finally happened for him in 1977.
Warner Brothers signed
him, he was just 18.
- Prince, through Owen
and my cousin Cliff,
got a chance at Warner Brothers
'cause Cliff was the promotion
man for Warner Brothers.
And they took the tape
to Russ Thyret there,
and he flipped out.
He couldn't believe it was one guy.
- This was a solo artist who got signed
to a pretty big record
deal with Warner Brothers,
and that's pretty rare.
And he was signed as a solo artist.
It wasn't like a member of a band
like The Rolling Stones
or The Beatles, or Queen.
On top of that, this young
kid was from Minneapolis,
so he didn't have anyone guiding him.
Michael Jackson had Berry
Gordy, and had the Supremes,
and had his whole family.
Prince was all alone.
- Prince's first record deal comes about
because he meets a
studio owner, Chris Moon,
who lets him basically
move into the studio
and live there, so he's up,
surely, all day and night,
figuring out the whole studio thing.
He makes some songs.
Chris Moon calls a manager and was like,
"Oh my God, you have to hear this."
The guy listens to it and
he says, "Who is this band?"
And they're "No no, it's one guy!"
Like, "What are you talking about?
"This can't be one person,"
and that leads to them
getting him a record deal.
Now, Prince chose
not the deal that would've
gotten him the most money
because he wanted the
most creative control.
- His first album wasn't a hit,
but music execs saw potential.
So Prince kept at it, and in 1979,
he released his self-titled
album, "Prince",
and as they say, the rest was history.
- The album's first single,
"I Wanna Be Your Lover"
soared on the billboard
charts, peaking at number 11,
and going to number one on the R&B chart.
At long last, Prince had arrived.
(funky upbeat music)
- What made Prince a superstar
is he could do everything.
He was a guitarist, he was a songwriter,
he was a producer, he was
an incredible performer,
every aspect of being
an amazing entertainer,
he had on lock better than
perhaps anyone in the world.
- He would walk into the studio,
sit behind a drum kit
and start playing drums.
He's playing an entire song,
just hearing himself on the drums,
and he's got all the parts
and all the breaks all worked out.
Then he'll pick up the
bass and put the bass on,
and then he'll go to the keyboards,
he'll get a vocal mic,
then he does his lead vocal
and his backing vocals,
and we worked that way, constantly.
- I love Prince, I love
Prince, I love Prince!
- Suddenly, Prince was everywhere.
His music, his lyrics, and his voice
were all the buzz of the record industry,
and so was his hypersexual style.
- Is that your man?
(fans screaming)
- [Toure] Prince wanted to be titillating.
- Tell me, baby, what, would
you consider that man fine?
(fans screaming)
- Wanted to be sexual,
he wanted to be noticed.
- Tell me, baby, does that
man have an ass like mine?
(fans screeching)
I didn't think so.
- And he wanted the world
to pay attention to him.
Pushing the envelope in terms of
how he was sexually
relating to the audience
was just so electric for him.
- In 1982, he released
his fifth album, "1999",
another smash hit.
- [Reporter] Places like Sam Goody
have seen a sudden interest in the song.
- [Caller] I'd like to request 1999, Rich.
- [Radio Jock] Well,
I can do that for you.
- [Caller] Okay!
- [Reporter] DJ Rich Davis says
they are playing the song
three or four times a day.
- A typical day in the studio for us
would often be 24 hours long.
That was fairly typical.
We'd all work together,
we'd record rehearsals,
and we'd finish that song that night.
Go to bed early in the morning,
six o'clock in the morning,
sleep for a few hours
and start all over again.
Now, some people can do
that for a day or maybe two,
even a week.
Prince did that every day.
- He loved staying up and playing
because for us it wasn't work.
We enjoyed being in the studio
and we would stay up all night.
If you're having fun, why stop?
- Prince's career is now on fire
and it absolutely exploded
in 1984 with "Purple Rain".
- [Announcer] The star of "Purple Rain,
- Oh my god!
- Please welcome,
- Oh, Prince!
- His Royal Badness, Prince!
(fans screaming)
- [Fan] Oh Prince, Prince,
Prince, I love you!
- "Purple Rain" is what
launches Prince forever
into the top level of
global elite super stardom.
It's not just that...
Well, it's partly that,
finally he's made a rock and roll album.
So now urban radio is all about it
because we love Prince
and rock radio is all about it
because we love great rock and roll,
so he's getting it all there.
MTV loves it because it's rock, he's big,
he's beautiful, these songs are great.
And of course he said,
"I need to make a movie about
myself to accompany this",
because he saw the
power of MTV right away.
- With the success of "Purple Rain",
Prince is ready to go on tour.
(upbeat music)
(fans chatter excitedly)
- These tickets are gold!
(upbeat music)
- I ain't just talking about
any old kind of temptation.
(fans scream)
I'm talking about the kind of temptation
that'll make you do things.
(fans scream)
- I thought he was absolutely spectacular.
He has this amazing energy
and this amazing feeling,
and the show went on and on.
I think he must have done over four hours.
It was stupendous,
and one of the best shows
I've ever seen in my life.
- And by then, of
course, he'd become known
for his extreme athleticism on stage.
(upbeat music)
- But for this tour,
he was about to take it
to new heights, literally.
- One of the moments on
the "Purple Rain" tour,
there's a bathtub,
and he's sort of like, you know,
performing in the bathtub,
what have you, right?
And in one of the
rehearsals, the bathtub...
The manager, Alan Leeds,
told me the story,
the bathtub fell, and Prince
took a quite long fall,
and it was painful for him
and had to go to the hospital,
and this he marks as potentially
the beginning of chronic pain.
- The bathtub incident
left Prince in a bad way,
but he carried on with the tour anyway,
with the same high voltage
energy he became known for,
wearing those platform shoes, no less,
as he suffered through the injury.
- I never had any inkling
that he was in pain.
In the over four years that I knew him,
I was with him nearly
every day of that time.
I never had any indication
that he was in any pain.
When I was with Prince,
he did not want to
admit to any weaknesses.
- There were other
performance-related injuries
over the years.
- I swear to God,
I watched him wear those
high heels every day.
Every day; I couldn't do
it, I couldn't have done it.
He wore all those high heels every day
and he never complained.
Never once.
- All of his shoes basically
looked like this, pretty much.
- [Narrator] In fact,
nearly all of Prince's
3000 pairs of shoes are identical,
with the exception of color.
Each pair had to match
the fabric and shade
of the clothes he was wearing.
- Every time he was jumping
up to do the splits,
I was holding my breath, hoping
the heel doesn't break off.
- There was clearly an
almost athletic grinding-down
of the body over many, many years.
So I mean, at the point at which
most athletes are like,
"I'm in my late 30s,
"I've lost a step, I'm going
to walk away from the game,"
Prince is not doing that,
he's still out there performing globally,
long tours all the time,
so yeah, over time, the hip,
potentially the lower back,
the knee, start to really bother him.
He's not one to complain.
He's not one to talk
about his sort of pain.
- Now many believe this was the beginning
of Prince's downward spiral
and possibly when he started
using high-powered painkillers,
all for the sake of his music
and for the sake of his fans.
(fans screaming)
- We want Prince!
We want Prince!
We want Prince!
We want Prince!
We want Prince!
- From the outside looking in,
Prince was on top of the world.
His music was killing it
and his performances were
as electric as his songs,
but internally, he was suffering,
keeping it mostly to himself.
- When a, especially a young person
is trying to figure out how
to navigate being a celebrity,
they have to create kind of
a psychic shell, a barrier,
that protects themselves,
their inner selves,
from an audience, from judgment,
and he created that psychic barrier
early in his career
and it protected him well.
You set up a barrier
between yourself and
the rest of the world,
so you can preserve that
most precious thing you have,
which is your own inner thoughts,
your own inner creativity.
But, in the world in which we live,
we are obligated to rely on other people
to solve some of our problems for us
or answer some of our questions for us.
I imagine, if you've
become so self-reliant,
that you only trust your own counsel,
you're at risk of making
some really bad decisions.
- Prince was certainly not
letting everybody around him know
how much pain he was in,
or that he was taking
medication for the pain.
He certainly was like, keeping that quiet.
So then to find out that, later in life,
he had turned to medication
to deal with chronic pain,
which had come from working
so hard to be a rockstar,
was heartbreaking and surprising,
in that, early on rejecting of drugs
the first half of his life,
like, completely rejecting of drugs,
and then the second half of his life
falling into something else.
- Years of intense physical dance moves
on top of that bathtub mishap
took its toll on Prince's body,
but he never complained about it
or said what he was
doing to mask the pain.
If you looked at him on any given day,
he seemed fine.
- Here's another thing.
Part of the reason no one suspected
Prince was on hardcore meds
is because he was a total health nut,
and opiates seemed totally contradictory
to his entire being.
- Being around Prince
made everybody else want to be healthy
because that was the example
that he set, all the time.
- For starters, he was either
a vegan or a vegetarian
for most of his life.
He believed meat eaters
were living a, quote,
"barbarian lifestyle"
and filling their bodies with bacteria.
- He was not a health nut
when I worked with him in the '80s.
He lived on Doritos,
Constant Comment tea with a
ridiculous amount of honey,
Five Alive in the morning,
fruit drink, beverage.
No, he was not a health nut.
He became one around the time of the film,
"Under the Cherry Moon".
You're aware that you're not young anymore
and if you wanna continue to look good,
you have to eat well.
But I did observe that he
changed his eating habits
in the late '80s.
- Are you, you're vegan
or you're vegetarian?
- Vegetarian.
I don't mess with no red meat though.
- No, no, no, no,
you wanna live!
- Well, somethings...
- At Paisley Park, his edicts
were strictly enforced,
no booze, no drugs,
and definitely no meat.
- There were times when
he was very serious
about being a vegetarian,
to where he wanted the
band to also be vegetarians
and people would go along
with it while he was there
and then when he wasn't there,
they'd eat whatever they wanted to.
- We were not even allowed to eat meat
inside of the building.
There's a shopping
center near Paisley Park
where we used to go Subway,
and outside of Paisley Park
there are patio table and chairs.
We had to eat it outside
and throw it away outside.
He didn't even wanna smell it.
- [Chris] I dunno how you
take care of yourself,
but I promise you,
he probably took care
of better than you do.
What he ate, like, what
he put in his body.
He would never put McDonald's,
or you're eating this,
or you're eating that.
He changed up most of the people's diets.
People who came and start work for him,
most of them became that
way, you know what I mean?
From hanging out with him.
- His strict rules weren't
just limited to his home.
When he went on tour,
he expected everybody,
everybody, to abide by them.
- [Cat] First of all,
Prince did not allow drugs
on the set, on the tour, around anyone.
No one's ever done drugs
on tour with Prince.
Period.
No one.
- It's true.
Prince was notoriously anti-drug
and it goes all the way back to his youth
when, then too,
he wouldn't touch a thing
that gave him a buzz.
- He scorned people who
took recreational drugs.
He thought that it was a
sign of weak character.
- [Chazz] All musicians experiment
and they lyin' if they say
they don't, but Prince did not.
He was 100,000,000% against
anything or everything
And he used to look at
me and go like, he said,
"Man," he said, "people
that smoke that stuff, man.
"People could sneak up on
'em and do shit to 'em."
And I was like, "That's
exactly how I'd put it"
and he'd go, "I ain't never doing that."
- Well, Prince kept up
that sobriety in stardom
and he ran a tight ship
when it came to people using drugs,
Members of The Revolution said
he wouldn't tolerate even
the smell of cigarette smoke
and get this, he supposedly
had spies on tour.
- He had people on the tour, to back up,
on our "1999" tour, he had
people observing us on the bus.
All of a sudden there
was strangers on the bus,
like, getting jokes and
learning our personality.
And you know, it was like a Big Brother
kind of a shadowing thing.
- On top of all of this,
he was devoutly religious.
Prince made it known he was a man of God.
- You certainly would not think of you
as a great believing soul.
- Well...
- [Larry] True or not?
- I don't believe that to be true.
- [Larry] Always were.
- Oh, I've always known
that God was my creator
and that without Him,
boy, nothing works.
It works to a point, and then
it just kind of deteriorates.
Entropy takes place.
- In 2003, Prince was baptized
as a Jehovah's Witness.
He regularly attended services
at a local Minnesota chapter
and even went door to door to proselytize.
He also sent members
to close friends of his
to try to get them to convert.
- He's like, "What's really
gonna help me do this,
"and for us to work
together again," is he said,
"us being brothers, we have
to be on the same page."
And he said, "I can't do this
"unless I can bring you into the religion
"unless we can pray together
"and believe, have the same
beliefs" and all of this.
And at that point,
even though my arms
are probably like this,
but my arms were crossed,
because I'm like,
"I'm not trying to do that.
"I've never understood
Jehovah's Witness enough
"to subscribe to it."
And then, after that, he
had 'em coming to my door
in Atlanta, like twice a week.
- [Interviewer] Oh, he would
send Jehovah's Witnesses...
- Oh yeah!
- To your door?
- To your door.
You know, because that's
part of their thing.
In order to be a Jehovah's witness,
you have to spread the word.
So you gotta go knocking, door to door,
and I guess he considered himself
doing it through his musical circle.
- Awards are wonderful,
but all praise and glory is
due to the true God, Jehovah.
- Prince's piety knew no bounds.
In his later years, he reigned
in his provocative image,
toned down some of his
oversexualized lyrics,
and even censored some
of his old material.
- I've evolved by the simple
fact of working on my spirit
as a human being.
I've been studying the Bible as of late,
and it's begun to play
a major role in my life
so it's going to affect
everything, especially the music,
'cause the music is so dear to me.
- [Interviewer] So
spirituality is helping you,
not only musically, but
affecting you lyrically as well?
- Yes, yes sir.
- And get this, at some point,
he even swore off swearing
and he didn't like anybody around him
using foul language either.
- I'm not using profanity
because of our connection.
- Mm-hmm.
(audience laughs)
- I have chosen to use the
word artichoke, instead.
- If I can stop swearing,
everybody can stop swearing.
(all laugh)
- I like that.
If you have a mishap in
the middle of the night,
if you kick the edge of
your bed, what do you yell?
- Artichoke.
(audience whoops)
- So now the question, how did a man
so devoted to living a
healthy, pure, God-fearing life
become a drug addict
and how did he keep it
a secret for so long?
- So Prince was living on
the straight and narrow,
but eventually, all of
this intense performing
caught up with him.
In addition to that, he was
dealing with a nagging hip
and ultimately resorted to drugs,
but it was a closely guarded secret.
Even people in his inner circle
had no idea what was going on.
- [Chris] I never saw any
signs of any addiction.
I know the signs.
I know what it looks like.
- [Detective] So you're saying
you never saw anything at all
regarding being addicted?
- [Chris] I never even saw
any drugs in his belongings.
I would have to make sure that he was up,
make sure everything was together.
When we were on the road and stuff like,
you know, wake him up, help
him get his stuff together.
I never saw anything like pill bottles,
pills, stuff like that.
If you're taking pills,
opioids, or whatever,
you're gonna be drowsy all the time,
you're gonna be like slurring your words,
but never seen any of that.
This guy had more energy
than all of us put together.
- [Detective] You've never seen anything,
you only have gotten him food.
Nothing that you've ever seen
was suspicious or strange circumstances.
- [Renville] No, that's (indistinct).
- Okay.
- Yeah, I've never seen him
take anything of that nature.
- [Andrew] Some people have even asked me
about drug use, and this and that.
And I don't know if I was
that naive at the time,
but I didn't recognize, I
didn't recognize anything.
The only thing that was a little oddball
about was the hours he kept.
He was a night owl, for sure.
- [Kim] He was always traveling.
He was always working.
He had an incredible work ethic.
I mean, he was just...
Worked like a dog.
- [Detective] You said you
didn't have any knowledge
of any use, drug use, or
anything like that by him at all?
- [Kim] No, that's why I was so shocked
when all this came out.
He was very, very meticulous
about his diet and what he ate.
So, yeah.
- But clearly, at least
some people had to know.
- Princess's ex-wife, Manuela Testolini,
actually told investigators
she knew he was using narcotic pain pills
during their marriage in the early 2000s.
- Another ex in Prince's life,
and one of his closest collaborators,
Sheila E told detectives
something similar.
Although she says she
was aware of his drug use
dating way back to the '80s.
- His ex tour manager, Theo London,
told cops a story that, in retrospect,
had all the warning signs.
- [Theo] Prince asked me once
to get him some pills for pain
and so I went out and bought some,
I guess it was Tylenol or something,
and he got very upset with me
and he said, "This isn't what I want,
"I need something stronger."
- While it's impossible to pinpoint
exactly when he got hooked, and on what,
what we do know is that, in 2009,
as his hip pain worsened,
Prince was prescribed Percocet.
This according to multiple family sources.
- I'm not blaming someone,
'cause everyone is responsible
for their own lives,
but I think it's just so
easy to just go and get
prescription drugs, that, it's scary.
- The Percocet alone
wasn't doing the trick.
In 2010, Prince finally
went under the knife
for a hip replacement,
and it was a big deal.
Fact is, this procedure usually requires
a blood transfusion,
and that's something that
Jehovah's Witnesses frown upon.
- There's some people who
talk to me about telling him,
"You should get hip surgery.
"You should get knee surgery.
"These things can alleviate your pain."
But by this point in his life,
he's a Jehovah's Witness,
they don't believe in surgery,
so that is against his beliefs.
Now, some people told me
he may have gotten the surgery anyway,
but he was struggling with
his religious principles
as well as chronic pain
that was hampering him.
- Unfortunately, it was
far too late for him
on the drug front.
He was deep down a rabbit
hole, before and after surgery,
and for him, there was no turning back.
- [Fan] Prince, huge fan, sir.
- [Man] Prince, love you, buddy.
- As we look back,
it should have been easier
to connect the dots,
to understand what was
really going on with Prince.
In 2016, just weeks before his death,
a sequence of events came together
that cost Prince his life.
- On the morning of April 7, 2016,
one of Prince's closest
friends and associates,
Kirk Johnson, was deeply concerned
about the singer's health.
We know that because he
reached out to his own doctor,
Michael Schulenberg, and
he asked for a house call
to treat Prince for numbness and nausea.
- An hour later, Schulenberg
showed up at Paisley Park
to treat him.
Schulenberg says he didn't
prescribe anything that day,
but he did tell Kirk
Prince didn't look well.
- Later that same day,
Prince canceled two shows,
something he hadn't done in 25 years.
The stated reason, a bout with the flu.
- Prince was supposed to hold
back to back performances
at the Fox tonight, at 7:00 and 10:00.
I've been in touch with theater officials.
Just about five minutes ago, they told me
they're still working on figuring out
the rescheduled date
for both of those shows.
But meanwhile, the musician's illness
is no doubt disappointing
hundreds of fans.
- The next day, April 8,
Prince called Dr. Schulenberg
to say he was feeling better,
and the two of them started talking
about a course of action
to address whatever he was dealing with.
- Now, this is where
things get interesting.
Six days later, on April 14,
Dr. Schulenberg writes a
prescription for Percocet,
not under Prince's name, though.
It was made out to Kirk Johnson.
- That same day, Prince got on a plane
to do the shows that were
canceled the week prior.
- Once again, I'd like to
apologize for the cancellation.
I was a little under the weather.
(crowd cheering)
But we're here now.
(crowd cheering)
I wanna take this time to thank you,
each and every one of you, for coming out
and enjoying this night with us.
- He performed back to back
that night, to rave reviews.
♪ Went to the doctor,
guess what he told me ♪
♪ Guess what he told me ♪
- All seemed well on the surface,
but backstage trouble was brewing.
Singer Judith Hill,
who had just started
collaborating with Prince,
was with him backstage.
She later recalled her mentor seemed off.
- Judith told investigators,
"He was saying things like
"he had done all that he was
supposed to do on Earth."
He also seemed really depressed,
which unsettled Judith.
- In the music business,
these careers are short.
If you reach the highest level of success,
realistically, you can figure on
a good five years at the
top of the music business,
but that rare air that you breathe
at the very top of the music business
is much, much shorter than
a career in acting, I think,
so he knew, this run that he had had
was ending, and now he had a
different problem to solve.
Not the problem of,
"Can I get them to believe
that I'm a great artist,"
but the problem of
"Can I get them to believe
I'm a legacy artist."
- Judith was concerned,
but she didn't know the
depth of the crisis.
Just hours later,
Prince would be at death's
door in a private jet.
- Prince's downward spiral
reached a peak in April 2016.
The blow-by-blow of those final days
demonstrates just how far
his addiction had gone
and why it might have
already been too late.
- Shortly before midnight on April 14,
right after his Atlanta shows,
Prince, Judith Hill, and Kirk Johnson
board a private plane back to Minneapolis.
- Once the plane took off,
Judith says Prince actually
became more upbeat,
but about an hour into the flight,
Prince walked to the back of the plane
and fiddled with his travel bag,
came back to his seat, and fell asleep.
Judith wasn't alarmed until she saw
water from a bottle he was holding
spilling all over the floor.
- She wakes up Kirk, who
then tries to wake up Prince,
but he's unconscious.
They alert the pilot, who
radios Air Traffic Control
telling them they need to make
an emergency landing immediately.
- [Flight Control] What's
the nature of the emergency?
What's the nature of the condition?
- [Pilot] An unresponsive passenger.
[Flight Control] Was it a
male or female passenger?
- [Pilot] Male passenger.
- Six minutes later, Prince's
plane makes a rapid dissent
and touches down in Moline, Illinois.
Paramedics are standing by and
they ask if he's on anything.
Kirk Johnson says he
may have taken Percocet.
- The medics gave Prince a dose of Narcan
right on the tarmac.
The so-called save shot
for overdose victims,
but it wasn't enough.
Prince started to convulse,
so they hit him again.
This one worked.
Prince was awake now and
rushed to the hospital.
- [News Anchor] TMZ had
reported, apparently,
that he had had some sort of
medical emergency on April 15
that forced his private jet
to make an emergency landing in Illinois.
- It's now April 15
and word has gotten out
about the emergency landing.
Prince's team spun it as
another episode with the flu.
- [News Anchor] Prince performed a concert
on Thursday night in Atlanta.
He was flying back when his private jet
had to make an unscheduled
landing in Moline, Illinois,
because he had been stricken
with what was described
as a severe bout of the flu.
He was hospitalized and then released.
- At 10:33 that morning,
Prince sends out a tweet,
quote, "I am transformed."
When doctors come to see Prince,
he tells them all he
had taken was Aspirin,
but he refuses to take any
tests to confirm what was wrong.
Privately, he tells Judith Hill
he mixed up his meds and fell asleep,
insisting he would've been fine
if it wasn't for those Narcan shots.
- Prince is obviously in denial.
Doctors want to keep him in the hospital,
but he demands to be released.
He goes home that very day
as if everything is fine,
but just six days later, he would be dead.
(tense music)
- The day after Prince was
released from the hospital,
he was eager to show
everyone all was well.
He seen out and about all over town,
riding his bike, going to record stores.
That same night, he hosts a
dance party at Paisley Park
and it would be his
last public appearance.
- By now, his inner
circle is in panic mode.
They realize Prince's addiction
is far worse than they imagined.
They need to get him help.
- On Sunday afternoon, Prince tweeted
that he was feeling rejuvenated.
- Prince's camp pumps the brakes
on scheduling more concerts
for the time being.
Kirk Johnson also reaches
out to Dr. Schulenberg
to apologize for requesting the Percocet
four days earlier, because he now realizes
Prince has a big problem.
- On the advice of his team,
Prince agrees to take some
time off from performing.
That night, he joins friends
for dinner and a movie.
He later hits up a jazz
club, a pretty normal day.
The next one, however
would be anything but.
(tense music)
The last full day Prince is alive,
his team believes they finally found
a solution for his drug use.
They contact Dr. Howard Kornfeld,
a California addiction specialist,
who they think can be Prince's savior.
- Kornfeld is known as one of the best
in the rehab business,
but he was too busy to drop everything
and fly out to Minnesota for Prince.
And this is where it
gets a little strange.
He sends his son Andrew in his place.
Andrew's not a doctor.
He's a medical school applicant
who worked in his dad's clinic.
- The plan is supposed to go like this.
Andrew will act as his dad's proxy,
make contact with Prince
and get him to a doctor in Minnesota.
- Once Prince was stable,
the next step was to
get him to the Bay area
and check him into
Kornfeld's rehab clinic.
Obviously, it didn't work out that way.
- As all these plans are in the works,
Andrew was getting ready to
take a red eye to Minnesota.
Prince is still desperate for relief.
Kirk says he was jittery and anxious.
He demanded something that
would calm his nerves.
At 5:00 PM, they headed back
to Dr. Schulenberg's office.
- This would be Prince's
last doctor's visit.
Schulenberg gives him an IV,
blood pressure meds and antihistamines.
He also sends him off with
a prescription for Valium.
but warns him, "Only use
it as a last resort."
- That instruction goes
out the window immediately.
At 5:45 in the afternoon,
they stop at a Walgreens
to get some Valium.
Surveillance video shows
Kirk going into Walgreens.
Meanwhile, we got a photo
of Prince pacing in the parking lot.
Witnesses told us he
was extremely fidgety.
Now the mystery deepens,
because they apparently left Walgreens,
but less than an hour and a half later,
Kirk returns to Walgreens to get something
and then goes back to Paisley Park.
- Around 8:00 PM, Prince heads up
to his quarters on his own.
It is the last time he'll
be seen alive by anyone.
Kirk stays downstairs to meet
with Prince's other
assistant, Meron Bekure,
to plan the next day.
- Remember Andrew Kornfeld,
the rehab doctor's son,
is set to arrive at the crack of dawn
with what the team hopes
is a life-saving Hail Mary,
a real plan of action to get
Prince detoxed and healthy.
- It was a plan that
will go down in flames.
- It's the morning of April 21, 2016.
Kirk and Meron try reaching
Prince by phone, but no luck.
Around 9:30 in the morning,
they drive to pick up Andrew at his hotel.
Then drive back to Paisley Park.
Once they're inside, Kirk
and Meron try to find Prince.
Andrew stays behind.
- They went looking for Prince,
couldn't initially find him.
They saw the staff representatives
apparently found him in
an elevator, unconscious.
One of the staff members
started screaming.
Andrew heard the screams
and went to the elevator
where he saw that Prince was unconscious.
- Prince was lying on the
floor of the elevator,
still wearing the same
clothes from the night before
and showing no signs of life.
At 9:43 AM, Andrew dials 911,
telling the operator he
fears Prince might be dead.
- [Dispatcher] Paisley
Park, 7801 Audubon Road,
person down, not breathing.
Chanhassen Chief one, 9:45.
- [Chief] Copy that.
Chanhassen Chief one, CPR started.
- [Dispatcher] 10-4, CPR started, 9:49.
- First responders rush to the scene.
They arrive within five minutes.
(horn blaring)
(siren whoops)
Just before 10 in the morning,
paramedics tried
desperately to revive him,
but it was too late.
At 10:07 AM, Prince was pronounced dead.
- 90 Minutes later, TMZ broke the news.
- Hey everybody, it is Harvey and Charles
and we have very sad news.
Prince has died.
We just broke the story on the website.
He was 57 years old.
- That triggered an absolute media frenzy.
- TMZ, that broke this story this morning,
is reporting that maybe his
death was not unexpected.
- TMZ has been around a long time
and there are a handful of stories
that just gives me pause
every time I think about them
and Prince is one of them.
- I will always remember what
it was like in this newsroom
the day we broke that story.
- I remember as we got a tip
that something bad happened to Prince.
- It was just a feeling it was true.
We had broken the story
about his overdose on the plane,
so we were aware that there were issues.
- And we made phone call after
phone call after phone call,
and the picture became clear
and it was hard to
process, but it was true.
And I remember turning
to Charles and saying,
"We have to publish this story."
and it was heart wrenching.
- On a personal note, for me,
it was the saddest story
that I've ever had to report.
And I distinctly remember,
once we confirmed it,
and double confirmed it,
triple confirmed it,
that he was indeed dead,
and I remember Harvey looking at me
and saying, "Publish it."
And I hit the button and published it.
And I walked away and I cried.
- Word spreads quickly.
Friends, family, and fans start to gather
outside the gates of Paisley Park
to mourn their idol.
Millions of others are
grieving around the world.
(melancholy music)
(uptempo music)
(people cheer and clap)
(indistinct)
- Oh my God, I was devastated.
I couldn't believe it, I'm still in shock.
I still can't believe it.
- It's just such a loss,
I can't, I'm sorry.
- Ask just about anyone,
and they'll tell you they remember
exactly where they were
when they found out Prince was gone.
- I remember so clearly,
exactly where I was when I heard the news
that Prince was gone, that he was dead.
I was driving my car and I
was listening to the radio
and I, literally, I teared up.
It was so hard to believe
and hard to fathom.
But then I also remember
people just spontaneously
coming out into the community
in downtown Minneapolis,
outside of the iconic First Avenue,
and gathering together.
Literally thousands of people
and singing "Purple Rain" and
"Nothing Compares To You".
♪ Purple Rain, Purple Rain ♪
- [Senator] And you just got a sense
of how much he touched people.
- I was in Detroit, giving a
speech about one of my books
and I looked at my phone and it had,
the number of texts and calls
was far higher than I'd ever seen.
There's all these people in
front of me who were like,
"Sign your book, say hi to me."
And then, and I'm going
through all these people,
and one of them said, "Prince died."
And I was like, "Get the fuck outta here,
"Prince didn't die."
And then I look at my phone
and the numbers were absurdly
high, texts and calls.
And then I looked at this woman
and she's like, "No, he
really died, this is real."
And I'm like, "Oh my God."
And I get out of the hall
where all the people were
and all these calls are coming in.
"Come on this show!"
"Talk to this interviewer," whatever.
And it was...
Quite heavy, sort of like,
I have to help other
people put this in context.
- As the bombshell news is processed,
it's not long before there's talk
about a possible overdose,
especially after TMZ reported
that he had suffered one
on the plane ride back from Atlanta.
Even then, many were skeptical.
- Breaking tonight, TMZ reports
that legendary singer songwriter Prince
may have received treatment
for a drug overdose
just six days before
his death this morning.
- [News Anchor] Prince's
representatives will only say
that he'd been suffering
flu for several weeks.
We know that, two weeks ago,
Prince also cited the flu
as the reason for
canceling a couple of shows
from his "Piano and a Microphone" tour
and the official explanation
as to why his plane
had to make an emergency
landing in Moline, Illinois
is because Prince was
suffering severe dehydration.
Clearly, TMZ is not
buying that explanation.
- That has not been independently
confirmed by Fox News.
That is TMZ reporting.
They are also the ones who broke
the accurate news this
morning of Prince's death.
- Meanwhile, the investigation
into Prince's death
gets underway.
- Because this was an unwitnessed death
of a middle-aged adult,
the decision was made
to process the scene.
- Detective's interview members
of Prince's inner circle
and a common theme emerges.
Just about everyone on his staff claims
they had no idea Prince
was hooked on pain meds.
- [Renville] I was very surprised-
- [Detective] Okay.
- [Renville] That, you
know, he was on any of that
because, like I said, he leaves
it all on the stage, right?
He gives his all.
- Two years later,
officials announced what they'd found,
and it was shocking.
- The investigation has
determined the following.
On April 21, 2016, Prince died
from an overdose of Fentanyl.
Fentanyl is a very
powerful synthetic opioid
that is 30 to 50 times
more potent than heroin
and 50 to 100 times more
potent than morphine.
- The details were almost
too incredible to believe.
There were more than a hundred pills
scattered throughout the house,
in bottles that had nothing to
do with the pills themselves.
There might be a pill
in an Aspirin bottle,
not an Aspirin, and so on.
- But investigators zeroed
in on dozens of pills
that were stamped with
the code Watson 853,
a common identifier of Vicodin.
- 15 of the prescription pills
that had the Watson 853 imprint on it
were located in Prince's dressing room.
Another 64 and a half of these pills
were located inside a (audio skips) bottle
and 20 and a half pills
were located inside an Aleve bottle
on the nightstand next to Prince's bed.
Another loose pill was
located in Prince's bed.
Law enforcement found numerous pills
throughout his residence at Paisley Park
and some of the pills had
Lidocaine and other agents
and then other pills in the
same bottle had Fentanyl.
- But then, a stunning revelation.
Those Vicodin pills were
counterfeit and laced.
- Representative samples
taken from Paisley Park
of the counterfeit Vicodin pills
tested positive for Fentanyl.
He got the Vicodin pills
probably through the internet
and it was laced with Fentanyl,
and so people are playing Russian roulette
if they're getting drugs
that are not prescribed by a physician
and it's on the street.
- As Carver County made clear as day,
most of Prince's Vicodin
was essentially poisoned with Fentanyl,
which is up to 50 times
more powerful than morphine.
But the question remained,
where did Prince get them?
And did he know they contained Fentanyl?
- Nothing in the evidence suggests
that Prince knowingly ingested Fentanyl.
In addition, there is no evidence
that any person associated with Prince
knew Prince possessed
any counterfeit pills
containing Fentanyl.
In all likelihood, Prince had no idea
he was taking a counterfeit
pill that could kill him.
Prince didn't think that
he was taking Fentanyl,
from the evidence that we had.
We don't believe that he knew
that the Vicodin he sought out and took
was laced with Fentanyl.
It was a counterfeit pill.
- In addition to the laced Vicodin pills,
there were more meds found.
Nearly all of them were prescribed
to someone other than Prince,
including Kirk Johnson,
but officials insist
those weren't the ones
that led to his death.
It was all about the Fentanyl.
- In light of all this information,
authorities decided not to prosecute
anybody over Prince's death.
They just couldn't pin it on anyone.
The criminal investigation
into Prince's death
lasted two years.
In the end, no one was prosecuted
because the culprits
just proved too elusive.
- We ultimately determined that
there wasn't evidence to
charge anybody in that case,
based upon an exhaustive and
painstaking investigation
by multiple jurisdictions.
There is no evidence
that the pill or pills
that actually killed Prince
were prescribed by a doctor.
There is also no evidence to suggest
any other sinister motive,
intent, or conspiracy to murder Prince.
There is no doubt that the actions
of individuals around
Prince will be criticized,
questioned, and judged in
the days and weeks to come.
But suspicions and innuendo
are categorically insufficient
to support any criminal charges.
In making the determination
that no one would be criminally charged,
that was based upon the evidence
and that, after this exhaustive
and thorough investigation,
that law enforcement was
never able to determine
where these counterfeit pills came from.
- Dr. Schulenberg was really the only one
who suffered consequences.
He paid a $30,000 fine to the feds
for his shadow prescriptions,
and an additional $4,600 to
the Minnesota Medical Board
for unethical conduct and
mismanaging medical records.
- Some of the people closest to Prince
shut down any questions
about accountability.
- Is there anything that you
wish you had done personally
to stop his drug use?
(chuckles)
- Oh my goodness.
Next.
- You don't feel like people enabled him?
- Next.
- Opioid addiction is such a big
topic of conversation.
- Next.
- Prince's family filed
a wrongful death lawsuit
against Walgreens, against Moline Hospital
where he had been
treated six days earlier,
and against Dr. Schulenberg.
- This morning, the family of Prince
is suing the star's former doctor
and several healthcare groups.
Six of Prince's brothers and sisters
filed a wrongful death lawsuit
against Dr. Michael
Schulenberg and Walgreens.
The family claims all of
the defendants had a chance,
but failed to diagnose and help Prince
with his opioid addiction before he died.
- All of these cases were dropped.
That is an indication they settled.
- While the family may have come to terms
with Prince's death, many of his fans,
even six years, later have not.
Prince just didn't fit
the traditional narrative
of a rock star who ODs.
His drug addiction came from
an unwavering commitment
to perform for all of us,
so there's something
tragically poetic here.
- Yeah, it could be somebody
that's as famous as Prince
and, on the outside, had this appearance
of living a very healthy life,
and he's not your typical drug addict
that you would say, "Well,
he's shooting up heroin."
He was using painkillers and medication
to treat his injuries and to
treat the pain that he was in.
- But this is not about rockstar hedonism.
It's not about cocaine
or these sort of things
that we hear about rock stars doing.
This is about doing like opioids,
like the drugs that guys
who work at the plant
or women who are nurses
or waitresses or whatever,
people who have chronic pain,
but need to get up to go
work at UPS or whatever,
are taking so that they can keep going.
And he was in chronic pain,
but needed to keep going
because music and
performing was all he had.
That's the only way he had
of interacting with other people.
So he's taking these sort of drugs
so that he can get up and go perform
and interact with people that way.
That was his entire identity.
So that's sort of the tragedy of it,
that he's not taking drugs to
have trippy fun experiences.
He's taking drugs so that
he can get up and work,
just like so many Americans.
- But my strong hunch
is that Prince never took pain medicine
for recreational purposes.
It seems highly likely
that Prince was taking drugs
in order to manage pain,
severe physical pain,
pain that he may have not been willing
to fully disclose to
the people close to him.
I've talked with quite a few
folks from my Prince days,
and it seems a little bit to me
like looking at a blank
screen with just a few pixels.
So you see these dots,
you get these dots of information;
a technician observed this,
a girlfriend observed that,
a band member observed this,
an operations manager observed that,
we all observed different aspects,
fleeting aspects of a very
complex person's life.
He was incredibly private.
There were things going on that
were beyond anyone's reach.
- And yet, Princess's legacy will hold up
as one of the most fondly
remembered in music.
Fact is, he'd left his mark in this world.
- Prince's death was
one of the most shocking
of the 21st century, partly
because he was so beloved
and partly because what happened to him
was the exact opposite of his image.
- Even Prince's incredible
Super Bowl performance
was memorialized by none
other than Justin Timberlake,
who honored the late legend.
- Bottom line, the guy
was, without a doubt,
idolized by his fans and
contemporaries alike.
He just had that shine about him.
And it's this memory of Prince's life
that stands in sharp contrast
to the dark reality of his death.
- You could say it was a
classic case of a double life.
On the surface, Prince was colorful,
flamboyant, and seemingly
clean as a whistle,
but underneath lurked a dark addiction,
one that had been simmering for decades.
- I didn't have a clue,
and if I had had a clue,
I'd like to think he might
still be with us today.
I could have talked to him.
I could have addressed
his issues in another way,
or in a way that would've been...
Healthier, for him.
I would've definitely tried.
I mean, it still affects me.
I'm still affected.
I still miss him very much.
Well, what can I say?
I still really, really, really miss him.
I just pray that he's happy.
I hope and pray that
he's happy and at peace.
- It almost like, doesn't really compute,
like, Prince dying, because
the notion of Prince
is so large and the music is so timeless.
His body is not with us anymore
and there's no new music,
but like there's so much of him
that still exists to this day,
that it's like there is so
much of him that is with us.
- I think it's highly likely
that that private shell
got harder as he got older.
So I would assume
that, later in Prince's life,
he found himself
perhaps more isolated
from other, than he had ever been before.
That's an assumption.
I think there's always the possibility
and other Prince colleagues
and I have talked about this,
that Prince knew exactly
what was waiting for him
at the end of the road he was on
and that he chose to travel that road.
I think there's a possibility
because I knew a man
who was always in control
of his own decisions
that maybe he knew
exactly what he was doing
when he was using pain medication,
when he knew he was in
deep trouble with it,
he may have just opted to
continue and go forward.
- Prince was just one of
tens of thousands of people
who die from Fentanyl
overdoses every year.
But his death was so shocking,
it opened the eyes of America.
- It was shocking for people that knew him
and certainly for his fans,
that the drug addiction
oftentimes is so hidden
and that the public health
officials have indicated
that the way to address this
is to start with the premise
that no one is safe.
And what I mean by that is
that this can affect anybody.
If Prince can die from a drug overdose,
with his belief system and
his focus on his health,
then certainly anybody can be affected
and die from a drug overdose.
- Hopefully there are
lessons to be learned here.
If you're struggling,
don't suffer in silence.
Reach out for help.
If only Prince had done so,
he might still be here today.
- He was in the grip of addiction.
If anything, we could blame addiction
and the struggle that we have as a society
of dealing with that, the
stigma that we place to that,
which makes a lot of people say,
"I don't want to tell people.
"I don't want people to know.
"I don't want to deal with it."
I mean, there's other diseases
that are okay for us to deal with.
Addiction is a sign of
weakness, supposedly,
and it's a failure, supposedly,
and it's not, it's a disease.
But the addict is not going
to be able to be saved
until they are ready to be saved.
- Despite his fortune and fame,
Prince sadly became yet another statistic.
He was one of 42,000 people in the U.S.
who died of an opioid overdose in 2016.
If nothing else, his death highlighted
this profound problem
which persists today.
- The opioid crisis has been said
by public health professionals
as the greatest drug crisis
we've had in America.
I think in connecting
this with the Prince case,
if I could, is that perhaps
shined the brightest light
on the tragedy.
He was so beloved on a
national, on a world level.
- There still exists in this country,
deep stigma around
addiction and mental health
and it makes it that much more difficult
for people to admit that
they have a problem,
for people to go and get
the care that they need.
But it's also important to
see individuals like Prince,
so gifted, such a complex person,
in their full complexity
and not to just see him as
a two-dimensional character,
What ended up taking his
life, at the end of his life,
this terrible addiction is
certainly part of his story,
but I don't think it
overshadows his genius
and the love that so
many millions of people,
especially people in
Minnesota, feel for him.
- Prince Rogers Nelson, a trailblazer,
a beloved figure to millions.
In the end, he was, just
like all of us, imperfect.
(dramatic hammering)
(sonic whooshing)
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