Alex Hahn's _Possessed_, aka the new Prince bio

Okay, I'm pretty sure somebody -- Michelangelo? -- had mentioned this before but I can't seem to find a thread on this yet, so anyway. Picked up a promo galley copy of this over the weekend and already ripped through it. My thoughts in brief -- really needed a better editor, there's a lot of redundant or repetitive bits that could have been easily trimmed or combined. Hahn is also no stylist -- the writing is competent at best but not distinct. Finally, a fair amount of the Prince mafia past and present refused to talk on the record or at all, including Wendy and Lisa, Morris Day, Sheila E., Mo Ostin, Albert Fargnoli, Vanity, Carmen Electra -- and nobody could even find Andre Cymone or Tony Mosley (in the latter case, I think that's a very good thing, frankly). Until someone can pull that together -- assuming Prince himself never accedes to a biography project, a pretty good assumption -- the interviews Hahn and Uptown's Per Nilsen did with all the folks they did get, and it's pretty thorough (Alan Leeds is on board at least), will have to do.

But that all said, a must read for the serious Prince fanatic and pretty well necessary reading for students of the pop rise-crash-burn cycle. Lots of stuff I had half heard about or knew the general outlines of, but it was good to get at least as straightforward a description as could be hoped for. Plenty of things to say about all the various side projects and efforts in the eighties -- one of the funnier bits is Prince saying about the Family's hoped for success, "We've got to get some of that Duran Duran money." Not afraid to take specific and clear stances on the worth of certain albums and songs though at the same time those stances are fairly conventional, but Hahn is able to make a specific case for Prince willfully limiting his range and study of influences that I think holds water in general (but not specifically -- I know Dan and I alone will have things to say about Hahn's outright dismissal of Come). Some genuinely unsettling stories, a couple of horrifying ones, and one in particular -- about Prince and Mayte's child and its death within a week, followed soon after by a video shoot for "Betcha By Golly Wow!" -- that's nightmare fuel. And for all the criticism, personal and otherwise, a clear recognition from a fan's point of view that Prince was some kinda genius and still is for many.

Anyone else tackled it? Yer thoughts?