Susan Rogers on meeting Prince for the first time
'He was a man who didn't waste words so he didn't even introduce himself to me,' the sound engineer says.
Susan Rogers spent a week inside Prince's home before ever meeting the famously private musician.
Rogers, a sound engineer, was hired to install a new console in Prince's home studio at Paisley Park. The whole time she could hear Prince practising what would become Purple Rain, released in 1984, but didn't actually meet him until what was supposed to be her last day.
"I moved to Minneapolis and spent a week in his home studio by myself," she remembers. "It's a home studio, meaning it's a bedroom in his house, so right outside the door of this bedroom was the hallway and there was his master bedroom, and in between the two was a long staircase. Right above me was where his piano was and I could hear him playing. I could hear him dancing because he was getting ready for Purple Rain."
When she was done installing the console, she called her boss and let her know there was nothing left to do. At that point, Prince finally came downstairs to meet her.
"He was always very short, he was a man who didn't waste words — I'm not talking about his stature — so he didn't even introduce himself to me," she said.
After going through a checklist of items, he asked her to come back the next day.
"Then he turned around to leave and I thought, 'This just doesn't feel right. I've moved 2,300 miles and I've left everyone I've ever known. I can't let it start this way,'" she remembers. "So I stopped him and said, 'Hey Prince,' and he turned around and then I stuck out my hand very formally, looked at him in the eye and said, 'I'm Susan Rogers.' He looked like he wanted to laugh — I would come to know that face very well — and was touched by the stuffy yet awkward formality of it.
"He stuck his hand out and said, 'I'm Prince.' We shook hands and did this little bow. I think of of it now as the equivalent of a dog's bow, but it was an important signal. It said, 'Everything after this is going to go like this, agreed?' It just felt important to me that he knew my name."
She was right. Rogers went on to engineer Purple Rain, as well as 10 other projects from Prince over the next two decades, including Sign O' the Times, widely considered one of his best albums.
It just goes to show, if you're ever lucky enough to meet one of your heroes, be sure to introduce yourself.
For more from Rogers and her time with Prince, be sure to tune into q Wednesday morning.
