Cymone: In private, you couldn't shut him up. But in public… You know, it became a thing about mystique, and not that I'm trying to debunk, but I think it was really an honest reality. You know, let the music do the talking. Let the performance do the talking. And so it wasn't like, "Oh, I'm gonna create this mystique," like it was that calculated. I think it was a natural metamorphosis, a natural sort of evolutionary thing.

Still, an early indication of how things would evolve: In Prince's 1979 appearance on American Bandstand, by far his biggest media exposure to that point, he fielded Dick Clark's questions with obstructively brief and uninformative—and sometimes even non-verbal—responses.

Dickerson: Totally calculated. We knew when one of those cornerstone moments was coming—it was a look he would get on his face. He called us to order in that band meeting when Dick Clark had just left the greenroom, and he had that look on his face, and he said, "I got it—here's what we're gonna do: When he talks to you, don't say a word." It was uncomfortable, watching Dick and Prince kinda go back and forth, watching him handle something that was obviously a pitch he'd never been thrown before. The answer that was given was so pared down that there's nothing to piggyback on. Excruciatingly uncomfortable.

In 1982, as his fame began to grow, Prince stopped giving interviews. His only extended interview for the remainder of the decade was with Rolling Stone in 1985.

Karlen: Wendy and Lisa talked to him and said he should talk to me because I was a Minneapolis guy. My parents went to the same junior high as he did. He [told] Rolling Stone, "I'll only talk to him." I remember my mother saying, "Some guy named The Prince called, and I hung up because I was talking to your aunt Cheryl." He thought it was hilarious: "Your mother hung up on me!" It was just us driving around for three days. At his house, he said, "You know how easy it would've been to just change 'Let's Go Crazy' a note and make a new song and it would be a hit?" I said, "Oh really? Show me." So he sat me down at the piano, took "Let's Go Crazy" and came up with this great song. After, I got a letter: "Thanks for telling the truth."

A few years later, Prince resumed giving occasional press interviews, though until the end of his life he insisted that these not be recorded and for many years forbade even the taking of notes.

Pagnotta: He didn't really care if you misquoted him—he just didn't want you writing anything down. For whatever reason, it was his thing. That was a situation that he wanted complete control over. I think he realized that he could get a lot more mileage out of the mystery play than you could out of saying anything—I don't necessarily think he thought he had anything to say that could match his music.

Karlen: [Asked to write a second Rolling Stone cover story in 1990, Karlen was the first to run into these new statutes] I was gonna cut a hole in my pants, hide a tape recorder in the crotch. First of all, it didn't work very well—because I tried—but also it was just too sleazy. So I lied—I feigned a bladder infection. We were in a hotel room. All he had was tea, Doritos, and Diet Coke, and I swilled Diet Cokes and I would run to the bathroom literally after three minutes and write on toilet paper. My hair was really long and I had really curly hair and I always kept a pen behind my ear back then. I knew I could do two and a half to three minutes of conversation verbatim. I did this, like, 15 times in six hours. You can get a lot of toilet paper in four pockets. He must have known, because no one has to pee every three minutes.

How Prince Set Me Free He was our Bach. He was our Beethoven. And he was, in every way, my icon.

Pagnotta: As I recall, the goal was not to have very much contact with Prince. Because if you had to have contact with Prince, there was probably something wrong. One of the strangest things I remember: We were in Australia and the show was over, and I'm walking down the hallway and behind me I hear this voice saying, "Get your pen and paper!" I was, "Okay." "Meet me in the dressing room." And I'm [thinking], I'm fired. I'm in his dressing room, and he's got all of his Prince stuff—his gold statues, the incense, the candles, the caftans, and interestingly enough, a couch with a kind of broken seat so that you would be much shorter than you would ordinarily be on a couch. That's where I was told to sit. And Prince comes in and he doesn't really say anything, but he's kinda walking around in a circle and doing his Prince shit—like, going from one leg to the next, almost like a shuffle. Like a pendulum. And he would spin. I don't know what he was doing. Almost like a bird might do some kind of intimidation dance. But maybe he was just thinking of what he was going to say. I'm just like, "Holy shit, what the fuck is going on here?" And he said to me, "How many T-shirts did we sell tonight?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "How many programs did we sell tonight?" I said, "Prince, I don't know—you know, I'm not sure if you know this, but I don't do merchandising for you, I do publicity for you." He said, "You trying to tell me that's not your job?" And I'm like, "Holy shit, is Prince scolding me? Is Prince yelling at me?" Like, how fucking cool is this? But it was cool and scary at the same time. I'm thinking: "Why is this guy chewing me out? Doesn't he know what a great job I've done for him? Doesn't he know where he was two years ago, and look where he fucking is now? He's on the cover of every magazine and doesn't have to talk to a fucking soul!" [Also] I couldn't really get at what the issue was. But once I left the dressing room and I stopped kind of shaking, I thought, "Okay, what he's trying to tell me is that everything is my job—whoever's working with him and around him has to understand that everything's their job." What Prince was trying to say was "Look, if you're here, you're capable, right? If you're capable, you're responsible. And if you're responsible, you better fucking do the job, whatever that job is, and it may change."