The reclusive singer opens up for the first time about his childhood seizures

What prompted the flashy, eccentric persona that helped make Prince a king of the music world? The singer reveals he was compensating for a painful childhood struggle with epilepsy.

“I’ve never spoken about this before but I was born epileptic,” the reclusive singer told PBS’s Tavis Smiley in an interview Monday night. “I used to have seizures when I was young. My mother and father didn’t know what to do or how to handle it but they did the best they could with what little they had.”

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Prince also cites divine intervention for helping him cope with his epilepsy. “My mother told me one day I walked in to her and said, ‘Mom, I’m not going to be sick anymore,’ and she said ‘Why?’ and I said ‘Because an angel told me so.’ Now, I don’t remember saying it, that’s just what she told me.”

But his struggle didn’t end there. “From that point on, I’ve been having to deal with a lot of things, getting teased a lot in school,” he said. “And early in my career I tried to compensate by being as flashy as I could and as noisy as I could.”