I praised Alex Hahn’s Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince without remembering to mention its flaws. Considering the book is a Billboard imprint, the lack of attention to detail on matters outside of, or peripheral to Prince is unforgivable. The author’s assertion that Elvis Costello had his only artistic and commercial peak with My Aim Is True is not a very sound position. Even on matters tangential to Prince, some details are missing: Hahn neglects to mention Carole Davis’ career as an actress, relevant since, according to both Kurt Loder and the press release for her second LP, she turned down the female lead in Purple Rain. Several errors in discography—Elisa Fiorillo’s second album was not a Paisley Park or even a Warner Bros. release, for example—are indicative that Possessed was not adequately researched beyond the storytelling level. The contribution of Jill Jones, one of the two most significant Paisley Park signings, is slighted.

None of this diminishes the narrative strengths of the book. For simply naming the date and time when Prince turned (1 December 1987, the date of a bad ecstasy trip which resulted in the abrupt cancellation of The Black Album), Hahn deserves much credit.

The XTC cardboard sleeve reissues are coming out again (from 30 September).

This is unbelievably cute and must be seen repeatedly. Aww.

The story now being told is that Fiona Apple was herself responsible for holding back her LP Extraordinary Machine, not Epic or Sony, because she wasn’t happy with Jon Brion’s production. Only “Extraordinary Machine” and “Waltz” survive; she did a Smiley Smile with the rest. A single, “O, Sailor” and “Parting Gift”, appears on iTunes tomorrow, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a point.

During 1985-1987, when the 1980s started to slowly recover from being the 1980s, Prince was so driven by quality it was inspiring. It was easy to admire him. Like too few of his admirers, I was disappointed when his inventive nature gave way to cultish behaviour. His actions spoke truer than anyone knew, including himself, when he scrawled the word “slave” on his cheek.

After Alex Hahn’s Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince was published, Prince staged another comeback, already forgotten, although his stature as a live performer is apparently much repaired if stories about his finances are to be believed. The book is chilling, and in spite of some kneejerk criticisms, I found the premise to be completely sound: you can draw a line between Prince’s ascent and the moment he threw it all away; the rest was all a steep decline.

Overkill spoiled aspects of his personna that were once tolerable, like the successive denials of obvious affairs, cute at first, then simply tiresome. (If irrelevant, why draw the attention in the first place?) Imploding his group The Revolution should have been a more costly error, but too many of the converted were unwilling to be discerning. Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman never recovered the momentum of Dream Factory; ultimately, they disappointed too. (From psychedelia to the 70s is always a crushing drop.) The establishment of the new order in the form of the New Power Generation was the last straw in that enforced “positivity” became symptomatic of brainwashing. Prince’s bizarre repression of feelings he deemed “negative” cast a perennial sunshine day that bleached away all of the contrast that made the work of his most productive period so evocative. Without direction or substance, and without the cross-pollinisation that enabled the Revolution period, Prince withered. The too-public dissatisfaction with Warner Bros. proved simply a distraction from the actual issue; once the contract elapsed, his productivity plummeted and years began to elapse between releases. There was a time when Prince was known for more than discovering Carmen Electra. Possessed establishes when and how he got lost.