Completed in 1987, Paisley Park was Prince’s creative sanctuary: a place for him to write, record, eat, sleep - if he ever did - and perform. It also housed his famous ‘vault’ of unreleased music and was, tragically, the place that he died.
Now, as well as being a museum, Paisley Park is also a functioning studio that other artists can record in, and one of those who has stepped over the purple threshold is one Jack Antonoff.
While having his music knowledge tested on the Track Star YouTube show, the musician and many-times hit record producer revealed that he and his band, Bleachers, spent some time at Paisley Park recording their latest album, and it seems that the place left quite an impression.
“We made some of this last Bleachers record at Paisley Park - man, the place that he built as his home, it’s so deranged,” he reports. “Like, weird drop ceilings, this fake diner you could have dinner in. because it’s so divorced from anyone else’s version of interesting but his own.”
To say that Prince put his own stamp on Paisley Park is something of an understatement. From the outside, it looks like a massive branch of IKEA, but a New Yorker article from 2018 indicates that, once inside, visitors are greeted by caged white doves and - gulp - Prince’s ashes in a Paisley Park-shaped urn.
There are exhibits, scented candles (obviously) and evidence of Prince’s hobbies in the form of a ping-pong table - on which he’s said to have trounced Michael Jackson - and a basketball court.
And then there are the four recording studios and 12,500 foot soundstage. Since Prince’s death, in 2016, a variety of artists have used these facilities, including Beck, and, appropriately, Prince’s fellow Minneapolitan funkster, Cory Wong.
Paisley Park isn’t the only Prince-themed tourist attraction in the Minneapolis area. Earlier this year, Airbnb gave fans the chance to stay in the house that served as the star’s troubled home in his 1984 movie, Purple Rain. ‘Hosted’ by his Revolution bandmates Wendy and Lisa, it’s stuffed with memorabilia, instruments and even a ‘secret room’ that guests have to discover for themselves.
