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Trump Act; Remembering Prince. Aired 15-15:30p ET

Aired April 22, 2016 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[15:00:14]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Just have to keep playing his music today.

You are watching CNN. Thank you so much for being with me on this Friday afternoon. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We begin this hour on the life and legacy of Prince, his purple highness being magnified and celebrated the world over. I can tell you as far as the investigation goes, we have now learned his autopsy is officially complete. We are waiting for the first news conference about his death. That should begin moments from now. We will take that live.

But while we wait for that, I want you to just look at some of the front pages of newspapers here, Prince gracing the cover, the world over. The memorials, they're growing by the hour, the flowers, photos blanketing his home, Paisley Park. Watching now as the world has turned purple.

And look at this. Want to show you cover of "The New Yorker" raining purple. Even the president of the United States today speaking in London, how he honored Prince's memory.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I love Prince because he put out great music and he was a great performer. I didn't know him well.

He came to perform at the White House last year and was extraordinary and creative and original and full of energy. And so it's a remarkable loss. And I'm staying at Winfield House, the U.S. ambassador's residence. It so happens our ambassador has a turntable, and so this morning we played "Purple Rain" and "Delirious" just to get warmed up before we left the house for important bilateral meetings like this.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: How about that? The president jamming to Prince this morning. Stephanie Elam is there outside of Prince's Paisley Park estate with

more on the investigation with the stream of fans and purple balloons there behind you. We know, Stephanie, the autopsy is complete. When do you think we will know details?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's not going to be soon enough for anyone who really wants to know. I can tell you that, Brooke.

It's four hours' long, this autopsy today, but the results of this testing and the toxicology results -- and this is in any case, it's not just specific to Prince. It will take probably a couple of weeks before we will hear the results of that. We still won't know why, which doesn't help anyone here, but still what is helping people, Brooke -- and take a look behind me.

Take a look at the number of people coming out here just coming out to pay respects for Prince. What I have been struck by is the fact that the people that are coming out here are so diverse. You see people from all generations. You see people wearing purple. You see kids out here with their parents. You're seeing people from all walks of life. You're seeing people representing different races and different colors and different creeds and when's so wonderful about music. Right?

It's the great unifier. It's a language we can understand and feel no matter what language we actually speak. And that's what Prince's gift was to the world. And that's what these folks are coming out here to recognize and remember, Border Patrol

BALDWIN: Didn't pack any purple in my suitcases. I'm here in Atlanta, in else I would have donned the purple myself today. Stephanie Elam, thank you so much.

Again, we are watching and waiting for a news conference. This is the first in the wake of the 57-year-old's death.

Birds of a feather flock together and sometimes geniuses like to jam together. Watch Prince do his thing with the legendary James Brown and late king of pop, Michael Jackson. Michael told the godfather to bring Prince on stage. This was back in the early '80s.

[15:05:15]

Let's bring in now "Rolling Stone" contributing editor and Prince biographer Alan Light. He wrote "Let's Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain. And back with us, W. Kamau Bell.

Welcome to both of you.

Alan, to you first.

We know that Prince in the last, what, couple of weeks, couple of months has been putting on the solo shows, just of him, piano. He was here in Atlanta last week, did a late-night Saturday performance, "Paisley Park After Dark," looking strong. Playing amazingly. Told a fan apparently on Saturday, save your prayers for me at least for a couple of days.

What do you think has been going on these last few weeks with him?

ALAN LIGHT, AUTHOR, "LET'S GO CRAZY": Well, I don't know.

I mean, I know the same information we all have, that there were a couple of canceled shows, that this -- that his plane had to make an emergency stop coming back from those Atlanta dates. But, as you know, we hear rumors and stories about these kinds of celebrities all the time.

We're always hearing that people like this are sick, they're dying, there's some terrible thing. And when he resurfaced over the weekend, he was riding his bike around Minneapolis. There were photos of that. He showed up at Paisley Park for this party over the weekend. You know, I think we all sort of thought, OK, that was not a big deal and I guess he will be OK.

So, now we just wait and like everyone else see what the autopsy tells us and see if we can make any sense out of this.

BALDWIN: We have been talking so much obviously about his music, his sense of humor, his perfectionism when it came to his work, the vault, the catalog that the world doesn't even know.

But, Kamau, I know you want to talk about Prince and how he embraced his blackness.

W. KAMAU BELL, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: There's that side of Prince too is that he's known for boundary crossing and genre busting and everybody can like Prince.

But he also is an African-American man, and as an African-American, he showed that you can define your own version of blackness and that in through reaching all across all the races and the other genres, he was still very clearly a black man. And that was a great example for black people because there's often sometimes black people, we feel like we have to be in a box or black a certain way, and Prince said, no, you can define your blackness. And for me that's a very powerful lesson to have learned.

BALDWIN: And staying on that, I was talking to a writer last hour who said and he was a black man who wore makeup and who, you know, probably could walk in heels better than I can, and women were falling all over for him.

BELL: And it made a lot of really manly men start to wear heels and makeup.

(LAUGHTER)

BELL: That's a -- you know, think about the lines from "Controversy." "Am I straight or gay? Am I black or white? Do I believe in God or do I believe in me?"

He's saying, I'm here for everybody and I'm going to try a little bit of it all while I'm here.

LIGHT: And he really understood also, Brooke, the power of mystery, the power of secrecy, the power of maintaining an aura and not turning over all your cards and revealing everything about yourself.

We live in a world where everybody Instagrams every cup of coffee they have, and this was a guy who knew that, you know, one way to be sure you're not overexposed and that people don't get sick of you is to make sure they're still asking questions, they're still curious. They still want to try and figure out who you are and what you're all about.

BALDWIN: Alan, I'm a bit of a music nerd and I'm also a Fleetwood Mac fan and I didn't realize the backstory on "Purple Rain" -- and I would love to have you chime in if you can -- that apparently Prince and Stevie Nicks became friends because he played synthesizer on her hit "Stand Back."

LIGHT: That is correct.

BALDWIN: Then he sent her an instrumental track and said, listen, I want you to write some lyrics. She passed, said it was too long, too anthemy. And he decided to give it a crack and that instrumental became "Purple Rain."

LIGHT: That is all true and all told in my book. Yes. He and Stevie Nicks had this friendship.

When he wrote "Purple Rain," he was trying to write a ballad like a Bob Seger ballad, a big stadium, arena rock, raise your lighters power ballad.

BALDWIN: Wow.

LIGHT: And he wrote this melody and he sent it to Stevie Nicks and said maybe you want to write something. And she said she listened to it, and it was just -- it was too big, it was too much, it was his, and she sent it back and said you are going to have to handle this one.

And what came out of that was "Purple Rain."

BELL: And Bob Seger's biggest hit song.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: Tell me, Alan, tell me one more story.

LIGHT: Tell you one more story?

I think the great thing to me is the version of "Purple Rain" we know from the album, from the hit, the one that is burned in our brain, that was the very first time that he played that song on a stage. And it was the very first show that Wendy Melvoin was his new guitar player. Think about, as a band leader, as a disciplinarian, what it is to get your band in such great shape that the first time they go out and play a song like that, the first time they put it on stage, they play the perfect, definitive version.

If you go and listen to the, you know, the bootlegs of that show in 1983, you recognize all of the things that are in the version that's released, that got edited, there's a verse out, the guitar solo got cut down a little bit, but it is -- nothing else was touched from that recording.

[15:10:05]

The idea that you could nail something that hard first time out, I think, tells you the way that he approached the music and the way that he approached leading a band.

BALDWIN: I could hear everyone right now clicking and trying to Google and finding the bootlegs of which you speak.

(CROSSTALK)

LIGHT: YouTube, he would always pull it down a couple hours after it went up, because he doesn't leave stuff up there, but maybe today it's not as diligent. I don't know.

BALDWIN: Well, on "Purple Rain," let's ask about Mrs. W. Kamau Bell, because I understand this played kind of the role in your courtship.

BELL: Well, yes.

When I met my wife, she was a little bit younger than me and so she had missed the "Purple Rain" thing. It was something that came out for her when she was a little kid. And so part of our getting to know each other was, like, we're not going to date unless you watch "Purple Rain" and you're going to have to at least lie about loving it, because otherwise it's going to be a problem.

And we talked about this last night on the phone. She is at home and I'm here in New York and we talked over the phone in bed about how that was one of the defining moments of our early courtship was my passion for "Purple Rain" and her adopting it into our family.

LIGHT: Prince a big part of my -- beginning my relationship with my wife, too. Now, she was a big Prince fan. She saw him even before I did, but by the time we got together, going deep into those Prince records was a big part of what got us started down the right path, too.

BALDWIN: It's incredible. I love it. Your "Purple Rain" is my "The Last Waltz," but I can relate all the same.

Kamau Bell and Alan Light, thank you so much.

And please watch the premier of Kamau's show. It's called "United Shades of America" this Sunday. And in the first episode, Kamau comes face to face with the KKK. Do not miss it Sunday night 10:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

Coming up next, sex and music. Prince's love life, it was complicated. Hear about the ladies he fell for, and also did you know he had a son? The tragic loss of his son. Plus, the secret songs inside of his vault, the songs you never knew Prince wrote from "Manic Monday" to the hit that defined one woman's career.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:17:14]

BALDWIN: From the songs he wrote for others to the songs he could only perform, Prince's last concert was just eight days ago, a big one. A fan recorded some of his performance at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta.

Prince was a prolific creator of music, but there is so much more we haven't heard. A former sound engineer of Prince's told me just last hour that there's a stash of Prince's work that's never been released and it's known at his Paisley Park studio as the vault, and that is because the place where it's all housed is at his estate.

And I imagine only a few people have the combination to get in there.

With me now, Brent Fischer, a composer who helped add orchestration to Prince's work for 30 years.

Brent, I'm so sorry for the loss of just an incredible, incredible man. I only had the privilege of seeing him perform once, but I want to get to the vault in just a second. But you performed on stage with him, 2004 Grammys, Beyonce, Prince. What was that like?

BRENT FISCHER, COMPOSER: Yes.

My late father, Clare Fischer, and I provided many of the orchestral arrangements for Prince, including much of the unreleased material, but this was a medley of Prince and Beyonce songs that we did an orchestral arrangement for. And I was performing in the orchestra with Prince and Beyonce at the opening song for the 2004 Grammys.

And it's one of the seminal moments in Grammy's history that it's my great honor to have been a part of. When you're sitting during commercial breaks in at the Grammy Awards telecast, they play that. That's one of the Grammy moment that they play repeatedly every year.

It was -- it was a really wonderful honor, and I'm grateful for my association -- the association that both my father and I had with Prince for many so years.

BALDWIN: That's what I would call me a pinch me moment.

FISCHER: Yes.

BALDWIN: We just played a number of songs with other artists, songs that Prince, you know, wrote for them. And I'm wondering, how would he decide? Would you even know? Why not just sing them himself? FISCHER: Yes, that will be forever his secret.

I think he produced a lot of people. I worked on the first album that Celine Dion did in English produced by Prince. So, there were a lot of -- I think he had a lot of interests. You know? And there were so many people that he wanted to collaborate with.

I remember that in all the time that he was sending us songs to work on, he never repeated himself. Nothing ever became stale or boring. It was always mixing genres, very creative.

[15:20:11]

Creativity was the most important thing to him, rather than genre. And so mixing all those genres, I think, was just natural. And so working with so many different artists and producing them was a wonderful experience for him, and it was also an honor for us to be involved on our end.

BALDWIN: Can we talk about the vault, the vault, which is at his Paisley Park studio?

FISCHER: Sure.

BALDWIN: And, I mean, do you even know how much music exists of his that the world has never heard?

FISCHER: I would say it's a lot.

As far as I knew, he -- there were many times in his life where he would just, you know, wake up in the morning and start recording. And he might actually erase something after he was done recording it because he didn't like the way it came out, even if everybody else in the room was happy with it. It was his final decision.

And we were sent music by him all the time to add orchestras to. And we never knew whether something was going to be released or not. It was -- most of it, like I said, has not been released as of this point. So I would imagine there must be, I could only guess, hundreds of songs in there.

BALDWIN: Hmm.

(CROSSTALK)

FISCHER: That's a lot of music.

BALDWIN: I was talking to a friend of his yesterday who was saying he was found unresponsive in the elevator in his studio, and that he was probably on his way to go make music.

FISCHER: Yes, I would imagine so. That's -- that was his whole life. You know, he would just wake up and start recording, and he wouldn't go to sleep until he stopped, until he was finished.

BALDWIN: Wow. Brent Fischer, I am so sorry for the loss of your friend, but thank

you so much for sharing some stories. I really appreciate it.

FISCHER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

At the top of the hour, we know that the sheriff investigating Prince's death will be holding a news conference. We will bring that to you live. This is the first time we're hearing publicly from authorities in the wake of his passing too soon.

But, next, hear leaked audio from inside a meeting between Donald Trump's new convention manager and Republican insiders. He seems to suggest the Trump we have seen on the campaign trail is an act.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:26:50]

BALDWIN: Want to come up on some tape and just show this to you.

Little bit of rain in London. This is moments ago. You see President Obama and first lady Michelle shaking hands. They're having dinner at Kensington Palace, the home of the duke and duchess of Cambridge.

But surprise. Someone else showed up as well joining them, Prince Harry. So they're having dinner. And I can tell you that this is not an official state event. You saw the joint news conference that the president held with the P.M., David Cameron.

At the very end of that, that is when he actually touched on Prince's passing and said they were listening to the ambassador who apparently had turntables listening to Prince's music to start the day. And also earlier this morning, actually right around noontime, the president and first lady had lunch at Windsor Castle with the queen, who just celebrated her 90th this week, Prince Philip.

There you have a little snapshot from London on this Friday.

But let's bring it back here and talk politics. CNN has obtained an audiotape. And on this tape, you can clearly hear Donald Trump's top adviser, Paul Manafort, saying Trump's off-the-cuff, bombastic personality is a performance. It's not actually who he is in private.

This tape comes from a closed-door meeting between Trump adviser Paul Manafort and the Republican National Committee. Listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

PAUL MANAFORT, TRUMP CONVENTION MANAGER: Trump is an outsider. Many of you don't know. So, he's sitting in a room, he's talking business and he's talking politics. In a private room, it's different persona.

When he's out on the stage, when he's talking about the kinds of things he's talking about on the stump, he is projecting an image that is for that purpose. The part he's been playing is evolving into the part that now that you have been expecting that he wasn't ready for.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let me bring in CNN political commentator, host of CNN's "SMERCONISH," Michael Smerconish.

So, when you hear Paul Manafort talking about evolving and an act, all I can is, how is that going to sit with Trump fan faithful?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, when I hear it, I say, I knew it. I absolutely knew that was the real Donald Trump.

The surprise is that Manafort would say it. And, Brooke, he's a very sophisticated player. He's been around a long time.

BALDWIN: Not an accident.

SMERCONISH: Not an accident. And one of my interpretations of this is the pivot toward the fall has begun.

(CROSSTALK)

SMERCONISH: They need to say that to convince independents, moderates that it's OK to be for Donald Trump. He's not the guy that he's been made out to be.

Look, I like the independent Trump. And take a look at what happened yesterday. He made the comments that he made which distinguished himself from his opponents.

BALDWIN: The North Carolina...

SMERCONISH: On the North Carolina bathroom issue.

And so, to me, that's probably the real Donald Trump. That is a moderate Donald Trump. That's a Trump who could win a general, but for some of the baggage.

BALDWIN: Wow. So, there's that.

You, sir, you live in Philadelphia. You sat down with a number of former D's who became R's, because you wanted to understand why so many people in the state of Pennsylvania have switched parties.

What did you find out?

SMERCONISH: So, it's true.

About 90,000 brand-new members of the Republican Party just since January 1, and we put about a dozen of them in a room and wanted to find out, well, what exactly drew you to the GOP, so that you could vote on Tuesday?

I think we have a clip of it that we can play.

BALDWIN: We do. Let's take a listen.