The Beat of My Own Drum (29 page)

I didn’t know when I turned down the offer that I was still going to get my
Playboy
money one day—playing under the stars at the Hollywood Bowl for the annual Playboy Jazz Festival. It’s one of my favorite gigs. And they let me do it fully dressed!

While Prince and I were crazy for each other back in the day and worked together constantly, we were not a constant couple. I tried to ignore the sadness I felt about not being the only woman in his life, but I learned to deal with it early on.

I’d been placed in a similar situation with Carlos and had spent years watching so many people around me being unfaithful. As I approached my thirtieth birthday, I was beginning to think that, given my profession, my hopes of finding a one-woman man were unrealistic. My old-fashioned notions of fidelity seemed completely out of kilter with what was going on all around me.

And I wasn’t sure if I could have been with him nonstop and permanently anyway. Although we were with each other on the road all the time and did end up living together for a while, it was never going to work. We both liked our own space too much.

We were in London filming a show sometime around that tour and staying at the Dorchester Hotel. When I was walking through the lobby on my way to sound check, I spotted someone ahead of me. My heart stopped. He had his back to me, but the silhouette was unmistakable.

“Oh, my God!” I cried, clinging to a friend for support. “That’s Sammy Davis!” I was nervous about approaching him, and so I hovered on the periphery while he talked to some other people. “If I don’t say something now, I’ll miss my chance and regret it for the rest of my life.”

I stepped closer but didn’t want to be a pest, so I waited for the right moment. I had a newfound appreciation for what fans must go through when they’re hoping to meet me. I’m not saying I’m anywhere near Sammy in the celebrity department, but it was somewhat of a wakeup call. It’s nerve-racking!

While waiting, my mind flashed back to one morning when my brothers and a few friends skipped school and actually drove six hours south in a Monte Carlo to Los Angeles—the glittery city of Tinseltown—for an adventure. We bought one of those celebrity maps that showed us where the stars lived. We drove around for hours gawking at all the Beverly Hills mansions. These were houses I’d only seen in movies, and they looked more like muse
ums than places where people actually lived. Not even Pops’s rich and famous celebrity friends in Marin County and San Francisco’s Pacific Heights had mansions like those.

As we sailed along Mulholland, I thought of my ultimate idol. “Hey! Let’s find Sammy Davis Jr.’s house!” I cried. We couldn’t believe that it was actually cited on the map, and when we realized we could actually drive right up, I nearly fainted. I wanted to preserve this moment in time—my being in such close proximity to the actual home of my Sammy.

“I have to have something of his,” I said as we pulled even closer. Then I spotted his mailbox. My brothers looked at me with dropped jaws as I ran up, dug my hand in and retrieved a few envelopes. I leaped back into the car and we sped off.

“Sheila!” Peter Michael cried. “You could go to jail for that!” It was only a few pieces of junk mail, but it was an illegal prank, not to mention immoral, unethical, and just plain wrong.

There in the lobby, I thought about telling him that story, but my heart was beating so fast I wasn’t even sure I could talk. When his conversation finally ended and I spotted my opportunity, I walked right up to him, still trying to figure out what to say. “Sir? My name is Sheila E and I’m in town playing. You have no idea how much I love you. I mean, I am, like, the biggest fan!”

He smiled at me with such warmth. “Oh, Sheila honey, that is
so
sweet!”

I couldn’t believe my ears were hearing
that
voice talking to me—the voice I had mimicked with such dedication day after day, family gathering after family gathering. I couldn’t believe my eyes were looking into the face I had studied so closely as a child.

We chatted for a few minutes, and I could have stayed talking to him all night, but my driver kept telling me it was time to go. Sammy Davis Jr. placed my hand on his arm and, like a true gentleman, walked me out to the Bentley that was waiting for me. I
don’t even remember what we talked about as he opened the door for me. I just remember thinking, “Sammy Davis Jr. has his arm around my waist!”

That album Pops had brought home when I was nine years old had been so pivotal, so liberating—it had opened me up to music’s infinite possibilities. I had learned his every line as he bellowed from the big wooden speakers of our Marantz record player, and copied his every move as I viewed it on our old Zenith set. Now here he was right next to me, as sweet as pie: the courteous and gracious star I’d always imagined him to be.

As I reluctantly stepped into the car, I invited him to the show as my guest. He thanked me politely and told me that he’d love to see me perform, but he never came. I don’t suppose he even knew who I was, but he was far too much of a gentleman to say so. The driver started the engine, and off we went.

I should’ve told him that story
, I thought.
I could’ve finally apologized
.

I floated away on air in the back of that Bentley, my head somewhere up in the London clouds.

Meeting Sammy was far from the only momentous event of that tour, however. One night, somewhere in the middle of Europe, Prince and I were playing when we started in on “Purple Rain.” There’s something about that song that moves me. It touches my spirit, and the melody is beautiful. It’s one of my favorite songs, because as a drummer I get to drive. As always, I lose myself in the music.

Prince was singing at the front of the stage, but halfway through the song and after his guitar solo, he spun around and grinned back at me as he often did when he felt the same thing I did.

I smiled back, wrapped up in that exquisite exchange of melodious connection for which there are no words. But then he found some.

“Marry me?” he mouthed.

My butterflies danced, twirled, and flipped as I stared into those deep green eyes I’d fallen for so many years ago.

“Yes!” I mouthed, without any hesitation.

He blew me a kiss, turned to the audience, and took the most amazing guitar solo ever.

A lot of people on the tour knew we were together, yet few knew he’d asked me to marry him. Again we kept it a secret from the public, because he said he didn’t want the extra publicity; that we were hounded enough as it was. It never even occurred to me to ask him for a ring (even though I shouldn’t have needed to), nor did he offer one. Besides, I didn’t wear rings very often—they only got in the way of my playing. And of course a ring on my finger would have told the world what he didn’t want the world to know. So I kept it a secret, even from my family.

I’d been good at keeping secrets since I was five.

I talked to my folks all the time on the phone, of course. Pops was gigging with Anita Baker and Moms was still running around challenging everyone to a game of anything. The physical distance was making me homesick, and as much as I wanted to tell them my news, my private life seemed especially private, so only Connie, Karen, and the band and crew knew.

For the rest of that year my relationship with Prince was a dream. We were very happy together, and even though I had my own tour bus, I usually spent the night in his. We were with each other all day and night, so if he was fooling around on me, he would have had to be quick about it.

“He’s crazy about you,” one of his close friends told me later. “But it scares him to love someone that much.”

Between concerts, I divided my time between Los Angeles and Minneapolis. It was fun hanging out with Prince, especially when he was so fired up about the next tour, the next look, and the next big thing.

“Let’s cut our hair!” he’d say one day, so we would. “Okay, now let’s dye it crazy colors. Wait, you could go blonde!” So I did.

It was while I was staying with Prince in his hometown that I first met Miles Davis, whose music my father had played almost every day of his life. He came to dinner one night, and I could hardly believe I was sitting across from him. I wanted to call Pops and let him say hello on the telephone, but that wouldn’t have been cool.

Miles spoke in an incredibly rasping voice that was almost a whisper. He turned to me and said, “Prince told me he’s got this girl playing drums, so I had to see you play,” he told me. “I never knew you were such a bad motherfuckin’ bitch!”

What do you say to that? Thank him for the compliment? High praise indeed!

Even though Prince and I were happy, after the intensity of touring I decided I needed a place of my own. Ever since I’d moved out of the Richies’ house in Bel Air, I’d gotten into the habit of renting somewhere for a few months at a time. It was a way to separate my life “on land” from life on the road—which so often felt like space travel.

Renting strangers’ houses in towns or areas I didn’t know, preferably in the hills and surrounded by trees, meant that no one knew where I lived. If no one knew where I lived, then they couldn’t reach me. And this gave me the silence I craved.

I loved playing pool, so I took my own table wherever I went. Practice makes perfect, and I was determined that one day I’d beat my uncles at their own game. My new home had to have a grand piano and stairs to run up and down, as well as a basketball hoop to keep me in shape. I needed a yard so that I could spend time outside, and I’d look for places in the hills or mountains near Los Angeles, or close to a lake where I could go fishing on my own.

My cousin Ia, who worked for me as well, found a beautiful
four-bedroom house in Minneapolis. In that remote lakeside property, with its own fishing boat, I wrote my own music in an environment of pure peace.

I needed to shut out the noise for a little while.

After so many years traveling with bands, with all that speed and movement, sound had taken hold of me, become a part of me, and I needed some distance.

No sooner had I found someplace quiet, though, than the noise started up again. I had to go back out on the road after I’d barely had time to chalk my pool cue.

There were times when it felt like too much, and I wanted more time to myself. Prince and I never argued or fought (that came later), but we didn’t always see eye to eye. At first it was music, the very thing that brought us together, that became our biggest point of contention. He was determined never to copy himself musically, and he wanted to release something edgy and original every time. Even though I respected his artistry, his rich fusion of sounds, and knew his songwriting was nothing short of great, I was increasingly uncomfortable with where that drive to be different seemed to be taking him lyrically.

His songs were getting too dirty for my tastes. There was so much cursing—way past the “funk until the dawn” days. It just wasn’t fun to be around. A talent like that didn’t need to listen to me, however, no matter how much he may have valued my opinion. He’s brilliant in part because he seeks out and soaks up all the great musical influences around him but ultimately does what he feels.

But I sensed he was struggling with his own creative decisions. To follow
Sign of the Times,
in 1987 he created the funky
Black Album
(in an all-black sleeve with no writing, including any mention of him at all, and one of my favorite records). We had a blast recording it in his house and in a warehouse before he had his custom-built studio at Paisley Park. Those were some funky songs
we laid down! There was one crazy-sounding one, the finished version of which he played me over the phone.

I said, “Let’s name it!”

“Okay. What does it sound like to you?”

For some reason, maybe because I’d seen some stuff on the news that day about gangs in Los Angeles, I blurted out, “Two nigs united for West Compton.”

He went with it.

As a kid I used to say “nigga please” to friends. The word
nigga
sometimes bothered me, and sometimes it didn’t. I guess on this night, the shortened version didn’t. I was in the midst of the very gradual process of cleansing my vocabulary. I didn’t like it when women called each other “bitch” as a term of endearment. I understood the importance of context and intention, but I was getting less and less comfortable with profanity of all kinds.

Prince was getting uncomfortable with the album for other reasons. One night he woke up and said, “We need to stop the record.” He abruptly withdrew it just one week before its release, claiming it was “evil.” The lyrics had gotten pretty dark, but I was surprised he turned on the whole album in that instant.

Having spent another intense period back in the studio with the band and me in May 1988, he replaced
The Black Album
(with the battle between good and evil as its central theme) with
Lovesexy
.

The tour to promote it began in Paris in 1988 with an initial seventy-seven dates planned for the US, Europe, and Asia. It was due to end in January 1989 in Osaka, Japan. There were, on average, twelve dates per month (sometimes seventeen), with a lot of traveling to and from countries in between.

Once again I was on tour doing all that I’d ever wanted to do—playing the drums, performing, singing, playing percussion. But things weren’t right. They weren’t right between Prince and me, and they weren’t right in my spirit.

25
. Ghost Strokes

Small, almost inaudible, ghostlike strokes

My love for you will never die

Can’t you see the tears in my eyes?

All of the promises that you made

Have all seemed to vanish and fade

“NOTHING WITHOUT YOU”

THE E FAMILY

I
t was in the early 1990s when God fully came back into my heart. I was working on my next record,
Sex Cymbal,
which my brother, Peter Michael, was helping me produce.