Details Of What Lies Inside Prince’s Paisley Park Compound Revealed

A few months ago it was announced that parts of Prince’s Paisley Park compound would soon become accessible to the public. Today, some actual details about what lies within those grandiose walls have been revealed.

As reported by Rolling Stone, workers who are sorting through the many rooms within the compound have found countless treasures. These include pages and pages of Prince’s handwritten lyrics, his vintage outfits (one of them being his 2007 Superbowl performance getup) and a secret room filled with unreleased video footage and music.

A source who was close to the Purple One sums it up pretty well, saying, “Everywhere I turn it’s, ‘Holy crap.'”

Surprisingly, Prince supposedly left intricate instructions detailing how he would like Paisley Park to be transformed into a museum after he dies. Some of these details stated that a timeline of his life spanning the mid-1990s should be wall-mounted.

Via emails and texts to friends he made it clear that his wish was for fans to be able to walk through Paisley Park. Some of these emails were sent as little as four months before his death, Rolling Stone reports.

“We’re seeing e-mails he sent four months before his death that say how he wanted it,” says the source. “He wasn’t foreshadowing anything. [But] he always wanted his fans to come here. He left us a big road map.”

In regards to the large amounts of unreleased video footage and music in his vault, L. Londell McMillan, a highly regarded industry lawyer who previously worked for Prince and who has now stepped in to deal with these matters, says fans will potentially hear some of that material in 2017.

“We’re still doing inventory, and we’re still mourning,” he says. “I know the world wants to commercialise it, but we’re still getting through the stuff.”

Susan Rogers, Prince’s engineer throughout the ’80s, says, “We need to approach this with love and care and a high moral compass. Some of his fans have written to me and begged that his material not be altered in any way.”

Rogers says Prince’s version of Nothing Compares 2 U and the 1982 outtake of Moonbeam Levels, are high on her list for future releases. She describes the latter as “poignant and revealing, which is probably why it was both valuable and risky for him”.

When Paisley Park opens to the public next month, fans will have access to the first floor. This won’t include the vault, his private apartment, or the elevator where Prince was found dead. There will however, be over 12 rooms that are open to the public, which will each document a particular era of the Purple One’s career. The rooms will be decorated and themed with period costumes, instruments and unreleased concert footage.

The recording studios will also continue to be used. Further down the track, the 12,400-square-foot soundstage will be used again, and Prince’s Paisley Park nightclub will host live music.

You can pre-book a tour from the Official Paisley Park Website now.

Gallery: Looking Back Over Prince’s Life In Pictures