“He hummed the initial melody for When Doves Cry into my answerphone – saying, ‘Don’t erase this!’ – so he’d remember it”: Prince’s Purple Rain co-star recalls the moment he had the idea for one of his greatest songs

For Prince fans, 21 April 2026 will be a bittersweet day. This will mark 10 years since the star’s death, aged just 57, and will be a moment to reflect on not only what we’ve lost, but also the remarkable catalogue of music and memories that Prince left us.

To mark the occasion, The Guardian has been speaking to a raft of Prince’s friends and collaborators, and they paint a picture of a man consumed by his desire to play and create music.

Take his cousin, Charles ‘Chazz’ Smith, who played drums in Prince’s first band, Grand Central. He says that they were inspired to form the group after going to see Sly and the Family Stone at the Parade stadium in Minneapolis.

“His dad got him a guitar and the next day he came back playing Black Magic Woman by Santana, note for note,” says Smith. “He was obsessed with being great at guitar, writing songs, playing rock, funk, ballads, everything.”

Apollonia Kotero, meanwhile – his co-star in Purple Rain, and the lead singer in Apollonia 6, the girlband that Prince created – recalls the urgent moment when he came up with the seed of an idea for what would become one of his greatest songs.

“One time, he hummed the initial melody for When Doves Cry into my answerphone – saying, ‘Don’t erase this!’ – so he’d remember it,” she recalls.

Someone who would eventually work on this track – and across many of Prince’s greatest albums, in fact – was engineer Susan Rogers, and she reaffirms just how demanding he could be, particularly in his desire to record at any time of the day or night.

“He once said: ‘Susan. You have no friends,’” she recalls. “How could I have a friend when I worked for him?”

Elsewhere, Revolution drummer Bobby Z reflects on how uncomfortable Prince was around other celebrities, but there was the odd exception. “When he met David Bowie at Paisley Park it was a warm moment, because he felt that they were equals,” he says.

Alongside these happy memories, there are some darker ones. Notably, several of the people interviewed discuss how frail Prince looked in the years before his death, and highlight the toll that his intense career took on his body and mind.

Perhaps Prince always knew that it would be this way, though: “When he was about 26 he told me he didn’t want to live past 35,” says Leroy Bennett, his former lighting director and friend. “We’re all lucky that we had a couple more decades with him.”