A rock legend who just wanted to be happy.
A pop star with a life of regret.
And the last pizza party before a terrible tragedy.
Keep watching for more last interviews given by music icons.
There's some debate as to what exactly was the last interview given by Prince — in
particular, one in-depth piece published by Ebony magazine in December 2015 was mysteriously
deleted the next day, for reasons that still haven't been explained.
As far as anyone can confirm, however, the last official talk with Prince by a major
publication was published by The Guardian in November of that year.
In this final interview, Prince laid out the concept for what would be his final tour,
clarified his famous statement about the death of the internet, and unknowingly waxed prophetic
by way of explaining his desire for "transcendence."
Prince said that he had conceived his "Piano & A Microphone Tour" to challenge himself.
As he explained, it would be like "tying one hand behind [his] back," adding that:
"I won't know what songs I'm going to do when I go on stage, I really won't.
I won't have to, because I won't have a band."
He also explained that he was perfectly aware that the internet was doing fine, but that
it was the ability of artists to make a living that had fallen by the wayside.
To that end, he quipped:
"Apple's doing pretty good, though, right?"
But his last sit-down left fans with one indelible image — of Prince, playing and singing by
himself for hours, as he said he'd done the previous night.
The star said:
"I just couldn't stop.
[It was] like an out-of-body-experience.
That's what you want.
Transcendence."
There was never another rock star quite like Warren Zevon.
His singing voice was unique, to say the least, and he wrote songs with titles such as "Roland
the Headless Thompson Gunner" and "Gorilla, You're a Desperado."
Even more amazingly, he actually made them work.
During the '80s and '90s, Zevon was known to sit in as bandleader for Paul Shaffer on
David Letterman's Late Show when needed, and over those years, he and Letterman developed
a close friendship.
When Zevon received a terminal cancer diagnosis in 2002, Letterman did something he never
had before: He blocked off his show's entire hour for one guest.
The show never got sappy or sentimental, though.
In fact, Zevon displayed his trademark humor by deadpanning:
"I might have made a tactical error by not going to see a physician in 20 years."
He also joked that the only real adjustment he'd made was telling them to step on it at
the dry cleaners.
But when Letterman asked if his friend's diagnosis had given him any insights on life, Zevon
turned serious long enough to deliver a truly great piece of advice.
"You're reminded to enjoy every sandwich and every minute of playing with the guys and
being with the kids and everything."
Zevon performed several songs throughout the hour, and it was often obvious that his illness
was giving him trouble.
But for the final song he ever publicly performed, at Letterman's request, he pulled out his
old classic "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" — and he nailed it.
"Let me just say now, thank you for being here and thank you for everything."
If you're a Beatles fan, John Lennon's words during his final Rolling Stone interview on
December 5th, 1980, three days before his death, will shake you to your core.
Lennon was coming off an extended hiatus from music which saw him appear to genuinely become
a better person and father.
He'd just released a slew of great new songs, which later became the posthumous Grammy-winning
album Double Fantasy, and he was all too excited about a future he would never get to see.
Lennon spoke to the interviewer for hours, joking around and often segueing into long,
fascinating anecdotes about his music, his wife Yoko Ono, the Beatles, and the troubles
he had endured during the '70s.
But here's the kicker.
In response to a suggestion that he and Yoko should have their own late night show, Lennon
said:
"We often talk about that.
It might be fun.
But there's time, right?
Plenty of time.
[...] And it will be fun to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.
It will be fun, won't it, to start 1981 like 1968?"
As a devotee of the Hare Krishna sect of Hinduism, George Harrison was always the most spiritual
of the Beatles.
And while he never got in anyone's face at an airport, he wasn't shy about expounding
on the tenets of his religion.
In 1997, only a month before he was diagnosed with the throat cancer that would kill him
four years later, Harrison appeared on VH1 alongside his old friend and sitar mentor
Ravi Shankar.
During the interview, he shared some existential thoughts that now seem eerily prescient.
"Nobody's trying to figure out what's the cause of death and what happens when you die."
Harrison also suggested that knowledge itself was the meaning of life, and he even quoted
the Bible to prove his point.
"Knock and the door will be opened.
And it's true.
If you want to know anything in this life, you just have to knock on the door."
Harrison was only 58 when he died — too young, but it could be that he had already
learned all there was to know.
George Michael's career beginnings as lead singer of the bubblegum pop group Wham!
belied his true talent as a singer and songwriter.
Later Wham!
releases and his subsequent solo career would bear this out, as he eventually achieved the
kind of respect normally reserved for pop's greatest icons.
To hear him tell it, though, none of it was worth the price.
In a BBC2 interview that aired shortly before his death on Christmas Day 2016, Michael said:
"If I'm really honest, something, somebody, some entity wasn't ready to let me have a
full life."
He continued:
"It was as though it was a choice, it was: Do you find your place in life, your place
with a partner/lover, or do you just carry on down this road to the next great achievement?"
In the documentary George Michael: Freedom, which the singer had been laboring away on
mere hours before his death, he describes his life as, quote, "a waste of time, a waste
of effort."
His millions of fans would certainly disagree.
Tom Petty broke hearts around the world when he died in 2017 at only 66, and his final
interview with The Los Angeles Times is one of those that makes it so much worse — not
because he was down and out, but because he was just on top of the world.
Petty led off talking about what a "wonderful year" it had been, before bubbling over with
enthusiasm for his proteges the Shelters, then going on at length about how songwriting
and studio work gave him purpose.
There was no reason to think that he was anywhere near the end of the road, and yet buried within
the interview was one moment of grim foreshadowing.
Referring to himself and his band the Heartbreakers, Petty said:
"If one of us went down, or if one of us died — God forbid — or got sick…
We're all older now.
Then, we'd stop.
I think that would be the end of it, if someone couldn't do it."
And if you're hoping for something a little more uplifting, Petty also reflected on his
time with the Heartbreakers by saying:
"It was about moving people, and changing the world, and I really believed in rock 'n'
roll — I still do.
I believed in it in its purest sense, its purest form.
[...] I'm just trying to get the best I can get out of it."
Keith Moon of The Who was a drummer like no other.
Both he and guitarist Pete Townshend appeared on Good Morning America about a month before
Moon's death from an overdose.
And if you know anything at all about Moon, his words and general disposition will not
surprise you.
He approached death as he lived — drunk, with merry good humor, making everyone around
him uncomfortable.
David Hartman interviewed the pair, regarding Moon in particular with barely concealed disdain.
"Are you in control of your life at all?"
"Only on certain days."
"Certain days."
"Yeah."
Moon also revealed that he enjoyed being out on the road "very much," and he opined that
he hadn't changed a bit in 15 years.
The drummer wound up by plugging the August 21st release date of his band's classic album
Who Are You.
He died on September 7th.
When Keith Allston of NME sat down to interview Jimi Hendrix on September 11th, 1970, there
was no way he could possibly know that he was recording the final public statement of
a guitar legend.
If he had, he probably would've asked much more interesting questions.
Instead, Allston asked Hendrix a bunch of fluff about the U.K. music scene, whether
he really deserved his rep as a guitarist, and whether he liked money.
Allston refrained from asking even a single question that would be of interest to the
King of All Guitars after his death, but Hendrix answered each question as completely and thoughtfully
as possible.
The interviewer did at least allude to Hendrix's suggestion that classical music would be informing
his next album to a greater degree, which sounds fascinating enough.
But that's about all that's fascinating.
The interview wrapped up with Allston extracting the scintillating insight from Hendrix that
he would perhaps like an indoor pool one day.
Alice in Chains lead singer Layne Staley's addiction to drugs has never been much of
a secret.
Take for example the biography Layne Staley: Angry Chair — A Look Inside the Heart and
Soul of an Incredible Musician.
This book contains a section detailing the singer's final interview just months before
his death, and it's clear that Staley knew both that the end was nigh, and that it was
all down to his own terrible decisions.
Staley admitted:
"I know I'm dying.
I'm not doing well.
I'm not using drugs to get high like many people think.
I know I made a big mistake when I started using this s---.
It's a very difficult thing to explain.
[...] The pain is more than you can handle.
It's the worst pain in the world."
Staley bitterly lamented his lost fight, saying:
"I invested a lot of money on treatments.
I know I did my best or what I thought would be right.
I changed my number.
I don't wanna see people anymore, and it's nobody's business but mine."
Kurt Cobain seemed to be in a good place during what is thought to be his last interview,
with the prolific Canadian journalist known as Nardwuar, a few months before his death.
The interview was caught on video, allowing us to witness Cobain, his wife Courtney Love,
and his bandmates all chowing down on pizza as Nardwuar slings inane questions at them.
"Kurt, did you really custom design a guitar?
Your own special model?"
"Yeah."
"How many models were there, and can I buy one?"
Many of Cobain's responses are kinda difficult to ascertain, as they're given through mouthfuls
of pizza.
In fact, everyone was in a great mood, nothing of substance was asked or learned, and Nardwuar
was basically treated like the geeky dude trying to hang out with the cool kids.
And, to be fair, that's because he kinda was.
It's actually rather comforting to see Cobain at such relative peace — which also appeared
to be the case during his final print interview, published in Rolling Stone.
Of particular note, when asked in that interview just how literal the song "I Hate Myself and
I Want to Die" was, Cobain replied:
"As literal as a joke can be.
Nothing more than a joke.
[...] That pretty much defines our band.
It's both those contradictions.
It's satirical, and it's serious at the same time."
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