Shownotes Transcript
Double Elvis. About a Girl is a production of iHeartRadio and Double Elvis. Let me tell you about Prince. Prince Rogers Nelson. The Kid. Joey Coco. Alexander Nevermind. The artist formerly known as, among the most naturally gifted musicians of all time, film star, video pioneer, dancer, showman, sexual dissident, spiritual seeker, icon.
But this story is not about Prince. This is about Maite Garcia, the virtuoso dancer who became his muse, collaborator, wife, and mother of his son before tragedy pulled them apart. This story is about a girl. Pillows of dense white fog spilled across the stage.
An almost subsonic hum began to vibrate through the crowd, penetrating skulls, chests, arms and legs, tethering 30,000 people together in the Barcelona night. The otherworldly drone gave way to a rapid collage of familiar music. The crowd sent the buzz back forward like a wave to the stage, where a pulsating drum and bass groove suddenly came to life. Then the fog blew away to reveal a figure in silhouette.
pure energy anchored to a single spot. The audience responded with rapture. Prince sang the first lines of his song, The Future. In the crowd, front and center, stood 16-year-old Maite Garcia, a Puerto Rican girl living in Germany who had traveled to Spain with her parents and sister to see this concert. A gifted dancer, Maite began leaping into the air with the music, hands thrust toward the stage.
They had arrived early for the show and had been let into a fenced-off area at the foot of the stage, where she had more room to maneuver than most of the spectators. Born with inverted legs, the infant Maite had suffered casts and braces for her first 18 months. With the problem corrected, her strong-willed dancer mother managed to get her into dance instruction at age three. "'What do you do if someone asks how old you are?' she would ask Maite."
Maite would hold up one hand, displaying five tiny fingers. Her mother began taking belly dancing classes, all the rage in the mid-1970s, at a YMCA in North Carolina near the Army base where Maite's father was stationed.
Mai Tay studied and imitated her mama's movements, and soon they were dancing together at restaurants and events around town, becoming minor local celebrities when they were featured on the syndicated TV show PM Magazine, and then on the popular primetime That's Incredible. Just before she turned 10, Mai Tay and her older sister Jan went to see a movie called Purple Rain. They were immediately obsessed, play-acting as members of Prince's band and characters from the movie.
As much as it was the incredible music and performances in the film, it was the singular and sensual visual style of Prince and co-star Apollonia that pushed Maite's particular preteen buttons. And something else too. The story of the kid, Prince's character, coping with his dysfunctional, battling parents. Maite knew this dynamic.
Her own parents were never violent, but they fought often, cheated on each other, and would go on to divorce twice and marry three times. Around this time, Maite emerged as a spectacular solo dancer, able to balance the sword on her head as she moved, reveling in the empowerment she felt as she mastered her body. She kept studying and was already working professionally when her father was transferred to Wiesbaden, Germany. The family followed.
Now 12 years old, Maite's career as a dancer flourished in Europe. She racked up local gigs around Wiesbaden and Frankfurt while she attended the same school where another American Army brat, Priscilla Presley, had graduated a couple of decades earlier.
Maite's father backed her up as she told all the venue bookers she was 16. She and her father made up a tight unit. He would scope out the stages in the crowds and report the details via walkie-talkie to her backstage as she prepared for her performance. You got a square dance floor? Would. The good party table is on the left. Okay, cool. He was also responsible for the music and sound system, as well as capturing every show on video. Sometimes he would even play the tambourine and tabla to accompany her.
Maite celebrated a few 16th birthdays, working so steadily that she banked $100,000 cash and bought herself a car. She expanded into Egypt, first traveling there for costumes, then plugging into the world's premier belly dancing circuit in Cairo. Her mama had her back, too, always on the lookout for opportunity and always wearing a beaded scarf.
If there was an opening for Maite to do an impromptu performance, wherever they were, she'd throw the scarf over her daughter's outfit and usher her in front of whatever crowd there was. Before her last year of high school, they planned one last trip together as a family. A concert. Celia Cruz with Tito Puente, or Prince.
Maite loved Prince, but she didn't want to repeat the experience she'd had at a Michael Jackson concert a couple years earlier. It had been a true shit show, general admission style, meaning no real seating and a huge crowd absolutely losing their minds. But she was overruled. Wait, the Prince tour is called nude? Her mother said. Oh, we're going to see Prince.
In the warm Mediterranean darkness, feeling the music tripping from the stage and through her body, Maite was in ecstasy. At one point, she looked up to see Prince peering over the footlights. He stuck his tongue out at her. On the drive back from Germany, her parents marveled especially over one song from the show. "Thieves in the Temple" was a new one, and it was imbued with Middle Eastern sounds and melodies. You should be dancing to that. He needs to see you dance.
Her mother thought maybe Maite could get hired to dance in a video. Maite was thinking less about Prince in particular and more about her own potential as an artist. Despite working as a dancer for much of her short life so far, and without doubt truly loving it, this was a new feeling. A pureness of inspiration, wonder at the unspoken interplay of energy between audience and performer.
Discovering that the tour was on its way to Germany, her parents convinced a reluctant Maite to make a demo reel from her father's tapes of her performances. They would go to the next show and get it to Prince. Her mama was determined. They went early to the venue, hoping to again nab a place up front, but they had to wait outside before the gates opened. "Whoa, here comes the tour bus," her sister said. Maite waved.
Inside the bus, she learned later, Prince turned to his bandmate Rosie Gaines and joked, "There's my future wife." A dancer recognized them from Barcelona and again they were led to the stage front area. From where they stood, they could see the touring entourage playing basketball near the side stage. "He needs to see you dance," her mother declared over Maite's exhortations that she just "please be cool."
Ignoring her daughter, she finally grabbed another of the band's dancers as he walked by. "My daughter, she's a belly dancer. She's been talking about how wonderful you all are ever since she saw you in Spain. Do you suppose you could give him this tape?" The dancer laughed. "Sure." He took the tape and walked off. Maite barely had time to recover from this encounter when a bodyguard approached. "He saw your tape. He wants to meet you." Maite and Prince formed an immediate, powerful connection.
He was fascinated by her dancing and would watch her tapes and ask a thousand questions about how she moved, about the controlled drama of it, the costumes and the music. Prince believed in the unseen power of the universe, a grand plan that moved in cycles, souls that came back again and again in different lives, connecting and reconnecting.
He believed they'd known each other a thousand times. Lovers, sisters, enemies, mother and child. Maite felt this too. At that first meeting backstage in Germany, Prince had looked up and said, "Hi." "Hi." And Maite's natural anxiety lifted like the fog from the stage, and she felt the comforting hand of fate upon her, revealing that moment as a preordained step on the spiral staircase of their souls.
She was where she was meant to be. They exchanged letters regularly and spoke on the phone for hours. He would send her music he was working on. He showed her a rough cut of the video for Thieves in the Temple, the song with the Arabic influences that had drawn them together. She asked him about a dance move at the end of the video.
Oh, that moves from James Brown, he said, and then told her about seeing Brown when he was a little kid, how he'd been up front and his stepfather lifted him up to the stage where he performed a similar move, slide, kick, split, before a bodyguard gave him the boot. Maite thought that sounded a lot like the way she'd arrived at this moment, with her mother pushing her forward. Prince sent her a mix of a new track he had in the works, a song called Seven.
He wanted her to hear it immediately, so he bought a plane ticket for the cassette. She had to go to the airport to pick it up. She was blown away just to get to hear new Prince music as it was being born. But this one even more closely resembled the music in her heart. Middle Eastern rhythms and melodies and mystical lyrics inspired by their ongoing dialogue. They flirted, and their relationship was intense, but not sexual.
A couple of years later, when she was being courted in earnest, there was no mistaking it. But they weren't there yet. He knew she was too young, and she was too self-possessed to turn herself into some kind of jailbait groupie caricature. No, this was a relationship of mutual respect. They met artist to artist and found their paths already merging. They spurred each other down that path, each inspiring the other to reach for something outside of their existing domains.
Her parents trusted her to take care of herself, as she'd proven she could, time and again over the years. Prince was, of course, an overtly sexual, alluring, powerhouse icon, but they knew Maite was equally strong. Maite realized how this relationship might look from the outside, but she also knew she could not explain fate to those who did not believe in it. So she didn't try, and she didn't worry about it.
Maite visited Prince's home in his studio outside of Minneapolis, Paisley Park, a sprawling complex that included offices and two venues where he could host private performances and where he rehearsed for tours. She watched him work on the songs that would become the Love Symbol album. He wanted her to sing. She hesitated at that. Not her area of expertise.
But his faith in her was complete and empowering. She began to play a part in the narrative concept he was imagining for the album, in the role of the Princess Maite. She headed back to Germany to finish her final year at General H.H. Arnold High School, where she'd look up at a portrait of Priscilla Presley as she passed, feeling like she shared a secret with this other young woman who had caught the attention of a charismatic older rock star.
Talking to Prince on the phone one evening, Maite told him she would be going to Cairo for a few months to begin the next phase of her career as a professional belly dancer. Wait a second, you're going to Egypt? Can I send a film crew with you? She was already beyond questioning his instincts. Sure, she replied.
His frequent collaborator, Randy St. Nicholas, arrived with a small crew, taking footage of Maite in and around Cairo, walking in the bazaar, dancing on the pyramids, interacting with locals. They'd send the tapes back to Prince, not knowing they were inspiring the story of the Love Symbol album.
It would all eventually be distilled into the Three Chains of Gold compilation of music videos, in which seven assassins kill Princess Mai-Tay's father and then pursue her as she seeks out Prince to protect her and her three sacred chains of gold. Back in her hotel room one evening during this trip, Mai-Tay was coming down from one of these long days alternately filming and making her dance contacts.
As she prepared for bed, a strange man walked into her room. They had previously gotten word about a rash of hotel invasions targeting American women who were robbed and sexually assaulted. Now, Maite barely paused as she thought, oh, hell no, and grabbed her sword, brandishing it at the intruder. His mouth fell open and he spun on his heels, stumbled out the door and ran.
Maite sprinted after him, screaming down the hall. One of the film crew members heard the noise and peeked out her door in time to see the guy tearing by, with Maite in pursuit. He escaped with his life. Amidst the record scratches, bells, and finger singles that adorn the finished version of "Seven," the swoosh of a sword slicing the air punctuates sections of the song.
In the video, Maite slashes her sword in sync, holding it with two hands on the hilt, dancing with it on her head. She loved the feeling and the imagery, a symbol of a woman's strength and power, balance and danger. It all said, do not fuck with. Maite turned 18 and made a long-term trip to Paisley Park.
She was set up in a little apartment with rented furniture. Prince had plans for her and wanted her nearby, as he did with all his collaborators, his band. The relationship began to change now that she was an adult, deepening and evolving. He seemed to be at his most creative when he had a muse, and Maite filled that role during what many fans and critics consider an artistic peak.
But before he could pull focus to his plans for the next project, he was still obligated for a world tour to promote his previous album, Diamonds and Pearls. Meanwhile, though she knew she had fallen in love with him and loved being around the incredible creative energy of Paisley Park, my take started to wonder, what am I doing here?
Prince tried to get her into the video for "Diamonds and Pearls," but the director, Rebecca Blake, was not as taken with her as he was. Prince trusted Blake's vision and deferred to her. Maite was rejected for another video by director Lisa Bonet, who thought she was too pretty for the role. Maite understood, but told him she needed to go back home, to work, earn money. It was all she knew.
He put her on payroll, earning $300 a week. She was officially part of the New Power Generation, Prince's band of musicians and artists.
They hit the road on a grueling world tour, and while she loved the experience, she still couldn't help puzzling over her role. She danced in only a few numbers in the show. Later on, she understood that Prince was keeping her on deck for when he was ready for her, rather than losing her to Cairo. Once the tour ended, though, the Paisley Park business office informed her that she'd have to take over the rent on her apartment, $600 a month.
Within a few months, she had exhausted her belly dancing money and was broke, hungry, and feeling lost. I'm leaving, she told him, visibly upset. I could be in Cairo right now, making a thousand bucks a night. Instead, I'm here, living on Triscuit crackers and water. I'm going home, and then I'm going to Cairo. Hold up, hold up. I don't even know how much you make, she told him.
Let me make a call. I don't want you to think I'm that person who's... You're not that person. Relax. He tripled Maite's salary and took the opportunity to give a big bump to everyone else on payroll too, which was gratifying to her. Fittingly, it was while shooting scenes to complete the video for 7 that their relationship moved into another phase.
There was a moment when I looked at him with tears in my eyes, she recalled later. All I could say was, this is everything I love. He hugged me close and then we went on with the job at hand. But something was different. A week later, she wrote in her journal, February 9th, 1993. Not a virgin. She was 19 years old.
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Maite's work with the New Power Generation kicked into high gear. Her voice and influence are all over the Love Sign LP, and she was in almost every number on the subsequent tour as the vibe of the music continued to migrate in her direction. She was back in Barcelona for a press junket when he called, sounding unlike himself, down, a little spacey.
He got that way sometimes. And he'd tell her it was a migraine or a cold. She was worried about him, but she had to get back to work. They hung up and she sat for a few seconds. The phone rang again. "Will you marry me?" It was July 25th, 1995, five years to the day since that first concert in Barcelona they later realized. They married on Valentine's Day, 1996. After the ceremony, they returned home to change clothes.
The house had been totally redecorated. Upstairs in the bedroom, there was a baby's crib. Prince went to the stereo and put on a new song he'd been working on: "Let's Have a Baby." When she became pregnant, she had one of those shirts that said "baby" with an arrow pointing at her stomach. He had one made that said "baby maker" on the front and "bam" on the back. There were a few troubling signs during the pregnancy.
Maite gained more weight than average despite a strict diet. At one point she started bleeding and doctors wanted to do an amnio to see if there was any genetic problem, but they refused. "It's in God's hands," Prince told the doctor. His belief system was unique to him, incorporating pieces of different religions and elements of mysticism, but he had an unshakable faith in a Judeo-Christian God, which kept him even from worry about the pregnancy.
There were additional signs that something could be wrong, but Prince refused to reconsider the amnio. Such was his faith that even when Maite went into labor at seven months, he told the doctor he was taking her home.
But in the car, he was convinced to take her to another hospital. A doctor there persuaded him to have Maite admitted. She was there for several weeks and they scheduled a C-section, but the night before the operation, she went into labor. Prince was at her side, trying to comfort and distract her from her pain. It seemed to take a very long time, but finally a nurse called out, "It's a boy!" Prince was elated.
A nurse held up the newborn infant who they'd already named Amir, and Maite and Prince shared a moment of the purest joy. And then she saw her husband's face turn to dread. Amir was indeed afflicted with a terrible genetic disorder, Pfeiffer syndrome type 2. His skull was deformed, his eyes outside of their sockets, his fingers were fused together, there were abnormalities in his colon and bowels.
In the delivery room, Prince said, He's not crying. Why is he not crying? The doctors rushed to start Amir's breathing. Maite's maternal instinct took over as she thought, Let him go. Prince stayed with her and Amir over six days as the baby had multiple surgeries. His faith remained that everything would be all right. But Amir's problems worsened. As a doctor advocated a permanent tracheotomy, Maite said, No, he is suffering.
We have to let him go, she told her husband. They decided to see if Amir could survive off the ventilator the next day. They were sent home. The next day, Prince answered the phone and then put down the receiver. Amir had not survived. He later wrote the song Come Back for his son, articulating his profound sorrow, but also his comforting belief in the grand cycle of souls, that a soul lost will return again.
Speaking later about the song, he told director Spike Lee, "If you ever lose someone dear to you, never say the words 'they're gone' and they'll come back." No doubt he believed this. It may well be true. But this belief also formed the foundation of his denial, his avoidance of grief, rationalization of the unspeakable.
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey just days after the death of their son, Prince and Maite couldn't acknowledge the loss, which he leaked to the press. It's all good. Never mind what you hear. He avoided Oprah's eyes as he responded to her gentle inquiries. With Maite sitting beside him, straining to keep her composure, he said, Our family exists. We're just beginning it.
Wounded and reeling, they tried again, hoping the soul of their son might return in another form. Soon enough, she was pregnant, and they reconnected as husband and wife. They were searching their souls, traveling to Egypt and talking about finding a new place to recover together. Prince being prince, though, he threw himself back into his work.
Maite did too, choreographing a standalone show with the NPG Dance Company to the music of her husband, who by now had changed his name to the unpronounceable love sign. Early in the pregnancy, though, she miscarried. The truth was, they had never recovered from the loss of their son, and their fractured relationship was further strained. At the same time, with the influence of his friend Larry Graham, Prince was beginning his journey toward the Jehovah's Witnesses,
He professed his burgeoning belief system to Maite, whose own faith was also strong and grounded in traditional Christianity. "I'm not judging," she told her husband. "I'm just not feeling it." They worked together again on a song that seemed to point to his strong love for her, his effort to recover what they'd lost. It was called "The One," and he asked her to direct the video.
It was a great experience for them both, and they were re-energized to seek out a place for themselves, away from the trauma they'd been through. They bought a mansion in Spain, overlooking the sea, and it became her place for a while. She waited for her husband, and he'd visit, but never stayed. At one point, she visited him while he was on a fundraising tour for their charity, Love for One Another.
There she noticed a pretty young woman in the entourage and was told she was working for the charity. Her name was Manuela. Prince walked in and shook the woman's hand. Prince did not shake hands. In the beginning of their relationship, it was one of the ways Maite knew she was special in his world. He would reach out and touch her in a way that he simply did not touch others. Maite knew what was up. The relationship was dying.
She realized Manuela had become totally invested in the Jehovah's Witness study groups Prince and Larry Graham had. It was this, more than their apparently growing infatuation, that crushed Maite. She could compete with another woman, but not another spirituality. A devastating one-two punch. On one of his visits to Spain, he asked Maite to agree to annul their marriage. He told her it was so they could be baptized together and renew their vows.
This was part of his M.O., avoiding the difficulty of grappling with the past by denying it. Being reborn, his new name was part of that cycle, redecorating and painting the house, new cars, new colors, new music. Now, he hesitated, dithering, desperate to find a way to start fresh. Maite reached the end. "I have come to terms with the fact that you don't love me anymore," she wrote to him.
She was terrified of the future, but she could not change the past. Prince was moving on and she must do the same. She accepted his lawyer's first offer. She could have the house in Spain and its contents. And that was that. Prince married Manuela. Maite watched from a distance as the pattern of her failed marriage repeated itself, and then they too divorced. Maite and Prince were in touch sporadically. The connection, as ever, was undeniable and abiding.
Maite even forged a tenuous connection with Manuela as the only two people who understood what the other had been through, the unparalleled high of being loved by Prince and the painful lows of seeing it fade. Maite returned to dance.
She became an instructor and continued working as a choreographer, most notably for the video for Britney Spears' very Prince-inspired I Am a Slave for You and her iconic 2001 MTV VMA performance. She also started acting and became a cast member of the VH1 reality series Hollywood Exes.
The show documented her ongoing struggle to have a child. She had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and though she had her symptoms in check and maintained an active and healthy life, it meant that adoption would be a long shot for her. The reality show caught the attention of a young woman, a single mother, another Latina, who was impressed by her positive attitude in the face of her challenges, her refusal to talk shit about her ex-husband,
The woman went to Mai Tay's website and reached out to her, describing her own difficult situation with a child she could not raise. Something about you touched my heart that you would be the right person to adopt her. You can see pics of her on my Instagram. You can call me. Mai Tay eventually adopted the then nine-month-old girl, Chia. Chia wondered if she would ever be able to find lasting love again, still feeling spoiled after all this time by her intense romantic journey with Prince.
But her daughter's love fulfilled her completely, and she stopped thinking about it. It was November 2006, her birthday. Maite sat in an aisle seat in a darkened theater in Las Vegas. She was feeling overwhelmed. Watching her ex-husband perform for the first time in years, she realized how much she still admired him. Performer, artist, spiritual being.
her husband and greatest love. The emotions were building inside hot and fast and overflowed into tears. She looked as he stepped down from the stage. With the music thumping behind him, he walked over to her, took her hand, pulled her up and in close to him. They embraced. He had told her more than once that he didn't believe in time. If he believed in it, he would be giving it power over him.
Then, of course, he'd have to contend with all that came before, and not just the "no." Maite did not subscribe to that. But for this one pure instant, time ceased to exist. She was 16 years old in Barcelona, 20 in Minneapolis, 24 in Cairo, 33 in Las Vegas, with the man who changed her life, whom she would always love. Then Prince walked back to the stage and blew the doors off the place.
But this isn't about Prince. This is about Maite Garcia, an artist whose soul found its counterpart for a brilliant moment, who was knocked down from that height by profound loss, but emerged as a mother and then found her child. This story is about a girl. About a Girl comes to you from Double Elvis and is executive produced by Jake Brennan and Brady Sadler. It was created by Eleanor Wells.
Scott Janovitz is the show's producer and composer. Matt Bowden provides logistical support. I'm Nikki Lynette. Thanks for listening. You can follow me at Nikki Lynette on Twitter and Instagram, at Double Elvis on Instagram, and at Double Elvis FM on Twitter. If you like the show, please be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more great podcasts from Double Elvis, visit DoubleElvis.com.
I feel it necessary to say, sometimes you hear a story and any compassionate feeling person would have a really hard time not passing judgment. But when you hear a story that's informed by the experience of the person who lived it, you have no choice but to respect their perspective. And that's what we strive to do.