Sheila E. confirms engagement to Prince, describes niece Nicole Richie’s adoption in new memoir
In 'The Beat of My Own Drum,' Sheila Escovedo describes her relationship with Prince and her career while on tour with him. The drummer also details the circumstances behind her niece, Nicole, getting adopted by Lionel Richie.




Well, that's fucked up for her, and the grandmama funeral powertrip was cold, but...
Prince did break her off with some classic heat! Charge it to the game, mami.


In 'The Beat of My Own Drum,' Sheila Escovedo describes her relationship with Prince and her career while on tour with him. The drummer also details the circumstances behind her niece, Nicole, getting adopted by Lionel Richie.


It was “somewhere in the middle of Europe” in 1987 that Prince spun around half way into “Purple Rain” and mouthed to his drummer, “Marry Me?”
Of course, the fierce, sexy Sheila E. said yes.
In her new memoir “The Beat of My Own Drum,” Sheila E. finally confirms in glorious detail the long-swirling rumors that she and His Purple Majesty actually had been engaged. Everyone always knew they were lovers. But Prince had so many women.
“He blew me a kiss, turned to the audience, and took the most amazing guitar solo ever,” she writes of the moment she made Prince a happy man.
“For the rest of that year my relationship with Prince was a dream ... We were with each other all day and all night, so if he was fooling around on me, he would have had to be quick about it.”

Meanwhile, the bill for the “Purple Rain” tour came due. Not having even skimmed her contract with Prince’s management company, Escovedo was unaware that she was responsible for all the expenses from her outlandish indulgences — to every last drink from the mini-bar — for herself and her band.
She owed a million dollars.
“He (Prince) had casually told me at the start it would be easier to go with him,” Escovedo writes. “It never occurred to me that I shouldn’t.”
And now, she and Prince weren’t even “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,” she writes.
She signed on to be his drummer anyway, a gig that lasted for two years and began with his “Sign o’ the Times” tour, an album she had collaborated on. But then came that stunning moment onstage “somewhere in Europe” when he proposed.
Prince didn’t want the barrage of publicity that would come if they announced their engagement. They already dealt with huge fan frenzy whenever they stepped out in public surrounded by burly bodyguards. So Escovedo kept it secret.
Between concerts, she and Prince divided their time between L.A. and Minneapolis. Prince was so relentlessly driven for the “next big thing” that their life together began to wear on her. She came off the “Lovesexy” tour that had them playing 77 international dates exhausted.

CLICK HERE TO READ FULL STORYBy 1990, Escovedo was in a bad way. While working on her album, “Sex Cymbal,” she collapsed. She hid her health problems — her musculature actually became twisted from her fierce drumming posture — from Prince. She had to keep up with him.
But she was also growing uncomfortable with his artistic direction. “His songs were getting too dirty for my tastes,” she writes. “It just wasn’t fun to be around.”
On the next tour, Prince refused to let her fly home for her grandmother’s funeral. “He was my boss, he reminded me. He signed the paychecks,” she writes. She stayed, but after that she refused to cash those checks, sometimes tearing them up in front of him. It was all but over.
Well, that's fucked up for her, and the grandmama funeral powertrip was cold, but...
Prince did break her off with some classic heat! Charge it to the game, mami.


