Jesse Grant/WireImageSheila E. addressed Prince‘s drug use, as well as her relationship with her late, longtime friend and former fiancé, in a revealing interview on Monday’s season-five premiere of the online show Larry King Now, according to People magazine.
The 58-year-old singer and drummer noted she was unaware of Prince’s use of painkillers, insisting she’d “never even seen him take an aspirin or a Tylenol,” but wouldn’t be surprised if he suffered from chronic pain, given his high-energy live shows.
“Just think about it,” she explained. “If you look at him jumping from one riser to another, like this, in those heels. I don’t know how he did it. And then in the splits and turning…”
The “Glamorous Life” singer first met Prince at a concert in Oakland in 1978 and they began collaborating together shortly thereafter. Eventually, she says it took a toll on their relationship.
“We were working together 24/7: We were always together, and it was a good and a bad thing,” she recalls. “I think after a while, I started to feel like musically where he was going, I didn’t want to be anymore.”
Although they parted ways for a time both personally and creatively in the late 1980s, they reconnected and were close until he died.
She also believes there are “hundreds” of unreleased songs that will probably never see the light of day. “I know [from] about three or four years of recording with him at one point, there’s hundreds of songs that I recorded with him that I have not heard yet,” she recalls. “And I know that in the vault, there’s a lot of music.”
Prince died of an accidental overdose of the prescription painkiller fentanyl April 21 at the age of 57.
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