The Bangles singer recalls when Prince first gave her a cassette with the song on it — and then finding it decades later
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NEED TO KNOW
- Susanna Hoffs says Prince gifted her the song “Manic Monday,” which became The Bangles’ first radio hit
- Prince gave Hoffs the original cassette tape with his handwritten copyright insignia before she recorded the song
- Hoffs recalls Prince as a musical genius and cherished their playful moments and creative collaborations
It’s been 40 years since The Bangles released “Manic Monday,” the song that thrust them to stardom.
During an interview with PEOPLE, the band’s former lead singer, Susanna Hoffs, reflects on Prince giving her the now-iconic song and just how drastically it changed her life.
“There’s so much about the connection with Prince that was so important to me: that friendship with him. And the fact that he gave me ‘Manic Monday’ and I still have the original cassette,” Hoffs, 67, shares.
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“I had picked it up. He was recording at the time … I was told, ‘Prince has something for you, come to the studio,’” she recalls. “But when I got there, he was recording. He had given it to the front desk, the cassette, and I kept it all these years.”
She notes that the cassette tape — in which Prince sang the song himself — had the “Purple Rain” singer’s own copyright insignia in red ink.
“He had seen the video of ‘Hero Takes a Fall,’ which was the song I co-wrote with the other guitarist in the band, Vicki [Peterson]. It was the most cheesy ‘80s video. It was just cheesy in the greatest way,” she shares. “But that’s what Prince saw when he saw me in the French maid outfit. That’s when I got the ‘Manic Monday’ cassette. He was a fan of the band.”
That one decision, she notes, “completely changed my life.”
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Hoffs says she stayed in touch with the late singer “as much as I could” before he died in 2016.
“When we did The Greek Theatre, he followed us, and then he was renting a place in Beverly Hills. He was very cheeky and very mischievous. He said, ‘Let’s go to Sunset Sound and just play music,’” she remembers. “We played music with him. He only wanted to play Bangles songs, and then all of a sudden we realized he had just left and didn’t say goodbye. I was like, ‘Okay, we’re done. All right. Thanks, Prince. That was fun.’ It was genuinely fun. He was such a character.”
Of his legacy, she says that Prince was an “iconoclast, a brilliant, genius iconoclast.”
“I don’t think there’ll ever be someone like Prince. I think he was one of a kind, brilliant human artist,” Hoffs shares.
Reflecting on 40 years of “Manic Monday,” Hoffs says it is the “gift that keeps on giving.”
“The gift of ‘Manic Monday’ [is that it] really did change the trajectory of The Bangles world. It was on the radio all of a sudden. It was really the first radio hit. It was pretty amazing.”
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