The career of Brian Warner—aka Marilyn Manson—was almost ruined on account of his alleged role in the Columbine massacre. Venues and communities all over the US refused to let him play on their premises and he received multiple death threats, hundreds of them when he played in Colorado. His solution to the situation has a lot to do with the dichotomy between bios and zoē: Warner registered the name Marilyn Manson as a trademark, which had never been his legal name, thus separating himself from his stage name (the mask of bios), a move which allowed him to act upon it as a legal object (0.13). This second juridical mask (separate from his real name) made it possible to impose cease and desist orders on the media that insisted on linking him/it to the high-school shootings (whatever this him or it entails).

But perhaps the most interesting case of the complex dynamics between bios and zoē in showbiz is that of Prince:

For 14 years, The Artist Formerly Known As “The Artist Formerly Known As Prince”—who was born with the name Prince Rogers Nelson— was merely known by his first name: Prince. Starting with his 1978 debut, For You, the funk singer published 13 albums under that one-word moniker, including his quintessential record Purple Rain… until 1992, when he suddenly and inexplicably changed his name from “Prince” to an unpronounceable symbol.¹

The symbol in question—a rather whimsical combination between the astrological symbols of Venus and Mars—was christened the Love Symbol #2 and Prince “the artist formerly known as Prince”. The move proved, if not disastrous, at least damaging to the sales of TAFKAP, as he began to be referred to in the media for the cumbersome initials of his new handle. Why go on with this move if the risks of a name-change in the case of a well-established artist are quite obvious? Prince had been signed to Warner Bros. for his whole career and, by the early nineties, he had renewed his contract. However, the new deal included additional clauses which hardened his production schedule while simultaneously slackened the pace of release. A prolific artist, he “wanted to release material as soon as it was ready—he had 500 unreleased songs in his famous studio vault. But Warner Bros refused, believing it would saturate the market and dilute demand for the artist’s music.”²

As a protest to the situation with Warner Bros., Prince had begun performing live with the word SLAVE painted on his right cheek and referred to his contract with the label as a form of slavery. In the press release in which he announced his name change he complained about being treated as a commodity by the record label. The solution, leaving behind his stage name which, unlike Marilyn Manson coincided his legal name, and creating a new “name” (the love symbol) that exempted him from his obligations to Warner Bros.

The first step I have taken taken towards the ultimate goal of emancipation from the chains that bind me to Warner Bros. was to change my name from Prince to (symbol). Prince is the name that my Mother gave me as a at birth. Warner Bros. took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing tool to promote all the music that I wrote. I became merely a pawn used to make more money for Warner Bros. […] I was born Prince and did not want to adopt another conventional name. The only acceptable replacement for my name, and my identity, was a symbol with no pronunciation, that is a representation of me and what my music is about.³

The Love Symbol # 2 not only acted as a juridical mask (bios) which allowed Prince to release his music at his own pace, it also served as a strategy to escape from a locus terribilis devised by Warner Bros, which commodified his given name and identity—a mixture of his bios and his zoē —and used it as a brand and a marketing tool. In short, Prince used his privilege as a sovereign/celebrity, his access to exception, to escape a terrible place that had been imposed on him. Unlike the peasant from Kafka’s parable or Pink (0.9, 3.2), he found a way to cross the law’s intimidating threshold.

In a daring and unique move, Prince renounced his status as a commodity —albeit sporadically as he also continued to release under his given name with Warner Bros.— to protect his integrity and his interests as an individual. He renounced being a showbiz commodity to recover his status as a true artist and human being. According to entertainment attorney John Kellogg, changing his stage name to the love symbol allowed Prince “to think of new ways of making money as an independent artist.”⁴ In fact, he was one of the first musicians to sell an album online and to bundle LP’s with concert tickets and newspapers. In 2006 he was awarded with a Webby Lifetime Achievement for his “visionary use of the Internet to distribute music.”

---

1. Jefferson Grubbs, “What Did Prince’s Symbol Mean? It Was Both A Contractual Tool & Meaningful Emblem.” Bustle, April 21, 2016. ↩︎
2. Jessica Lussenhop, “Why did Prince change his name to a symbol?” bbc.com, April 22, 2016. ↩︎
3. Rupert Till, Pop Cult: Religion and Popular Music, 63. ↩︎
4. Lussenhop, “Why did Prince change his name to a symbol?” ↩︎