To the whole world, Michael Jackson was the biggest star alive.
To his son Prince, he was just Dad. The man at the breakfast table. The one who tucked him in. And when you grow up with someone like that, it takes a while to understand that the rest of the planet sees him very differently.
Prince once explained how the truth slowly dawned on him. People followed them everywhere they went. Strangers would reach out, hoping to touch his father. Little by little, it started to add up in his young mind.
Then one day, when he was about 10 or 11, he watched some old concert footage of his dad on stage. And what he saw stopped him cold.
Take a look at the kind of scene he would have been watching.
A sea of fans losing it while Michael performs live
Watch the crowd more than the stage here, because the reaction of all those people is the whole point of this story.
In Prince’s own words, “you just see this sea of people, and there’s people fainting in the audience.” Thousands upon thousands of fans, packed together, some of them so overcome they actually passed out from the excitement.
Now, to a grown-up, that makes perfect sense. That’s what Michael Jackson did to a crowd.
But to a 10-year-old boy who just saw this man as Dad, it made no sense at all. So Prince turned to his father and asked the most wonderfully innocent question you’ve ever heard.
He asked, “Why were they fainting? I see you every day and I don’t faint.”
Isn’t that perfect? In one simple line, a little boy summed up the strangest part of growing up famous. His dad was so beloved that people fell over at the sight of him, and the kid who lived with him couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about.
Here’s another look at just how wild those crowds could get.
Fans going absolutely crazy the moment Michael arrives
Turn the sound up and listen to the screaming, because this is the madness that confused his own son.
You can understand why the story sticks with people. It’s funny, it’s sweet, and it says so much about the gap between the superstar the world adored and the ordinary father Prince knew at home.
To millions, he was a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon worth fainting over.
To one little boy, he was simply the guy he saw every single day. And that, to Prince, was the most normal thing in the world.