MINNEAPOLIS — The nighttime is my time. Those 2 a.m. Prince pop-up performances at Paisley Park, I was so there. No need to get up in the morning because my work shift didn’t start until 3 p.m.

Nonetheless, as a diligent newspaper reporter, I kept my cellphone on the nightstand. Ringer in vibrate mode.

The vibrations woke me from a light sleep on a Thursday spring morning about 9:45. I glanced at the text message. Better read this one with glasses.

“A body was removed from Paisley.”

April 21, 2016, would be the longest, hardest day in my then-40 years on the music beat in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The text was from Kathy, another regular at Paisley Park. She lived near Prince’s studio complex in Chanhassen, and she was a high school classmate of his. Her daughter worked at Paisley, selling merchandise and running a teleprompter.

I rolled out of bed wondering what to do next. Different scenarios ran through my head. Who could it be? Who was visiting the Purple One at Paisley? Or could it be …? I called my editor Tim, who told me to proceed as if we must prepare for the worst.

It was. TMZ announced Prince’s death shortly after 10 a.m., minutes after Kathy’s text message. Associated Press soon confirmed the news. Tim called with my marching orders: Come into the office, shoot a short video with your reaction and then start writing.

Time to shift into reporter mode. I’d written obituaries for other people I’d known personally. But no one who was world famous, who merited a full front-page write-up.

First, a moment to breathe. I stepped into the shower, where I often mentally outline a particular article I’m working on. Not on this day. The blasts of water blended with tears that I allowed myself for a New York minute.

No time for emotions, however. Journalistic instinct took over. No time to grieve.

Shy until onstage

At the office, my relatively new boss Sue interviewed me about Prince for maybe a 12-minute video that felt much longer. I was able to control myself until we finished and the videographer asked, “Could we reshoot that? I didn’t have the volume loud enough.” We rolled our eyes and promptly exited the photo studio.

Time to write. The assignment: My personal reflection of the artist, the mysterious Minnesota icon, the local kid made good I’d been writing about since 1977.

The opening lines had come easily during my drive to the office:

I knew him for six years before he looked me in the eye.

Yes, Prince was very shy. Until he got onstage. Or until you got to know him.

If you got to know him, he was smart, articulate, aware, spiritual, observant, clever, joyful, silly, sweet, generous, thoughtful, impulsive, complicated, spontaneous and cuttingly funny.

Before you could say “Prince was so much more than ‘Purple Rain,’” the calls to appear on broadcast media started. First local and then from around the world as outlets learned I was the Prince expert in his hometown, having covered him for four decades and written the bestselling 1984 biography “Prince: Inside the Purple Reign.”

I talked with Chad Hartman on WCCO Radio during his noon show, him pressing with in-depth questions, not seeking the usual quippy sound bites. It was all so fresh, so raw; so many questions, so few answers. I hadn’t done any prep or even focused my thoughts as I usually do before a radio appearance. My head was in the middle of writing the remembrance.

This was breaking news, which radio loves, so Hartman kept me on for a second segment as Tim, my editor, hovered over my desk and soon gave me the “cut it” sign over his throat.

No one was ready for this. No one was expecting this. Prince was too young. Just 57.

After finishing my reflections article, I phoned into myTalk 107.1’s “Lori and Julia Show,” where I was a semi-regular on their afternoon-drive program. They were all in their feels. But I stayed the composed journalist.

CNN interview

While I collaborated with Star Tribune colleagues on the rest of our Prince coverage that afternoon, media requests kept pouring in via email and phone messages. A friend who works for NBC News in New York wanted to forward my name to their producer in Minneapolis. CNN wanted me live that evening at 7 o’clock on “Anderson Cooper 360,” but I’d have to go over to WCCO-TV studios to do it.

I’d never talked into a completely black screen on a TV camera before. That’s how CNN’s breaking news sausage was made. That was after a pre-interview by a producer, rehearsing the three questions with me. Oh, it wasn’t Anderson Cooper after all, but his sub, John Berman. That was a lot of hurry-up-and-wait for a very short segment.

There were more media interviews by telephone — Australia, Canada, the BBC from London, I can’t remember them all. I kept offering different versions of the same observations about Prince to reporters who were as equally unprepared for the news as I was.

NBC wanted me to drive to Minnetonka for an interview at a hotel. No way.

Except for the CNN interview, I’d spent the entire day and night in the Star Tribune office, covering arguably the biggest story of my long career, while my colleagues reported on the scenes at Paisley Park, First Avenue and elsewhere around the Twin Cities.

After all the extended 10 o’clock TV news programs ended, it was time for an interview with a national news correspondent I knew, Jamie Yuccas, formerly of WCCO-TV, who had recently joined CBS News. She and her crew came to the Star Tribune newsroom as my night teammates were leaving after one of those eventful days journalists hadn’t prepared for but definitely knew how to deliver.

Yuccas and I talked on camera for an hour and a half, a very long duration for a TV interview. Her overnight staff prepared a report for the next day’s “CBS This Morning.”

It was well past midnight. I hadn’t really eaten a proper meal all day. I’d been running on adrenaline. I hadn’t even removed the TV makeup that a CNN staffer applied.

I phoned a friend who lived in downtown Minneapolis. We went to the 24-hour Nicollet Diner. While munching on some nothing-special French toast, I matter-of-factly recounted my day.

It hadn’t hit me yet.

I had just seen Prince two nights earlier in the audience at a jazz concert at the Dakota. I had heard him on the weekend assure the faithful at Paisley Park after his emergency plane landing two nights previous in Illinois.

“Wait a few days before you waste any prayers,” he said.

A text message changed everything. Prince was dead. I was numb. This Thursday will last forever in my memory.

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(Jon Bream has been a music critic at the Star Tribune since 1975, making him the longest tenured pop critic at a U.S. daily newspaper.)

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