(Daily Mail)– He’s one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of popular music.
But Prince revealed his personal side during a solo performance in Melbourne this week, when he dedicated songs to his ex-girlfriend who recently died.
The 57-year-old told the sold-out crowd at the State Theatre on Tuesday that he had just heard about the death of former protégé Denise Matthews, aka Vanity, according to the Herald Sun.
Denise enjoyed a string of hit songs in the ’80s with her group Vanity 6 – including No.1 dance track Nasty Girl, which Prince produced.
She later fell into crack cocaine addiction, but recovered and became a born-again Christian after a kidney transplant in 1997.
On Monday, Variety claimed she reportedly died of kidney failure aged 57.
During the first leg of his Australian tour, Prince dedicated a medley of Little Red Corvette and Dirty Mind to the late-singer, whom he dated for several years in the ’80s.
The Herald Sun reported him saying: ‘Someone dear to us has passed away, I’m gonna dedicate this song to her.’
He also changed the lyrics to The Ladder to describe his relationship with Vanity and, for an encore, replaced the final words of The Beautiful Ones, ‘my knees’, with ‘Denise’.
Later, the Purple Rain star was remarkably candid about his memories of Denise, saying: ‘Her and I used to love each other deeply.’
He continued: ‘She loved me for the artist I was, I loved her for the artist she was trying to be.’
In her 1997 book, Blame It On Vanity, Denise claimed that Prince was the only man she ever truly loved, Jet Magazine reported.
They first met at the 1980 American Music Awards and Prince later asked her to be the lead singer of Vanity 6, a band known for their sexually explicit lyrics.
The pop power couple later famously posed for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine together in April 1983.
In the raunchy photo shoot, Denise could be seen reaching for Prince’s crotch and sliding a finger seductively below his waistband.
The front page headline boldly stated: ‘Prince’s Hot Rock’.
Besides Prince, Denise was romantically linked to punk rockers Adam Ant, 61, and Billy Idol, 60.
She later dated Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx, and told reporters in 1987 they were engaged. They never married.
Nikki, 57, wrote about their dysfunctional relationship in his 2007 autobiography, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star.
The book documents the pair’s Class-A drug abuse – with him addicted to heroin and her hooked on crack cocaine.
Denise eventually married American football player Anthony Smith of the Oakland Raiders in 1995, but they divorced the following year.
Smith would later be sentenced to three consecutive life sentences for the 1999 murders of Los Angeles car wash owners Ricky and Kevin Nettles.
Despite being clean for over two decades before her death, Denise still suffered from the after-effects of her kidney damage until her final days.
She had to undergo peritoneal dialysis five times a day, with each session lasting for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, Prince has recently embarked on his first Australian tour in four years – and will play New Zealand for the first time ever next week.
He surprised fans by announcing the Piano And A Microphone tour on Twitter earlier this month, having cancelled several European dates after the Paris terror attacks.
