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Prince and the Jews: The late rock star’s best Jewish friend tells all in new memoir
By STEPHEN SILVER
(JTA) — In the late 1960s, when Neal Karlen was not even 10 years old, he would spend time at the home of his grandparents, one of the few Jewish families that remained on the north side of Minneapolis. Karlen would play basketball and ride bikes with a group of African-American kids who lived in the neighborhood. One of them, he later realized, was a young Prince Rogers Nelson.
The two men would reconnect in the early 1980s, when Karlen was a magazine journalist and Prince one of the world’s most famous rock stars. Karlen wrote three Rolling Stone cover stories about the singer, some of them published at times when Prince wasn’t speaking to any other reporters. Karlen went on to collaborate with Prince on the 1994 direct-to-video rock opera “3 Chains o’ Gold” — which Karlen notes received “the worst reviews of anything [Prince] ever did” — and was eventually hired to write the singer’s “final testament,” which was said to have been buried in a time capsule on the grounds of Paisley Park, Prince’s legendary home and production facility southwest of Minneapolis.
“We were very similar, except that he was an international icon and I was some schmuck from St. Louis Park,” Karlen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Long after they stopped working together, Karlen and Prince remained in contact, speaking for the final time just weeks before Prince’s death in 2016 at the age of 57. Now, Karlen has published “This Thing Called Life: Prince’s Odyssey, On and Off the Record,” a memoir of his relationship with the enigmatic superstar.
“I was taking notes all the time,” Karlen said of the last years of his friendship with Prince. “But I didn’t know what it was for.”
What it was for turned out to be a mournful remembrance that provides new insight into the torments and mysteries of one of the most successful popular musicians of modern times. It also details a surprising number of connections between Prince and Judaism.
Prince had several Jews in his close circle, including several members of his best-known band, The Revolution. He was interested in a long list of Jewish subjects, including golems, dybbuks and the gangster Meyer Lansky. He was a huge fan of the television show “Seinfeld” and “The Big Lebowski,” the cult film in which John Goodman plays a Jewish Vietnam veteran who famously refuses to bowl on the Jewish sabbath. And Prince tagged along for meetings with rabbis conducted as part of Karlen’s research for his books.
“He liked Jews,” said Karlen, 60, who has authored several books with Jewish themes. “He did. Half the Revolution was Jewish. The guy who discovered him, Owen Husney, was Jewish. Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker, who he really liked, his guys at Warner Brothers, were Jewish. He knew Jews, he liked them.”
But there was at least one ugly moment in Prince’s history with Jews, which Karlen discusses in the book: In the early 2000s, when a Revolution reunion was being proposed, Prince is said to have asked Wendy Melvoin, a key member of his band in the 1980s, to renounce her Judaism. Prince confirmed to Karlen that this was true.
“He may have just been just being an asshole that day,” Karlen says. “He could hurt people, and not realize it …. he just didn’t get that you shouldn’t turn your back on the people who love you. And I think those are the people who did love him, and why he really was alone at the end.”
The author of eight other books, Karlen couldn’t bring himself to listen to the tapes of his conversations with Prince for a long time after the singer’s death. Instead, he spent a year reading what others had written about Prince — everything except his own notes.
In the time between Prince’s death and the publication of the book, Karlen himself went through a great deal of personal trauma. His father died last September, and in April of 2017, nearly a year to the day after Prince’s death, he lost nearly all of his possessions in a fire. Luckily for him, the audio of his old interviews with Prince and other notes had been digitized just weeks earlier.
“I lost everything but my Prince stuff,” he said.
Karlen notes repeatedly in the book that Prince was very much unknowable, even to those who were close to him. Though he had long been vocal about hating drugs and even looked down on those who used them, Prince privately battled an opioid dependency that would eventually kill him. And like fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan, he made a habit of saying things to the press about his upbringing that were contradictory or even outright untrue.
“He was inventing himself,” Karlen said. “The easiest way to reinvent yourself is to pretend you had no past.”
Karlen’s book also explores how Prince was shaped by the “Minnesota nice” stereotype of mild manners and passive aggression and how the state can often be an inhospitable place to those outside the dominant Scandinavian culture. Much of the music legend’s life was marred by his hostile relationship with his father and the death of his only child in 1996 — a tragedy, Karlen convincingly argues, Prince never really got over. Prince also had strained relationships with band members and his family, and he ended up dying alone at Paisley Park — the exact fate he had long feared.
“It breaks my heart, because I really did like him as a guy, but he was broken,” Karlen said. “I think his father did it, and I think it broke him as a human being, but it also sort is what propelled him into the next stratosphere…. I just wish he’d been happier more often.”
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Ontario Online Casinos Let Players Set Daily, Weekly and Monthly Deposit Limits
A deposit limit sets a ceiling on how much money someone can add to an online gambling account. In Ontario’s regulated market, players can choose limits covering 24 hours, seven days and one month, with the website’s system enforcing the amounts they select.
The settings are straightforward, but the timing deserves attention. A daily allowance may sit within weekly and monthly caps, while an increase can involve a waiting period. For adults using Chrome on a Chromebook, understanding these account rules starts with knowing where to find them.
Finding the Settings and Choosing a Period
Deposit controls sit within the gambling website’s account menus. The Tooniebet Ontario responsible gaming page is an operator-specific resource readers can consult alongside their account settings. ToonieBet is operated by Canadix Limited and regulated by the AGCO under an agreement with iGaming Ontario.
Ontario’s standards require an easy and obvious way to set financial and time limits during registration and afterward. Players must be offered deposit and loss limits when signing up, and the controls must remain easy to reach and change once an account is open.
Menu names differ between sites. Published examples place deposit limits under account settings or responsible-gaming tools, where players can select an amount and a period.
Each type of limit measures something different. Deposit limits cap money added to the account. Loss limits restrict net losses after winnings are taken into account, while time limits govern playing time. iGaming Ontario’s player guidance explains all three.
For Chromebook users, these settings are managed through the website’s account interface. Chrome’s own permissions handle separate browser functions, such as access to location information.
How Several Limits Apply to One Deposit
Players can have daily, weekly and monthly limits running together. A deposit must fit within every active cap.
Take a hypothetical account with limits of CAD $40 daily, CAD $100 weekly and CAD $250 monthly. These figures illustrate the process.
If someone has already deposited CAD $90 during the weekly period, the remaining weekly allowance is CAD $10. That becomes the most they can add, even when the daily limit has more room. Reaching the monthly cap would likewise block another deposit until some monthly allowance becomes available.
This is why checking all active limits matters. A new day may bring fresh daily capacity while the weekly or monthly total remains close to its ceiling. The longer periods continue to apply as the shorter one refreshes.
When Money Drops Out of a Rolling Window
The next question is when previous deposits stop counting toward a cap. Some sites use rolling periods, which track elapsed time from individual deposits.
Published Ontario policies include daily windows of 24 hours, weekly windows of 168 hours and monthly windows of 720 hours, equivalent to 30 days. Under that approach, each deposit frees up its corresponding allowance once it falls outside the window.
Suppose someone has a CAD $100 rolling weekly limit and deposits CAD $25 on Friday, followed by CAD $75 on Saturday. Seven days after Friday’s deposit, CAD $25 becomes available again. The other CAD $75 returns seven days after Saturday’s deposit.
Leaving the restored Friday allowance unused means it combines with Saturday’s restored amount. At that point, the full CAD $100 is available. Reviewing deposit dates and times helps explain how much room remains within a rolling period.
Changing a Cap Takes a Separate Step
A limit refreshing follows the schedule already attached to the account. Raising that limit requires a request and a wait.
Ontario’s standards require at least 24 hours before a player’s request to relax or remove an established limit can take effect. The existing limit remains enforceable during the cooling-off period.
Operators publish their own timings. Documented examples include a seven-day wait for deposit-limit increases or removals. Another published schedule allows increases after one day for a daily cap, seven days for a weekly cap and 30 days for a monthly cap.
Lower limits take effect immediately under these published policies. Some policies also restart the waiting period when a player requests another increase while an earlier change is pending. The effective date shows which amount currently applies.
Other Controls and Support
Deposit limits work alongside loss limits, time limits, short breaks and self-exclusion. Together, these give players ways to restrict account funding, gambling activity or access.
Ontario-regulated online casino play is restricted to adults aged 19 and older who are physically in Ontario. Gambling involves financial risk.
For concerns about your gambling or someone else’s, ConnexOntario offers free, confidential information and referral support around the clock. Call 1-866-531-2600 or text CONNEX to 247247. Standard message and data rates may apply.
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What “Best Odds” Really Means When Comparing Gambling Review Websites
The phrase best odds appears frequently in gambling discussions, but it is surprisingly easy to use imprecisely. MonsterBetList is primarily a casino review and rankings website, not a dedicated live sportsbook odds comparison terminal. That difference is central to evaluating what its reviews can and cannot establish. A casino rating may explain payout conditions, licence information and bonus restrictions, while a claim about the best available price on a sporting outcome requires a different kind of evidence altogether.
Odds and ratings answer different questions
Sports betting odds represent a price offered on a specified outcome. A review rating is an editorial judgement built from multiple criteria. These two numerical systems cannot be substituted for one another. A bookmaker rated highly for service may offer a less competitive price on a particular match, while a service with a more attractive price may impose different limits or verification rules.
Similarly, a casino review can discuss return-to-player statistics, but RTP is not the same as sportsbook odds. RTP describes a theoretical long-run percentage built into a game model. It does not tell a reader what will happen in one session and it is not an individually negotiable market quotation.
What makes sports odds comparable?
A fair odds comparison starts with identical selections: the same event, outcome, market rules and settlement conditions. Comparing a three-way football result with a draw-no-bet price is invalid because the products pay under different circumstances. The observation time also matters; displayed prices can change quickly as market information or trading decisions evolve.
The numerical format should be standardised. Decimal odds provide one convenient representation, but American and fractional formats express the same underlying idea differently. Converting these formats is straightforward. What matters is the net price, the operator’s rules and whether the quoted offer remains available when reviewed.
Overround explains the hidden cost of many markets
In a simplified two-outcome market, dividing one by each decimal price produces an implied probability. If the implied probabilities add to more than 100%, the excess is commonly described as the bookmaker’s overround. It is one way of understanding the margin embedded in prices, although individual market structure and adjustments can complicate the interpretation.
This concept explains why the word best should not be attached to a price without context. A strong headline may look appealing yet represent an ordinary margin after calculation. More importantly, any single quote is time-dependent. Genuine comparison requires a dated observation and equivalent market rules; broad editorial praise is not enough.
What casino rankings can establish instead
MonsterBetList publishes casino reviews and guides addressing licences, bonuses, payout experiences and responsible gambling. Those topics are relevant to evaluating consumer risk and service quality. A report about the length of a withdrawal process, for example, can be useful if its methodology is transparent. A bonus review can help identify restrictive wagering requirements that marketing headlines omit.
However, a casino ranking should not be presented as evidence that its highest-rated operator consistently offers the best sports prices. Unless a site publishes repeated market-by-market comparisons, that conclusion is not supported. Readers benefit when publishers clearly distinguish what was measured from what readers might assume was measured.
Bonuses can complicate comparisons
A sportsbook may offer free-bet tokens, cashback or other promotions. Their effective value depends on conditions rather than the largest number printed in a banner. Some credits are not withdrawable as cash; others require qualifying selections, minimum odds or a deadline. Casino welcome bonuses often introduce wagering requirements, game-contribution rules and limits on withdrawals. Combining these products under one generic promotional score can hide important differences.
For instance, a large matched deposit might require extensive play before bonus-related funds become eligible for withdrawal. The required betting volume is not a promise of profit. The presence of a promotion may therefore make comparisons more complex instead of simpler. Clear disclosures should precede any judgement about value.
Editorial independence and methods
Review sites sometimes state that rankings are editorially independent. Such a statement is relevant but does not replace evidence of consistent testing. Readers should look for the criteria used, the date of each review, whether real transactions were examined and how negative findings are treated. If one platform receives detailed testing while another is scored on marketing copy, the ranking loses comparability.
Commercial incentives should also be visible. Referral relationships or sponsorships do not automatically make every observation inaccurate, but they create reasons to ask how rankings are insulated from revenue. A publication that explains its methodology and corrections process gives readers a stronger basis for trust than one that simply declares its winners.
Licensing and dispute rights before price claims
A marginally attractive price is of limited value when the operator is not legally available to the reader or does not provide meaningful avenues for redress. Regulations vary by jurisdiction, and a licence in one country may not authorise service in another. It is prudent to verify the legal entity behind a brand and the current status of any licence through official records.
Consumers should also review identity verification, account restrictions and dispute resolution procedures. These operational conditions influence the actual experience of using a gambling service. A sensible evaluation includes them before discussing promotions or theoretical market advantages.
Why guaranteed-profit language is a warning sign
No ordinary review or odds list can guarantee that an individual will win money from gambling. Claims of certain returns often omit the fact that results are uncertain, prices move and transactions are subject to restrictions. Casino games generally incorporate a house advantage, and sports outcomes remain uncertain regardless of a persuasive analysis. The safest response to absolute promises is scepticism.
Readers should also avoid treating gambling as a means of addressing financial problems. Chasing previous losses and increasing stakes to recover money can deepen harm. Consumer-oriented coverage is more valuable when it explains risk and offers realistic options for stepping away.
Conclusion: define the claim before ranking the service
“Best odds” is a specific comparative proposition, not a synonym for a high casino rating. MonsterBetList can be examined for its published casino research, review structure and risk disclosures, but those materials should not be stretched into claims they have not tested. Clear definitions, dated evidence and honest limitations are the foundations of trustworthy comparison journalism.
