Party over. Oops, out of time.

When David Bowie died in January two things happened. Firstly, there was an understandable outpouring of grief. Bowie wasn't just a pop star - he'd transcended that status at the outset of his career. His music, his art, his way of life were on a totally different plane, and the impact he'd had on those who'd grown up with his music (as well as those who'd come late to the party and found out in the best way what the fuss was all about) was immeasurable. Certainly more so than any other rock star I can think of.

The second thing that happened was the abrubt realisation that musical icons who'd emerged in the '60s and '70s were beginning to pop their clogs. Well, to be fair, clogs were popping long before 2016 came knocking with its apparently unstoppable roll call of celebrity death. Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Michael Jackson, et al, should still be rock and rolling, had rock and roll not got in the way. And, then, if you really want a depressing legacy, Wiki the hip-hop acts who have died in an age range of early-20s to mid-40s, with causes grimly including: "shot and killed" (numerous), "car accident", "complications from AIDS", "cancer", "complications from diabetes" and a long list of strokes and heart attacks.

If you were to transplant these deaths into the general population it's likely that you wouldn't see anything greatly different (though "shot and killed" may not be as prevelent an exit in every part of the world...). The bleedingly obvious point I'm making here is that people die all the time: 55.3 million each year, 151,600 people every day, 6,316 people each hour, 105 people each minute. Two people will have died, somewhere in the world, in the time it has taken you to read this sentence.

Unfortunately we expect our icons to be immortal. At some point - whether we like it or not, accept it or don't - we will have to bear with the news of Paul McCartney and Ringo Star reforming the Fab Four upstairs. Even the Rolling Stones can't go on forever. Not even Keith. No doubt the insurers of a special gig this October in California that will feature the Stones, Bob Dylan, McCartney, Neil Young, Roger Waters and The Who are sweating bullets, given the rate we're losing celebrities this year.

However, like Bowie's death, last night's news of the 57-year-old Prince moving on came from nowhere. Even if the tabloids have since been intrusively digging around reports of prevailing ill-health, here was another icon departing as unpredictably and, in a way, as eccentrically as he had conducted himself throughout life and as an integral figure of that trio of Madonna (whom Prince was older by just a couple of months) and Michael Jackson (who was just a couple of weeks younger than La Ciccone).

They were children of the first pop era, who'd learned their way in the world in the '70s to become the premiere megastars of the MTV age, mixing dance and pop with gawdiness and sexuality, to take over the very arenas rock's behemoths had occupied the decade before.

Prince, Madonna and Jackson were the undisputed pillars of the 80s in pop. Just as Bowie, glam and art rock had done for the 70s, they established put image, reputation and music to work. And while Jackson may have been the self-styled King of Pop and Madonna its Queen, Prince was by no means the errant offspring. Like Bowie, he was an innovator who took recognised forms and adapted them to his own idiosyncratic sense of artistry, crucially both in the studio and on stage.

Prince was an analogue musician in the pre-digital age who sounded like no other. His 'Paisley sound' was his own, uniquely, and unlike any other contemporary in black or white music. And, of course, with his adrogyny, he challenged what black or white musicians should sound and look like. Somehow he appeared to be overtly sexual and asexual at the same time. In his music there was a lot of funk, soul and R&B, but also a lot of rock, blues and psychedelia, and more than a lot of knowing humour. The thing is, we just knew so little of him which, actually, in this era of knowing what everyone has for breakfast thanks to social media, is fine by me.

My abiding memory of Prince was being crammed into the Stravinski Auditorium in Montreux three years ago on a hot, sweaty Saturday night. Somehow I'd managed to get down to the front of the stage, which is not my normal MO at concerts at all. The Stravinski is perfectly shaped to see artists from almost everywhere in the room, such is its pleasant intimacy, but by virtue of the fact I'd been forced to use a side entrance, I was right up against a human barrier of security people shining torches on anyone who dared to get their phones out to photograph the Purple One. By the time he was on stage, I was resembling one of the bodies in Picasso's After Guernica, deformed and bent totally out of shape by the crush.

Not exactly being the right shape or physique for such exertions, I ended the concert with cramp in both feet and both calves, gasping for the drink I'd been denied by being hemmed in down at the front. And I wouldn't have had it any other way - as Prince, backed by his muse-du-jour 3rdeyegirl, funked out for close to three hours barely 20ft in front of me. It was one of the gigs of a lifetime, coming in the midst of a long summer of concert-going. You can read my review of it here: http://whatdavidbowiewoulddo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/party-over-oops-out-of-time-prince-at.html

Instagram/Montreux Jazz Festival

I've been less effected by Prince's death than Bowie's, simply because Bowie meant much more to me, and in a way, that gave me greater licence to wallow. But, like every obituary and music fan who has thusfar commented on the Purple One's sudden demise, his genius was truly, really unparalleled, even if that does, after so many celebrity deaths, sound like hyperbole. Much of that is down to the fact you can't, really, nail down what it was that made him so innovative.

The starting point would be his starting point, the 1978 debut album For You - written almost entirely by him and performed exclusively by him. It's personnel listing reads: "Prince - all vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, Orr bass, bass synth, singing bass, fuzz bass, Fender Rhodes electric piano, acoustic piano, Minimoog, Polymoog, ARP String Ensemble, ARP Pro Soloist, Oberheim 4-voice, clavinet, drums, syndrums, water drums, slapsticks, bongos, congas, finger cymbals, wind chimes, orchestral bells, wood blocks, brush trap, tree bell, hand claps, finger snaps."

Over the next three albums - which included 1980's Dirty Mind (the one with Prince posing on the cover in, well, his underpants) - his polymathic virtuosity expanded further, along with more of his American moral sensitivity-challenging mild eroticism (Smash Hits named him The Purple Perv). In 1982, 1999 put him squarely on the map with the a whopping, 70-minute double album that featured the brilliance of its title track, along with Little Red Corvette and Delirious. Purple Rain, which followed, is arguably one of the greatest albums of the decade, removing Springsteen's Born in the USA from the top of the US charts and featuring the hits When Doves Cry, Let's Go Crazy, Purple Rain, I Would Die 4 U and Take Me With U and ending with the anthemic, nine-minute gospel-meets-blues opus of a title track, one which showcased Prince's excellence as a lead guitarist, an attribute he was rarely credited for.

These were the albums that introduced me to Prince. These were the albums that established him as an artist, really, like no other. There would be 33 more to come from Paisley Park Studios, each as confounding and as their predecessor, some without fanfare, some without even a name attached to them (), but all unmistakeably without parallel or without imitation. That may not be your definition of genius, but it certainly comes close to mine. And that is what we mourn for. Death is inevitable, that we know. But loss is something you can't allow for, especially the loss of someone as brilliant as Prince Rogers Nelson.