Devin Devasquez is a woman of many accomplishments. She’s a model, a Playboy Playmate, an actress, a best-selling Author, and an Emmy-winning Producer, (and she’s a right-wing conservative, but I don’t hold that against her…). She is also an ex-girlfriend of the Late Prince Rogers Nelson, who had a significant role in her life, even in the years after they broke up.

I actually remember the first time I heard about her. Not quite all the details, but I was in Junior High School, and I read in one of those urban teen magazines that used to be popular back in the 80’s (either Right On!, or Black Beat, I used to get each new issue every month),  a brief entry in their gossip column that said something like (I’m paraphrasing from memory) “Prince is dating a playboy playmate named Devin Devasquez, who has recently been seen driving around L.A. in a purple car that Prince gave her as a gift.” There were no pictures but the name did stick with me, as I was a major Prince fan who absorbed any news about him that I got. And then at some point I saw the teen comedy CAN’T BUY ME LOVE, in which she had a small but crucial role. I remember when seeing her, recognizing her name in the credits from that article, I immediately thought to myself that she looked like Prince’s type. Obviously, from her last name I knew that she was Hispanic, but she had that exotic racially-ambiguous look, my brother James calls them, “Guess-My-Race women.”

There is a picture in the book of her posing with Carmen Electra and Appollonia, which I can’t find online to post here, but seeing them all together they do look like they could be related.

Next time I happened to see Devin was while watching an infamous episode of the sitcom Married With Children, in which the character of Al Bundy visits a lingerie shop. Devin plays a woman who models her lingerie for Al, and then takes her bra off in front of him (we only see her from behind at that point). I was already a regular fan of the show, and I thought that episode was hilarious, and I remember telling my mother about it, including describing the lingerie scene, after I saw it. The reason that episode became “infamous,” is because some random housewife saw it and was so offended by it that she tried to start a national letter-writing campaign to get the show canceled. Instead, the increased publicity for the show made it more popular than ever…

I would see Devin in other things over the years, like the film HARD TIMES, on the Howard Stern Show, and even on my favorite dating show BLIND DATE once (I wish they’d bring that show back). And, yes, I did eventually manage to check out her Playboy pictures. . .

No, I will not link to the images, this is a PG-13 blog. Look ’em up, yourself.

And then in recent years I found her and connected with her on social media, where she has shown to be a delightful person (I just avoid political topics), and so when I saw that she had released this book, I immediately bought it.

First, before I talk about what this book is, let me tell you what it isn’t.

This is not an exploitative salacious tell-all full of scandalous tales, exposing celebrity’s dirty secrets. So if that is what you were looking for, move on.

Yes, in addition to Prince, she had encounters with many other celebrities over the years whom she writes about, including a relationship with Sylvester Stallone, but she doesn’t go out of her way to trash anybody. I mean, one of the worst offenses I thought was in the book was that Prince’s friend Eddie Murphy tried to hit on her, even though he knew she had dated Prince.

That’s a Bro Code violation, Eddie. Not cool…

Even when she gets to her first night making love with Prince, she doesn’t get into explicit details. It’s one paragraph, where she says that he was “a very tender and passionate lover.” She also answers a question that she says she’s often gotten from women and men about Prince, by confirming that yes he was well-endowed. But even with that, she doesn’t say much. “I mean, I didn’t exactly get out the measuring tape, but he was more than satisfying for me in that department.”

Well, alrighty then.

She also tells us that Prince confessed to her that had occasionally orgasmed while he was performing guitar solos during concerts. I guess that’s kinda dirty?

She was just 21 when she first met Prince, who was 5 years older than her. At the time she had already appeared in a Playboy pictorial about college girls, and now she was preparing to shoot for her first centerfold (she was Miss June, 1985). It was originally just a business thing, as Playboy wanted to see if they could get a picture of her with Prince, to include in the magazine, so she was sent to meet him. Prince refused the picture, but he was clearly impressed with her. She was given tickets to a Prince concert and then was invited to join his band an entourage in the hotel they were saying, where she and Prince were able to talk. Over the next several months she and Prince remained in touch, with him calling her at 2am on many mornings and talking for hours until dawn. And he would also sometimes fly her out to his concerts and they’d hang out afterwards. They would even frequently sleep in the same bed, but often not doing more than just kissing.

To us hardcore Prince fans, this isn’t really surprising, as we know that despite his public personae, especially back in the 80’s, Prince was not this wild sex-crazed fiend that he appeared to be. Judging by his music you might think he was the type to be having orgies with random groupies while on tour. But If anything, Prince was more of a serial monogamist. Devin even calls him a bit of a prude. He was a very private person, so it’s understandable that he would want to take his time to really get to know a woman before getting physically intimate with her.

Sadly, as quickly as their relationship heated up, it then cooled off. Prince eventually dumped her via phone for someone else (possibly Sheila E, at the time). But she and Prince remained cordial and stayed in touch for most of the rest of his life. When Devin got on Star Search (eventually winning the $100,000 prize for Spokesmodel Of The Year in 1986) she was able to get Prince to agree to let the show use one of his songs for free. She met and introduced him to dancer Cat Glover, whom he would then hire to tour with him. She had become close with Prince’s father, John L. Nelson, and stayed in touch with him via phone, and even escorted him to the premier of Prince’s film Under The Cherry Moon. One of Prince’s managers became her manager, and whenever Prince came to L.A., he would arrange for Devin and Prince to meet up. As she said, she become part of his entourage whenever Prince was in town. She and Prince did backslide once, spending another night together a few months after their breakup, but remained strictly platonic friends then on.

There are multiple other encounters with Prince detailed in this book (no mention of him ever buying her car, though, so I guess that was just a rumor after all), but she did lose touch with him during the last few years of his life, which she regrets. Her last time seeing him was taking her husband, legendary soap opera actor Ron Moss, to a Prince concert. But they had unexpectedly bad tickets, and didn’t get a chance to see Prince backstage like she usually did at his concerts. In her descriptions of her reaction to the news of Prince’s death, you can feel how much she still cared for him, as a friend. It’s very touching.

A couple of notable reveals about Prince are his description of Madonna as “a very calculating woman” (that sounds about right), and his admission that he had been a fan of Micheal Jackson’s music when he was younger and, while he hated the publicly-invented “rivalry” between them, Devin thinks Prince continued to respect Micheal’s accomplishments.

But I have to say that even without the Prince connection, this would be a book that I could recommend, as Devin’s life is quite interesting in its own right. From a small town in a Louisiana, Devin had a miserable childhood being raised with a mother who suffered from mental illness and a real slimball stepfather who would regularly touch her inappropriately. The latter fact is something she hid even from those close to her for most of her life until she finally sought therapy later in life, which helped her put it behind her. She studied hard so she graduate high school early, and supported herself since age 16. She worked two jobs to put herself through college, where is where ended up applying for the playboy shoot. She ends up moving to Chicago where she began her modeling clear, eventually moving to California. She maintains her career as a model and actress. After Prince she got into a short but intense relationship with Sylvester Stallone, then she meets and marries a man whom she moves to his hometown in Tennessee, initially intending to completely give up her modeling career and live a domestic life as a housewife. Then its a move to Arizona, and a rekindling of her career. She admits to infidelity on her part, which leads to the end of the marriage, despite a mutual effort to work past it. Then there’s a relationship with an older wealthy man, where she becomes part of Hollywood’s intimate social circle, hosting parties where she meets many other celebrities, from Mick Jagger to Jon Lovitz. But the man cheats on her, and she remains single after that for many years.

Devin finally finds the real and lasting happiness that eluded her for much of her life, when she begins dating Ronn Moss. And the chapters where she details their meeting, courtship, and marriage (their official wedding dance was to Prince’s song, “Kiss”) are particularly interesting. Both of them came with their own emotional baggage, but learned to work through them together to form a happy family with Ronn’s daughters from his first marriage. Now they’ve written a book together (My Husband’s A Dog… My Wife’s A Bitch: A Humorous Look At Relationships), in addition to the two other books (The Naked Truth About A Pinup Model and True Age, Timeless Beauty: A Guide to Finding the Fountain of Youth and All that You Desire in Life ) that Devin has written alone, and they co-produce (with others) the long-running web series, THE BAY, which Ronn also stars in and which has won multiple awards, including a number of Emmys.

The Day It Snowed In April is a compelling book that both Prince fans and non-fans alike could enjoy reading. I give it my highest recommendation. A+

The Day It Snowed In April: A Memoir by Devin Devasquez

And learn more about her at her website: https://www.devindevasquez.com/

P.S. my brother James Lott Jr. will be interviewing Devin on his show BREAKING INTO this afternoon (May 21, 2017). I will include a link to the interview when it is available.

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