They left the stage and headed for the exit as Prince, still wearing his custom-designed “Yellow Cloud” guitar, jumped from the stage and strode toward us. Medina, seeing this, also headed over, attempting to beat Prince to me, in order to do the honors.
“Prince, this is—”
“Oh, I know exactly who this is,” Prince interrupted, extending a hand. “I’ve read your work for a long time. It’s an honor. Thank you for coming.”
He sounded part businessman, part tour guide. His handshake was firm, his demeanor warm. And not at all what I expected.
Up close, Prince was a lot to take in. First thing I noticed was not his height, but how the man smelled. Obviously not Old Spice. More like Eau de Badd MF. Whatever it was, no doubt the fragrance was designed especially for him. And it was heavenly.
Then I noticed his height. Years of seeing him around L.A. still hadn’t prepared me for how small he was. Onstage, in music videos and on film, Prince’s appreciable symmetry—-the equality of his torso in relationship to his arms and legs, not to mention his quietly bold personality and sheer dynamism as a performer—cast the image of a towering, if compact, personality. But up close, he was tiny. Delicate, but sturdy.
The total presentation was striking in its self-containment: every strand of his full head of dark hair, even those seemingly tousled, had its place. His unblemished skin resembled porcelain, his facial hair, a purposeful five o’ clock shadow and sideburns, all hooked up tight. The tailored outfit was a casual (for Prince) yet spectacular mélange of contemporary pimp and time-honored pontiff in both its majesty and funky elegance.
This was the refined, quintessential post-“Purple Rain” Prince of the “Diamonds and Pearl” video, when his sartorial style came together on yet another, exquisite level. That afternoon, in the middle of the week–in Minnesota, no less–he looked every inch a person somebody would pay money to see. Good money. Oh, come, let us adore him.
“How was your flight?” Prince asked. “Is the hotel okay?” We sat on the first row of a set of bleachers. Those on the soundstage stood at a distance, observing us. I asked him about the guitar. He said he designed it; wanted something that visually resembled his music. I wondered if the Yellow Cloud was a Telecaster, his favorite guitar, in disguise. “Not at all. Different guitars do different things. When I want a Telecaster, I play it. They both give me what I want, in different ways.”
The rehearsal, he said, was in preparation for a tour that would see Europe, Japan and Australia. “‘Money Don’t Matter 2 Night’ is my current favorite from the Diamonds LP,” I told him.
“Ya like that, uh?”
We sat a few more minutes as different tech people came over to ask Prince one thing or report another. He knew the impact of simply sitting with me.
“Wanna hear some music?” he teased rhetorically, as the lights on the soundstage lowered. “I mean, only if you can stick around, sir…” He well knew the answer to that. I resisted adding,“Or, you can just sit here and be Prince while I bask in the fabulousness of how you smell and that badd ass yellow suit.”
Imagine a world-famous superstar performing an entire concert just for you. Sound and lights, effects. With me being the only person there–among maybe ten–not somehow associated with Prince, it was easy to imagine he was performing just for me.They played the entire Diamonds and Pearls album with “Let’s Go Crazy”, “Purple Rain”, “Nothing Compares 2 U”, “Thieves in the Temple” and “Sexy MF” rounding out the set.
Prince was a brilliant musician and a master showman–which is to say he worshipped at the altar of Rehearsal. The man was gifted, but as with any entertainer renown for breathtaking stage skills, what resembled magic was created through back-breaking, spirit-making rehearsal.
Former members of his bands have talked about Prince’s meticulous, slave-driving dedication to practice.
“We would rehearse a show for weeks,” a musician in one of Prince’s last touring units told me. “Rehearse until we “got it,’ rehearse until it felt good [to the band] and then rehearse past the point of it being fun anymore, until it felt like a job. But that was the secret to our shows. Everyone knew their parts so well, that onstage you could…well, not relax, but you could be confident that if something went wrong in a show, it was going to be something technical, like lights or sound. It definitely wasn’t going to be us, because he worked us until we could play that shit in our sleep.”
Continued the musician, “I learned one way to keep my job—-other than hittin’ it every time—-was to pretend to be into rehearsing as much as he was. After playing a song into the ground, he’d say, ‘I think we got it.’ After rehearsal, I said to him, ‘You know, I think we can do that one better.’ The next day, after we played the song until it died and rose again, he said, ‘You were right, it’s tighter now. I appreciate your work ethic.’”
Prince and NPG played the show right through, with no pauses or stop-and-do-overs, which meant they’d been rehearsing weeks before I got there and the set was road-ready.
During rehearsal, I discovered a secret: in a Prince show, there were very few spontaneous moments. The show’s entertainment value was in making “spontaneous” appear spontaneous.
Example: at some point, during the long, instrumental segment of a song, Prince seemed to suddenly change his mind about playing guitar; outwardly seemed so overwhelmed by the groove that he threw his guitar to a roadie offstage, and ran to the piano to play. I could see that the move was anything but an afterthought, tightly choreographed to look spur of the moment.
Even addressing the hosting town was rehearsed. “Good evening, Chicago!” he yelled to the empty soundstage, referring to the city in which the band would be performing in a few days.
Even in rehearsal, the ever competitive Prince seemed to give it his all. The charismatic gestures, the subtle, seemingly impulsive funky move, the mid-air split as he jumped off the piano—-he gave me all that. By the time he ended a rip-roaring “Purple Rain,” I half expected an encore; I sure applauded enthusiastically enough for one. A roadie looked at me like I was crazy.
With that last note, the whole stage went dark. When the house lights came up, the band was still there, but Prince had vanished, apparently having made his exit through a trap door at the back of the platform.
“Hey, do you have to leave for L.A. this evening?” inquired the PR man, as tech people began to split. If I didn’t have to leave, he suggested that I stay overnight. That evening, he said, was Funk Night at Glam Slam, Prince’s very own night club there in the city—-he also opened Glam Slams in downtown Los Angeles, Miami and Yokohama, Japan—-and Prince would be there. If I wanted, I could go, hang out and perhaps talk to Prince again for my story. Cool.
Had dinner at the hotel and got a cab to Glam Slam. It was early—-five or six in the evening—-and the place was empty but for bartenders stocking their stations and wait staff preparing to open that night. It was known that Prince often played on the club’s sound system tapes of unreleased music from his infamous demo vault, and sure enough, as I climbed the stairs to the second level I heard an oh so funky jam new to my ears.
That Time Prince Invited Me To Hang Out At Paisley Park was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
