Prince. Veni Vidi Vici.

He arose through the rain and fireworks, in the middle of the male/female mash up symbol that he made famous during his legal battle with his former record label. His hair was tied up Jemima style, with a big sloppy bow in the front. He wore a teal high collared suit with an orange – bright orange – shirt. It was a sartorial choice that could only be called conservative when worn by Prince. You heard the Queen classic ‘We will Rock You’ in the background. The message was clear.

Prince was going to fuck with our heads.

Again.

He was the weird star in the eighties – (just look at the trouble wikipedia has in trying to classify his style).
When the rest of North America was loving Michael Jackson and sucking up every hair band the labels could trudge out, Prince Rogers Nelson was doing what he has always done; standing apart from the pack, and showing us – graphically at times - what we were scared to admit.
He had hit after hit – When Doves Cry, Purple Rain, 7, Little Red Corvette, I would Die 4 U, and more than I could possibly fit here.

He started in with ‘Lets Go Crazy’, and pranced up and down the stage as if it wasn’t pouring rain and striking lightening. His Twin Dancers - Maya and Nandy McClean - bracketed his moves while displaying what might be the best hair tossing by dancers in a live performance. (Twin dancers, as in real Twins. Hot real Twins. This is the same guy who wrote ‘Darling Nikki’. Like anyone else could command a stage with twin dancers doing an eleven minute dancing orgasm.)

As he moved into his next song, incredibly, a marching band joined him on the field. His music amplified by the worlds largest horn section, this performance began to gather energy. He went into a groove that started with ‘Baby I’m A Star’ and worked in ‘Proud Mary’ and ‘All Along The Watchtower’ while displaying some one handed guitar magic. Shrieking with the androgynous glee that so attracted and confused us years ago he was rolling now. When he did stole the Foo Fighters ‘Best of You’ and made it his own, you could see that he had the crowd transfixed.

Then came what you knew had to come. With the rain pouring down, you heard the opening of what I consider to be the best song written in the twentieth century: Purple Rain. He strode into his ballad, and the crowd lit their lighters like it was, well, like it was nineteen ninety-nine.

Truth is that ‘Purple Rain’ wasn’t the biggest hit off the album – or movie – of the same name. It never even made it to Number One on the Billboard chart that Prince shared with Michael Jackson in the eighties. But when you see him perform it live, you know that part of him is forever trapped inside of, and set free by this song. It came at a time when all his his other offerings were a legendary mix of raw eroticism and James Brown funky. But this song, with it’s tender lyrics and honest motive was different. Out of the cauldron of raw sex and eros that Prince reveled in at that time, ‘Purple Rain’ was immaculately born.

The lyrics – as always – don’t make literal sense. There is no shared understanding as to what the ‘Purple Rain’ is. But somehow, magically, everyone feels the passion he is trying to convey. It is the ghost in the machine of this song, at once incomprehensible and universal, and forever impossible to describe. It is only possible to feel this song, as you cannot ever understand it.

When the guitar solo came in and the huge billowing image of Prince was projected on it, the crowd was in his hands. The guitar solo itself, a mixture of holler and call back rhythms that have been a part of rock and roll since the Juke joints of the twenties, was a thing of beauty. In the torrential rain, he played it as if we had never heard it before; the call, the guitar wail, the answer and then the refrain.

The screen comes down and Prince asks the crowd if we want to sing tonight, and the answer is a resounding yes. We all know this part, the wailing at the end of the song. We know not because we know the notes or have the voice to sing it. We know it because we feel it.

Prince sang two bars and then tossed his mike aside and let the crowd do what it was dying to do.
He guided them there, and then he let them sing.
In the Purple Rain.