Prince en band op weg naar Rolling Stones show 1981
Inleiding
In 1980 zag Mick Jagger Prince live in The Ritz in New York tijdens de Dirty Mind Tour. Het maakte diepe indruk. Toen The Rolling Stones in 1981 door de VS toerden werd Prince gevraagd op 9 en 11 oktober 1981 in het voorprogramma te spelen. Het zouden twee veelbesproken incidenten worden.
The Rolling Stones
Het leek een perfecte combinatie. De jonge opkomende Prince in het voorprogramma van The Rolling Stones, die destijds nog steeds The Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band In The World waren. Mick Jagger had altijd geprobeerd in connectie te blijven met de tijdsgeest. Dus toen de verhalen over een nieuwe jonge muzikant, alleskunner en geniaal performer de ronde deden, wilde Jagger zien wie dat was. Jagger bezocht Prince in New York tijdens de Dirty Mind Tour. Hij is het nooit vergeten, en toen er extra ruimte in het voorprogramma van twee concerten in Los Angeles was, stelde Jagger Prince voor.
Voor Prince was het een goede kans zijn muziek eens aan een voornamelijk wit publiek te presenteren, en daarnaast twee keer voor 94.000 mensen te spelen.
Op weg naar de soundcheck oktober 1981
Keyboardspeler Lisa Coleman:
We were so excited, we’d rehearsed our little booties off, our funky black asses. This is it, we’re gonna make the big time.
© Prince – The man and his music, Matt Thorne, 2016
9 oktober 1981
De eerste show, 9 oktober 1981, was een ongebruikelijk warme dag. Het publiek stond er al een tijdje en moest eerst nog door 3 voorprogramma’s heen voordat The Rolling Stones zouden beginnen. Drummer Bobby Z. verwoordde het als volgt:
It’s Prince, it’s George Thorogood & The Destroyers, J. Geils Band, and the Rolling Stones. People that are up front are rough—it’s the Stones’ reputation—and it’s a festival scene. So if you survive the front, you were there since 6 am. You’re probably drunk for the third time and high on God knows what. They’re excited that there’s music about to start. But they don’t realize that they’ve got five hours until the Stones and three opening acts. So concert promoter Bill Graham comes out and says, “All right, we’ve got a new act for you today.” Boo. Everybody wants the Stones.
…
We start out with I think “Uptown” and they hear us singing falsetto. They’re not interested, they’re not willing, they’re certainly not tolerant. You’ve got three brothers up there. You’ve got weird-looking white people in the back. It’s New Age weird punky funk rock—all the stuff they don’t want to know about or be interested in. They just want the blues or rock and roll. They don’t want to listen to anything new—let alone from the guy who looks like a chick but he’s not a chick and the chicks like him.© A Soldier in Prince’s Revolution, Jayne Haugen Olsen, 05-12-2016
Ladingen aan racistische en homofobe beledigingen werden naar het podium geslingerd aangevuld met allerlei afval, bekers, etc. Prince en band verlieten voortijdig het podium.
Keyboardspeler Matt Fink:
We went on when the sun was still up, I think we hit the stage around six or seven at night. We get on stage and within two minutes of the first song the audience, which was a hardcore hippie crowd, they took one look at Prince and went what the heck is this? And they started booing, flipping us the bird.
…
And they’re throwing whatever they could get their hands on…a crumpled up Coca-Cola can. I saw a fifth of Jack Daniels whiz by Prince’s face…© I Would Die 4 U – Why Prince became an icon, Touré, 2013
Ook bassist Brown Mark herinnert zich de shows goed. Sterker, het was zijn vuurdoop bij Prince. 9 oktober 1981 was zijn eerste officiële concert als bassist voor Prince.
The Rolling Stones concert was my first gig with Prince. It was an unforgettable experience and very enlightening to say the least. I remember pulling up to the Coliseum in LA and walking through a small town of tents and trailers. It was a lot like a circus or fairgrounds with all the cables, tents, and generators and people everywhere working behind the scenes. Security brought us to our tent filled with flowers, mirrors, bright lights and a banquet of fruits, lunch meats and a variety of breads. You could hear the crowds roar although you couldn’t see them through the city of tents. As show time fast approached, security lined us up to direct us to the stage. It felt like a scene from the movie Gladiator as we walked towards the stage. I remember a huge set of white curtains towering across the back side of the stage and a very wide stair case taking us down to the stage. As we walked through the curtains from the back of the stage there was musical gear everywhere, technicians running back and forth; it was very chaotic. As we came around the towers of amps and speakers and entered the stage we still couldn’t see the audience because of the large curtains in front of us. We all looked at each other and Prince gave the ready signal. As the curtains opened, the drums started beating and all I can remember was the site of a massive herd of bodies all piled together like cattle; 94,000 if I can remember correctly. Everyone was hot and sweaty from the heat, screaming and dancing to the music, holding up beer cans and bottles. I couldn’t even hear the band, the crowd was so loud! On each side of the coliseum were these massive water hoses spraying every one down to keep them from dehydrating. As we finished the first song I noticed people not liking what they were hearing. This was a crowd of Stones fans, predominately bikers, and they wanted to hear Rock music. We changed up the set in an instance and started performing Bambi but the audience, not being familiar with this music, became very violent. The scene shifted quickly as the crowed began to up their middle finger, hollering out all sorts of profanities. Next thing I noticed was food starting to fly through the air like a dark thunder cloud. Imagine 94,000 people throwing food at each other; it was the craziest thing I had ever seen in my life. I got hit in the shoulder with a bag of fried chicken; then my guitar got knocked out of tune by a large grapefruit that hit the tuning keys and I knew then it was time to run! I dropped that guitar and started flying but the funny thing was, everyone else was already gone! They were smart enough to get the heck out of there not knowing what was going to happen at that point.
Brown Mark, 2009
Prince in het voorprogramma van The Rolling Stones oktober 1981
Setlist 9 oktober 1981
- Bambi
- When You Were Mine
- Jack U Off
- Uptown
Prince voelde zich vernederd en was al onderweg naar Minneapolis. Hij werd toch overgehaald (door Mick Jagger en Dez Dickerson) om het tweede concert toch te doen.
11 oktober 1981
De tweede dag werd zo mogelijk nog erger dan de eerste. Mensen waren nu extra voorbereid. Deze keer werd er vanaf noot 1 van alles naar het podium geslingerd: rot fruit, afval, flessen. De band stopte weer voortijdig.
Setlist 11 oktober 1981
- Bambi
- When You Were Mine
- Jack U Off
- Uptown
- Why You Wanna treat me So Bad?
Prince op het Rolling Stones podium oktober 1981
Achteraf
De bekende Amerikaanse (rock) journalist Greil Marcus ontving een brief van één van zijn lezers naar aanleiding van zijn beschrijving van de gebeurtenissen die avond in Los Angeles:
You obviously are a fan of that faggot nigger group or you wouldn’t of lied about it. I just wanted you to know that us W.A.S.P. rock n rollers pay to see white performers and not niggers, faggots or tawdry critics like yourself President Reagan has proven once and for all that liberals, niggers, fags and minorities are out. Thank god for that. I can sure bet your ass on one thing, prince wont open up for the stones next time around.
© Food fight: Real life rock top 10, 1981 (12/81), Greil Marcus
Aan bovenstaande is weinig toe te voegen. Hiermee is uiteraard niet gezegd dat alle Stones fans er zo over dachten, maar het is naïef om te denken dat dit voorbehouden was aan een enkeling. Net zoals The Sex Pistols en disco door rockfans werden minacht, werd Prince onbeschoft behandeld, omdat ze anders waren. Ironisch is en blijft het wel dat jonge, nieuwe, opwindende en vernieuwende muzikanten werden bedreigd en bespot door dezelfde mensen die een decennium eerder opkwamen voor hun eigen nieuwe subcultuur.
Prince – Rolling Stones backstage pasje
Reacties
In 1982 werd Prince geïnterviewd en had hij het volgende te zeggen over de concerten:
When we first went on stage, a lot of people were throwing things and making noises. At first I thought it was funny. I figured, ‘We’d better just play’. When I looked up a bit later, it had simmered down and a lot of people seemed relaxed. But there was this one dude right in front, and you could see hatred all over his face.
What was really strange was there was two of them. We kept playing and the one of them noticed that everyone else had cooled out. So he tried to stop this other dude, but the guy wouldn’t stop. The reason I left was because I didn’t want to play anymore. I just wanted to fight – to fight him,. I was really angry.
I’m sure wearing underwear and a trench coat didn’t help matters… but if you throw trash at anybody, it’s because you weren’t trained right at home.
© The renegade Prince, Robert Hilburn, 21-11-1982
Zowel Mick Jagger als Keith Richards waren niet erg begripvol voor het weglopen van Prince.
I talked to Prince on the phone once after he got two cans thrown at him in L.A. He said he didn’t want to do any more shows. God, I got thousands of bottles and cans thrown at me! Every kind of debris. I told him, if you get to be a really big headliner, you have to be prepared for people to throw bottles at you in the night.
© Rolling Stone, 24-11-1983
Keith Richards was zelfs kwaad en leek niet erg op de hoogte van wie/wat Prince was, zeker gezien zijn opmerking over de naam Prince, niet beseffende dat dit zijn geboortenaam was.
I wish him luck. He’s got a problem with his attitude and it comes across on record. Prince has to find out what it means to be a prince. That’s the trouble with conferring a title on yourself before you’ve proved it. That was his attitude when he opened for us on tour, and it was insulting to our audience. You don’t try to knock off the headline like that when you’re playing a Stones crowd. You’d be much better off just being yourself and projecting that. He’s a prince who thinks he’s a king already. Good luck to him.
© Musician Magazine, 1983
Herinneringen
Alle betrokkenen hebben herinneringen aan de concerten. Gitarist Dez Dickerson heeft een interessante andere kijk op wat er voorviel.
The folklore surrounding those shows is fairly epic, especially regarding how things went down Day 1 versus Day 2. The shows took place with a day off in between, on Friday and Sunday, and we had a very different experience on the first show than the second. The response after the first song on the first day was something I’ll never forget – the sound of 120,000 people cheering is almost overwhelming. In addition to rank and file fans, there were hundreds of Hell’s Angels in the audience. They did not look favorably on a short black man wearing high heels, leg warmers, bikini underwear and a trenchcoat, singing in falsetto, on the Stones’ stage, and they let us know, along with a few other similarly inclined individuals. They threw paper Coke cups and booed heartily, but they were outnumbered by those who cheered us. It was enough to rattle Prince, though, who exited the stage early and left the band onstage to fend for themselves. He left the stadium and went straight to the airport, returning to Minneapolis. Bill Graham, the promoter, got up onstage and cussed out the people he singled out as troublemakers, and he got booed. The word that went out between Friday and Sunday is that we had been booed off the stage, which was not true – Bill got booed, we just cut our set short. A station that broadcast live from the stadium misreported the booing thing, and the legend grew until Sunday, by which time thousands came to the show intent on running us out of town. In the interim, after attempts by both our managers and Mick Jagger to convince Prince to come back and do the second show, I was asked by management to call and talk to him. We talked for 45 minutes, and I convinced him to get on a plane and come back. It was a bit like landing on Normandy Beach on stage the second day, but we did our entire set and left on our terms – that was important to us.
Dez Dickerson, 2009
Prince en Ron Wood 16 juli 1988
Na 1981
Prince had geleerd van zijn ervaring. Er was nog werk te verrichten om de echte cross-over voor elkaar te krijgen. Voor zijn eerst volgende album 1999 zou hij dingen anders gaan aanpakken. Met direct resultaat: Little Red Corvette zorgde voor de cross-over. Twee jaar later ontplofte het helemaal: Purple Rain maakte Prince tot de meest populaire artiest van 1984 en 1985.
Prince en The Rolling Stones kruisten elkaar soms in de jaren daarna. Jagger bleef een groot liefhebber en vertelde dat hij graag sportte met The Black Album op.
Op 13 augustus 1986 speelde Prince een aftershow in Londen tijdens de Parade Tour, waar hij The Stones’ Miss You voor het eerst speelde, waarvan hij eens stelde dat dat het enige nummer was dat hij zelf had willen schrijven. Stones gitarist Ron Wood speelde destijds mee. Op 16 juli 1988 werd dit nog eens dunnetjes overgedaan.
Prince zou tijdens zijn carrière vaker nummers van The Rolling Stones blijven spelen.
21 april 2016
Na Prince’ dood op 21 april 2016 reageerden Ron Wood, Mick Jagger en Keith Richards alle drie op Twitter.
Prince – Ron Wood – Twitter 21-04-2016
Prince – Mick Jagger – Twitter 21-04-2016 (1)
Prince – Mick Jagger – Twitter 21-04-2016 (2)
Prince – Mick Jagger – Twitter 21-04-2016 (3)
Prince – Keith Richards – Twitter 22-04-2016
Op 24 oktober 2021 speelden The Rolling Stones speelden in Minneapolis en eerden Prince met korte tekstflarden uit Prince nummers Purple Rain en Controversy.
Ter afsluiting
Of Prince’ ervaring tijdens The Rolling Stones concerten vormend waren, zullen we nooit weten. Feit is wel dat Prince daarna steeds meer in een flow terecht kwam, die er uiteindelijk toe leidde dat hij daadwerkelijk een nummer per dag schreef en opnam. Volgens zijn engineer destijds, Peggy McCreary, was dat op dagen zelfs meer (!).
