PRINCE Shakes his money-maker

The Prince world tour hits Britain this month. We sent Phil Sutcliffe to preview the shows from Australia. And
be warned: he’s using the term “funky bedlam

I didn’t really notice prince till he walked through the schoolyard one day wearing just an open trench coat and a pair of underpants. says Damon Dickson, of The New Power Generation’s dazzling dance team, We just looked and said what the hell is that? “you see he’s been Prince for a long time”! observes drummer Michael B, vest and vibrant with hilarity. he’s been Prince since he realised he was never going to grow to more than five and a (secret) silver and the kids in the playground took to calling him Princess” and apparently “Bucther Dog”because they said he was ugly too. he’s been Prince since his parents spilt up in 1965 when he was seven and he began to be passed around from side to side and relative to relative more like a parcel than a child, He’s been Prince since his stepfather took him to see James Brown when he was 10 and he went straight home tp practisc the moves. And Prince since he realised the for him, music meant no limits. “Most of us go back that far with him, although he’s a few years older,” says Tony M rapper/dancer. ” Michael, Damon and me, We all went to the same high school as Prince.” It’s dinner time at the Sydney Intercontincntal, a rare day off on the Australian tour. With news of the LA riots the ony thing on T, the comforts of reminiscence are appealing and available because the NPG ‘reflects how in the couple of years. Prince has turned back to the most reliable and proven source of strenght in his life ( outside of his own formidable character. that is ) the music community in his hometown. Minneapolis. Most of the eight-person core NPG members were born there and they all live there. In pop superstar terms it’s extraordinary – as if say bowie’s prime requirement when recruiting Tim Machine had been tthat they all came from bromley. ” Musically there didn’t seem to be anything special about growing up in Minneapolis,” says Tony ” One thing though , it’s real cold ,serious snow. so we woild be indoors all throught the winter. practising a lot. sharing whatever equipment we had. Then in the sumer all the bands werebattling each other for the same gigs .it was very competitive. There was Flyte Time ( wih Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis,Alexander O’Neal). Grand Cental (Prince’s band), Family and Cohesion,” says Damon. “Quite an atmosphere going.” “Our bass player, Sonny Thompson, was in Family,” says Michael. “He was the man; he taught Prince the stuff. He’d be down in the basement there, smokin’ a cigarette, playin’ bass with the wah-wah, and Prince would just sit and watch him for hours.” But merely being “a homey from the “hood”, as Tony puts it, doesn’t get you a gig with Prince’s band. There tend to be searchingly unorthodox tests of talent and attitude, often involving first hand discovery that the legend about him being a workaholic bright-eyed and, allegedly, bushy tailed on three hours sleep a night max is no more than the truth. When Tony, Damon and Kirk Johnson, the third dancer, were spotted, they’d just got together at First Avenue, the Minneapolis club featured in Purple Rain. “Prince seen us dam’ some dancin’ around, rehearsin’, and told us he’d like us to do something,” Damon recalls. “This was nine o’clock in the evening and he said he’d like to see routines for seven of his songs by seven the following morning!” “It was very.. . unusual,” says Tony. “We went to my apartment, moved all the furniture out the way and my ma let us work through till breakfast. And we did it. They filmed us for a video — and it all ended up on the cutting room floor.” “But you got the job,” says Michael, laughing. “Yeah. I was pissed off they didn’t use it — but it was cool,” says Tony. He pauses a moment to pull together a feeling that obviously means a lot to him. “This band is all about payin’ dues. We’ve all been through a lot of let-downs to get here. Humbling experiences. I think that’s why you don’t see any big heads in The NPG. Now we want to take advantage of everything we got.” They all want to make it clear that band pride and solidarity shine very bright in the inevitable shadow of the star. “Prince formed The NPG because he wanted a band where, if he leaves the stage at any time, the show’s still going to hold up,” says Tony. “With us the funk don’t drop out,” says Michael. “Everyone here is an act in their own right,” says Tony. “Prince really appreciates that. He gets upset if he sees the shows credited as just ‘Prince’, not ‘& The NPG’. As the rapper, before the tour I didn’t know how I’d feel going out front on his stage. Y’know, that boy snaps his fingers and the crowd goes ‘Yeaaaah!’. But it’s fine; it worked out.” One facet of band pride is a fierce commitment to the bracing uncertainties of an all-live show — “Strictly no Memorex, man. There’s too many fakers out there,” says Michael. They rely on a Famous Flames-like ability to improvise as a unit as Prince kicks arrangements into new shapes every night with unscheduled shouts of “Michael, be on the one!” or “Levi!” or “Horns!”. “Yeah, we understand each other as a band and in other ways too,” says Michael. “It’s unusual to have eight people who see life so similar. Just say a couple of words and everybody’s laughin’. On the bus after the gig, man.. . heh, heh, heh.” But one thing about life on the tour bus that might not always be a laughing matter is that Prince is never on it. Nor does he stay in the same hotel — in Sydney he was sequestered elsewhere in a luxury apartment building. However, as Tony will invariably say when such essentially academic questions are raised, “That’s cool, I got no problem with it.” What they’re intent on, he insists, is taking care of business. “You do all sorts of things to keep the show fresh and innovative,” he says. “Sometimes, just after the prayer meeting we have every night before we go on stage, Prince’ll call out ‘150-dollar funk night!’. That means whoever’s funkiest wins the prize. Ch-ching! Time to get busy, you understand what I’m sayin’?” You mentioned a prayer meeting? “It’s important to pray, man,” says Michael. “Pray the crowd’s gonna get what they’re supposed to be gettin’. Be thankful. I could have been a janitor..

T A-DAAI OR RAThER FRRRROOOOOWWM’! and bip-bip-bip-bip and eeeeeeeeeek! because the show at Sydney Entertainment Centre opens with a huge lights-and-lasers rig in the shape of Prince’s union-of-the- sexes symbol slowly descending, Close Encounters style, with rockets roaring, electronics bleeping and, augmenting the sound- track, every female throat in the 18,000 house open wide in anticipation, track, every temale throat in the open wide in anticipation, which is to say screaming their heads off. On stage, strobing lights reveal two massive statues of Greco-Roman ilk, a ballet dancer giving it a little pas de une, and finally, rising into view at the rear amid a swirl of dry ice, something like an overgrown chemistry lab bell jar, attended by two towering bodyguards. A door opens (always a tense moment, Tap fans) and— titter ye if ye must — out steps Prince! “Sydney!” he yells, rather oddly, just as if he might as well have yelled “Arthur!”, and already everyone’s laughing, everyone’s shrieking, everyone’s got the feeling that, even if the day hasn’t gone too well so far, even if life hasn’t gone too well so far, things are definitely looking up. And the NPG hit the first stomping gospel riff, “‘Twas like thunder!” Someone bellows that he’s “the one, the only” and to prove it Prince freefalls into Thunder via a trampoline bound from stage rear to front. He lands in a s~dits, throws a pirouette, and whirls into a rug-shredding dance routine with Damon Dickson, Kirk Johnson and Tony M — stiletto- sharp, all the moves you ache to make. And, hell’s teeth, it’s funny too, a spiffing rib-tickler from Prince, an actual joke about his, uh, you know, height. With all the kickin’ five-foot-nothing break dancers in the world to choose from, he’s working with a team of such altitude they could trade slam-dunks with Michael Jordan. Lest the self-mockery be missed, Prince jack-knifes out of a burst of Cossack-style floor exercises to act the itsy puppet with big Tony pulling the invisible wires. A man like Prince, you’ve got to like him for even the slightest hint of not taking himself a hundred per cent seriously. It makes the sheer look it-me flash even better. This is into Daddy Pop now, the funk is crunching non-stop, 18 people on stage including the horn section, and Prince is showing off his James Brown mike-stand pyrotechnics, bouncing it off his chest, dropping into splits and flipping it off his thigh, no hands mama. There’s barely a second to spare a glance for glamdancers Diamond and Pearl, simultaneously gyrating in furry night attire… Sydney’s sweating buckets. Arthur’s on his knees. But, have mercy, it’s time to slow it down a bit, Diamonds And Pearls. Phe-ew! In the after-burn of the opening sensory on slaught, Mayte, the ballerina, does a liquid-limbed romance dance. Mmm. Sweet. But the song gradually settles attention on the vocal interplay between Prince and Rosie Gaines. While, for all her physical oomph, she seems a self-effacing character hiding behind her veil of red locks, her voice comes from the heart of soul and it’s the answer to what is perhaps Prince’s one remaining artistic difficulty. Just as he won’t answer journalists’ questions, in music he won’t/can’t spill his guts. Everything else. Not that. But having Rosie Gaines in the band is like having Aretba Franklin on back-ups. Prince sings the lead straight and serious, she twines her voice around it in unity, harmony, counter-melody, flows all over his song like a wave of the sea.

He’ll kiss the catwoman, roger the baby grand, and writhe about on an airborne brass bedstead. And that’s
not the worst of it.