And he is not funky. His name is Albert. And he is lurching across the dance-floor in search of accommodating company. Slightly balding and chunkier than he looks in photographs, he moors behind a gyrating female and clumsily interfaces. Up on the stage, another man whose name is not Prince says, “This is dedicated to Prince Albert, the funkiest man in Monaco.” It’s a wonder he can get the words out with his tongue buried that deep in his cheek. Prince Albert beams and grinds arhythmically on. Prince laughs, throws a swift shape and stops the funk on the one. It’s his party and he’ll lie if he wants to. One hundred and twenty people have been invited to the Stars & Bars club in Monte Carlo for this most exclusive of celebrations. The champagne is free, the spirits are freer and the house band is possibly the best live act on the planet. You probably remember them as Prince And The New Power Generation. They’re still the NPG but he’s not Prince any more. He is ‘i” (to give him his full title). Sir Hieroglyphicford for short. Ursula Andress is at the bar, sipping sensually at a flute of champagne. A few generations and a couple of yards along, Claudia Schiffer is doing likewise. It’s that sort of a do. Everyone is wearing impossibly shiny shoes and gold epaulettes. If God weren’t resting his suave old soul, you’d expect David Niven to walk in with Peter Wyngarde on his arm. Without trying too hard, you can imagine Fellini standing in the corner saying, “Christ, this is weird!” Quite what the gnarled jet-setters are making of the music programme is anyone’s guess. At 1.l Sam the Barry Manilow tape was exchanged for a stripped down five-piece (and non-stop disco dancer Mayte — pronounced My Tie — Garcia) who have just embarked upon the most daunting funk experience of a lifetime. A knot of maybe 15 perfumed debs cluster around the lip of the stage. Naturally you join them and find yourself standing so close to the Artist Formerly Known As Prince (AFKAP to use the diminutive) that you can hear him singing unamplified behind his microphone. As the franc-trillionaires dance like your dad or simply stand looking bemused, a set of entirely new material is unleashed: a slamming funk madhouse named Now; a total headshag of a thing called Interactive; Grand Slam Boogie, a swinging R&B shuffle; this scorching rap, Days Of Wild; Space, a superb mid-paced chug; a Prince-of-yore smutathon which boasts the chorus “Pop goes the zipper”; Race, another blistering rap and a freshly minted song which may or may not have been called Jogging Machine. Amazingly, despite performing for over two hours and dancing like an amphetamined primate,he doesn’t break sweat. It’s only during the very last song (during which he takes to calling out “Bass — hallowed be thy name” and “You know you re funky!”) that minute moist tresses begin to glisten at the back of his neck. Shirtless now, you can’t help but notice as he cavorts on the floor with Mayte that here is a man who has no truck with underwear. The trained medical eye can also detect, through sheer yellow matador trousers, that he is circumcised. And she isn’t. It is indecently, maybe even illegally, sexy. “Doesn’t anyone have to go to work tomorrow?” he asks rhetorically as the monied merry-makers bay for another encore. “Guess not.” THE PRINCE CAMP ARE AN ODD crew: all are deeply aware of the idiosyncrasies of their bonsai boss — and they call him “Boss” — but they hold him in unutterably high esteem. One lunchtime, his American PR, face poker-straight, tells me that her charge is “an instrument of God.” Over drinks, his European PR is a little more terrestrial: “He doesn’t talk a lot,” he says, reflecting on Prince’s visit, a few days ago, to his newly opened London shop. “He just came in and sat on the stairs sucking a lollipop. Then he wandered around for a while, looking at things. Of course, the next day I
get this long list of changes he wants made.” The band plainly find his celebrity both a convenient distraction and a bit of a laugh. They are more than used to fencing questions about their commander, invariably dismissing enquiries with “He’s just a regular cat like you and me”, but in their hearts they know he isn’t. I ask them one Fleet Street-type question which gets very short shrift: “Is he Mayte’s boyfriend?” “No,” they say firmly. “She don’t have a boyfriend.” Amusingly, among the entourage, the P word is rarely mentioned for fear it might result in the P45 word. There is a mild panic when a poster advertising his appearance at Monte Carlo’s World Music Awards is spotted with the dread legend on it. In the blink of an eye the name is erased and the now familiar gold uni-sex symbol drawn in its place. “If he’d seen that,” says a relieved minder, “he might just have just turned around and gone home.” A telling scene occurs one night as the band are sitting around talking nonsense and drinking beer in the lobby of the oppressively posh Hotel De Paris. A huge horde of fans have gathered outside having heard that their hero is dining with Prince Albert tonight and will soon be emerging from the hotel. At 8.30, Prince ghosts up by your side (you soon learn that he has this unnerving habit of just appearing) and in an unimaginably deep voice asks, “Shall I go out the front?” He is resplendent in full battle dress: a jacket made from what once must have been a gold doily, lace strides, heels, walking cane and lollipop. “Yeah,” cry the band, “go out the front! Freak ‘em out!” With the cheekiest of smirks, he pops the lolly decisively into his mouth and steps boldly out through the revolving door. The crowd screech his old name as, surrounded by three minders, he steps — head down, mouth corners curling knowingly— into a waiting car. Only once during our five-day stay do we see Prince out of his stage gear. He is in a lift heading down to have his hair re-teased and is wearing a black jumper, leather jeans and impenetrable dark glasses, presumably because he hasn’t bothered to put any make-up on. He looks remarkably pale but then he has just got up. It’s 5pm. Similarly, the only time you truly find him off duty is when you wander early into the empty Stars & Bars club and he is standing on the dancefloor on his own picking out a tiff on a bass guitar. After thrumbing absently for a while he mutters “Sounds like shit” to himself. Then the enigmatic song and dance man looks over to the technicians and says, “Can we get separate EQ for the bass in the monitors?” Such was the success of the gig at Prince Albert’s party, a decision is made to play the same club the following evening. Sadly, the show isn’t nearly half as good. It is merely transcendent. “DO YOU FEEL READY TO MEET HIM?’
It’s been four days now. It’s a little after midnight. You’re not going to feel much readier. I’m escorted up to a small room that features a large white bed and not much else. The doors are open and, below, the guano-festooned roof of the Monte Carlo Casino looks monumentally unimpressive. The junior suite is the temporary home of Prince’s brother and head of security, Duane Nelson. In keeping with the name change game, he has already been re-christened The Former Duane. Prince’s personal minder, a mightily be-blazered individual called Tracey, who looks and sounds alarmingly like Mike Tyson, infonns us that “he” will be arriving very soon. Within a minute, there is a tiny commotion in the doorway and Prince is suddenly standing before you like a virgin bride on her wedding night. Dressed completely in white silk and wearing full make-up, he only breaks a long floor- bound stare to flash one coquettish glance upwards by way of a greeting. I’m introduced by name. He isn’t. We are left alone. An agreement made prior to this meeting stipulated, in no uncertain terms, that three rules were to be obeyedif intercourse of any description were to occur: firstly, that no tape recorder be used; secondly, that no notepad or pen be brought into the room; and thirdly, and most strangely, that no questions be asked. He wanted to enjoy a halfhour conversation unencumbered by the paraphernalia of nosey journalism. He paces around the cramped boudoir in deliberate, even steps, as if he needed to fit the place with a new carpet and had forgotten his tape measure. He wanders out on to the balcony, still haying not uttered a word and then comes back in, shutting the doors behind him. He is small but in perfect proportion, like a scale model of an adult. A doll, an Action Mannequin. He sits down next to me on the bed in a semi-lotus position and fixes his gaze on the middle distance, smiling secretly. No-one has said anything for a full minute. Then he turns with this curious expression. It’s somewhere between the shamed but surly look of someone has has been wrongly reprimanded and the suggestive yet intense glare of someone who is about to shag you. Oh no! He leans closer and you can smell him. It is just like the band said: he smells of flowers, music and innocence. I smell of lager. Eventually, he speaks. He says this: “I don’t say much.” Oh dear. Silence. Why not? He shrugs in slow-motion and looks sideways and downwards. It’s a sad, apologetic gesture, like he just killed your dog. This will serve as an answer for many of the questions he’s initially asked. Once again. Why is that? Why don’t you say much? “You don’t need to.” That doesn’t bode well for this conversation really, does it? “Guess not.” A different tack: “Speak to me only with thine eyes.” Have you heard that phrase? He turns on the bed and laughs, rolling his eyes to heaven. He is wearing an extraordinary amount of slap — foundation, eyeliner, black mascara (on lashes of which Bambi is alleged to be fiercely jealous), brown eye shadow on the outermost corners of his lids.

He has the most slender line of facial hair that runs from one temple, down his cheek across his upper lip and up the other side. There are black, phallic rockets on the sleeves of his shirt. We look at each other for a while. It isn’t quite uncomfortable, more exhilarating, like a first date. In keeping with this, I say: “You look lovely, by the way.” He exhales almost sexually, bites his lower lip and whispers, “Why, thank you.” This is becoming ludicrous. We’ve got 30 min- utes and 10 of those have just been swallowed up with nothing more than a handful of sighs, some peculiar body language and one dodgy chat-up line to show for it. I decide to forget the rules and fire a volley of questions at him. How did you feel when you heard Jimi Hendrix for the first time? He stops and thinks and arranges his hands in a steeple in front of his mouth. “That was before Puerto Rico,” he says quietly and, to be honest, mystifyingly. “I can’t remember much before then. That was before I changed my name.”
Why have you changed your name?
“I acted on the advice of my spirit.”
Do you normally do that? Is it reliable, your spirit’s advice?
“Of course.”
Is it significant that you’ve changed your name?
“It’s very significant.”
Did you dream last night?
He frowns. “No, can’t remember. Although I had a dream recently and I was telling Mo Ostin
(Chairman of Warner Brothers Records) to be all a man and not half a man.”
Last night I dreamt I saw this article in print. Believe it or not, the headline was Funny Little Fucker. Seriously.
He laughs. “Oh.”
Do you fall in love easily?
“No.”
You’re a slow burner then?
“Un-huh.”
It isn’t going tremendously well. Knocking it on the head and suggesting we just go out for a curry begins to seem like an excellent idea. Then something highly bizarre and Prince-like happens: a sound starts to crackle through a previously unnoticed and inert TV. Without missing a beat, he nods towards the set and says, “It’s a sign. It’s a sign that we should go to my room.” He makes for the door, leading with his shoulders. Duane appears in the hall and asks what the problem is. “A sound came through the TV,” explains Prince. “It’s a sign.”
“Nah,” says Duane, “you probably just sat on the remote control.” And with that, he ushers us back into the bedroom to continue our “conversation”.’

Q: Do you think you’re underrated as a lyricist?
“Well, underrated by who? Against what? You know? Some people get them. That’s what counts.”
Q: Do people not get the humour in your work?
“Maybe, but there’s a lot of things that I don’t get. the humour in.”
Q: What’s the most moving piece of music you’ve heard recently?
(Long, sigh-strewn pause) “Sonny’s bass solo last night.”
Q: What is your preoccupation with sex all about?
It features in nearly all your songs. Does sex really loom that large in your life? “My songs aren t all about sex. People read that into them.”
Q: But sex is such a dominant theme. Your new song called Come
is unarguably about orgasm.
“Is it? That’s your interpretation. Come where?
Come to whom? Come for what?”
Q: Oh, come on!
(Laughs) “That’s just the way you see it. It’s in your mind.”

This is the first subject he warms to: different perceptions. How one man’s meat is another man’s muesli. This, he explains, is why we can’t label music, feelings, people. He says something convoluted like: everything is something else to everyone. When I begin to ask him about how he thinks other people perceive him, it obviously touches a nerve. He adopts the voice of an especially demented mynah bird and asks, “Are you normal? Are you normal? Is that what you’re asking me? Do I think I’n~ normal? Yes, I do. I think I’m normal. I am normal.”

Q: What happens in your life when you’re not doing music?
(Hikes eyebrows, looks incredulous) “
When I’m not doing music?”
Q: Do you have a life outside of your work?
“Yes.”
Q: And what does that involve?
(Pinteresque pause) “Have you never read about
me ? I’m a very private person.”
Q:I’m not prying, I’m just interested.
“I know. I understand.”

The subject of his recording contract with Warners Brothers comes up, as does the topic of Prince’s work — he speaks about Prince in the third person. Whether or not Prince the recording artist is finished, consigned to the bunker of history, is unclear. He says several times that the body of work is complete but later admits that he
hasn’t ruled out the possibility of adding to it, under the name of Prince or otherwise, in the future.

Q: Is it possible to shed an entire personality?
“It’s not like it’s really a personality.”

Q: It’s a persona then?
“Yeah. I think it is.”

Q: Have you turned your back on pop music?
“What’s pop music? It’s different things to different people.”
Q: Beatles-derived four-chord tunes that everyone can sing along to.
“Still don’t help. Is The Most Beautiful Girl pop music? I can’t say. You can’t say.”

He mentions George Michael’s court case for the first time. It’s a subject he’ll return to with astonishing regularity and persistence. At one point, he almost shouts, “Why can’t George Michael do what he wants? Why can’t he write a ballet if he wants to?” What he is talking about is artistic freedom and its place in the future. By the end of the rant, and it is a rant, I suggest that he should get in touch with George Michael as he might find such supportive words encouraging. “Oh,” he says breezily. “We speak.”

Q: What do you think about when you’re playing a guitar solo?
“I’m normally just listening.”

Q: You look like you’re about to cry sometimes.
“Really? Mm. Maybe.”
Q: You seem at your most relaxed onstage.
“If it’s all going well, I’m pretty happy up there.
It’s a very natural thing for me.”
Q: Offstage you seem to be having a good old laugh at us sometimes.
He laughs.

The categorisation of music is another area which gets his goat. How on earth can we categorise something like music when everyone hearsand feels it differently? How many people do you know that have just one type of music in their record collections? None, right? You don’t get home and think, I’ll listen to some ambient jazz punk, do you? You just have a mood in your head and yet we, or at least record companies, feel the need to compartmentalise everything. Tell you what, when you play a song live, and it’s a jam, man, and you think up some little vocal line and everyone is still singing that when you’ve left that stage. That’s marketing. A to Zee. The bottom line, baby. Pure marketing. Period. Wouldn’t it be great if someone made an album and gave it away for free? Like air. You could just have it. Anyway, what type of music do The Sundays play? Is it pop, indie, rock? Who cares? When, eventually, I say that anyone who heard Prince play would assume that his new direction was big funnk, he says cryptically. “You could ask those people what they saw and they might say that they didn’t see Prince play at all..

Q: Do you ever have a problem translating the sounds you hear in your head into music?
“No, that’s never been a problem. The problem is getting it all out before another idea comes
along.”
Q: Do you exhaust people?
(Laughs) “Yes, I do.”
Q: A joke: you used to be called Prince and then you were Victor. Why not just call yourself Vince?
“I read that somewhere. I was never called Victor. That was the line in the song, ‘I will be called
Victor.’ I never called myself Victor.”

He launches into a stream of consciousness monologue about names. What they mean. This seems to confuse him. He has, he says, a friend called Gilbert Davidson, and one day he said to Gilbert, Who is David? Is he your father? No, said Gilbert. Is he your grandfather? No. Then, man, you’d better look back and find out who he is.
Then Prince started thinking, My name is Nelson. Who was Nel? My mother? No. My grandmother? Uh-un. Then he thought, Maybe she’s someone that I don’t want to know about.

Q: I asked the band, individually, what you smell 0f?
“What I smell of? What’d Sonny say?”
He said you smell of music.
(Delighted smile) “That’s a good answer, Sonny.
That’s a like, yeah, yeah, let’s have the next question type answer, isn’t it?”
Q: And I asked them to sum you up in one word.
The word one of them chose was, Wow!
(Laughs) “Who said that? No, let me guess. Was it Michael?”
Q: Yes.
“That’s funny. Wow. We don’t normally talk about that kind of stuff.”

Now he’s getting excited. He has moved to a chair and is sitting with his boots—high-heeled silver stage numbers covered in mini mirrors— upon the counterpane. At one point, whilst agreeing about something with particular enthusiasm, I grab hold of his boot. He doesn’t flinch, but his toes wriggle inside. He has left behind the cautious customer of yesterhour and is freewheeling through the thoughts as they enter his head.
Suddenly it strikes you. Blimey! It’s just like having a chat with a normal bloke.
Q: Tell me about the opera you’ve written.
“I don’t want to give too much away. It’s just a story.”
Q: What sort of story? A love story?
“Could be.”
Q: Did you write the libretto?
“Yeah, (he laughs at the pretentiousness of the word) I wrote the story.”

Q:Did you find opera difficult to get into?
“I don’t really listen to opera.”

He had spoken to Placido Domingo earlier in the evening. “He said some very beautiful things and you could sense that he had a feeling of all the power that was in the room and what it could achieve if we did something with it.” While they were talking, Prince got this tune in his head that he’s going to have to get down pretty quickly.

Q: I’ve been told that you’re an instrument of God.
“Oh yeah, stuff’s been written about that. Who said that?”

Q: Your PR.
(Laughs) “Really?”

Q: Do you ever seriously feel like you are a conduit forsome higher power?
‘No, I just practise a lot.”

Q: Do you ever feel that a certain telepathy exists
between you and the NPG?
‘Sure, musically, that happens sometimes. But we rehearse too.”

He tells a long story about the making of the dec for The Most Beautiful Girl In The World. ey placed ads and got shedloads of letters and some videos back. They selected a cross section of women all from different backgrounds and invited them to meet Prince. He asked them what their yearns were and then to the best of his mortal abilities set about making those dreams come. Like Jim’ll Fix It with “0” Levels. Then they filmed the women watching footage of their fantasies. One of the women, and he gets quite emotional as he relates this, wrote to him afterwards saying that although she was overweight, he had made her feel beautiful and she would now lose weight with the intention of modelling one day.
Q: Is physical beauty an overrated virtue?
“Yes. See, you understand.”

Q: Did you sit on The Most Beautiful Girl in The World so Warners couldn’t have it and you could
release it on your own terms?
“No, I didn’t sit on it. I heard that I did that but I only wrote it recently.”
Q: What would you have done if it had stuffed?
“If it had stiffed? (Laughs) It wouldn’t have mattered. I put the record out, that was the important thing. People got to hear it.”
Q: Did you feel vindicated when it was so successful?
“Well, it’s nice when people appreciate what you sdo.”
We discuss the future again. He says, “That’s why I wanted you to help me — and I need some help with this — because you think that anything is possible.” He peels off at a tangent. “In the future,” he announces, “I might be interactive. You might be able to access me and tell me what to play.” It’s certainly a thought. He says he’s found a young drummer “who plays things you can’t even think. And if he wants to do an album of drum solos, then I’m prepared to go out on tour to finance that.” He reveals that he’s got a blues album completed and in the can and lets out a vocal wail of anguished guitar to illustrate just how good it is. He brings up Nelson Mandela and the current situation in South Africa. Mr Mandela, as he calls him, must have had a very clear vision of what would happen. He envies this and would like to have that gift. Something of a basketball fan, he alludes to Magic Johnson time and and time again. “He wants to form his own team,” he says. “How long will that take?” He looks at his non-existent watch and shoots a look to the ceiling. “Look at South Africa,” he says, palms upturned. “Bosnia. You can’t tell people what to do for that long.” He appears to be equating racial and artistic struggles. It’s a fair moment to suggest that if he wants total artistic freedom, then he has to be prepared to put up with that Mick Hucknall jazz harmonica album which, under these new terms, could easily emerge. “But would that be a bad thing?” he asks, his argument crumbling. “OK,” he concedes, giggling. “I guess you wouldn’t have to listen to everything.” alludes to Magic Johnson time
Q: Won ‘t people say, It’s all very well Prince banging on about artistic freedom when we’ve got
bills to pay and mundane reality to cope with?A ren ‘tyou speaking from a privileged position?
“If you’re shackled and restricted, it doesn’t matter how much money you got. Money don’t help.
And I’ve got bills to pay. People at Paisley (Park), they’re like my family, I have a responsibility
towards them.”
Q: Would you like to have children?
“That’s something I haven’t thought about.”

Q: You’ve been thinking about the future so much
and you haven’t considered children?
“No, but I’d like to contribute to the future generation.”

HE’S TEARING UP AND DOWN THE ROOM
now, having talked for almost an hour and a half. His voice has become excited and slipped up a key. Not quite Kiss standards but getting there. Now and then, he slips into black slang. He even belches once, very gently but it’s a belch nonetheless. It’s like the Queen farting and lighting it. He enthuses about his new songs, Now and Days Of Wild. “What the fuck is that all about?” he asks, shimmying around the bed with one arm stiff behind his back, rapping the opening lines, which involve copious use of the Oedipal compound noun. He raves about the genius of George Clinton, froths about his Smell My Finger album and is plainly in awe of his talents. “George is the funk,” he explains breathlessly. He speaks about purity in music. “Rock’n’roll, man,” he says, “was so much better when people were hungry. It was better when you didn’t automatically make money. When James (Brown) was putting out an album every four months, that was the stuff.” It’s getting on for 2am now and we have one
final bash at distilling what he really wants to convey. Before that, he asks about magazine editorial practice and is stimulated by the fact that an article can go from writer to reader virtually untampered with. He speculates about producing music that you could listen to as you read this article. “That would be great, wouldn’t it? And although I am an artist without a contract, that’s just the sort of thing I can’t do.” He recaps one last time: artistic freedom for everyone with fearlessness and limitlessness well to the fore; love and care to be liberally distributed and accepted; peace to reign; dolphins to leap; choirs of children to sing and, um, George Michael to write that ballet. “So,” he says spinning on his spangly heels. “Are we gonna party?” He dances towards the door, flicks a final seductive glance over his shoulder and sashays out. Funny little fucker.

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.