Image via Paul Natkin
Jack Riedy has said it before and he’ll say it again: Beach Bunny >>>> Rolling Stones.
Charli xcx’s Brat and its lime green cover have captured a renewed strain of club-kid hedonism, and the ensuing “Brat summer” has already been co-opted by an unexpectedly surging Democratic Party and thus disavowed by the new youthful regime at Pitchfork. Forty years ago, an upcoming pop star took over the summer with a landmark album in a different hue: Purple Rain.
Prince’s masterwork combined his technological wizardry with the arena-ready chops of the Revolution to ask big questions about love, lust, and legacy on a neo-gospel scale. It resonated with the unruly youth of Reagan’s America; at one point in 1984, Prince had the number one single, album, and film in the country. The Cobrasnake pics of Charli’s birthday party are great, but it’s hard to beat the hairspray-and-cocaine ambiance of the MTV Purple Rain premiere, with legends like Little Richard, Eddie Murphy, Stevie Nicks, and “Weird Al” Yankovic stopping for interviews and crowds chanting for Prince and the Revolution like Beatlemaniacs.
The film fictionalizes the contemporary Minneapolis music scene centered on First Avenue, a real downtown nightclub that Prince played several times a year in the early ‘80s. The Warner Bros. production closed the venue for 25 days to film from late November to just before Christmas in exchange for a cool hundred grand.
Prince and the band played at First Avenue on either side of filming, headlining a benefit in August 1983 and a surprise show in June 1984. Recordings of the two shows, technically unreleased but widely available amongst fans, illustrate the development of the classic Purple tracks and capture Prince’s rise from regional hero to superstar.
Minnesota Dance Theatre artistic director Loyce Houlton made musical history when she waited outside Prince’s dressing room to ask him to do a benefit show for the company. The band took the stage at First Avenue on August 3, 1983 to a sold-out crowd that had paid an inflated price of $25, $75 today, to raise over twenty thousand dollars for the dance troupe.
As if to make up for the first year he did not release an album since his debut in 1978, the young pop star comes out swinging with the live debut of a half dozen new songs, including “Computer Blue” and the electric opener “Let’s Go Crazy.” The crowd digs that one alright for a song they’ve never heard before, but what really gets them going is “When You Were Mine.” And why not, it’s one of Prince’s best songs, a few months before Cyndi Lauper’s cover, upgraded with the slinky flanger-soaked lead guitar tone.
Tunes from 1999 get the biggest reaction from the hometown crowd, and the band responds by cranking the tempo up. The bluesy piano solo on “Delirious” nearly ascends to horndog heaven. The dance troupe performed Houlton’s choreography to “D.M.S.R.” earlier in the evening, so the band saves it for their encore, Prince feigning too tired to go on then leaping into action over and over like James Brown tossing off his cape.
The energy only subsides for “Electric Intercourse,” which earns its status as an outtake with its simple chorus and faux-classical piano filigrees. To modern ears, it sounds like The Love Below.
The real highlight of this show is the trio of “I Would Die 4 U,” “Baby I’m A Star,” and “Purple Rain.” (It’s bizarre to hear “Little Red Corvette” come between “Star” and the title track, but hey, gotta play the hits.) The show was recorded via 24-track Record Plant truck parked outside the venue, and these performances were used on the album and film (it’s like if Ferris Bueller was real and stormed a real parade.) The crowd isn’t just hearing these songs for the first time, they’re hearing the exact performances that will be all over the radio in a year’s time, and they’re reverent in the shadow of Wendy Melvoin’s shining arpeggios.
Prince made some edits for the album – “Die 4 U” gets additional layers of keyboards, “Rain” loses a verse and guitar noodling – but he knew they had captured a special energy. “He could have waited and done 20 shows and picked the best one, but he didn’t,” recording engineer David Rivkin said years later. “He’s kind of like that though – it’s like first impressions are the most important.” For fans four decades deep on the album versions, the original performances are a chance to fall in love all over again.
Fast forward to summer ‘84. Tickets to a show celebrating Prince’s 26th birthday went on sale with a few days’ notice only to members of the venue’s private mailing list. A few weeks after “When Doves Cry” hit shelves and a few weeks away from the album release, Prince and the Revolution returned to First Avenue on June 7, 1984.
The Revolution’s setlist is for the heads; they literally open with a b-side, locking into the rumbling groove of “17 Days.”
“Because it’s my birthday, we’re just gonna get up here and make a little music for y’all to party by,” Prince explains. “If y’all came in here expecting to drive Prince’s red corvette…that’s not gon’ work. We’re just gonna play a few numbers, some of ‘em you’ll know, most of ‘em you won’t.”
The band is there to jam like prime P-Funk, and they stretch out on unreleased tunes that are little more than a vocal hook and intricate rhythms: “Our Destiny,” “Roadhouse Garden,” “All Day, All Night.” 1999 deep cut “Something In the Water” is remade in the image of Darling Nikki, with punishing slap bass from Brown Mark and glam guitar solos. The band slows to a crawl to match the angst of a narrator that doesn’t realize he’s the problem in all his relationships.
When they finally kick into “When Doves Cry,” Prince vamps in the gaps between Dr. Fink’s keyboard lead and Bobby Z.’s ping-pong drums, admonishing the crowd for not clapping along: “If we can get everybody to do it, it’ll be sexy in here.” It takes a minute or so for everyone in the room to lock in, and the ensuing ten minute rendition of Prince’s Freudian meltdown is worth the anticipation.
The audience sings “Happy Birthday” to their host before the band returns for a two-part funk encore. The ‘84 birthday show has a well-deserved reputation as the best example of the Revolution’s unity. Approaching a new peak of his career, Prince preferred to celebrate by making more music, and he had the perfect band to back him up.
Prince played First Avenue a few more times in the ‘80s and returned for a late night show in summer 2007. After Purple Rain, the singer and the stage became inextricable in the public imagination, to the point that some fans assumed he owned the place.
The First Avenue performances of the era seem perfect for a Purple Rain reissue on par with the revelatory Super Deluxe Editions of 1999 and Sign o the Times, but the Prince Estate remains embroiled in dispute eight years after his death. There are rumors that the full videos are intended for an upcoming Netflix documentary series, but the Estate is keeping that project in limbo.
Still, the 40th anniversary of his most famous album brought thousands of Prince fans to Minneapolis this summer. The Revolution reunited to headline at First Avenue, with Melvoin, Mark, and Prince protege Judith Hill filling in on lead vocals for an eager audience.
Before their final song, Melvoin addressed the crowd with tears in her eyes: “We’re missing him here a lot. No one is trying to be him on this stage. We’re just trying to do him proud.” Then she played the opening chord of “Purple Rain,” the same way she first strummed through the notes at 19 years old, on the very same stage.
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