Prince

November 2, 2010

The silhouette appears in the dark, backlit beams and an electronic hum beneath. Then, all at once, everything explodes. "Let's go crazy!" for real, the electronic screen lights up gigantic like a lightning bolt, like a psychedelic pinball machine, and the roar from the crowd merges with that sound, that futuristic funk that only he has. The little Prince starts to prowl the stage, where everyone moves, and plays, and goes wild on command. The three backing singers, fierce as can be, start off at the hips but then throw themselves across the open stage, astonishing for their power and aggression. Which is nothing, though, compared to the mountain of sound that this latest incarnation of the New Power Generation manages to pour over the crowd, where we're packed so tight that even dancing, or clapping, becomes difficult. Three keyboards and a rhythm section, and that guitar, sound five times more numerous than they are. "Delirious", perfect, the title seems written for the occasion. Party like it's …"1999", the date is old but the party is in full swing. "Sssh", and then a bit of old school, as he announces, with "Controversy" and an ecstatic version of "Le Freak", nastier and more knowing and more dancefloor-filling than Chic themselves. All stitched together, one into the next, without so much as catching a breath, let alone a thought. How is it even possible to play with this rhythm, and nastiness, and fun, and wit, and power? What an opening! Had we perhaps forgotten? Live, when he's on form and in the mood, the Prince is a very serious contender for the best live show on the planet. And tonight, as will become clear, Prince is in dazzling form and very much in the mood, a lot of it. 

Fortunately, right after comes "Angel", slow and undulating, Prince slips off for his first costume change, making room for the three vocalists, where Shelby J, a sort of sixteen, or maybe twenty-ninefold version of Skin, takes center stage, imposes a dominant position over the others and overwhelms everything in existence with a voice that could split the vaults of the old Palasport. Who knows what the Prince was thinking as he stood before the vaults of Nervi and Piacentini, when before the concert he came out, had a photo taken, blew a kiss and gave an elfin bow, and, smiling like a child, slipped back behind the veil of LEDs. Who knows if that view, a little cold and geometric, made him think that beneath that majestic vault, the nightmare of hundreds of sound engineers, now draped in red velvet, every single one of his colleagues, disciples and masters had once played.

Because – like Springsteen does for rock'n'roll – Prince brings to the stage the history, the tradition, the masters of black music who came before and after him. Prince knows full well that without James Brown, and Jimi Hendrix, and George Clinton with his Parliament/Funkadelic, Sly Stone e famiglia, and even Chic, pillars of the much-maligned (though not by him) disco music, he wouldn't be who he is. His genius – because Prince is a genius of black music, like Miles and StevieMeraviglia, and SugarRay and FatherSoul James and SuperJimi – lies in combinations and recombinations of past and future. He rewrote history from the '80s onward, and even though he hasn't been able (partly due to his battles against the Industry) to keep up that pace (impossible as it is), live he has a sublime and boundless repertoire, and superhuman energy. He has fully absorbed the lesson of the Soul Revues – made to entertain, and get people dancing, and have fun at the highest level – and the showman's gift of a true entertainer. As bandleader he dictates tempos, changes and improvisations with an ease that leaves you speechless. In his spare moments, he dances with the lightness of a Black Fred Astaire of the discotheque, in platform boots and steps worth patenting. He plays the rhythm guitar like a high-speed train, bends notes and invents and plays as if the guitar weren't an instrument at all, but an extension of his mind. When he decides to take a solo, he's a Hendrix dancing between soul and rock with spine-tingling class. When he closes the show (a curious way of doing things, an hour of the show proper and another hour, in four blocks, of encores) with "Purple Rain", he'd deserve a commemorative plaque at the entrance of the Palalottomatica, like at the great stadiums: "Here, on November 2, 2010, Mr. Prince Rogers Nelson played one of the greatest solos in history". "Purple Rain" is his song, his color, his direct line to the soul.

When, on the opening notes, the crowd joins him with that "Oh-o-o-o", he smiles, and you understand something is about to happen. Purple drops of memory open up and slide down the electronic curtain, and it already feels like magic. A long solo, the kind that first gets inside you and then digs around searching for your center, fills the air, and the veins, and the third ear. Mouths wide open, eyes wide, or closed, or lost in ecstasy, on rapt faces. Everyone taken by the hand and carried far away, where angels fly, and doves no longer cry, and even time has decided to take a vacation. A purple spotlight on him, and joy on his face, he first asks for one final chorus – an avalanche that comes crashing back at him – and then another. And another, "Will you sing for me again?", crossing his hands over his heart, "Thank you. So beautiful", and in the end even he seems to find the magic in the air too much, and he lets it out: he takes off the Fender, showing it to the crowd as if it were the sword in the stone, and gives it away to the front rows – never seen before – with a gesture that leaves you speechless with emotion. What a moment! The rest is sheer wonder, a space jukebox that doesn't even need coins. A funky pile-up for the All Star classic "Kiss", with dozens of spectators invited up on stage to raise hell as if we were in Fame, the original one, mind you, not Amici. A "Nothing Compares 2 You" full of soul, and gospel, and languor, with that towering Shelby J dueting carnally, the exact opposite of the fragile and mystical Sinead of so many years ago. "Little Red Corvette", one of his first ever-red hits, the dream car of young Americans, the same color as a Ferrari, used as a metaphor for that girl who "goes too fast": he asks the audience on the right to sing it, and the ones on the left to provide the counterpoint – oh-oh – with a double hand-clap, and slips away.

For at least five minutes the hall keeps going, call and response and clap-clap, until they finally come back out, and the disco-dance of another little hero of black pride kicks in, the sweet and unrestrained Sylvester, one of the first victims of AIDS. And so be it, disco, as if this were Studio 54 and not the Eur, the Dionysian 1979 and not this worried, and worrying, 2010. "Baby", he really is a star. And when the white neon lights come on, and we realize the dream is over, and we're about to wake up to the rain of the journey home… ten minutes later the little Prince pops back up again: three minutes of rock'n'roll and colorless flashiness, the backdrops switched off, the crowd disbelieving, turning back and flooding once more onto the terraces. It's over in an instant, three minutes and truly goodnight. So thank you, giant Prince, who even knows how to pull off a surprise, like when your beloved, already walking away, is digging through her bag for her house keys, and you go back for one last kiss. So sweet. We won't forget you.

Photo by Carlo Massarini

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27/04/2026