With doves crying since Prince was nice enough to sing about them prior to his recent death, some locals who had their 15 noteworthy minutes with him or his bandmates are reining in on the experience.
– I met a member of Prince’s back-up band in the 1990s, when he was at the height of his popularity and both men had toured together. I was returning home late to Hudson (was it from a concert?) when I needed to gas up at the station at White Bear and Interstate 94. I encountered a man who was almost a head taller than Prince and immaculately but not flamboyantly dressed, but added his car had stalled. He asked for a ride and seemed like a safe risk, so he jumped in my passenger side for a trip across town. Turns out the man had done gigs playing guitar for Prince, but now worked in the corporate world. We agreed to take each others’ numbers and get together for lunch some time, but I never followed through on it, (this being in a day when the economy didn’t suck and we were both up to our eyeballs in job duties). I always regretted that, as who knows, maybe amongst other things I could have done an interview and gotten a piece in Rolling Stone?
– A friend Jean saw Prince, who was 57, perform with his band back when both were in high school, in the early 1970s. She took in his performance while he was a student at Central, and she was at Regina, just a few miles away and a Catholic school none-the-less. It was about three years later that Prince signed his first record deal.
His lack of stature was hard to determine, since Prince was up on the stage and the audience was seated on the gym floor. But she liked the music. “It was a little bit louder than what I was used to hearing.”
– Friend Dan once found out that Prince was staying in the next motel room over, and orchestrated a brief meeting, although in characteristic Prince form, what he said was short in duration.
– A sidebar in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, by music writer Ross Raihala, was far less personal and heavy on his simply-rewrite-the-press-release format than what’s in this blog. He was asked to share his favorite recollections about Prince, and just rehashed what he considered great about a few particular albums. Apparently Ross has never met the guy, or anyone else who has ever met the guy, although he did admit right off the bat he was in grade school when Prince hit the scene.
– A full day after the death was pronounced, a couple at Pudge’s Bar was discussing the Purple One, and his request that a symbol be used in place of his name, (a suggestion the mainstream media immediately fell on board with). Said the man at Pudge’s: “That’s his symbol. It’s a guitar.”
– So what is the last word, at least locally? The sign at Agave has said on multiple days: Purple Rain #crankit.