Paisley Park 21 June 2002

 KaNisa is going to kill me. 

I want to tell you about 2002. I want to tell you about the glory of the One Night Alone Tour. I want to share the incredible music and concerts played over this period. I want you to love it as much as I do.

But this iteration of Prince is KaNisa’s Prince. This period is her greatest pleasure, her private joy. We should keep it quiet among ourselves she whispers. This is just for those of us in the know. But I can’t keep it to myself anymore and I’m sorry. This is one of Prince’s finest hours, and I’m going to tell you all about it. 

The 2002 celebration occurred amid the One Night Alone Tour. Titled Xenophobia Celebration 2002, it took place at Paisley Park between the 21st – 24th of June. A lot of the music played is not new to the audience with Prince having already been on tour since 1st March. Although familiar, the music has a weirdness that can’t be shaken and it continues to excite and fascinate throughout the year and beyond. 

Over the next few weeks, I will listen to some of these concerts from the 2002 celebration (who am I kidding, I’m probably going to listen to them all) and offer my thoughts. I’m starting with the concert from June 21st – probably the closest to the setlist Prince had been playing on the road and a good introduction to the vibe of the era. I can’t wait, I love this era and look forward to sharing it with you. 

As I said, KaNisa is going to kill me.

21 June 2002, Paisley Park 

A John Blackwell drum solo is a great way to open any show, and it kicks down the door on a flurry of Maceo Parker's saxophone work. There is freedom to his playing, and for a few minutes it sounds as if anything might be possible. The saxophone tears down barriers between genres, opening the mind to the new soundscape Prince envisages. With his distorted vocals and a lacerating guitar sound, it becomes a concentrated deconstruction of his 1980’s legacy as he seeks new inspirations and muses. “The Rainbow Children” sprawls across the opening of the concert, everything contained within offering a glimpse into this new vision. You don’t have to buy into it, you don’t even have to like it, but you do have to understand that Prince is seeking new horizons and he’s taking us all with him. With a band that relishes this free-form open playing, Prince has the right team around him to get him where he needs to go. Hold on to your hat, it’s going to be quite a trip. 

 

After the wild and woolly “The Rainbow Children,” the music solidifies around “Muse 2 The Pharoah,” and it feels like we are on safer ground. A smooth vocal delivery gives a sense of safety and warmth, this might just be the Prince we always knew, but that illusion is shattered with the dark clouds of the keyboard suddenly closing in and Prince spinning off into his darker lyrics. It’s a trap door in an otherwise innocuous song. It falls to Renato Neto to provide some soothing balm after this pitfall, but Prince isn’t finished as he returns to his theme for the evening. Easy listening it ain’t, but seeing an artist create something on stage before us, now that is something special. 

He continues in this vein through “Xenophobia,” his brooding music matching the lyrical content. Rising from the swirling darkness comes an ecstatic solo from Maceo, the brightness of his playing in sharp context to what is going around him. The solo from Renato Neto matches him, at times hinting at The Commodore's “Machine Gun” before he drags the sound far into the future with creative finesse. The song becomes a celebration of the band, each member playing off each other while taking it to ever-spiraling heights. I am giddy just listening to it, I can’t imagine how great it would have sounded to be there. Prince’s final gift of a guitar solo isn’t just a gift to the crowd, it’s a gift to all that love good music, and it cuts right through some of the former unsettling moments. 

Prince’s opening vocal stretches gently out as notes condense around the lyric of “A Case Of U.” With the backdrop of a lush piano, Prince enthralls with a performance that offers intimacy without sappiness, delicacy without weakness, the song carefully pitched so it never once falls into the nostalgic trap that often befalls such songs of the past. This is helped no end by the tail of the song that takes on a far more strident sound, Prince twisting it to his current sound and the heaviness of the band pulling it firmly into their orbit. It becomes of the era, and never once suffers for it. 

On a firm foundation of keyboards and horns, like so many of the songs of this era, “Mellow” is slow to reveal itself. Upon this foundation Prince gives us a spiky vocal performance, for a song titled “Mellow,” it often isn’t. It twists and turns, never settling one way or another. Out of kilter, it holds my attention with its constant evolution. I hold onto Prince’s vocals, his primary instrument never once faltering as he negotiates the twisted path of the song. 

A heavy dose of funk drives the concert for the next fifteen minutes as the band plays a pummeling version of “1+1+1=3.” With some brittle funk guitar lifted straight from 1981, the band underpins it with a heavier funk style more associated with Prince’s mid-nineties style. With Maceo Parker in the mix, it is brought up to his current era, an amalgamation of funk that comes together in a heady mix that intoxicates the mind while your body moves on the dance floor. Prince plays the crowd as well as the music, inter-cutting several times to chat, encourage and tease. It speaks to his comfort on stage and in Paisley Park, the show at times becoming a community gathering rather than the normal audience/performer divide. 

 

Stepping away from the Rainbow Children album and into the blues, Prince tortures and teases with a powerful rendition of “The Ride.” The opening guitar pleads and whimpers at his command, never settling on a lick, instead stretching and reaching into the darkness with its aching plea. It gains strength from the surrounding music, the atmosphere becoming crushing as the guitar rises to an untamed tower of electric discourse. It mutes all else in its rage and rough-edged fury, all the nuance and delicacy of the previous jazz fusion swept away with a single sweep of Prince’s guitar crunch. 

“The Other Side Of The Pillow” matches the aesthetic of the Rainbow Children material and it’s like jazz swing is complimented by some thoughtful keyboard work from Renato Neto. Greg Boyer and his trombone emerge from this as the star of the piece, the final minutes belonging to him and him alone as he bounces and loops us to an uplifting conclusion. 

The concert is ignited by “Strange Relationship.” A song long stuck in the groove of the original vinyl records with no secrets left to reveal or surprises to be sprung, here Prince lifts it from 1987 and gives it a spring clean for 2002. Vibrant and dazzlingly fun, it bleeds funk, the song flowing with a sumptuous groove across the audience. With Rhonda’s attitude burning through her bass work she becomes the most important member onstage, the center around which all revolves. 

Rhonda stays equally important for “Sing A Simple Song,” even with Larry Graham on stage my ears stayed attuned to what she is doing. The song pales in comparison to the previous “Strange Relationship,” and although each part of it shines in its own way, it never becomes more than the sum of parts. 

The cover version of “La, La, La Means I Love U” feels much more at home in this setlist. Safe and warm, it balances some of the more challenging moments of the first half of the concert. It becomes a communal moment, with plenty of time for the audience to sing along to the music. We again become aware that we are in Prince’s house as the feeling of a concert disappears beneath the soft waves of Prince’s vocals. 

“Didn’t Cha Know” hits me in my weak spot. With Rhonda Smith taking vocal duties I briefly forget Erykah Badu, the vocals interweaving with the mellow vibe crafted by the band around her. It creates an atmosphere of sweet soul and briefly is just as good as anything else heard in the evening. 

A performance of “When You Were Mine” accelerates the concert back into rock n roll territory and snaps me out of this revery. It is not as essential or urgent as elsewhere, but its stark, stripped-back sound brings Prince into sharp relief after the previous prominence of the band. The final guitar flourish has me listening for clues where this electrical storm might go next, but it’s all flash in the pan as the song dissolves into “Avalanche” 

 

The music slinks into the shadows as Prince’s vocals take center stage. He sings in a cursive style, his vocals flowing easily from line to line in an elegant loop and smooth transition. There is a simmering tension every time he is on the microphone, and although Renato Neto’s piano solo is commendable it cannot displace the vocal performance as the key element in the song. “Avalanche” barely registers in my consciousnesses most of the time, but I would gladly return to this performance any day. 

There is a hint of Stevie Wonder’s influence in the keyboard work of “Family Name.” I can’t shake the feeling as the keyboard sticks to me throughout the song, forever nudging me and whispering its influence in my ear. A jabbing guitar lick briefly banishes any of these thoughts, it’s rugged charm dismantling my infatuation with the keyboard. With its raw and real sound, it cuts to the bone of the song, its angst and fury turning Prince’s words into music in a turbulent ending to the song. 

I try and pretend that I have never heard “Take Me With U” before. It doesn’t work. It becomes wallpaper to me and with its everyday familiarity, I barely hear it. Funk guitar front-loads “Raspberry Beret,” but it too suffers the same fate. I am just too familiar with it to hear it as it is here. I may sing along, but this could be any performance from the last thirty years. 

The last jam is “The Everlasting Now,” and it is pleasingly upbeat and dance-able. It delivers all that it promises as a final jam, each member playing with a freedom and expressing themselves musically. None more so than Maceo, who in a flurry of horn work stamps his particular brand of funk across this ostensibly Prince song. 

From the smokey atmosphere emerges one final number, “Joy In Repetition.” It takes some time to assume its solid form as the various strands slowly come together to reveal their true nature, each instrument creeping towards a convergence point. It is hard to tell where the song starts and the atmosphere ends, the song becoming one with its own sound, swallowing the room with its suffocating dense sound. For the next fifteen minutes, I live the song rather than listen to it, it becomes its own world, a world crafted around us by this phenomenal band. Prince continues to craft this world, carving out a guitar solo so real you can almost touch it, a solo that feels as if it has always existed in all of us. A few lines of “Prince And The Band” pull at this illusion, temporarily warping this new land, before the song slowly returns us to the here and now. I never want it to end, but end it must, and I feel sadness at the end of it as if waking from a strange unknown dream. 

 

2002 – what a year. As a glorious celebration of Prince’s newfound muse, these concerts from Paisley Park can’t be matched. They deserve to be spoken about in the same reverential tones as the Purple Rain tour, after all, they are every bit as exhilarating and groundbreaking and a joy to listen to even as the passing of years consigns them to history. In the following weeks, I look forward to indulging in the other concerts from this celebration as a personal celebration myself. A celebration of life, of music, of Prince, and the pure joy that live music provides. Music that demands we all come together and rejoice in its undeniable power. 

Sorry KaNisa.