Paisley Park 24 June 2002

 We have reached the halfway point of the Celebration 2002 shows and it feels as if our journey has yet to begin. The first few shows have been of astounding quality while covering a large sonic territory. This concert on the 24th of June 2002 is no different as Prince foregoes the band and complex arrangements to give us an intimate acoustic set that sees Prince take the stage as a solo performer. We have heard acoustic sets on the piano throughout his career, but here he performs alone with his guitar. It is a first at the time and a concept that he would return to for the acoustic set that would appear during his Musicology shows. It is a fast-moving show, the songs aren’t drawn out too long, and Prince covers a lot of ground over the two hours. The best way to appreciate it is to jump right in, so take a deep breath and prepare to immerse yourself. 

24 June 2002, Paisley Park 

I must admit, it is not very often that I pull out The Truth album, but when I do it is like meeting an old friend. I think of this as I listen to the opening song of this concert – “Don’t Play Me.” I reacquaint myself with its clever lyrics and laugh at Prince’s humor that appears at every twist and turn in the music. This is the live debut of this song and it deserves every whoop of approval that it gains from the crowd. The music is bright and sharp, much like Prince’s humor, and his guitar playing to the fore as he draws rhythm and melody from his instrument. 

“Whole Lotta Love” follows fast, the music quick and just as forceful as the electrified version. Prince’s vocals balance the performance and I find my ear drifting easily between the two, neither one quite holding power over me as the song moves back and forth. Much like the previous “Don’t Play Me,” it is kept neatly trimmed, clocking in at just over a couple of minutes. This is par for the course for the evening, and most of the songs to follow will be equally brief. That is not to say they are mere tasters, Prince does play the bulk of the song, but he knows when to rein it in and move on to the next. 

The next song is unsurprising “7”. It is a song well suited to such a performance, the acoustic guitar of the song dovetailing beautifully into the theme of the evening. It is not the best version I have heard. With a hollow feel, its power is rendered impotent in comparison to the first two songs. Enjoyable enough, it fails to linger in my mind once it has passed. 

I am much more interested in “Tangerine,” especially since this is its only appearance in a live concert. It almost skips by too fast for me, I find myself listening to the lyrics, and then it’s gone. The guitar is light in Prince’s hands, barely raising a ripple, leaving space for his lyrics to carry the song. He doesn’t disappoint, his gleaming vocals matching the wordplay and making for a great concert moment, a moment that flutters by and leaves us thinking “Did that just really happen?” 

 

There have been some wonderful versions of “A Case Of U” over the years, sadly this isn’t one of them. Prince’s guitar playing is exquisite, but it is not matched by his vocal delivery. While technically his vocals are good, they fail to cut to the heart of the song, and not once do I hear a thread of real emotion coming from Prince. I don’t expect Prince to constantly suffer for his art, but it would have been good to hear him draw from his well of emotional experience to perhaps give us just a little more for this song. The final minutes when Prince points his guitar at the funk are his finest and give me just enough that I might return to this song. 

“Pink Cashmere” is a perfect fit for the evening, with Prince’s vocals, and his guitar intertwining in such a way that the world seems to stand still for a couple of minutes. Like the best things in life it is all too short, the song barely coming to fruition before Prince moves us forward. 

Another live debut next with “One Kiss At A Time.” The music lingers longer for this number, and Prince’s call for us to indulge him is well rewarded. With the guitar stepping back and forth, Prince spins his lyrics out, each line dripping sweetly from his tongue. It is one of the more substantial songs of this first part of the concert, and the perfumed intoxication of the music makes it feel longer than it is. Some of the previous songs have been lightweight, but here we have a song that will be drawing me back again. 

“Alphabet St” suffers from its familiarity, even more so in its stripped-back form. Despite its sprightly sense of fun, it fails to offer the ear anything new, and as such I find myself nodding and clapping without ever being moved by it. With its eighties sheen stripped off, it becomes just another number in this long setlist. It’s hard to imagine this performance without it, yet it doesn’t add anything to the occasion. 

The following “Girls & Boys” is short, yet worth hearing, the insistent guitar strum drawing the lyrics from Prince and the crowd at the same moment. Shedding its 1986 skin, it is reborn and is essential in a way that “Alphabet St.” wasn’t. The fact that it is so short suggests that there aren’t perhaps too many more directions Prince could take it, but in the spotlight, it shimmers and shines in a way that some of the other songs of the evening don’t. 

The raw intensity so often associated with “Motherless Child,” is strangely lacking in this intimate setting. The quick rhythm guitar does it a disservice, as do Prince’s vocals which skim over the lyrics without scratching beneath the surface as I have heard elsewhere. I yearn for him to unleash something more primeval, perhaps a guttural roar or howl, but it remains buttoned up and oddly removed from the surroundings and context of the performance. 

It is with the next song, “The Truth,” that the true nature of the evening is revealed. The concert isn’t about Prince’s shining guitar or bright vocals. It isn’t about the performance, or even Prince himself. It’s about the moment, about the community. The words performer and concert are worthless because neither are to be found here. This is a community-bought-together, a campfire moment brought to life as we huddle around singing songs that, while they may have originated with Prince, now belong to all of us. This is a man singing to, and with, his tribe. And now that I understand that, the rest of the night makes perfect sense. None of these songs exist singularly, they belong together in this context, trapped in the amber of this one night. The title “One Night Alone” has never been more apt. 

 

With this new-found knowledge, it matters little how I feel about “Telemarketer Blues,” the way it sounds, or the performance. What matters is the audience’s response, which is resoundingly positive as they share in Prince’s humor, laughing and cheering after every line. Another show and this may disrupt the flow of the evening, but not in this case as it becomes the epitome of what the night is about – togetherness. 

“The Other Side Of The Pillow,” brings a calm serenity to proceedings, the song glassy smooth throughout, not a single moment that raises the pulse but in the very best way. It is as cool as the lyrics Prince is singing, the song an embodiment of the lyrical content in beautiful symmetry. 

Prince vocals come to prominence for an angelic “She Loves Me 4 Me.” The guitar remains in the mix, but it is the singer that holds the spotlight as he plays vocal gymnastics with the lyrics. Here the song finds its natural place in the surrounding material and is all the better for it. 

I’m not convinced that “Peach” works in an acoustic setlist, and Prince does nothing here to sway my opinion. It is barely a minute and a half though, and that feels about the right length for it in this show. We can enjoy the swagger of the song and appreciate it through a different lens without it wearing out its welcome and becoming overblown. 

“It Ain’t Over” belongs to the crowd. Prince may stop and start, but the audience carries the moment, the song nothing more than a chant and a chance for Prince to emote without words. It sounds like a lot of fun on record, and even more so for those there, as once again we return to the core of the evening, audience and performer bonding as one. 

The only known live performance of “Wherever U Go, Whatever U Do” leaves me in two minds. While I rejoice in hearing a live performance of the song, it fails to reach my unrealistic expectations. I can only wish for more, as Prince interrupts himself a couple of times, before bringing the curtain down on it before we can get to grips with the true nature of the song. It’s more than a tease of the song but not much more, and that makes it all the more frustrating. 

 

As much as I want to hear Prince himself sing “Forever In My Life,” I can’t deny there is an innate beauty in the audience singing Princes’s own song back to him as he strums along. One could easily see Prince stretching this out and playing the audience for several minutes, but he doesn’t. Instead, he gives enough to satisfy without overindulging in the moment, proving once again that timing is everything. 

This guitar set finishes with the sweetest version of “Last December” you might ever hear. Accompanied by not only his guitar but also the audience, Prince delivers the song straight down the barrel, with no flourishes or embellishments, leaving the song bare and pure in the soft light of this concert. It’s surprisingly moving and becomes a song you can feel as much as you hear, Prince once again proving that music is a powerful force in the right circumstance. 

The piano set that finishes the set appears to offer more than it really does. The real meat of the show is the guitar set, and while the piano set offers several songs, many of them are mere tasters with the bulk of the set clocking in under twenty minutes. The opening “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be,” is a band performance, a chance to introduce the horns and a more rounded jazz sound that is representative of the era. It has an easy swing, although it moves quickly, “Take The A-train,” suddenly appears before it comes to an abrupt halt. 

 

A solo piano and we are off with “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore.” It is a song purpose-built for a show like this, yet Prince does it a great disservice, the thirty seconds of it we hear reducing it to a mere shell of what it could have been. We can cry all we want, but it is what it is, and sadly the next few minutes see many beloved songs get the same treatment. Prince’s line of “I got too many hits,” signposting a street we have walked down many times before. 

“Diamonds And Pearls,” becomes a single verse and chorus, albeit a pretty verse and chorus, before the inevitable segue into “The Beautiful Ones.” Shorn of its length, “The Beautiful Ones” has none of the sense of drama and tension that made the song so essential in the first place. I want to like it more, but there isn’t enough there to hold onto, and as much as I try, I find it quickly slips through my fingers. 

The evening swings upwards and takes flight with first “Free,” and then “Starfish and Coffee” lighting up the venue. They both have a brightness that remains undiminished by their brevity, surprisingly the slightest songs of the set deliver far more than the heavy hitters in their abridged forms. 

“Sometimes It Snows In April” has become impossible to detach from April 2016, and as such listening to this concert, sounds more poignant than probably was the case at the time. It's gracefully melancholy receives a resounding response from the crowd, the song yet to be weighed down by the sense of history it has here in 2020. 

Prince has a rounded sound to “I Love U But I Don’t Trust U Anymore,” the band joins him to bolster the song. He doesn’t need them, in this case, the song would have gained more from a bare performance, the stark intimacy of the lyrics laid bare would have had much more impact than could be gained from a keyboard wash or a drizzle of a cymbal. However, the song remains drenched in sadness, and even with the band onboard I can feel the lyrics dragging me under. 

The band comes to the fore for the appropriately titled “Prince And The Band.” The song takes a long time to reveal itself, hiding in the skirts of the long-opening jam that spins and twirls across the funky bassline. When Prince does bring the lyrics out of the closet he keeps it short, preferring for the music and the band to carry the ideals he sings about. Maceo is front and center for large portions of the song, and it is his sound that becomes the signature of the song, no matter what Prince or the crowd are doing it all comes back to his riff and sense of style. With Renato providing a soft shower of a piano the song continues to evolve, Prince returning to the lyrics, this time pitching them in a way that fits with the jazz tilt the music has moved towards. It’s smooth, yet they retain their bite enough to remind us what the song is really about. 

 

We stay firmly in the realm of the band, the music continuing to be enthralled by the horn section. “Xenophobia” belongs not to Prince, but to the players he has surrounded himself with, and for all his proclamations and lyrics they continue to hold sway over the music. The audience is not to be ignored, and with the chant “I feel like bustin loose,” it is down to the band to provide a soundtrack to this desire. After such an austere show it does feel like an extravagance, but one well deserved as the band throws off the chains of the acoustic set with a funk jam that matches anything heard in the main shows of the tour. The fact that the chant “I feel like bustin loose” rattles around in my brain for ten minutes after the end of the show speaks to the power of repetition and the fish hooks embedded in Prince’s music. 

Of the celebration shows of 2002, I have listened to so far this is my favorite. It doesn’t have the heavy funk of some other shows, or shredding guitar, but it does have a group of songs that work coherently together in the setlist. No one song stands out, but together they form a powerful brew, one that sustains the first half of the concert. Likewise, the audience and sense of community pervade through the music, and it is hard to untangle this sense of togetherness from the music just as it is hard to untangle the songs from each other. A lesson in intimacy, this concert is Prince building his own world through must and inviting us all to join him. Maybe I am overstating it, but it is hard not to feel it yourself as you listen. Try it and you might just see what I mean.