"My name is Prince and I've come to play with you"

A review of "Prince and the Revolution: Live"

It’s always been somewhat unusual that an artist as prolific as Prince left behind so few official live recordings of his 1980s prime. There are, of course, any number of bootlegs floating around online these days, and it’s not too hard to find them on YouTube or other legitimate sites. But since these recordings fall afoul of digital copyright laws, they don’t tend to stick around for very long. The 1987 movie Sign O’ The Times was intended to be a full-blown concert film drawn from the European tour of the same year, but much of the otherwise excellent final product wound up re-recorded and reshot at Paisley Park – making it something less than an actual live concert movie in the end.

That’s slowly begun to change in recent years with the release of super-deluxe editions of 1999 and Sign O’ The Times, both of which contain live recordings from the 1982 and 1987 tours in support of their respective albums. More noteworthy – and far more accessible to more casual Prince enthusiasts – is the recent release of a newly-remastered CD and Blu-ray set of the Purple Rain concert tour broadcast around the world by satellite from Syracuse, New York in March 1985. Pulled together in lieu of an overseas concert tour, this performance has already seen the light of day, first as a DVD included with the remastered version of Purple Rain released in 2017 and then as a digital-only album in 2020. But this new edition offers vastly improved audio and video over earlier releases, making it probably the best live recording we have of Prince at any stage in his decades-long career.

Indeed, the concert itself now sounds far sharper and richer than it ever has before. Vocals and instruments leap off the recording, allowing listeners to focus in on the distinct individual performances by Prince and the members of the Revolution with ease. More than anything else, though, the record conveys the frantic energy and intensity of the performance – listeners can feel it as Prince and the Revolution rush from one song to the next like their lives depend on it.

It's something that’s even more apparent on the video recording of the concert, which leaps and bounds better than the DVD version released with the remastered edition of Purple Rain in 2017.  Still, there’s only so much that can be done to bring the video itself up to modern standards; its quality remains much lower than the high-definition restorations we’ve become accustomed to in recent years.

The concert itself starts predictably enough with the organ strains of Purple Rain album opener “Let’s Go Crazy.” Prince and the Revolution dive straight in from the beginning, with Prince attacking his guitar with ferocity during the opener’s multiple solos. They then race through “Delirious,” “1999,” and “Little Red Corvette” from 1999 before hitting “Take Me With U” at full speed. It’s a breakneck pace that conveys less a desire to burn through old material as fast as possible than a palpable sense of urgency, as if Prince has far too much music to play and far too little time in which to play it. He’s manic in his intensity, slamming into audiences like a force of nature - even those of us listening decades after the original performance.

By today’s standards, however, the stage set-up is pretty basic – but Prince makes the most of it. He sprints back and forth across the stage, climbing up platforms on right and left before spiraling down a firefighter pole back to the main stage. He’s flanked by guitarist Wendy Melvoin on his left and bassist Brown Mark on his right, while keyboardists Lisa Coleman and Matt “Doctor” Fink join drummer Bobby Z on risers behind them.

After a dreamy interlude where Prince gently seduces the audience, the show launches into a selection of tracks, B-sides, and unreleased songs from the Controversy and 1999 eras. An energetic rendition of “Irresistible Bitch” and “Possessed” sees Prince do his best James Brown impression, both as a dancer and a bandleader. He then uses “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?” as an opportunity to once again mug for the audience before shifting into a rockabilly-style rendition of “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” – all while interspersing elements of “Temptation” from the as-yet unreleased album Around the World in a Day.

The concert downshifts dramatically as Prince slides from a brief excerpt of “International Lover” into a queasy, uncomfortable tete-a-tete with God. Thunderous piano cacophonies indicate the deity’s displeasure with Prince’s sexually explicit music, though Prince insists he’s “just trying to have fun with these people” who “dig it when I’m bad.” It all cultivates an atmosphere akin to a religious revival or a shared mystical experience, one that becomes all the more apparent in the uneasy spiritual reverie that follows during a rendition of the Purple Rain B-side “God.” None of these soliloquies are terribly profound – real “if is the middle word in life” stuff with a strong Christian twist – but they’re nonetheless a fascinating window into Prince’s mind and metaphysical preoccupations .

It's then full speed ahead with the rest of Purple Rain, starting with a hard-charging versions of “Computer Blue,” the then-controversial “Darling Nikki,” and the powerful “The Beautiful Ones” – the latter two featuring ample crowd participation. The show then moves on to the inimitable “When Doves Cry,” a song that Prince and the Revolution cannot in fact fully replicate live on stage. That’s not exactly surprising given, among other elements, the absence of a bass line in the studio recording, but Prince and his band give it their all – and wind up with a superb result. Wendy’s live guitar solos can’t match the virtuosity of Prince’s studio work, for instance, but her performance has a sort of raw, live-wire quality that works well in context. As the added bass line kicks in, moreover, the song escalates into the best kind of controlled musical chaos. A mini jam session ties the song off nicely before Prince and his bandmates take their first bow of the night.

The show reaches its climax comes with the two encores that follow, the first involving an energetic sing-along to “I Would Die 4 U” that smoothly transitions into a ten-plus minute jam built around “Baby I’m a Star.” But it’s the nearly twenty-minute version of “Purple Rain” that steals and seals the show. Everything about the song is embellished and amped up, from the melancholy opening instrumental section to the suite of blistering guitar solos Prince delivers throughout. All the while, he’s draped in a glittering black outfit that conjures up a clear, starry night and reflects the song’s valedictory mood. It’s obviously meant to be the most memorable part of the evening and, as was Prince’s wont, leaves audiences wanting more right at the very end of his performance.  

It’s a testament to Prince’s prowess as a live performer as well as skill as a musician that some three-and-a-half decades after the fact he still leaves listeners and viewers wanting more. Prince and the Revolution: Live is truly an experience to behold, and it’s beyond fortunate that posterity has this superlative audio and visual document of Prince at his prime to remind us of his artistic greatness.