Here is a story about Prince. I heard it from a friend, but it happened to someone else, the wife of a professor she once had. This woman was a huge Prince fan, and she went to see the Toronto stop of 1993’s Act I Tour at Maple Leaf Gardens. Then security allowed her into the impromptu afterparty backstage. She met the purple one, who seemed enamoured – thought she was beautiful, said he’d be in town for another day, asked for her number. Obviously she gave it to him, because Prince. Anyway, the next morning he phoned and invited her to his suite at the Four Seasons. When she entered, its floor was strewn with rose petals. After some conversation that must have been otherworldly, the host shyly asked if he could bathe her. She agreed, he did, and that, apparently, was it. Assuming that anecdote is true – he would’ve used orchids in the fictional version, right? – it’s yet another example of Prince eschewing half-measures. Even his record-company-spiting glut of material in the early ‘90s was churned out with a certain visionary panache, indecipherable glyph and all. Saturday’s show at the ACC, the last of two Toronto gigs kicking off his “Welcome 2 Canada” tour, turned out to be a happier demonstration of the rule. Appearing on a stage shaped like that notorious symbol, outfit glittering, with the New Power Generation’s three backup singers in diaphanous robes at his side, Prince could have been the leader of some Afrofuturist paradise. Then he went to “Purple Rain” by the second song, soloing epically amidst smoky confetti. The set list drew heavily on his decade-long imperial phase, a period when the dauphin wasn’t just releasing one good-to-epochal album every year but writing numerous great songs for acquaintances or protgs as well. As he bantered at one point, with hilarious precision, “when was the last time you went to see a singer with 145 hits?” Yet the concert was far more than mechanical repertory. Prince’s current affection for medleys and covers sometimes came off as a gimmicky shortcut – really, “Play That Funky Music”? Transitioning from “Sign O’ the Times” to “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” to “I Would Die 4 U” via samples didn’t quite work, and I used an NPG member’s rendition of Sarah McLachlan to catch up on notes. (Blame the song, not the singer, who was rocking a shaved head, some kind of golden circlet thing and serious vocal chops.) Otherwise, however, all that mercurial experimentation reinvigorated very familiar music. Prince covering “Everyday People” will never not be amazing, and it was lovely to hear relatively obscure tracks like “Mountains” or “Alphabet St,” but speeding up “Let’s Go Crazy” to the point where his backup singers’ chants (“uh oh let’s go!”) resembled some riot grrrl anthem was still more unexpected. Their interpolation of “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” during the Time’s “Cool” struck me as a movingly understated tribute to Prince’s old semi-rival. His guitar work hasn’t changed; it’s virtuosic as ever, whether playing solos or spark-spitting funk chords. The medley of “Controversy,” “Sexy Dancer,” “Get Down Tonight” and goddamn “Housequake” was like one of those recipes that basically says: “throw some spicy things into a pan, turn up the heat.” His lascivious charisma is undimmed too. Prince turned 53 this year, not much younger than my dad, but the single loudest cheer came when he splayed himself across the piano during a slowed, sexjamming “Little Red Corvette.” (It was either that or the wanton ass-shaking in an extremely tight space priest outfit.) After his “Take Me With U” duet alongside NPG guitarist Andy Allo, those audience members pulled onstage to dance included an ’80s Prince impersonator, as if the pair’s sheer smolder had left cigarette burns in space-time. It was the kind of show where two hours of music feels hypnotically brief. Enjoying his applause, Prince teased: “Y’all keep that up, I’m going to have to move back. I don’t take up too much space.” Only in the physical sense.
