Reviewing a Show I Didn't Attend: Prince at Coachella 2008

Prince's death was perhaps the most unexpected to occur this year. Unlike David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Lonnie Mack, Merle Haggard and Lemmy, Prince was relatively young at 57 years old. He was also a notorious vegetarian who (at least to the public) didn't appear to have any notable issues with substance abuse. With his youthful good looks and boundless energy as a performer, no one would have expected the Purple One not to make it to 60. Unfortunately, we were wrong.
I was a major Prince fan from 2008 until about 2012. Though I was initially turned off by the definitively '80s production sounds in the music and his colorful (to say the least) vibe, I couldn't deny the masterfully catchy pop of "When Doves Cry", "Kiss" and later, "Little Red Corvette". It wasn't until I heard "Raspberry Beret" when I was completely sold on Prince's genius as a musician. It mixed the synthesized elements of Kraftwerk, baroque touches of latter day Beatles AND a soulful vocal worthy of Al Green at his best. No one else could mix such disparate elements to great success. More importantly, it's one of the catchiest songs ever written!

I became a full blown fan when he headlined the Coachella Music Festival in 2008. I didn't personally attend, but I obtained footage and high quality audio of the entire show. It was enough to completely sell me on his talent. Prince is one of the most notoriously dynamic and energetic performers in popular music, often featuring flashy set pieces, stunning choreography and most importantly, music so thrilling it reaches out to people from all walks of life.

That's exactly what made his Coachella show such a monumental experience. If it had happened ten or twenty years prior, it would have become as iconic as Otis Redding's appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival 41 years before him. Like Redding, Prince played to a crowd brought up on a diet of Indie Rock, Trip Hop, early EDM and anything that might be classified as "Alternative". Prince was one of the biggest stars in popular music before Nirvana paved the way for darker, more rock-oriented music in the early 1990's. Who was Prince to these millennial music fans? An unforgettable face from the '80s? The guy who sang "Purple Rain", "Kiss" and those other good songs you might not have known were his?

Regardless of who he was to them before the show, no one who left that show would ever forget him. There he was, a black performer who announced cockily that they were in the coolest place on Earth, due entirely to his presence...just before letting his proteges from Morris Day and the Time take the stage. Prince didn't sing a lead vocal until a good twenty minutes into the show, choosing instead to play one hot guitar solo after another, as if he knew he was so good he reveled in teasing the audience. He didn't even play a song he technically recorded himself until he sang "1999". By then, the party had truly taken off.

Prince's shows by then were approaching a new peak. After a long period of commercially disappointing, self indulgent albums which sometimes focused on his Jehovah's Witness faith, he'd made a comeback to (relatively) commercial music in 2003 with Musicology. There were still elements from his more experimental phase, such as the habit of performing sometimes unexpected covers in concert. Coachella's set list of mostly hits was interrupted near the end of the show with a cover of Alt. Rock favorite Radiohead's "Creep", which he'd utterly made his own with his less 'sinful' lyrical changes, R&B falsetto and a roaring guitar solo worthy of Van Halen.

If there's one thing I can say about Prince's shows in general, it's that they were all about diversity. When I finally saw him a year later at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles, his own crowd was made up of people from literally all backgrounds and tastes in music, from fans of left-of-the-dial indie rock to older R&B fans. There were college students and concertgoers who looked like they had just come from Hollywood's flashiest clubs. Of course, there were also more than a handful of celebrities in both sports and music, including Magic Johnson.

His catalogue of music reflected this diversity. Only Prince could fearlessly play the ultra-smooth R&B of "Shhh" back to back with the hard rocking "U Got the Look", the old school blues funk romp "Musicology", the aforementioned Radiohead song and a set of true-to-form Santana jams, topping off almost every song with a jaw-dropping guitar solo worthy of Jimi Hendrix.

 Near the end of the show, he followed an emotional cover of Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" (sung by backing singer Ledisi) with the one-two gospel punch of his own "7" and a pounding version of the Beatles' "Come Together", in which he announced to the mostly youthful audience that they as a whole were at the brink of a new golden age. Of course, it was all wind and sail but he had such an explosive charisma that it really seemed plausible.

Throughout the recording, people could be heard audibly gasping at stunts like that, or when he reached a crescendo in his magnum opus power ballad "Purple Rain". One concertgoer exclaimed, "He thinks he's Jesus!" While Prince would have certainly taken offense to that specific comment, that person wasn't completely wrong. Whether he was playing virtuoso-level guitar, keyboards, bass or making the most daring jumps between vocal ranges, Prince knew he had the talent to wow thousands of skeptics at a show and took pride in it.

Though it's never officially been released apart from a clip of "Creep", Prince's Coachella set can be found by only the most loyal and least ethical of his fans. Perhaps that's why it's faded into relative obscurity in this volatile time for media. His notoriously aggressive protection of his intellectual property has also aided this.

It's a shame that not everyone will be able to experience a Prince concert now. I caught one of his smaller shows, plagued with sound difficulties yet still brimming with excitement. Never before have I seen a figure with such a broad crossover appeal, a star who truly had the power to bring people together under the influence of his music. I don't think we'll ever see such an artist in popular music ever again.