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Prince · S2 E6
The Rick James Tour
Opening for Rick James, getting booed, dodging bottles. The audience isn't ready for him. Prince doesn't care
Somewhere in the American South, early 1980. Prince walks onto a stage full of Rick James fans wearing nothing but bikini briefs and thigh-high boots, and the crowd starts throwing things before he plays a single note.
"Raspberry Beret" (Prince and the Revolution, 1985). Five years after getting booed off Rick James's stage, Prince is headlining his own world tour. The pop-funk sound that confused a funk audience in 1980 now sells out arenas.
Raspberry Beret, Prince and the Revolution (1985)
"Raspberry Beret" is Prince at his most effortlessly pop: a Hohner guitar, a Fairlight CMI sample, and a melody that sounds like it has existed forever. Prince plays it loose and breezy, which is the hardest thing in the world to fake. The string arrangement is scored by Prince himself, lifting the song from pop single to something closer to a short film. Listen for how relaxed the whole performance feels: this is a man who no longer has anything to prove to anyone.
Sources
Thorne, Matt. "Prince: The Man and His Music." Faber & Faber, 2012.
Hahn, Alex. "Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince." Billboard Books, 2003.
The Fire It Up Tour
In early 1980, Prince joins Rick James's Fire It Up tour as the opening act. James is the biggest funk star in America, and his audience wants raw, hard funk. What they get instead is a twenty-one-year-old in lingerie playing new wave and rock guitar, and they respond with hostility: booing, heckling, throwing whatever they can find.
Sources
Hahn, Alex. "Possessed: The Rise and Fall of Prince." Billboard Books, 2003.
Nilsen, Per. "DanceMusicSexRomance: Prince, the First Decade." Firefly Publishing, 1999.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Rick James really think about Prince?
“He would come out in those little outfits and the crowd would lose their minds. At first I laughed. Then I stopped laughing.”
— Rick James, Glow: The Autobiography of Rick James (Atria Books, 2014)
First Avenue
Prince's home club in Minneapolis, known as Sam's in 1980 before it was renamed First Avenue. After months of getting booed on the Rick James tour, this was the one stage where the crowd always had his back.
The Rick James Tour: The File
Partyup, Prince (1980)
From the Dirty Mind album, recorded shortly after the Rick James tour. "Partyup" is pure adrenaline: a live-in-the-studio anthem that channels all the energy and defiance of those hostile opening sets into four minutes of funk-punk. The chorus is a dare. The tempo is a threat. This is what getting booed every night sounds like when you turn it into fuel.
Partyup, Prince (1980)
Beneath the party-anthem surface, Prince is channeling the rage and defiance of an artist who spent months being told he didn't belong. The repeated refrain says it all: he's not going to war, he's going to the stage. Every line hits harder when you know what he just survived on that tour.
Who did Prince open for on his first major national tour in 1980?
The booing is still ringing in his ears, but Prince is already recording something new in his home studio. Next season: a four-track recorder, an album called Dirty Mind, and the moment Prince stops asking permission and starts making the rules.
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