Prince serenades Madonna at late-night Paisley Park gig
From an article by Andrea Swensson on TheCurrent:
Thirty-three civilians showed up to Paisley Park late last night. I know there were 33 of us because I ended up having plenty of time to count each and every one of us from left to right, then again from right to left and all the way up to the stage, which was littered with dozens of guitar pedals, two keyboard rigs, a drum set, and Prince’s signature glyph microphone.
I had shown up to Paisley Park around 11:30 p.m., having been summoned there only hours earlier with the promise that something “extra-special” might go down. As the 33 of us who were gathered there did our best to stay upright, sway to DJ KISS’s mix of Prince and ’80s pop tunes, and keep our wits about us, and as the clock crept past 1:30 a.m., I was just about to start counting the crowd again and contemplating the strength of that word might when a flurry of security guards with walkie-talkies started buzzing around and a door next to the stage swung open.
A steady stream of people started filing into the venue, and it took me a couple of blinks to realize that the first woman and the head of the pack was Madonna. She is a petite little powerhouse of a figure, and was dressed in a sharp navy trench coat-style cape with her hair neatly woven into a braid that fell down her right shoulder, like a pop star’s rendition of Little Red Riding Hood. Her bright lipstick and dark eyeliner appeared flawless, and as she scanned the strange scene—33 civilians dancing haphazardly, undoubtedly looking tired from all the waiting and the late hour, and her own hits blasting over the sound system—she looked so calm and coiffed that you would have never guessed that she had just finished performing a two-hour show in front of a sold-out crowd at the Xcel Energy Center which included a special dedication to Prince.
It turns out that injecting Madonna’s entire professional dance troupe into a party is a surefire way to liven it up, and as more and more of the pop icon’s touring crew filtered in, a fully choreographed dance party soon broke out in the middle of the room. It was incredibly surreal standing on the sidelines attempting to groove to the music while what looked like a professional music video shoot sprawled out before us, but all of a sudden the energy in the place had been cranked to 11 and it was all we could do to try to soak up the crew’s ecstatic vibe.
Madonna was ushered into a roped-off section of the room and then disappeared, undoubtedly to have a few private moments with Prince while her team blew off a little steam on the dance floor. By 2:15 a.m. she had returned to the scene and was followed in short order by Prince, who stood near the back of the dance floor draped in a floor-length hooded sweater and smirked at the energetic dancers who were frolicking around the room.
As soon as Prince appeared the small crowd started pressing toward the stage, and even after Madonna’s tour buses had all been unloaded into Paisley Park there were still only roughly 60 people there to take in the impending show. Most of the people in attendance were standing within a couple yards of the band, and Prince seemed a little uncomfortable playing to such an intimate audience.
Read the full story on TheCurrent and check out Prince’s reaction at Madonna’s dedication of La Vie En Rose in St. Paul. Thanks to Darren.
I’m gonna sing this for him.” –@Madonna dedicating La Vie en Rose to @Prince3EG pic.twitter.com/8wnM1FlSxF
— Prince3EG (@Prince3EG) October 9, 2015
