Publication: Melody Maker [UK]
Date: June 20, 1992
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Page Number(s):
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Title: "Prince And The New Power Generation"
Reviewed By: Simon Price

The giant velvet bed suspended 20 feet above our heads was the first sign that tonight was going to be a Bit of a classic. With it's giant clawed hands instead of legs, and two neon-lit headboards, it looks like something the Queen Of Narnia would use for shagging the dwarves on the quiet. Yeah, in retrospect, I think it was the bed that did it.

"KEINE Karten -absolut NIX mehr!" That's telling you. The Sporthalle- a surprisingly small leisure centre in Hamburg's northern Lattenkamp district - is completely and utterly sold out. I'm being offered things that only a vague sense of journalistic integrity prevents me from accepting. Inside, the oxygen count is being dangerously reduced by the lucky few thousand Italians, French, Swedes, rich American and Japanese obsessives, Brit Controversy members, and even one or two Germans (everybody loves Prince) who have actually managed to get in. And what do the assembled United Nations actually do? The Mexican wave.

Suddenly, the wave mutates into something approaching a simultaneous, communal multiple orgasm, and the remaining oxygen almost vanishes completely as several thousand frauleins, herrs, senoritas, messieurs and geezers gasp in disbelief. The lights have just gone out and an enormous "Lovesexy" sign - the male and female gender symbols combined in a giant point anchor- hovers, spaceship-like, against a background of twinkling stars. (The "Diamonds And Pearls" stage set looks like it had to be specially shipped in down the Elbe). A dancer appears ("Mayte", apparently), twirls around for a minute or so throwing a series of breathtakingly beautiful rubber-spined arabesques in the smoke, and is joined by two more of equally astonishing pulchritude (and pliability), "Diamond" and "Pearl", at either side of the stage.

Then the band slowly emerges, in post-apocalypse Mad Max gear, amid a scary squall of thunderstorm noises. He hasn't even appeared yet, and already it's better than any concert you've seen this year.

Then it gets better. Something like a cross between the Great Glass Elevator and the Tardis is slowly rising out of the floor. Everyone screams. Everyone creams. It's Him! It's fucking Him! A tiny figur(in)e in a lemon drummer-boy's uniform, unbuttoned to the sternum, steps out in stilettos, a guitar hanging nonchalantly from the hip. The gigolo from Outer Space. The band - ahem - thunders into "Thunder". What happens next is a blur. During "Daddy Pop", Prince, in his high-heeled boots, manages pirouettes and splits and slides that Jackson, Baryshnikov and Astaire wouldn't attempt with crash -mats, and you suddenly remember that this... this creature, who reputedly survives - no, remains ageless, physically perfect- on a diet of marshmallows and cookies, is more divine than human. He is not on of us ...

"Diamonds and Pearls" is next, Prince sitting at the piano, and, this being Germany, out come the cigarette lighters, combusting what little breathable air remains. To the left, a gang of girls wave sparklers. Normally I'd sneer but, in context, it's rather sweet. Prince's new haircut is going to kill you - a quiff to make The Stray Cats pack up and retire, braided with

Valentino kiss curls smeared across the forehead. I mention this now because he seldom keeps still long enough to get a second look. Then he's off again, up on the piano lid, winking, twirling, teasing. All the girls want to have him (or vice-versa, etc). Prince was recently described as, "probably the only person alive who could teach Michelle Pfeiffer something about writhing around on Steinways."

There's a moment in the "Purple Rain" movie when Appollonia tells Morris Day that Prince ("The Kid") is going to help her make it in the music business. Morris laughs. "The Kid? He ain't never done nothin' for no one but himself!" So who is Prince trying to please? "Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here 2 day.. 2 Go Crazy!" Well, there's your answer. Prince in 1992 is an artist completely at rest with his past, willing (and able) to play around with it for our pleasure. If Prince is God (and I'd say the evidence is fairly conclusive), he's a benevolent one. He Lives 4 Love, and tonight he loves us to death. "Let's Go Crazy" is chopped in half started again, and cut short. In an instant, the guitars go "Wowwowwowwowwow-UH!". "'Kiss" raises the roof, brings the house down and performs several more architectural impossibilities. An essay in understatement - but what "Kiss" doesn't say isn't worth saying. The most perfect, minimal, concise song ever written, "Kiss" (almost) puts the "suck" and "sin" in "succinct".

The lighters are out again. "Purple Rain" is a rhapsody of remorse, a song of love gone wrong and more moving than any straight love song. Prince must have played it nearly as many times as you've heard it, but he still manages to invest it with fresh emotional intensity, even ditching the lyric, "I never wanted 2 B your weekend lover" for an ad-lib "I could B a lover". Prince's guitar gently weeps. Then less gently. Then it howls with anguish. That endless country-rock riff at the end is so simple-yet-effective in wrenching tears from your eyes it must be written in some arcane musical code (Barbara Cartland on a guitar?). As the hall echoes to mass "Ooh-hoo-hoo-hoos", grown Germans quietly cry. I'm filling buckets.

After "Live 4 Love", "Willing And Able" and a USO (Unidentified Slow One), Prince mutters, "That was 4 all the lovers. This is 4 the whores" If the shops had a problem with "Gett Off", I've got to see how they handle "Sexy Mutha F***a". The future single is new to all of us but, in seconds, we're chanting the chorus "Sexy mutha f***a....shakin' that ass, shakin' that ass" and grinning like call-and-response stadium idiots. There's an oriental interlude. Mayte shaking her stuff while Prince changes costumes. Then it's a metallic, menacing "Thieves In The Temple", which melts briefly into "It" (the only moment from "Sign O' The Times" we hear all night), then an instrumental "Strolling" (during which Mayte actually skates).

Then the bed comes down. "Insatiable" is one of those hilarious 10-minute sex ballads that Prince occasionally entertains us with, and during one particularly pregnant pause, he joins Diamond and Pearl on the flying bed, under a curtain of pearls, for a bizarre threesome. Only it isn't like that. When the dancers kneel beside him and slowly peel off his clothes, it isn't remotely sexual. It's more as though he's being blessed, anointed. So why do we journalists, when writing about Prince, always resort to the old dichotomy between the divine and the carnal? Once upon a time, the apparent schism used to trouble him (see the dialogue with God on "Temptation"). Since "Lovesexy", though, Prince has decided that the orgasm is a revelatory moment of divine rapture, and should be pursued at all times. Which is exactly what he does next.

"Gett Off" is Prince at his most myopically, single-mindedly shag-crazy-a heat-seeking (penile) missile. When I look up from my notes, Prince has his face between Diamond's cleavage, grinning at the video camera as if to ask, "Should I lick, or shouldn't I?" Of course he does. "U oughtta B happy when that dress is still on - I heard the rip when U sat down." And it doesn't stay on for long. Then it's Pearl's turn. "U got 2 B a mutha for me- now move yo big ass round this way so I can work on that zipper, baby!" Zippp... Then he slides down and simulates sex with both of them on the floor. It's possibly the dirtiest dance routine ever performed.

All right, All right, I can hear you: isn't Prince sexist? "Women and girls rule my world... I SAID THEY RULE MY WORLD." That's the most serious answer you're getting out of me. Then he very nearly blows it. Every now and then, Prince betrays his childhood James Brown fixation and marshals his musicians into interminable big-band "funk" workouts. (I use the word "funk" loosely - there's nothing lubricious about a 13-minute trawl through "It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night" or "Baby I'm A Star"). This might not be a watertight rule, but for some reason, it almost always happens when he's wearing a suit. After a couple of worrying warnings ("Jughead" and "Push") The New Power Generation go into bumping, thumping overload. Big fat Rosie (Gaines) is wheeled out for a wail, the even bigger, fatter Michael B (drummer), gets his bit, then the three useless rappers get their turn. They're sweating. Prince never sweats. Ah well, it gives him time to change costumes, I suppose.

For his encores, he reappears in an "Elvis In Hawaii" outfit which is apparently made from lobster netting. "Hamburg! Do I take it that U want 2 party??!" "Jaaaaaaaa!!!" Um, I think that means "Yes". "Cream" confirms what some of us have always suspected - Prince is well aware of Marc Bolan. Compare the lines, "You're filthy cute and baby you know it" and "You're dirty sweet and you're my girl" ("Get It On"). Compare the subtle, chugging boogie and the neat little flick of the wrist riffs, no doubt about it. Then it's Big Fat Rosies turn again, to do her Karaoke Aretha on "Chain Of Fools". Well, she's not that bad, but...

"1999" gets the sort of reaction you only ever see at Prince concerts. As the hall resounds to the German-accented refrain, "Party!", Prince is on his knees, rhyming away in a world of his own. "My name is Prince/And I am funky/My name is Prince/The one and only". And then he's gone.

It's already been said that the "Diamonds And Pearls" tour is to the pop concert what "Terminator 2" is to action movies. You'd better believe it. A quite famous friend of mine recently suggested that rock journalists should only be permitted to use the word "genius", three times a year. So I'd better be careful with my annual ration. Genius. Genius. Oh f*** it. GENIUS.