thu 28/03/2024

Prince, Shepherds Bush Empire | reviews, news & interviews

Prince, Shepherds Bush Empire

Prince, Shepherds Bush Empire

Surprise! Mr Nelson's new band rocks out hard

L-R: Hannah Ford Welton & Ida Nielsen of Third Eye Girl; Prince Rogers Nelson

If you're looking for good vibes, you could do worse than watch people who've queued up for a surprise show by a megastar finally getting through the doors, having paid only a tenner. The buzz on the way into the Shepherds Bush Empire last night, in fact, was a real tonic – people whooping, spontaneously singing, grinning inanely.

A quite peculiar mix of celebrities – Nick Grimshaw, Cara Delevingne, Alan Yentob and George Clinton – all took to their seats looking as excited as the 3,000-odd standard punters. This was what fandom should be about, and it couldn't have started off the evening better.

Now I've never been one of THOSE Prince fans, to the point of mystical symbol tattoos, worrying about the right shade of Purple and collating untold bootleg and fanclub-only releases – but I was an over-serious 13-year-old when Sign o' the Times came out and in the market for something strange and conspicuously Meaningful, so I do really appreciate how intensely people can get into him. So I found myself at my first ever Prince gig, caught between dreading a set of the endless noodling obscurities to which he is notoriously prone, and prickling with adolescent excitement and hope.

Prince and Third Eye GirlThe crowd buzz helped, as did the arrangement of the stage. A screen flickered with pretty but sort of banal mandala-style computer graphics, while a Classic FM soundtrack tinkled away; however, you wouldn't need to believe in Feng Shui to see beautiful symmetries in the vast speaker stacks, lighting rigs and scene-dominating drum kit (featuring no fewer than three kickdrums). It was clear that Prince and his band meant business. And sure enough, right on schedule at 8pm – almost to the second – the lights went mental and the three members of his band Third Eye Girl came on.

In a Valley Girl accent, the drummer Hannah Ford Welton made a short but articulate and convincing plea for cameras and phones to be put away, promised the “best night of your life”, then went behind the kit as the lights blacked out to kick up an almighty boogie-ing racket. Prince's voice came in, the crowd went nuts, the shadow of a small fellow with a bobbing Afro appeared in the wings and the crowd went double nuts, then the lights came on, he bounced on in his light-up platform heels, and it all went into hyperspace.

The next hour was wild, really wild. Third Eye Girl, looking like exactly the sort of band Eighties Prince probably imagined he'd be playing with in the 21st century, are a proper, kick-ass rock band. From a slowed-down but still grooving “Let's Go Crazy” on in, they made the most amazing noise that sounded, insanely, like some sort of fusion of Guns N' Roses, Funkadelic, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry fronted by... well... Prince. Really, it was that good.

Prince himselfClassic stuff – the B-side ballad “She's Always in My Hair” and a skull-crushingly mighty “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” – provided high points. Newer tracks like "Midnight Blues" or the fruit-loopery of 2009's “Colonized Mind” couldn't compare, despite the former's implausibly great opening line “Lost my job at Mickey D's / For giving away too much free food”, but it didn't matter. When tracks lacked hooks, it was made up for in pure riff, or in guitar solos dripping like molten gold from the fingers of Donna Grantis and doubly so from Prince himself. The sound mix was 100 percent perfect, the band's control and ability to turn on a dime was jaw-dropping and that hour went in a blink.

Then came the first of the encores, and it was pretty amazing. A solo piano and vocal medley, starting with “How Come U Don't Call Me Any More” wove neatly through “The Beautiful Ones,” “Diamonds and Pearls,” a heart-stopping and roof-raising “Purple Rain” and on. It could easily have been frustrating to hear just a verse and a chorus of these songs, but the arm-hair-raising feeling of Prince – in the vocal form of his life – sitting there only yards away belting them out more than made up for it.

Then there was a slightly peculiar machine funk section. One lengthy track was just Prince on distorted bass guitar jamming over a drum machine and was just stunning – the planet's hippest DJs could eat off a bootleg of that for quite some time. Then there were snippets of “When Doves Cry” and more hits, wonderful to start with then getting shorter and scrappier until it seemed he was just mucking about, karaoke-style – but at the precise moment of irritation it cut into a slamming “Housequake” and the band returned. If ever there's a Prince song that doesn't need a crunching rock reinterpretation it's that one – but they did it anyway and it was great.

It all blurs a bit after this, as the set degenerated into encore after encore, with five-plus minute gaps of milking applause, and it was almost all new-ish songs. And here he really did test his fans' devotion, but there were enough rewards to keep momentum – just. The batshit-mental “Cause and Effect” (from 2010) was kept alive by demolition riffs that evoked Black Sabbath, and in a moment of extreme cognitive dissonance made it obvious how close Prince's lower vocal registers sound to Ozzy Osbourne.

A Prince among womenA massively elongated “Something in the Water” from 1999 included a singalong which at first was so forced it felt chew-your-thumb-off embarrassing – but a furious guitar solo turned the whole track inside out and by the time the song emerged from the other side of it, the audience was still singing completely naturally. And other singalongs with obscure material were downright lovely; if there's one thing you can say about Prince fans it's that they can keep time and hold a tune. New song “Screwdriver” – thus far only ever heard in online clips – was greeted like an oldie, and “Bambi” from his 1979 debut album sounded oddly right next to it. But there was a load of indistinct noodling either side of these moments of rocking clarity, and the incredible momentum of the first part of the show seemed fractured by the amount of work he expected the crowd to put into asking for more.

How can you criticise him for this though? He is the Bob Dylan of funk-rock, the “Imp of the Perverse” in the title of one biography, kept alive and revived by never giving people exactly what they want, and that is why, perhaps against our better judgement, we love him. And when he lets loose the full Hendrix on yet another solo, or screams a perfect scream for 30 seconds straight at the climax of a song, all the faffing and preening are worth it. Even if you're not one of THOSE Prince fans, suddenly check yourself, and go “I'm watching PRINCE!" Nobody else can do what he does. It wasn't a perfect show by any means, but as people thronged out and buzzed around outside, that vibe was still palpable, and that's got to be worth a tenner of anyone's money, right?

The shadow of a small fellow with a bobbing afro appeared in the wings

rating

Editor Rating: 
5
Average: 5 (1 vote)

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Comments

I'm nitpicking because I wasn't there & therefore jealous. The full version of Screwdriver's available on the 3rd Eye Girl website (& I think iTunes) & Bambi's off his 2nd album, not his debut

Not 3,000, more like 2,000. That's the capacity of the Empire.

A brilliant and comprehensive review. Here's my note on the evening that preceded it http://humandynamics.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/one-nite-alone-with-george...

You will not have seen a better show than that in years, or maybe in your life, yet you pick silly faults in it. You make out as if parts of the gig were tedious, too many solos and 'preening' ??? what are you on? And you get a lot of the facts wrong too. He brought the band back on after the piano set during 'sign o the times' not 'Housequake'. The empire holds 2000 not 3000 etc. Stop trying to review something you have no idea about before you've grown up a bit.

I'm going to humour you and spell things out a bit, as you clearly don't understand the concept of a review, and would be angry with anyone who said that the show was anything but perfect.

First, I never said there were too many solos or preening (indeed, I repeatedly flagged up the guitar solos as high points), so I suspect you were just combing through with things to pick issue with rather than paying attention to the message of the review.

The fact is, though, it was NOT a perfect show. The general pace of the later part of the show did flag compared to the incredible first hour, and the energy levels in the crowd visibly and audibly dropped in the final section of repeated encores as people got weary of being expected to clamp and stomp for seven minutes at a time - even though it was clearly signalled (by the house lights remaining down) that this was not the end of the show. Up in the Circle, people were sitting down for longer and longer periods of time as it went on. The singalong of 'Something in the Water' WAS forced to start with, although as I say he turned that around brilliantly. 

The fact that, despite all this, Prince and TEG managed to produce so many utterly thrilling moments and everyone left happy is reflected in my five star rating for the show. I apologise that you were so upset by very minor factual errors, but my job as a reviewer is to give an overall impression of the night, warts and all, and those factual matters don't actually alter my honest impression of the show. But perhaps if you are so hurt by gentle, and affectionate, criticism of your favourite singer, you should stick to fan forums, because reviews are probably not for you.

I refer you to a message I sent to a friend a few minutes ago.... Reviewers have always pissed me off. People who have never created anything but a wet fart yet think they can scratch at others. Hurray to the internet for letting us respond to these dobbers! Here some smartarsed bed wetting amateur picks fault with Prince. He doesn't deserve hearing.

Dude, you're not making yourself very happy.  If you don't like reviewers, perhaps you shouldn't spend your time reviewing reviews.  It's a hall of mirrors you could well do without in your life. 

Can't comment on the show cuz wasn't there (last min announcements excluding so many of us fans from going) but I do agree that a reviewer has the right to post THEIR review and if u don't like them don't read them. Unfortunately there r some very touchy fans out there that won't hear a bad word about Prince even if other fans don't think he is acting fairly over his approach to gigs. I find it hard to live in cloud purple land no matter how much I respect and admire Prince and get a buzz from his music. I'm sure this is gonna get a few nasty responses too from people who want to spread purple love!

If you were expecting the hits, you should have gone to the O2 in 2007. What you call "obscurities" I just call songs that weren't singles in my complete Discography of his work.They have an album coming out very soon & that's the reason they are here to promote the new stuff mainly. You're clearly not a true fan, you may dip your toe in the water. For me, hearing #Bambi#, which is one of my favourites of all time, was special & totally suited the band & the occasion. My 5hrs standing in the cold, was well worth it & one of the greatest nights of my life. I actually preferred it to my front row at the O2 in 2007,it was a lot more raw& real & less showy. The fact he dropped the price to £10(it had £70 on the ticket)just goes to show exactly what he's about...The music & the love o(--|-->

Well @3rdeyedgirl retweeted this article with a big fat YAAAAAAAASSSSS so guess they liked it...

wha...ta sense of sound. BS ? Ozzy? can't be.

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