Dirty Mind Tour - Prince 1980/1

1980/1

Concert tour

You can’t take his music seriously.

With Lisa Coleman replacing Gayle Chapman on keyboards following the debut tour, Prince’s backing band’s lineup continued otherwise unaltered. His third LP Dirty Mind was released on 8 October 1980. Occasioning his second tour, Dirty Mind Tour was a more upscaled production, its scheduling at theatres required Prince to enlist a lighting designer. The man he hired was LeRoy Bennett, who would design all Prince’s live shows for the next fourteen years. The Dirty Mind Tour staging was basic: the guitarists played upfront, and the rear stage comprised an aluminium platform for the two keyboards, flanking the drums on the second, slightly higher, tier. The two levels of the riser were lit with white spotlights. Prince’s set averaged 75 mins in length.

Dirty Mind Tour was Prince’s first touring show as headlining act and so featured support, in the form of Teena Marie. Teena entered the music scene in 1979 with her debut album Wild And Peaceful, a collaboration with Rick James her mentor. The trio met when Prince was opening act for James on the Fire It Up tour in the early half of 1980. Prince, impressed that she too was a multi‑instrumentalist, booked her to open for him on Dirty Mind Tour, where she performed throughout the first leg.

Dirty Mind Tour opened in New York at the 3,200 capacity Shea’s auditorium in Buffalo, on 4 December 1980, two months after the release of the LP. Ticket sales were slow and so the second leg of Dirty Mind Tour was down-sized to rock clubs, starting in Minneapolis on 9 March 1981 at Sam’s; the venue whose name would famously change to First Avenue later that year. The decision to downscale to the club circuit proved a stroke of good fortune, in that more white people began attending Prince’s shows, setting the turning point for his crossover appeal.

The 10 December concert at The Ritz, New York City became a seminal moment in Prince’s career, as the show that got him noticed in the music scene. In attendance were A-list celebrities including Nile Rodgers, Andy Warhol, the rock band Kiss and a slew of music reporters, including Rolling Stone magazine. It was also an eerily poignant night, John Lennon had been murdered in the city just hours before. Dirty Mind Tour returned to The Ritz on 22 March 1981, this time with Mick Jagger in the audience. The Ritz dates provided the catalyst to Prince being viewed as a serious musician and performer, inspiring his 1982 track All The Critics Love U In New York. That momentum was further enhanced with the appearance of Prince and the band on Saturday Night Live on 21 February 1981 to perform Partyup to a TV audience of millions and earned Prince’s touring act ever growing recognition. Scoring also his first interview for Rolling Stone magazine.

On the road with Dirty Mind Tour, Prince wrote much of the material for his fourth album Controversy. It was during this tour Prince famously switched from the Fender Telecaster he played at the start of the tour, to his newly acquired Hohner MadCat that would remain his mainstay guitar right up to the end of his near five decade career. During Dirty Mind Tour, Prince took to laying on the stage floor and jamming out on the new guitar. The crowd loved the vibe. It was unlike anything anyone had seen before, it was a sexual, funky and high energy show. Its regular setlist included the brand new unreleased tracks Broken and the instrumental Everybody Dance, written during the tour.

Dirty Mind Tour bought Prince to over Europe for the first time. During this this mini tour of Europe he played club Paradiso, Amsterdam (29 May 1981), followed by London’s Lyceum (June 2nd) and then Theatre Le Palace in Paris (June 3rd). It was a tentative introduction overseas, the venues were not filled and the other dates envisioned did not materialise. With the conclusion of the tour André Cymone is next to quit the band to embark on a solo career because Prince refused to accept creative input. As a parting gesture of goodwill, Prince gave Cymone the song The Dance Electric. Thirty-five shows were performed in total. The experiences on Dirty Mind Tour provided the formative moment in Prince’s live act, earning him the acceptance among his peers that he was no mere eccentric artist lingering at the fringe.

Prince | Dirty Mind Tour — Photography by Leni Sinclair

Support act for The Rolling Stones

Dirty Mind Tour was due to end after its Europe run. Then suddenly, having obviously been impressed by the show at The Ritz, comes a personal invitation from Jagger to book Prince as opening act for The Rolling Stones, to play their two LA dates of their American Tour of October 1981 promoting the LP Tattoo You. The timing happened to coincide with the 14 October release of Prince’s fourth album Controversy and the stadium appearances would be the big promotional coup for the new album. A young local musician named Mark Brown was hastily recruited to replace Cymone on bass for the show.

On the face of it, the booking seemed too good an opportunity for Prince to turn down. But the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum show on 9 October 1981 became memorable for the wrong reasons. Prince, who was first on the bill, played to a stadium filled with 94,000 hard rock fans unimpressed with Prince camping it up in a trench coat. He and the band were famously booed offstage when into their fourth song. Deeply insulted, Prince flew straight home to Minneapolis, with Dickerson and Jagger phoning to convince him back to play the second show.

Prince did indeed return for the 11 October LA gig but was again pelted with food and beer bottles, booed, and headed back offstage during the third song Jack U Off. The band played on without him but they too were forced from the stage during the fourth song and the set was aborted. The incident instead made Prince more determined and this was the last time he became anyone’s support act. On achieving his own stardom, a sound sample depicting the commotion of October 1981 was incorporated into the track Pop Life in 1985.