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Dirty Mind Tour

1980/1

You can’t take his music seriously.

With Lisa Coleman replacing Gayle Chapman on keyboards following the debut tour, Prince’s backing band’s line-up continued otherwise unaltered. His second tour, Dirty Mind Tour was a more upscaled production, staged in a mixture of clubs and theatres it 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 14 years. The Dirty Mind staging was simple, the guitarists played upfront, keyboards flanking the drums on risers behind. Dirty Mind Tour was also Prince’s first touring show as the headlining act, and so featured support in the form of Teena Marie. Prince’s set averaged 75-minutes in length.

Dirty Mind Tour opened at the 3,200 capacity Shea’s auditorium, Buffalo, New York 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 downsized to clubs; starting in Minneapolis on 9 March 1981 at Sam’s, the venue’s name would 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 was a seminal moment in Prince’s career, 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 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 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. The regular set lists included the unreleased tracks, Broken and the instrumental Everybody Dance, also written during the tour.

It was Dirty Mind Tour that bought Prince to Europe for the first time, to play club Paradiso, Amsterdam (29 May 1981), followed by London’s Lyceum (June 2nd) and Theatre Le Palace Paris (June 3rd). It was a tentative introduction to Europe, the venues were not filled and the other dates envisioned did not materialise.

Dirty Mind Tour was due to end after its Europe run, but on the invitation of Jagger, Prince was booked to support The Rolling Stones for the two LA dates of their American Tour that October, in support of the LP Tattoo You. The timing happened to coincide with the release of Prince’s fourth LP Controversy and the appearances would provide the big finale for Dirty Mind Tour and so seemed like an idea too good to refuse. But the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum show on 9 October 1981 became memorable for other 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 G-string. He and the band were famously booed offstage when into their fourth song. Insulted, Prince flew straight home to Minneapolis, with Dickerson and Jagger phoning Prince to convince him back to play the 11th October show. Prince did return but was again pelted with food and beer bottles, booed, and heading back offstage during the third song Jack U Off. The band played on without him but they too left the stage again during the fourth song and the set was aborted. The incident instead made Prince more determined, and was the last time he was anyone’s support act. When he found his own success, a sample depicting the commotion was edited into the track Pop Life in 1985.

André Cymone quit the band on the conclusion of the tour to embark on a solo career – citing that Prince denied him to give creative input. Thirty shows were performed in total, providing the formative moment of Prince’s live act.