Interactive Tour

1993/4

Concert tour

Glam Slam Ulysses was a full scale dance show put together by Prince. In October 1991, Prince had previously collaborated with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, offering them his music royalty free for a dance production titled Billboards. Although set to the music of Prince, no new material was created for the show other than a reworking of one of the tracks – Thunder gifted to the production. Prince specially extended the Diamonds And Pearls album opener to incorporate an orchestral score. Billboards premiered on 27 January 1993 at the Hancher Auditorium at the University of Iowa. Further performances followed at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles and Brooklyn Academy of Music in July and November 1993. The production inspired Prince to develop his own full-scale dance production, Glam Slam Ulysses

Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?

The Glam Slam Ulysses stage show was a 65-minute dance extravaganza featuring the music Prince created earlier that year and comprised twelve newly recorded songs that he later released commercially on Come, The Gold Experience and Crystal Ball, loosely interwoven into a storyline based on the Odyssey of Homer. Specially shot footage was screened on a backdrop with which the live action dancers interacted. Choreographed by Jamie King who had done Michael Jackson’s Dangerous World Tour, Carmen Electra was the show’s dance captain heading a troupe of fourteen.

The show premiered in LA on 21 August 1993. Although Prince himself did not appear in the dance shows, matinee and evening shows were performed to an audience of 400 at $19.99 per head. Glam Slam Ulysses ran for two weeks at Prince’s Glam Slam nightclub at LA, closing on 4 September. On September 15, he followed with a series of concerts backed by the NPG, some staged as benefit gigs, under the name Interactive Tour.

These early shows for Interactive Tour were performed at Paisley Park Studios and having played just four shows by the end of November, Interactive Tour did not go on the road until April 1994.

Interactive Tour witnessed Prince’s iconic gold coloured Prince love symbol shaped Auerswald love symbol guitar take its public debut at the 12th of February 1994 relaunch show of the tour billed as The Beautiful Experience, premiering the promo video for The Most Beautiful Girl In The World. This show was filmed and then televised as a Sky special on 3 April 1994. The concerts continued the format of Glam Slam Ulysses, combining live performance with video footage show for the dance show screened on the backdrop of the stage. The performances averaged 80-minutes and tickets were priced at two tiers – VIP ($100) and general admission ($50). Interactive Tour was then performed across his chain of three Glam Slam nightclubs in Minneapolis, Miami and LA.

A brief run of the Interactive Tour was also staged in Europe to coincide with Prince’s appearance at the World Music Awards in Monaco, at the personal invitation of Prince Albert, 4 May 1994, and in Berlin that 25 November having played the MTV Europe Awards the previous evening. Resuming in the US, there was further TV performances for the VH-1 Awards (26 June) and NBC’s The Today Show (12 July). The closing show of Interactive Tour was staged at the Roseland Ballroom at New York on 12 December, as the following day Prince and the band appeared on The Late Show With David Letterman to perform Dolphin.

Interactive Tour inaugurated what became a popular part in Prince’s shows, The Jam, a cover of Larry Graham’s 1974 instrumental of the same name. It was integrated into Prince’s setlists of both this and the following Ultimate Live Experience tour to introduce the band, who each perform a solo.

An accompanying video game, likewise titled Interactive, was released on Prince’s birthday 7 June 1994, the night he staged the tour at Glam Slam Miami. Interactive Tour began one week after the final show of Prince’s Act II Tour, and was Prince’s his first tour promoted under his new name Prince love symbol despite having adopted the change exactly one year previous. Interactive Tour inaugurated a new format of concert to explore alternative avenues by which to showcase his latest music amid the height of his dispute with Warner Brothers at that time over the publishing of his albums and Prince’s refusal to give the label his latest material to fulfil their contract: Warner having forced the closure of Paisley Park Records in February 1994.

Performers

Vocals/Guitar

Prince love symbol

Drums

Michael Bland

Keyboards

Morris Hayes

Tommy Barbarella

Bass Guitar

Sonny Thompson

Dance

Mayte Garcia

Sample setlist

1. Come
2. Endorphinmachine
3. Space
4. Interactive
5. Days Of Wild
6. Now
7. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World
8. The Ride
9. Get Wild
10. Acknowledge Me
11. Race
12. The Jam [Graham Central Station]
13. Shhh

Glam Slam Ulysses

1. Strays Of The World (Part 1) [The Ship]
2. Dolphin [Lotus Land]
3. Interactive [The Cyclops]
4. Pheromone [Circe]
5. Dark [Penelope]
6. Loose! [Hades]
7. Space [The Sirens]
8. What’s My Name [Scylla]
9. Endorphinemachine [Calypso]
10. Race [The Suitors]
11. Come [The Trojan Horse]
12. Strays Of The World (Part 2) [The Homecoming]
13. Pope [The Celebration]

Performers

Director

Kenneth Robins

Producer

David Haugland

Chorography

Jamie King

Dancers

Carmen Electra

Frank Williams

Joaquín Escamilla

Stefanie Roos

Kevin Stea

Shaun Earl

Kerri Ann James

Sébastien Lachaise

Becky Luckett

Dominique Schatz

Dina Lee Helm

Sergio Carbohal

Alexis Valentine

Chad Allen

Costumes

Jack Edwards