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Purple Rain Tour

1984/5

More costume changes than Liza Minelli.

Coinciding with the 14 December 1984 home video release of the Purple Rain movie, the supporting tour for the movie’s the already 8x Multi-Platinum selling soundtrack opened on 4 November and ran through to 7 April 1985.

The shows received considerable media attention as result of Prince’s triple number ones and award show appearances that year – holding a trio of chart number ones at the movie box office as well as top selling album and single. Shows sold out immediately and many extra dates were hastily scheduled. Purple Rain Tour was Prince’s first of two tours backed with The Revolution. Over 300 reporters attended the opening concert, the first of a run of seven shows staged at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. Stage features included a hydraulic trapdoor through which Prince would enter the stage and open with Let’s Go Crazy, backlit by a bass drum rigged with a white light. A purple bath tub rose through the stage floor. Purple Rain Tour also occasioned the introduction of Prince’s two custom built ‘Ejacucaster‘ telecaster guitars which sprayed fluid over the audience front rows. Fink and Coleman on keyboards flanked Bobby Z on drums occupied a single raised platform behind Prince, Wendy and Brown Mark floor level up front.

To rehearse, Prince bought his first warehouse, located on Flying Cloud Drive in the suburbs of Minneapolis, where he drilled the band relentlessly throughout the summer of 1984 in preparation for the mammoth Purple Rain Tour. Stage rehearsals began on 1 October 1984. A 28-page tour book was also produced – Prince’s first tour to publish one. Featuring publicity photos for both the album and the movie, the tour book was tantalisingly titled 1984-85 World Tour. Performances averaged 125 minutes and the songs were elaborately indulgent, the closer Purple Rain extended to near 20 minutes.

Opening Purple Rain Tour was Sheila E promoting her debut LP The Glamorous Life, her guitarist Miko Weaver would be incorporated into The Revolution following the tour. On occasion Apollonia 6 would appear as guests in the climax of the show, joining Sheila on stage along with dancers Greg Brooks, Wally Safford and Jerome Benton, for the rousing encore Baby I’m A Star reworked into a party salsa jam: Brooks and Safford being additionally Prince’s actual security detail on the tour. Watching Bruce Springsteen in concert backed with his E Street Band, Prince enlisted Eric Leeds as an unofficial member of The Revolution to add a saxophone to the line-up. Due to their simmering rivalry on previous tours that inspired even the storyline of the movie, The Time did not appear on the bill for Purple Rain Tour and the group soon disbanded.

The encore of the performance at Inglewood Forum on 23 February 1985 became the stuff of legend when Prince was joined onstage by Madonna and Springsteen for Baby I’m A Star. Purple Rain Tour had been scheduled at Inglewood Forum to coincide with the Grammy Awards ceremony, where Prince collected multiple gongs on 26 February 1985. During an off-day on tour he and the band flew to LA to perform at the American Music Awards (28 January), collecting another trio of awards. With his slew of awards and growing celebrity following the run cemented Prince’s dominance over other acts of the day.

Purple Rain Tour was played in arenas averaging attendance of 20,000 and performed 98 dates, drawing a total audience of 1.7 million. Leg one focussed on the eastern USA, and leg two the west and then New York area and south to Florida. In December 1984, Prince played two concerts in Toronto, his first ever shows on Canadian soil. Purple Rain Tour was intended to afterwards continue to Europe by mid 1985 but after playing show number 75, Prince found himself burnt out. So he had the tour’s 30 March 1985 concert at Carrier Dome, Syracuse televised to a worldwide audience of 15 million to allow those unable to attend to see the live show and savour the spectacle. The footage was released on home video once the tour was finished, its sales would likewise attain Platinum certification. Prince had grown so tired of performing every song from the album over the near 100 shows of the tour, five days before its final concert his manager Steve Fargnoli announced Prince’s indefinite retirement from performing. Thankfully his retirement was short-lived as Prince was back on the road just months later in 1986. Purple Rain Tour played its final show on 7 April 1985 with a concert at the Miami Orange Bowl stadium, renamed Purple Bowl for the occasion, with 53,000 in attendance.

The tour yielded $30million in revenue and was among the highest grossing shows of the year, just $4million short of Springsteen’s Born In The USA Tour performed over 122 dates in the US. Madonna’s debut tour The Virgin Tour grossed $5million from 40 shows. Purple Rain Tour established Prince as a live performer extraordinaire and he never looked back.