Sign O’ The Times Tour - Prince 1987
1987
Concert tourIt ain’t about the money, we just wanna play.
Sign O’ The Times Tour was Prince’s first tour as a solo artist again since his disbanding of The Revolution in October 1986. The rehearsals with the new band began in December 1986, conducted at his third and final rented warehouse, sited on Washington Avenue in Edina, Minnesota. Not being large enough to accommodate the entire stage, full dress rehearsals took place instead in April 1987 at the Birmingham NEC Arena over ten days prior to the tour’s opening at the Isstadion in Sweden.
Sign O The Times Tour launched just eight months following The Revolution’s final live performance with Prince for Parade Tour. A new touring band was assembled. The key introduction to the new lineup was Sheila E, taking Bobby Z’s seat on drums. Having been opening act for Prince on his previous two tours, Sheila was a solo artist in her own right and had been touring with Lionel Richie in 1986. Sheila was also granted her own segment in the main show on Sign O The Times Tour.
The setlist was fairly rigid in contrast to Prince’s previous tour. Opening with the title track Sign O The Times Prince appeared onstage in dramatic style, solo on electric guitar, backed simply with a drum machine and strobe lighting. The band then filed on, each bearing a marching snare drum bringing a live accompaniment to the beat. When the opener ended, they walk to the instruments to begin the action.
Joining Sheila E in the new band, Miko Weaver, guitarist in The Revolution’s extended lineup for Parade Tour filled the place of Wendy Melvoin on rhythm guitar; Prince taking Weaver’s former role on lead guitar. Newcomer Levi Seacer Jr was enlisted in replacement of Mark Brown on bass. Revolution’s last-standing member Matt “Dr” Fink retained his place on keyboards, and was joined by Boni Boyer on second keyboards and supporting vocals. Boyer and Weaver were long-term acquaintances of Sheila and were in her 1986 touring band E-Train, they completed Prince’s vision to source a funkier touring band which he felt lacked with The Revolution. Other’s keeping their places in Prince’s band were dancers Greg Brooks and Wally Safford, having been incorporated into the touring lineup since Purple Rain Tour. Sign O’ The Times Tour was also Prince’s first shows to add a professional dancer to the main lineup. Chicago club dancer and TV talent show Star Search runner-up Catherine “Cat” Vernice Glover met Prince in December 1986 having been invited to a dinner party at his home by fellow contestant Devin Devasquez. That evening, Cat afterward accompanied Prince to a nightclub called Viola at the Beverly Center in LA and the pair danced. Prince enlisted her on the spot and became a fully fledged member of the band. Cat bought a dynamism to the Sign O’ The Times Tour and was notable for her dance shimmy the ‘Cat scat’. Following the main show in Paris on 15 June, Sheena Easton makes an appearance to shoot the video for U Got The Look, which was released as a single after the tour on 14 July.
The staging for Sign O’ The Times Tour was once again the brainchild of Prince’s long-term production designer LeRoy Bennett. The set formed an urban scene scape with a moonlit backdrop, the buildings bearing a mishmash of neon signs ‘Girls Girls Girls, All Nude’, ‘Hotel’, ‘Bar’, ‘Uptown’, ‘Loans’ and ‘Pool’, drawing a seedier reinterpretation of the theatrical production Guys And Dolls seen on the LP’s cover. The props featured a large heart-shaped mirror that swung upright and down on hydraulics, placed on a high central rear riser accessed by a ramp stage right. Sheila E’s turquoise Yamaha drumkit with twin bass drums occupied a lower central riser positioned in front. The drum riser was fronted by a Pontiac Grand Prix car grill, again to mirror the album cover. Boyer’s keyboards were sited on the high rear riser stage left of the heart, accompanied by Prince’s grand piano. Fink’s keyboards occupied the riser stage right. This main riser sported industrial girders fronted in mesh. The stage floor was flanked by two half-curved ramps – stage left led to rise where Prince played his guitar solos, with railings interwoven with flower stems. Spotlighting was integrated through windows cutout in the street set backdrop. On the floor was a mock bar for Stafford and Brooks. The guitarists were located stage right, and Prince up front and centre. Rigged above were two large neon signs ‘LOVE’ and ‘SEX’ and six aluminium hexagonal light boxes for dynamic effect. The setlist was pretty locked down due to the show’s choreographed lighting and to concentrate on songs from the new album, which were played to their full length.
The show was even jazzier than Parade Tour, Eric Leeds and Atlanta Bliss on horns performed as if they were an entire jazz ensemble, incorporating music by legends Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker. Prince played a range of instruments in the shows, his peach coloured signature Cloud guitar, Hammond B3 Organ, even swapping with Sheila E on drums. Sign O’ The Times Tour was Prince’s boldest set to date, given its versatility to accommodate both indoor and outdoor venues. Prince’s latest spin-off group Madhouse was the show’s opening act – and because she was performing in the main show, Sheila E, member of Madhouse, was stood in on drums by her own drummer Dale Alexander. Audio technician for the tour was Prince’s home studio engineer Susan Rogers. On one night, while performing Purple Rain, Prince turned to Sheila and proposed on stage.
Following the itinerary of 1986’s Parade Tour, in light of that tour’s success in Europe just nine months earlier, Prince staged the follow-up Sign O The Times Tour also in Europe only. Tickets went on sale just weeks after the album’s release that March and sold out immediately. A total audience of 350,000 attended its run of 34 shows. Feeling he did not wish to continue the tour to the US where sales of the LP were less strong, no US venues were booked.
That desire to focus the Sign O’ The Times Tour on Europe where his recent albums sold better marked a real shift in Prince’s favouring of Europe over the US which continued well into the 1990s. Fate would see Sign O’ The Times Tour inadvertently miss the UK as its two shows scheduled at Wembley Stadium on 25th and 26th June 1987 were cancelled due to poor weather. Earls Court was hastily booked in replacement but the permits could not be issued in time and so with no suitable alternative indoor venue available Sign O’ The Times Tour returned to continental Europe. This experience left Prince reluctant to play outdoor venues in later tours. Prince instead played an extra date in Utrecht but the unseasonable rain continued to dog much of the remaining Europe leg, leading to the cancellation of several shows in Turin, Rome, and Birmingham. Its curtailment inspired Prince to have the show preserved on film and provide means for American and British audiences denied seeing the shows in person to watch it on TV – repeating what he did to placate European audiences when aborting the planned Europe leg of Purple Rain Tour in 1985. The resulting Sign O’ The Times movie was released with footage captured from the three performances of Sign O’ The Times Tour staged at Rotterdam’s Sportpaleis Ahoy, interspersed with re-recordings and extra scenes staged and shot as the first project undertaken at his newly completed Paisley Park Studios. Perhaps the real reason Prince wanted to race home.
Performers
- Vocals/Guitar
- Prince
- Drums
- Shelia E.
- Guitar
- Miko Weaver
- Keyboards
- Matt Fink
- Boni Boyer
- Bass Guitar
- Levi Seacer Jr.
- Saxophone
- Eric Leeds
- Trumpet
- Matthew Blistan ("Atlanta Bliss")
- Dance/Vocals
- Cat Glover
- Greg Brooks
- Wally Salford
Total performances
- 34 shows from 8 May to 29 June, 1987
Sample setlist
Madhouse
- Mutiny
- Two
- Three
- Six
Prince
- Sign O’ The Times
- Play In The Sunshine
- Little Red Corvette
- Housequake
- Girls & Boys
- Slow Love
- Take The “A” Train [Duke Ellington] / I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man
- Hot Thing
- Now’s The Time [Charlie Parker’s Be Boppers]
- Sheila E drum solo interlude
- If I Was Your Girlfriend
- Let’s Go Crazy
- When Doves Cry
- Purple Rain
- 1999
- Forever In My Life
- It
- Kiss
- The Cross
- It’s Gonna Be A Beautiful Night
Supporting albums
Madhouse 8
Warner Bros. Records
- Released
- 21 January 1987
- US Chart Peak
- 107
- UK Chart Peak
- Did not chart
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