Culture Thursday: The night Prince got booed off stage
On October 9 & 11, 1981, The Rolling Stones performed at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with opening support from Prince. At the time, Prince wasn’t well-known but Mick Jagger was a fan of his early work and invited him to open the show. Less than four songs into their set, the crowd of 94,000 promptly booed Prince and his band off stage, likely because his music and fashion was much different than taste of The Rolling Stones’ audience.
Following the poor treatment, Prince flew back to Minneapolis, set on not returning to the stage. However Jagger and his manager convinced him to come back for night two. Prince and his band received similar treatment on October 11, but finished their five-song set, closing with “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?”
At the time I was a young lad in New York City. Prince, as the above quote accurately states, was not that well-known outside of Minnesota. MTV had just debuted two months earlier. And, let's be frank, it would be a few years before it would start playing Black artists on regular rotation. But in New York, we heard the story.
It's hard to believe now, with the adulation we give him, that Prince could ever be treated so shabbily. But he upended everything white rock fans treasured. They had forgotten that rock and roll came from Black music. They ignored that the Stones, in their early career, were a blues cover band. Rock had become white music, and its Black pioneers had been sent to the memory hole. And here was this young Black man, outrageously dressed, with his outrageous band, playing music which they considered theirs. And, a band fronted by a Black man opening for the Stones? Heresy!
But, Mick Jagger, who was not blinkered by the racism of his fans, was instrumental in giving us Prince, and urging him not to quit. And Prince took that opportunity. Yes, he got booed again. But to be an artist you have to made of strong stuff. And that shabby treatment perhaps was what he needed, in order to pursue the visions he had for his music. He was making music for a multicultural audience. The audiences at the clubs in which he played at home were famously integrated. That vibe spread wherever he performed. And by 1984, with the release of Purple Rain, he had the world at his feet. I now wonder how many of those who booed him those two nights went out and bought his album, shoving the memory of their blindness deep down, to be hidden forever?
Art is not for the weak of nerve or mind. It is a harsh master. You may wind up making it only for yourself. But an artist creates because he or she has no choice. The muses will not let them rest. It is who they are.
Thank goodness that Prince Rogers Nelson continued to follow his particular muse. The world would have been so much grayer if he had let those yobs determine his future. As in so many things, fortune favors those who stop, look up, and say, "Fuck it, let's go."
Be as a thief in the temple.
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