Celebrating Prince at Paisley Park’s 2018 Celebration — Day One
I’m currently sitting in a beautiful Airbnb space in Victoria, Minnesota, just down the road from Paisley Park where we spent the day as VIP media guests at the 2018 Celebration — the first of a 4 day event. Myself & Kim Camilia would like to give a massive shoutout to Paisley Park for granting us media passes to cover the event.
As we are YouTubers, our immediate reaction upon returning was to film and upload a video review, which you can watch here!
However, there’s some stuff that works better in a blog post, so we felt it would be appropriate to write a recap here too.
We started our day by heading towards Chanhassen Transit Station, where we grabbed our Media Passes and jumped on the coach to Paisley Park!
We arrived there amidst hundreds of fellow fans in a sea of purple. As we walked through that hallowed entrance, I can say I felt a sense of wonder, awe, excitement and also a deep sense of calm. I knew that we were exactly where we were supposed to be in this moment in time. Despite being a hardcore Prince fan for over 2 decades, this was in fact my first visit to Paisley Park. Although I wish I’d been able to come here whilst he was alive, it was never within my reach. That said, I saw him many times in concert over the years, including front row in my home city of Birmingham, UK, and I even met him in London during the legendary 21 Nights after a show there, so it’s not as if I’m lacking in memories.
As we walked in, one of the first faces we saw was our good friend Steve Parke, Prince’s former photographer and author of the amazing book Picturing Prince. We had hosted and DJ’d the afterparty for Steve’s gallery show opening in London last year, so it was great to see him again, and wonderful that Paisley Park had asked him to take photos of the event.
We were quickly taken to our seats at the front in the Soundstage room for the opening panel, where we were immediately treated to a loud playback of Prince’s original demo of Nothing Compares 2 U, newly mixed and released online this same morning. This was a beautiful moment.
After some introductions from Paisley Park head Joel Weinshanker, and Prince’s friend Wally Safford, we got to the first panel talk of former President of Paisley Park, Gilbert Davison and the legendary Sheila E.
It was a moving, heart-warming and hilarious talk as they discussed Sheila’s history in the music business both before and during her years working closely with Prince, how competitive they both were, and shared memories Gilbert and Sheila had.
Next, we were taken to the NPG Music Club room for a panel talk on iconography from three photographers who worked with Prince — Nancy Bundt, Allen Beaulieu and the aforementioned Steve Parke. Nancy spoke about and showed unseen photos of Prince taken on the Purple Rain tour, Allen spoke about shooting very early pictures of Prince, as well as the album cover for Dirty Mind and the back sleeve cover of 1999, and Steve shared memories and photos from shooting photos of Prince on an early digital camera, pointing out that the invention of digital cameras meant that photoshoots with Prince were thereafter much more spontaneous. Steve also discussed his design of the iconic drawn image cover of Graffiti Bridge.
Following this panel, we moved back to the Soundstage for a panel on musical arrangements with Brent Fischer (son of the late Clare Fischer, Prince’s longtime orchestral arranger) and Michael B Nelson of the NPG Horns. As I’d actually interviewed Brent and Clare all the way back in 2011 for a radio documentary I’d made for the 25th anniversary of Prince & The Revolution’s album Parade, I’d heard a couple of the stories before, however I was more than happy to hear them again and I suspect they contained new knowledge for many people in the audience! Michael B Nelson spoke about the way that Prince worked with him to create the horn parts, and one particularly interesting part was that Michael on at least one occasion had to create a horn part solely based on Clare Fischer’s string arrangement in isolation, without hearing the actual Prince song itself!
After taking a short break for lunch (during which time we picked up some vintage shirt replicas from the gift shop) it was time for the main event of the day — a performance from Sheila E!
It’s almost impossible to accurately describe just how epic, funky, and amazing Sheila’s set was. Her band were incredibly tight, the setlist perfect, she engaged the crowd to get us even more hyped than we already were, and delivered an emotional rendition of her song Rockstar, mashed up with the chord progression of Purple Rain which, combined with the video playing on the screens, had us all feeling incredibly emotional.
Her set began with a recreation of the Sign O’ The Times tour opening, starting with Sign O’ The Times, Play In The Sunshine, and Housequake. From there, they ferociously jammed through tracks like America, U Got The Look, The Belle of St Mark, The Glamorous Life, A Love Bizarre, Baby I’m A Star, Holly Rock, The Dance, Get On The Boat and Te Amo Corazon. Watching her perform Te Amo Corazon immediately transported me back to watching her, Prince, Wendy & Lisa perform that song at the 2006 Brit Awards which I remember watching on the original broadcast as it happened in the UK.
One particularly memorable moment happened when Sheila invited out two young sibling pianists that she’s been mentoring to join her and her band. 11 year old Jacob played a brilliant rendition of Venus de Milo from Parade, and his 15 year sister Emma joined the band to play piano on Te Amo Corazon. It was a beautiful moment, and although I’m sure Prince was proud of the entire performance, I know he would have been especially proud of the work Sheila is doing to mentor and support young musicians. It’s a sad fact that musical education in schools isn’t what it was back in the day when Prince and Sheila were growing up, so I especially commend Sheila for her efforts in this area.
Sheila’s band were all tight, but special shoutouts must be made to her godson Mychael Davison (son of Gilbert) on guitar, saxophonist Eddie M (who has been performing with Sheila since the 80's!) and of course, the incredible vocalist Lynn Mabry, who, if you’re a true funk head like I am, you’ll know as one of George Clinton’s original Brides of Funkenstein.
This was a phenomenal ending to a very emotional day. As we wandered out of Paisley Park through the nearby tunnel, filled with graffiti tributes to Prince, we attempted to take in and process all that had just happened. Through dozens of emotions, we felt a strong current of Prince’s spirit knowing that we were all there to celebrate his genius.
All I have left to say for now is…. Roll on Days 2, 3 and 4!
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