A royally rocking affair with Prince

Rock ’n’ roll royalty — he of the Prince variety — held court in San Diego on Friday night, and he showed why he was king.

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Stripped of all the trappings of a stadium-size concert, the diminutive 54-year-old singer-songwriter delivered a big performance during the 8 p.m. show Friday, the first of four over two consecutive nights at the 1,000-capacity Hard Rock Hotel Legends Ballroom.

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The cozy setting at Friday’s first concert — the seventh stop on a nine-city West Coast tour — gave the evening a “come and sit awhile” feel, even though the performance was a standing room-general admission show with Prince narrating the night’s storyline as he sang a mix of songs, old and new and a handful of fan favorites.

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The 8 p.m. concert didn’t start until 8:38 p.m., and the tardy Prince quickly offered a royal apology to the room, about two-thirds full: “Sorry for the delay, San Diego. I’m going to make it up to you. I promise.”

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And proving a royal promise isn’t meant to be broken, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer definitely made it up to his San Diego audience during the 88-minute set, a revved up evening punctuated by some excellent guitar playing by Prince and his accompanying female band, the 3rd Eye Girl trio.

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Wearing black pants and a paisley-patterned black coat — a subtle nod, perhaps, to his now-defunct Paisley Park Record label back in Chanhassen, Minn. — Prince kicked off the evening with an exuberant version of “Let’s Go Crazy,” his 1984 hit with his band The Revolution, which formed in 1979 in Minneapolis and disbanded in 1986.

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His opening song jump-started a night that focused less on Prince the personality and more on Prince the musician. The venue’s intimacy limited what could be on stage, so what was left were the bare necessities — some guitars, some drums, a keyboard, some lights and a whole lot of chutzpah.

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And that’s really all that was needed.

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Who knew you could get away with what Prince and his band got away with Friday night? At their best, Prince and his ladies dug deep musically with stunning guitar work, taking turns downstage becoming one with their electric guitars. At their worst, during a couple of instances during the night when the instruments drowned out his voice, it was still pretty darn good music, so you quickly forgave them.

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His huge stage presence — yes, even on a small stage, you knew you were in the presence of music royalty — draped the evening in an “I-can’t-believe-he’s-that-close” aura. And perhaps therein lies the magic of this intimate “Live Out Loud” tour, which kicked off April 15 at the 1,144-capacity Vogue Theater in Vancouver. A venue so intimate, you have no other choice but to feel so very privileged to be that close to greatness.

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Throughout the evening, Prince offered glimpses of his musical prowess — on the guitar and on the keyboard. His funky “Screwdriver,” released in February of this year, was a mix of ‘60s and ‘70s rock ‘n’ roll, but mixed only the way Prince can.

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Early on in the evening — perhaps as a strategic part of his royal apology — he pulled out the big guns with the normally set-closing “Purple Rain.” After nearly 20 minutes of energetic music, Prince sat down at the keyboard at 8:55 p.m. to slow things down. Five minutes later, he began playing the first familiar chords of “Purple Rain” and eased into one of the most memorable moments of the evening: a man, a song and an attentive audience.

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Later on, urging his audience to join him in clapping to the beat, he said: “You didn’t think you’d be going to church tonight, did you?”

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FOR FANS, A SPECIAL EVENING

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Ask concertgoer Monica Proscelle where she thought she’d be going Friday night, and she definitely wouldn’t have told you that she’d be at a Prince concert.

Her husband, Mark, decided to buy tickets around mid-day Friday, and after scoring two tickets, he called his wife and told her they needed to leave their North County home and head to the Gaslamp Quarter around 4 p.m.

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Standing in line for what she thought was dinner, Monica Proscelle finally realized she’d been duped — “a pleasant surprise by my lovely husband.”

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“The last Prince concert I’ve been to was 20 years ago,” she said while standing a few feet from the stage. “This is special.”

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For Steven Ozbun and his friends, being first in line Friday evening had its privileges: They were guaranteed to get the red wristbands awarded to early birds. The red wristbands got them into a special area right in front of the stage.

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For Ozbun, 32, Friday night’s concert brought back memories of his first Prince concert when he was 17. He drove 36 hours from San Diego to Minneapolis to attend a Prince concert there. Ozbun, an advertising executive, didn’t have to drive that far to Friday’s concert. He lives downtown.

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A diehard Prince fan, Ozbun also had tickets to the second of Saturday’s concerts: “I’m attending the first one and also the last one.”

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For his friend, Michael Hubbard of Mission Valley, Friday night’s concert was a special night. First in line Friday, Hubbard looked forward to a great evening with Prince.

What was he most excited about? “Being up front,” he said, smiling.

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And sure enough, during the entire night, Hubbard stood within inches of his Royal Purpleness.

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Hubbard’s face? All smiles.

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AT HIS BEST, A MUSICIAN IN COMMAND

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Nearly halfway through the evening, at the keyboard, Prince was a man in control. With the house lights down, he took control of the stage with his keyboard at his fingertips and then uttered the first few words of a 1985 song he originally wrote for himself but was then made famous in 1989 by Sinead O’Connor.

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“It’s been seven hours and fifteen days ... “

The audience went wild.

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And in those four words, one could sum up how many in the audience felt about Prince on Friday night. Even though Friday night’s set list lacked many of his popular titles, it was easy to forgive Prince for using the intimate setting to try something new.

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Some of the songs performed Friday were old songs that had been reworked to the point they were almost unrecognizable. And still, other songs were so unknown, you sometimes wondered, “What song was that?” And then, there were songs so new you probably were hearing them for the first time.

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For all that, and for being 38 minutes late, you didn't want to forgive him, but with all that great music, you had no choice but to do so. And the $250-per-ticket price tag? You didn’t really want to forgive him for that, but you go ahead anyway.

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It’s Prince after all.

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“Too many hits, not enough time,” he said before wrapping up the 8 p.m. concert to prepare for the 11:30 p.m. crowd.

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Earlier in the evening, he promised he’d make it up, and he definitely did — and because of that, you wished that there wasn’t a second show that evening so you could get one more encore or two, courtesy of Prince, the king of the evening.