I just got finished reading Possessed by Alex Hahn. I won’t comment on the book as I took it with a grain of salt. But there was something mentioned that brought back a powerful memory.

It was 1988 and I me and some friends were waiting outside Tower Records (now Virgin Megastore) in Boston to get Tickets to the Lovesexy show in Worcester MA (the only Prince show I ever saw live). We got there at about 11:00 pm for tickets that went on sale at 10 am the next day, and it being late summer (September) in Boston, it was quite chilly at that time of night. The line had grown about ½ a block long about a half hour after we got there, but didn’t get any longer for the next hour. Since it was cold, the line wasn’t getting longer, and we lived in Cambridge (about a 5 min drive away), we decided to go home and sleep until about 4:00am, and take a chance that the line would not have gotten too much longer by then.

When we got back to Tower Records at about 4:30am, we notice the line was actually smaller (now down to about a quarter of a block). When we got back to the line we noticed right in the spot we had been standing earlier in the night there was now police caution tape and a huge crack in the wall. We asked the people in front of us what happened and they told us a car had jumped the median strip and plowed right into the line hitting a couple of people. They said one person more then likely died and a couple of others had some pretty gruesome injuries (from what they described).

After marveling at the devotion some people had for Prince to stay in line after witnessing this, it hit us just how fortunate we had been. Not only did the incident take place right in the spot we were standing before we left, only about 3 ½ hours had passed between when we left and when we came back. By that time most of the mess the accident caused had been cleaned (leaving only police tape, a cracked wall and a couple of small blood stains). So the incident could not have happened very long after we left (1/2 hour at the most). In other words, had we decided to stick it out a bit longer, it would have been us.

After Tower opened at 10 am and we got our tickets (only two were left once we got ours), we went home and turned on the news to find out that a Berklee College student named Fredrick Weber had been killed in the incident. Prince had sent a letter offering sincere condolences to his family. He then planned a benefit concert at the nightclub called the Citi (now Avalon) in which every news outlet in Boston attended and said he blew the doors off the place. They showed some clips and he was indeed tearing it up! He made a special dedication to Fredrick Weber during both performances in Worcester (a second show was added that did not sell out).

This was an incident that I had almost forgotten about until I read the passage in Possessed that mentioned it. On top of seeing me or my friends’ brush with mortality mentioned in this book, it reminded me of how generous and caring Prince was during this unfortunate incident. It was something the countered almost everything the book was saying about him.

That is so sad yet incredibly lucky for you.

I have a close friend who used to live in Worcester, just as an aside - funny to hear it mentioned in a thread, and to think Prince played there eight years before I first flew over.

I was born too late, argh..!

Alot of what Prince does goes undocumented, or is twisted by the media. He has heart.

This doesn't mean Prince is a giving person. This was just one incident. In the book, all Prince does is fucked up things.lol

Wow, that's quite as story. how thoughtful of Prince to do that in memory of his fan. Sorry I didn't like the book "Possessed" tho.

and the moral of the story is, dont line up like cattle to see a popstar perform. if ur meant to go, u'll go. go with dignity.

sacredwarrior said:

might wanna practice what you preach there before you try and hand out advice, because continuously peeling out money for said pop star's website while it was still running is just as bad. if yer money's meant to go, it'll go. and with dignity.

anyway--i remember reading/hearing about that accident. that was some scary shit, i'm sure...thing of it is, i hadn't heard about the show he did for the guy until now, and that was a very grand-hearted thing for 'im to do.

On a side note, I was at an aftershow standing next 2 this girl close 2 the front of a 200 strong crowd. I remember standing at an angle not unlike MJ in that Smooth Criminal video. The force of a crowd is truly amazing...
Anyhow this girl suddenly dissapeared under the crowd, lost her footing I guess, and the gap where she stood was very quickly closed with bodies up against each other. What a hot sweaty mess that was, I'll never 4get it.
She must've been in all kinda trouble because I remember this guy that was with her screaming frantically "Stop the show...stop the show..." almost crying, a real tone of terror in his voice. He was well within earshot of Prince and his bodyguard (1 of the biggest human beings I've ever seen...lol) and was motioning frantically while he was screaming. I watched intently 2 c what the reaction their would b, and was quite surprised when the bodyguard simply smiled and folded his arms, quite apathetic 2 the whole sitution. That scared me.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

sacredwarrior said:

1) dignified folk don't continue to carry on after the fact.

2) the way you carry on each day on this forum makes it so that i don't really have to say why. it has nothing to do with being on a personal level, but with common sense...stop and think: if the same situation happened to you, would you wanna read some bullshit like that from somebody after you posted about it?

i still stand by my earlier statement. this ain't the time nor the place to carry on with your constant anti-prince rhetoric--the cat's sharing a rather sad story with us, and here you go.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

Gurl, just ignore her. You know she and MickG are

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

and yet u do. its up to me how i choose to respond to a topic. not you. i chose to make an objective statement. not an emotional one. i understand if u feel it was insensitive, but that's a subjective opinion.

as for your comments about my comments on this website, u can sit there and criticise me if u want to, i aint gunna stop ya, but dont u think it would b more productive to [b]be what u'd rather me be, than stoop to the level you accuse me of?

last time i checked, u arent me, dont know me, and even though u have the right to presume you do, you are completely wrong. there's lots of different kinds of people in the world, am sure ur well aware, but u seem to be forgetting that not all of them are going to be people you understand. if ur way of dealing with that is to react on face value, so be it, but all ur really telling me is that ur closed-minded. sorry.

if u'd ever like to show open-mindedness toward me, please do.[/b]


sorry for going off topic but i aint gunna let someone hack at me for imagined reasons... which only amplifies the perceived negative effect. if u dont like what i say, and dont wanna try to understand, move on. x

Scotsman1999 said:

Prince always used to play in Worcester during the 80's. It was the only arena big enough (no one wanted to play in the old Boston Garden). Musicology was at the Fleet Center/New Garden. I'm still pissed I didn't go to that one!!! I also had a chance to go to the one at Cobo in Detroit, but my GF didn't want to pay for the tickets.

2freaky4church1 said:

Don't I know it. I took it all with a grain of salt though. It seems like the book concentrated on the fucked up shit he did. But my felling is that if he really was as much of an asshole as the book showed him to be, why whould anybody want to play with/for him EVER?

Wow! What an amazing and tragic story. Thank you so much for sharing.

christos7 said:

well... and then....?

That's a sad story, but I'm happy that you and your friend were not injured. Thank God 4 that and it also shows that even though us fans often make Prince out to be larger than life-that he is a caring person .

wow...you shoulda bought a lotto ticket that day!
thanx for sharin your story with us.