Hendrix while playing with his whammy
bar often
detuned his guitar,today we have lock systems
on guitar but it still happens.

You ever heard Prince's guitar go out of
tune while he played solo?
i heard one version of Just my Imagination
and in the second helf of the solo his
guitaR got out of tune.

Hell yeah I've heard P's guitar go out of tune. A few times. On the Controversy show I went to, during the song Controversy, which is towards the end of the show, P's guitar was out. It showed up during the break of the song where it's just P on the guitar playing the funk riff and Bobby on the drums. When the rest of the band joined in, P's guitar really stood out cuz when they went into the pre-chorus "Do I believe in God? Do I believe in me?", his tuning was out from the rest of the band and it clashed. His axe was somewhat out of tune on one of the shows on the PR tour while he performed Purple Rain. On the few choruses right before he went into his solo, while he was hitting his power chords, u could hear that it was out. It was easy to hear, because always during that song, his monitors would be BLASTING! He obviously could hear it too because during the choruses while he was saying "Everybody raise your hands", he was steady tuning the pegs on the headstock, trying to put it back in tune. He got it back in time for his solo because his solo was dead on perfect pitch. That shit is going to happen. If you're a lead guitarist and u play hard to begin with, no matter what, it's going to slip out of tune from time to time. Atmosphere has a lot to do with this. The heat from the stage and the crowd, if u move around a lot, like P did, that'll help knock it out of tune. Even if u think u don't bump the headstock to the guitar, still certain enviroments, the electricity and energy on the stage. Combined with heat could knock your axe out of tune. Sometimes weird shit happens to your amps and speaker cabinets that could make you think you're out of tune, etc...That's why from experience, u play out and gig enough, u can catch that kind of weird cosmo shit that happens sometimes when you're performing. It certainly happens to well known acts playing to 20,000 people.
[Edited 8/27/09 14:48pm]

When he started playing "Guitar" on the Jay Leno show, he started and stopped twice.
It gave me the impression that the guitar was out of tune...but since I hardly know anything about music, I'm not sure if that was the case

JayJai said:

Saw that too. Wasn't out of tune, He just didn't have the right tone/efx that he wanted.

Speaking of out of tune, I've seen many of times where Prince has popped his E string like in the SOTT movie playing It and he also broke a string during the preview of SOTT at First Avenue. Like BGZ says crazy shit happens!

God help Prince's guitar techs... I can't imagine him being too happy, even if these things happen!

Listen to P's guitar solo in "Gotta Broken Heart Again" on the Ritz 80 gig. It's out but he covered it real well.

Spyfan you are right about Gotta broken Heart