Prince stated: "If you came to get your Purple Rain on you might as well hit the door."
I realize One Nite Alone is made up of a compilation of concerts.
It does contain several other "old" tunes: Adore, I Wanna Be Your Lover, Do Me Baby, The Beautiful Ones(which is from the Purple Rain album and era), etc.
So is his comment really meaningless??

Extremely meaninless being as he played Purple Rain at the majority of the shows and he said the same at the beginning of every show.

Every artist has a signature song. Purple Rain is Prince's signature song, and for him NOT to perform it is a slap in the face to fans. The fans expect to hear it.

But what he meant with that saying is that the overall "tone" of the evening would not be one of greatest hits - instead concentrating on rarities and new material.

lovemachine said:

Just the way U said it!
And at the NYC show, he was like "I had no intention of playing this song at all..." the crowd was like: "ROOOAR!"
Im like: "Come on Prince darling, U knew U had 2 play Purple Rain! Its Ur "PRINCE" song!"

I thought it was funny he didn't play Purple Rain and played Take Me With You.

Iam sure some people came only to hear that song.

He did manage to play it at a few of the shows.

Se7en said:

"a slap in the face" uhh...a bit extreme..don'tcha think? I'm a fan...and I expect to hear him play his music...period. I don't expect particular songs.

Purple Rain is to Prince as:

Stairway to Heaven is to Led Zep
Tom Sawyer is to Rush
Teen Spirit is to Nirvana
Jeremy is to Pearl Jam

Free Bird...Satisfaction...Purple Haze...Another Brick in the Wall...Walk This Way...Every Breath You Take...Pride in the Name of Love...

I could give a shit if he never played it again, really. I love all of the songs I just named, and don't care to hear any of them anytime soon. At a certain point, it just becomes silly.

Now, what is THE quintessentia; version of PR?

For my money, it's the Rave 2000 DVD version, "There is no other king" and all that aside.

Of course when he says 'you might as well hit the door', it's a win-win situation for him. Either he doesn't play it and it's ok because it's not 1984 anymore, or he does play it and the crowd goes absolutely wild.

I don't take the comment to mean he won't play Purple Rain, though - I take it to mean that if you came just for that, leave now. As in, he has so much more to offer than that. If you're someone who only likes the PR-era Prince, and you aren't open-minded to more (eg. TRC), you may as well leave the show. That's how I interpret the statement. But hey, that's just an interpretation like all the others...

Like Prince says-
"We aint interested in what u know, but what your willing 2 learn".
Kinda sums it up

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