James Corden and Prince onstage at The BRIT Awards 2014 at The O2 Arena on February

Love the photos. Thanks, OldFriends4Sale.

I was wondering... surely all that leather is fake?

MMJas said:

Love the photos. Thanks, OldFriends4Sale.

I was wondering... surely all that leather is fake?

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Supposedly, it was some kind of "supple cloth available only to Prince".

These are the photos that I always think made him look overweight.
A bit of chin, a bit puffy in the face.

It reminds me of when my daughter first went on steroids for her kidney transplant.

There were some reports that said he was taking medication that would suppress his immune system which is EXACTLY what steroids do. Why steroids? Arthritis!

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If you want to be taken for the ride of your life, Prince is for you

Prince, along with his current group, 3rd Eye Girl, appeared at the Academy for the second northern night of his Hit & Run UK tour on Saturday night - Andy Dawson reviews it here

Dig, if you will, a picture, of more than 2,500 dazed humans spilling out into a Manchester street after having their hearts, minds and assorted other body parts well and truly blown.

(Not like that.)

That was the scene on Saturday night as Prince, along with his current group, 3rd Eye Girl, appeared at the Academy for the second northern night of his Hit & Run UK tour.

Friday night’s shenanigans had led to murmurings of discontent – some punters paid £35 for a late night show that didn’t actually happen, only getting to see a handful of encore songs from the first performance.

That’s fine – this is Prince we’re dealing with. A bona fide genius, and genius doesn’t work to an itinerary.

If you want certainty, and things like a timetable and shows that actually happen, go and see the slick likes of Coldplay or Mumford & Sons in an ice hockey arena instead.

Slurp down your overpriced fizzy drinks and don’t forget to get your multi-storey car park ticket validated before you go in, because that queue will be a nightmare afterwards and there’s a babysitter to pay for.

But if you want to be kept on your toes and taken for the ride of your life, Prince is for you.

Perhaps he’s gone soft – after all, these latest shows were announced up to three days before they happened, and fans were able to buy actual tickets instead of being forced to queue for hours.

As he takes to he stage just after 8pm, some of the stragglers are still making their way into the venue.

“Do y'all know how many hits I got?” he says early on. “I'll be here all night.”

He’s not wrong – for three hours (including six encores), Prince keeps the good-but-not-amazing new stuff to a minimum, powering through the greatest moments of his back catalogue.

Let’s Go Crazy, If I Was Your Girlfriend, Alphabet Street, Housequake, Nothing Compares 2 U and Purple Rain were all given an airing, in various stages of reinterpretation.

If that list gave you a sustained tingling feeling, here’s another one.

When Doves Cry, Raspberry Beret, Sign O The Times, Sometimes It Snows In April, The Beautiful Ones, I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man.

That’s only just over a third of the set there. Another list would be too much.

Bandying the word ‘genius’ around might be underestimating things – how many other artists can switch between hard rock, funk, ballads and out-and-out pop, effortlessly winning at all of them?

There’s only one name on the list – Prince.

The man had the entire 2,600-strong crowd completely under his spell. Dangerously so.

If he’d ordered us to paint our faces purple and perform a naked conga through the streets of Manchester, there’d have been a fight for the paintbrushes.

Once he’d finally wound things up for the night, some fans hung around inside the Academy for a further half an hour, before security staff ushered them out into the night.

It was impossible to tell if they were waiting for a possible seventh encore or just rooted to the spot in amazement at what they had just witnessed.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3...ce-3178257