Who knows why? So many "whys"?

My guess is he needed to keep touring to earn money and the new band with MonoNeon and Adrian Crutchfield etc wasn't ready yet for live shows.

So glad he did it. I was at the Sydney Opera House. Unforgettable. He didn't come across as vulnerable, his stage presence and music was powerful.

This interpretation about him being frail and vulnerable came after he died* , is a way in hindsight trying to explain and read things into the timing of his passing. Every solo musician talks a bit between songs or says something personal. Otherwise there is just this awkward silence between songs. With a band he didn't need to do that and the energy is different if it's a band or a solo performer.

* Except for the show in Melbourne when he had just heard about Vanity which must have been hard for him.

Superconductor said:

Superconductor said:

laurarichardson said:

Superconductor said:

Who knows why? So many "whys"?

My guess is he needed to keep touring to earn money and the new band with MonoNeon and Adrian Crutchfield etc wasn't ready yet for live shows.

So glad he did it. I was at the Sydney Opera House. Unforgettable. He didn't come across as vulnerable, his stage presence and music was powerful.

This interpretation about him being frail and vulnerable came after he died* , is a way in hindsight trying to explain and read things into the timing of his passing. Every solo musician talks a bit between songs or says something personal. Otherwise there is just this awkward silence between songs. With a band he didn't need to do that and the energy is different if it's a band or a solo performer.

* Except for the show in Melbourne when he had just heard about Vanity which must have been hard for him.

--Adrian had already played live with Prince and according to him the tour in the fall would have Prince opening on the piano and then bringing out the band for the second act.

that could be but I believe the general consensus is that the fans would have wanted to see the P and M tour, I, as a pianist, would have made it there if it had costed 500 bucks.

PeteSilas said:

These shows were the best of all options; 1) very low overhead/highly profitble, 2) gave the people what they wanted-Prince in a small venue without other distracting performers like some of the other tours, 3) he could roll these out quickly without much planning, 3) it was not something he had done before and would be a challenge for him. I don't believe this had much if anything to do with his ongoing issues with pain. I'm sure he was receiving and listening to a lot of feedback on how is unplugged sets were received by fans in the past.

People need to remember that performing was his primary source of income. He had an expensive lifestyle and business obligations that hit every month. This tour was the perfect for him with where he was at the time.

He had future plans just like we all do. But as we can see, we are not promised a tomorrow and many times it comes like a thief in the night.

I've heard that he knew it would be his last one. What else was left for him to do after almost 40 years. i waas looking forward to seeing him again.

becasue he wanted to hear his fuckin fans sing ..and not be able to do a real piano and mic tour

luvsexy4all said:

Pookie said that he wanted to challenge himself, and not rely on quitar like he always did. His voice and a piano ? Exquisite.

Why did Prince do anything? Because he found it cool

luvsexy4all said:

I also remember an interview about the AoA album and why he decided to have someon 'produce' him ie Joshue Welton. And Prince replied "when things don't seem to be working, sometimes you have to try something different"

That statement dropped my heart a bit. And I think it had an effect on him later deciding to solo tour on the piano

OldFriends4Sale said:

I also remember an interview about the AoA album and why he decided to have someon 'produce' him ie Joshue Welton. And Prince replied "when things don't seem to be working, sometimes you have to try something different"

That statement dropped my heart a bit. And I think it had an effect on him later deciding to solo tour on the piano

laurarichardson said:

Well, he had a wrist injury so had to refrain from playing guitar and he needed cash to pay the bills, so travelling with a small entourage meant lower overhead costs...

dolphin said:

Well, he had a wrist injury so had to refrain from playing guitar and he needed cash to pay the bills, so travelling with a small entourage meant lower overhead costs...

where are all these "wrist" "arthritis" rumours coming from, i've heard them but seen no evidence.

Shelby J said in her interview that Prince had stated that he had done everything and he wanted to do this tour, just him and his piano, so he could connect more with his audience

PeteSilas said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

I also remember an interview about the AoA album and why he decided to have someon 'produce' him ie Joshue Welton. And Prince replied "when things don't seem to be working, sometimes you have to try something different"

That statement dropped my heart a bit. And I think it had an effect on him later deciding to solo tour on the piano

wonder what he meant? I know he got lots of hate on here and his fans were never happy but I don't think that's the way to look at things. He still sold live very well and he always would have a core of listeners. I thought the new producer may have been because he wanted to get a younger sound and/or he was less spry about taking on all those duties. which, let's face it, was an almost inhuman amount to take on for his whole career.

I think he wanted to have one last hit album has he was getting older. Whatever he was doing was not getting sales so he said let me let someone else take a crack at it. He could have also just been tired and needed some help. I cannot understand why fans see him as some super human who could not have been ill.

laurarichardson said:

luvsexy4all said:

becasue he wanted to hear his fuckin fans sing ..and not be able to do a real piano and mic tour

-- Yes, because he really was not playing the piano or signing and he should have shushed the audience.

who wants to hear his fans singing over his voice? judging from the audios thats most of what u hear

luvsexy4all said:

laurarichardson said:

luvsexy4all said:

who wants to hear his fans singing over his voice? judging from the audios thats most of what u hear

--If people are paying 200 bucks for concert ticket they can sing as loud as they like.

ok.. but why would they for a piano show? doesnt make sense to me

luvsexy4all said:

laurarichardson said:

luvsexy4all said: --If people are paying 200 bucks for concert ticket they can sing as loud as they like.

ok.. but why would they for a piano show? doesnt make sense to me

Because they were not listening to classical music.

laurarichardson said:

luvsexy4all said:

who wants to hear his fans singing over his voice? judging from the audios thats most of what u hear

--If people are paying 200 bucks for concert ticket they can sing as loud as they like.

What are you guys talking about? Nobody sang along. You could hear a pin drop while he played. In between songs it was a different story - roaring applause and screams.

leecaldon said:

Superconductor said:

laurarichardson said:

luvsexy4all said: --If people are paying 200 bucks for concert ticket they can sing as loud as they like.

What are you guys talking about? Nobody sang along. You could hear a pin drop while he played. In between songs it was a different story - roaring applause and screams.

unless he told us to stand up and sing along, then we did
his vocals were spectacular, it was amazing just sitting there, listening to that sweet instrument.

Superconductor said:

laurarichardson said:

luvsexy4all said: --If people are paying 200 bucks for concert ticket they can sing as loud as they like.

What are you guys talking about? Nobody sang along. You could hear a pin drop while he played. In between songs it was a different story - roaring applause and screams.

Someone who was not at the show is bitching about people having fun.

sfinky1 said:

I honestly believe he was suffering from some kind of arthritic condition in his hip and possibly other joints, which gave him difficulty walking. He went from doing a full arena tour of Australia in 2012 (of which I saw 4 shows) During whIch he was dancing, walking around and moving around non stop, like the prince we've always known - to then switching in 2013-2015 to a power rock trio 3rd EYE GIRL which allowed him to stay in just one place and play guitar, to then switching to just sitting at a piano because it would allow him to sit down for the performance and not have to walk around. Even at the 2012 Australian shows he was sitting in a black box and being wheeled to and from the stage to avoid walking, we took it as showmanship at the time but looking back I think he couldn't walk long distances, something was clearly up.

Yes....

He was suffering something ..it was apparent but only in retrospect...He did a good job if disguising his pain...

my heart hurts and there is a lump in my throat..he was an extremely Brave Sodier

http://www.rollingstone.c...w-20160122

Prince approached the piano, a purple baby grand. He landed a single chord, resonant and bassy. He stood. He walked away.

As we could have guessed, Prince's first-ever (first ever?) solo show last night at Paisley Park, his home compound in suburban Minnesota, was no simple, straightforward affair. The 57-year-old funk-pop wizard approached the performance as a challenge, an opportunity to prove that he could deliver a full Prince show without much of anything we expect from a full Prince show: No powerhouse band, no impossibly lithe dancing, no masterful guitar fireworks. Just, as the show's official title put it, "Piano & a Microphone." And a lot of Prince. Maybe more Prince than he's ever shared before.

Prince framed the evening as an autobiographical struggle, the story of how he mastered the piano and emerged from the shadow of his father, a jazz pianist. The set moved chronologically (with a few exceptions) through the first decade of Prince's career, including at least one song from each of his first 10 albums. Familiar melodies splintered into virtuosic cascades for a dreamlike effect, as though Prince was remembering the birth of his career in real time.

The night began with some introductory psychodrama. Elegantly casual in his mauve pajamas, that enormous afro dominating his slim frame, Prince took a stage decorated sparsely with candles, befogged by a smoke machine, his personal glyph looming from behind, illuminated by kaleidoscopic patterns. His voice was doused in heavy echo as he expressed the dreams and doubts of a child who sneaks down without permission to play his father's piano. "I can't play piano like my dad. How does dad do that?" he wondered, while attempting improvisations that, at one point, suggested Thelonious Monk teaching himself the theme to Batman.

Then it got sexy. Prince's fingers were everywhere during "Baby," a ballad from his 1978 debut For You that served as foreplay to the full-body workouts "I Wanna Be Your Lover" and "Dirty Mind" before the ecstatic squeals of "Do Me, Baby" provided the climax. Multiple climaxes, even.

Prince moved between songs fluidly. He introduced the moving ballad "Free" by celebrating "the freedom to say no," later interrupting the song to wipe a tear and briefly mourn David Bowie: "I only met him once. He was nice to me. He seemed like he was nice to everybody." Before we knew it, he was in the middle of a gorgeous take on a longtime Prince favorite, Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You," which transformed into a bluesy vamp that Prince used as a lesson in musicology. "The space between the notes — that's the good part," he said. "How long the space is — that's how funky it is or how funky it ain't." And just like that, he was was moaning the spiritual lament "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child."

The intimate setting was ideal for falsetto-wrenched ballads like "Sometimes It Snows in April" and "The Breakdown," one of a handful of newer songs inserted into the set. But Prince never forgot that the piano is a rhythm instrument. If the old-time boogie-woogie masters didn't need drums to rock a party, well, neither did Prince. He remade "Paisley Park" as a bluesy, gutbucket romp, and his pumping left hand recalled Ray Charles, a debt he made clear when he ripped into the soul legend's "Unchain My Heart," a song he recalled playing with his father.

"I thought I would never be able to play like my dad," he said. "And he never missed an opportunity to remind me of it." But Prince's playing belied his modesty. His florid right-hand runs had a little of the theatricality of Liberace in them, but with more tasteful jazz inflections as well. Paying tribute to his past collaborators Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman, he credited Lisa with introducing him to the complex chording of jazzman Bill Evans then played the harpsichord part she wrote for "Raspberry Beret." "That's the whole song, right?"

The set's final song was the mystical "Anna Stesia," from Prince's 1988 album Lovesexy, that culminated in a sing-along: "Love is God, God is love/Girls and boys, love God above." It offered a spiritual resolution to a performance that highlighted struggle and hard-won knowledge.

"This is what I usually do this time of night," Prince said at one point. "It's better with you all present." A genius, at home, alone at the piano, performing to maybe a little more than a thousand fans — it was unmistakably a once-in-a-lifetime event. Of course, there was a second show an hour later. Because Prince is the kind of guy who makes once-in-a-lifetime events happen twice in the same night.

Set List
"Baby"
"I Wanna Be Your Lover"
"Dirty Mind"
"Do Me, Baby"
"Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)"
"Free"

"A Case of You" (Joni Mitchell)

"Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" (Traditional)
"The Beautiful Ones"
"U'r Gonna C Me"
"Condition of the Heart"
"Raspberry Beret"
"Paisley Park"
"Sometimes It Snows In April"
"I Love U, But I Don't Trust U Anymore"
"The Ballad of Dorothy Parker"
"Unchain My Heart" (Ray Charles)
"Baltimore"
"Rock and Roll Love Affair"
"Starfish and Coffee"
"The Breakdown"
"Anna Stesia"