I have the same feelings. I wrote an article about that show on my website.
here's a Google translator copy of the article, the original version in french is available here :
https://calhounsquare.fandom.com/fr/wiki/Paris,_Le_Zenith,_25_aug_1986
This page details my experience during the Prince and The Revolution concert, in Paris Le Zenith, August 25, 1986.
We are chronologically after the release of the album Parade, and a little before the release of the film Under The Cherry Moon in European cinemas. Following modest sales of the album in the United States, Prince decided at the last minute, in his particular style that has become so usual, to organize a European tour in the summer of 1986.
For the fans who attended, the Paris concert holds a very special place. The expectation, the expectation and the deliverance were such that it would take a whole novel to describe it.
You have to put yourself in the context of the time to understand. First of all, in 1986 there was no internet, no mobile phone, no cable TV channels. It was difficult to get reliable information about Prince, and a lot of outlandish rumors were circulating. The only thing that we really knew about him was his records, and the rare TV shows or magazines that had wanted to talk about him in France.
On the other hand, although Purple Rain experienced a thrill in France the excitement was much less than that seen in the United States at the same time. The following album produced minor hits like Raspberry Beret, Pop Life or Paisley Park which were regularly programmed on the radio but without allowing sales to literally explode.
It is therefore only with the single Kiss and the good reviews of the album Parade that Europe and France discover Prince and his eccentricities. But when it comes to holding a concert, that's another thing ...
Even if a European tour is announced - very late - for the summer of 86, everyone at the time thought that Prince was angry with France: because of the records which sell weakly, but especially because he would have been thrown off the stage five years earlier, during his concert at the Palace in June 1981! We have since known that this is not what happened at all, but at that time the rumors were persistent.
Moreover, the French public seems to be shunned by the star, because Paris is not on the initial list of dates planned for the tour! This was explained later by the fact that the Bercy hall was under construction and that it was very complicated to find a date in the middle of August and which was compatible with the travel of the tour. The concert will be added at the last minute for August 25, at the Zénith on a Monday evening! Confirmation came at a time when large numbers of people had gone on vacation. Tickets went on sale just over a week before the concert, at the Casino de Paris on a Saturday morning ...
The concert is organized by Jean-Claude Camus and Gilbert Coullier from Zéro Productions, in association with NRJ radio. Questioned by the media, Jean-Claude Camus said that this concert brought him prestige but was not very profitable in financial terms.
Let us recall once again that at the time the means of communication were limited. Yet, almost instinctively, there was a huge buzz surrounding this gig as soon as it was known that it was confirmed. A lot of people cut their vacations short and went back to Paris to buy tickets. The tickets went on sale just one week before the concert, on the morning of Monday August 18 (just after the weekend of August 15), at the Casino de Paris, because it was impossible to print them and distribute them in the FNAC and specialty stores in such a short time. It was then very rare to have such a short deadline to sell a musical event. On the day it went on sale, people started lining up in the middle of the night in front of the Casino de Paris. At five in the morning, the queue was already several hundred meters!
Ticket purchases were limited to four per person, for a unit price of 150 FF (23 €). As soon as the ticket office opened, it was taken by storm and in a few hours in the morning (at 10 am?) All the tickets were sold, which was exceptional at the time. The ticket office lacking change, the last tickets even sold for 200 FF (30 €).
The day of the concert came very quickly afterwards. On site, the black market flourished from the start of the day. Starting around 300 FF (46 €), prices reached 1500 FF (230 €) and we even talked about 3000 FF (460 €) for a place bought by Gérard Depardieu at the exit of the subway!
A certain controversy took place among fans about the invitations: out of a capacity of 6,000 seats at the Zénith, we were talking about nearly 1,000 invitations reserved for VIPs! The personalities identified in the room were indeed numerous: Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve and her husband Pierre Lescure (then president of Canal +), Jack Lang, Gilbert Bécaud, Stéphane Collaro, Michel Berger, France Gall, Jean-Louis Aubert, Antoine de Caunes ...
The configuration of the room was also the subject of many questions: seats were placed in the front row, right in front of the stage. The upright pit was thus relegated ten rows behind, behind a separation barrier.
The room filled up to the sound of Mazarati's album. There was no opening act: when the light went out, the huge black curtain that hid the stage hadn't let anything go. At that moment, there was nothing to say that Prince would come and do the concert, and everyone was thinking that he could still change his mind at the last minute. Very rare were the fans who had heard of the aftershow given the day before at New Morning, and even with that very courageous would have been the one who would have certified the presence of Prince at the Zenith that evening! This shows the tension that reigned when the lights of the Zénith went out ...
When the first musical notes played by The Revolution began to flow through the Zénith speakers, the excitement was at its height! The concert started with Around The World In A Day but the damn black curtain remained invariably closed. Time to wonder what was going on, for the first two minutes, and although Prince had started to sing, the audience was still wondering if the concert was going to take place or not. As a result of this stratagem, the public was heated to white in less time than it takes to write it and when the curtain finally opens, we are already on Christopher Tracy's Parade.
The first quarter of an hour of the show is really magical: Prince is everywhere, he twirls, turns on himself, multiplies the dance steps, jumps and does large splits, involves the public ... The titles are linked at breakneck speed and we have the feeling that everything is going way too fast. Too many things are happening at the same time and we no longer know what to remember: the band, which delivers a masterful set, or this singer that we see for the first time "in real life" and towards whom converge 6000 pairs of googly eyes.
Throughout the show, Prince will completely go wild and give the best of himself. As Wendy And Lisa explained in later interviews, the band believed Paris was going to be the toughest act on the tour. Basically, the apprehension was the same on the side of the public and on the side of Prince! The reception of the public was exemplary, and it is nothing to say it: a true love story was then built between Prince and Paris, which led our artist to rent an apartment in Paris avenue Foch and to there return regularly incognito.
The Zenith crowd did not give Prince and his group a single minute's respite, who had planned to deploy heavy artillery to get the audience moving: in the middle of the show (during the 17 Days intro) he announces that this show is recorded and will be used for a live album! This project did not see the light of day but a piece specially composed for Paris, It's Gonna Be A Beautiful Night, will be found on the Sign O The Times album with a special thanks to the "6,000 wonderful Parisians". It should be noted that the day of the concert, this title was an instrumental, and neither Jill Jones nor Sheila E were in Paris, the voices were added in post-production.
The show ends with Kiss then a magical Purple Rain with a room moving from left to right with the lighters on.
In many ways we were treated to a masterful slap, an ultimate show by a multifaceted artist who masters space and sound in such a way that we are satiated, dazed, stunned, and hypnotized. Words are no longer enough to describe the emotion we felt. For many weeks after this date of August 25, 1986, it will be impossible to listen to anything other than Prince. Everything else strikes us as tasteless, soulless, bland, and insignificant.
The crowd emerges from the Zenith in shock. Impossible to explain to a third person what this concert represented, especially for the teenager of 15 years that I was then.
The next day, the excitement was on all the radios. The articles were dithyrambic or, failing that, expressed their incomprehension of the phenomenon. The comments were complimentary. Prince was immediately considered the greatest showman of the decade! And to think that he returned less than a year later ... for Sign O The Times!
To be completely biased, there were still some criticisms of the concert. Some journalists felt that the show was "American-style", too framed, and too perfectly rehearsed. It is true that for Europe, a public considered to be more demanding, the show was less inspired and free than the few concerts in the "hit & run" format given in the United States. Compared to the audacity of the concert at the Palace in 1981, and the exuberance of the Purple Rain concerts seen on television, the Parade tour gave the feeling of a sober Prince, more jazzy, and more square.
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