Back in 84 or 85 (during Purple Rain tour), Friday Night Videos played a live version of I Would Die For You. I don't know if it was a "video" or one of those occasions that they played a snippet from a concert somewhere. I only saw it played once, but it was one of the most awesome things I had seen at the time.

Prince had on the all white lace outfit. White lace pants, white lace shirt and white lace thing that was pulled over his eyes (man, remember that -- that was so cool back then). During the course of the song he lost the shirt at some point. It was really high energy. Lots of sweat.

For some reason I was brought back to that moment today and would love to know if that rings a bell for anyone else? Does anyone else remember seeing that, or, better yet know of its existence in taped recorded form?

Thanks for your help.

Yes, it originally premiered on MTV I believe along w/ the live version of Baby,I'm a Star and it ran for like 20minutes. There's been debate on this site where this live performance originated.

it's on the the hits collection video.

PhilG said:

Yup, they played this the winter of '84 and they had a schedule of when they'd play it every day. I remember watching it every day at 6pm before my parents got home from work, then begging them to let me watch it again at 9pm. I had every "GOOD GOD!" memorized by the end of the year.

The preceeding pictures I posted where lifted off another prince.org thread

http://www.prince.org/msg/7/80869

and posted by other .orgers from other sources.

Anxiety said:

Yup! I loved the funky break downs when he said "Good God"! Don't forget the live promo version of Take Me With U which was cool also.
[This message was edited Mon Feb 23 15:43:18 2004 by PhilG]

Yes !
Iam collecting those Friday Night Videos on VHS so if anyone has any copies let me know.

Hi, everyone....The video was from one of the seven Purple Rain shows he did right here in Washington D.C. If you watch VH1 Classic, they show it all the time. I don't know what kind of cable or sattelite y'all have, but VH1 has a few different channels....Classic is obviously older videos. But sometimes, I've seen it on VH1 Soul, too. I have it on video (but I don't know how to go about uploading it - maybe someone can tell me how?)

Anyway, hope this helps....
Rena

renapisces3372 said:

I wish my DISH had those extra VH1 channels....I've seen VH1 Classic and it is great! So much better than the reg VH1.

When VH1 was new, I thought --- yuck, music television for old people.

Now, I'm TOO OLD for regular VH-1 and have to watch VH-1 Classic?

Where did 20 years go?

It's too bad that they sliced off the "Baby I'm A Star" performance on 'The Hits' video. It doesn't help that they play the audio of it under the credits either!

AnnaStesia said:

I KNOW!!


Sucks doesn't it?

oh my god for friday night videos!!!! how old am i

i thought these videos were from the live at syracuse shows

Isnt that the vid for I Would Die 4U anyway...Its on the Hits DVD?!

For some reason I always thought that was from the opening night of the tour in Detroit.

I also remember it being played every hour at the top of the hour, kinda like what MTV did with Thriller.

Then again, that was 20 years ago and I was only 10.

GOOD GOD indeed!!!

VioletBlue said:

OK, the fact that anybody's talking about Fri Nite Videos is sad...but yes, this is I Would Die 4 U / Baby I'm a Star...I have it somewhere on video tape...along with anything I could get my hands on.

The REAL Friday Night Videos was in LA at 1AM after a show called Fridays...Kramer came from there as well as Marcy from Married w/Children. Anyway, they used to show 1999 and Automatic vids...twas the bomb.

TheBoostress

PhilG said:

YESSSSS...I remember being so happy that Miss Cain't Sang wasn't there! Loved that blue/green suit.

I saw that tour twice. Once at the Forum in Inglewood, CA, and at Long Beach Arena, CA, where there were REALLY stupid people who left before the 1st encore. He did I Would Die 4 U in his purple lace vest w/tails and hat, and I was at the stage and he pointed the microphone at me and ... that was about 20 years from now and I'm still about to cry!

TheBoostress

chrisslope9 said:

I heard/thought it was from here in DC....but you may be right. I wasn't able to go to the shows that were here in '85 - the tickets sold out.

parade86 said:

I just taped this 17 minute video again last month on VH1 Classics.....and yes, I remember Friday Night Videos and USA Network videos.....I just dated myself!

The reason there has been some debate about the origin of this clip. It was advertised as being from Washington DC but if you look closely the I Would Die 4 U portion of the clip is from Syracuse (look for the chick in the zebra flashdance blouse.) I assume the Baby I'm A Star portion is from DC since it is different than Syracuse.

chrisslope9 said:

so did I

There's a TV show in Australia called RAGE shown on the ABC every weekend - starts around midnight and goes through to about 6am....most times they have guest programmers who just play 4-5 hours of their favourite videos with the last hour being the Top 20 usually.

Whenever an artist tours or is in the news they almost always play their entire back catalogue of videos back to back. When they did it in the 90s Madonna and Prince would fit onto a 3 hour tape. They did Prince last October I believe when he toured Aus and the videos lasted 5 hours! It's absolutely brilliant because not only do they play the mainstream singles videos but also every other longform music video release by the artist, which of course includes the 17 minute version of I Would Die 4 U. Not like MTV who do a 1 hour show only showing the 10 best hits.

I must have taped that back catalogue at least 4 or 5 times...some of the stuff that comes out is amazing....like Endorphinmachine live video version and Sign 'O' The Times live video version...

parade86 said:

I've got live performance from prince of that song on that show, I'm not sure if it is the very same performance though. he also did songs from d&p and 1999. He did a crazy dance move with his guys where he was a puppeteer and they were puppets, thought that was out there.