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Great Prince story from Maroon 5's JAMES VALENTINE, who gave us a great interview in Episode 3 of No Guitar Is Safe:
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ONCE, AROUND 2007, Adam decided to have a party at his house in the Hollywood Hills. We decided to have instruments set up to have a casual jam session.
Earlier in the day Adam had run into Selma Hayek and invited her to drop by. She asked if she could invite Prince. Of course you can invite Prince. No one thought he'd actually come.

It was a pretty small party, probably about 30 of our core group of friends. At some point we started jamming, everyone was having a good time but it wasn't that different from any other night.

Then all of the sudden, I look across the living room and I see a bass player walk in. I knew he was a bass player because he had his bass strapped across his shoulder. Behind him was a drummer. I knew she was drummer because she was carrying her sticks. One by one, his entire band walked in. Not only did they have their instruments, but they were wearing matching outfits. Behind all of them I saw Prince lurking in the background.

I think first the drummer walked up to the stage and Matt offered up the kit to her. Then the bassist took over. We never stopped the original funk groove that we were vamping on. At that point it was me jamming with Prince's band. It was glorious, I was having a blast (OBVIOUSLY THESE WERE SOME OF THE SICKEST MUSICIANS ON THE PLANET).

I was lost in the flow of playing with these guys for a while (how long I don't know, lost my sense of time and space) but suddenly realized that Prince was waiting for me to get off the stage. I made eye contact with him as I unstrapped from the black telecaster and offered it up to him.

What followed was the most insane, peak musical experience that I had ever heard or witnessed. They were still going on some variation of the same vamp that we had started before they had even showed up but it morphed into something else as soon as he got on the guitar. Everyone lost their minds!

It was almost too much for everyone there to process. PRINCE was in our living room. He showed up with his band. He showed up to give us a masterclass. He showed up to throw down and show us that even though we had logged a couple of hits, we would never reach the level he's on. It felt like we were at First Avenue and we were Morris Day and the Time being shown what was up.

At some point in that transcendent jam, he made a sudden guitar move that unplugged the tele from the fender amp. At that point he announced to the party: "Let's go to my house!!!"

He invited the entire party, all of our friends, over to the house he was renting at the time in Beverly Hills. It had a dance club in the basement that had a full stage, with full back line.

Prince and his band had been rehearsing for an upcoming tour so they got up and ran through a medley of some of his biggest hits. Then different people started getting up onstage and jamming. Natasha Beddingfield was there and got up for a song, Adam got up and played.

I was too scared to get up and play while Prince was onstage. When he took a break I got up and started playing guitar. He came up after I started playing and we started trading fours. He eventually signaled the band to stop and it was just the two of us doing a call and answer sort of thing. Probably the most peak experience of my musical life.

Now sometimes in these situations you are so intimidated that you start to play safe or start to suck. However on this night the opposite happened. The stars aligned and for a moment I played beyond my abilities as I knew them. Probably not an accident, Prince was the type of musician that could inspire the best from people.

We were there all night. Prince's assistant jokingly asked if we wanted pancakes as the sun was coming up (a reference to the Chappelle Show's Charlie Murphy story about playing basketball with Prince).

I didn't really have much of a conversation with him that night, he wasn't a very chatty guy. I pretty much hid behind Adam as he talked with him (very grateful for Adam's confidence in those situations). I think I pretty much just thanked him for having us over and tried to communicate how much it meant to me. I don't think he said much but I could see from his eyes that he understood what a big deal it was for us.

Yes, thank you---