Photo courtesy of NPG Records
"Welcome to the new story because the old one doesn’t work any more." After making a spectacular entrance through a scrim emblazoned with kaleidoscopic projections of church-like and psychedelic imagery, this was Prince’s opening line at the first of two shows Sunday night at Oakland’s lavishly art deco Paramount Theatre for the American launch of his Piano & A Microphone Tour, which started in Australia and New Zealand just a few days before. It was a paradoxical way to open a concert largely focused on mega-successful oldies interspersed with similarly familiar autobiographical fragments. "I wanted to be like my father and I loved everything he loved—my mother, the Bible, and music," he explained before zigzagging into and right out of "Over the Rainbow."
From "I Wanna Be Your Lover" in the late '70s until he started resenting his superstardom and the commercial enslavement it entailed in the early '90s, Prince had a way with making just about everything he touched seem extraordinarily easy. But in the absence of fresh challenges, his work since then has been both belabored and tossed off; he’s for decades needed a tour like this one to yank him out of his safety zone. Starting with "I Would Die 4 U" and ending with a sermon that flipped from Michigan’s current water crisis ("We all got family in Flint") to the civil rights movement’s recent resurgence ("When someone says their lives matter, they’re trying to get your attention; don’t miss the point"), Prince performed early Sunday evening as if dancing across a tightrope sans net.
The inclusion of several Sign o’ the Times faves like "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker," "It," and "Starfish and Coffee" among other albums’ deep cuts meant that even on a song selection level, this set of some two dozen tracks wasn’t a straightforward greatest hits show. But aside from 3121’s funky "Black Sweat" and a pair of tunes from his recent, softly released HITNRUN Phase Two, most numbers in Sunday’s first show were 25 or more years old.
Yet there was nothing stale or staid in the way he presented them: Prince vigorously rewrote and rearranged just about every element of his nearly continuous 100-minute set. Commandeering a grand piano augmented by invisible synthetic strings summoned by a swipe of his fingers on a screen that sat atop his acoustic keyboard, Prince presented what was essentially a collage of original material and covers performed as if it was all one ornate, intricately interwoven concerto. The intensity and ingenuity of it was extraordinary, and the 3,000 diehards lucky and solvent enough to score pricey, non-transferable tickets—who’d clearly lived with and for these songs much of their lives—were carrying on as if they’d never seen their favorite entertainer before. In a way, they hadn’t. Posting up at the piano meant Prince had to stay fixed in one place, but that meant each pose and gesture held far more meaning. When he’d flirtatiously cross his legs while banging out some Liberace riffs, or flop atop his instrument after a long medley, the crowd absolutely flipped out.
Despite his proclivity for playing just about everything on most of his greatest albums, it’s usually thought that guitar is Prince’s primary instrument. Instead, his skill at the piano here emphasized how advanced his arrangement skills can get even with just keyboards and voice. No two verses sounded alike; on the rare occasions that he repeated choruses, he’d change the melody or the chords or the way they’d interact so drastically and masterfully that you could spot the heads of fans turning in enraptured puzzlement.
Songs would segue into each other and circle back again when you’d least expect, like the way "I Would Die 4 U" returned with new spiritual lyrics, or how the appearance of cuts like "Dirty Mind" sliced and diced rumors that he’d be omitting the sensual side of his songbook. The Batman theme morphed into Phase Two’s jaunty "Big City," which gave way to Sly and the Family Stone’s "Stand" before that nuzzled up to "Take Me With U."
Not for one moment was the maestro on autopilot. Rarely since his '80s heyday has he been this alive.