Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski
And my other memory. I was at the D airport, in the Northwest Worldclub. There is a commotion as a few people come in and are escorted to a conference room. There is a beautiful woman, this short guy who I kind of recognize, but can't place- he is wearing sweats and has his eyes down, and then A 6' 6" body guard with large heavy walking stick, a shaved head and wearing a 3 piece purple suit. I googled "prince's tour schedule" and he was in town the night before. The man wanted to pretend he didn't want to be recognized, but he did want to be recognized. Otherwise you hire a 6' bodyguard and have him dress down.
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Graham was cleaning the stage at the Irwin Center while the New Power Generation was doing their sound check before a show, and he was sort of dancing along while he was sweeping up because, as he puts it, you couldn't not dance to the funk they were dropping. Prince had a "no local stage hands on premises when I'm here"* rule, and ordered a security guard to kick Graham off the stage when he got there. The security guard had instructed Graham that he wasn't allowed to even look in Prince's direction as he walked him off of the stage. Graham yelled something snarky and left. Graham sneaked back in to watch the show. Afterwards, during load out, he ran into the security guard again, who said "hey, you got a smirk out of him. He still wanted me to kill you, but you got him to smile." Graham said he may have addressed Prince by his given last name as he left. Later in the same tour, Prince did a New Year's show here in Houston and worked with the keyboard tech to put together a plexiglass leslie hammond b3, and he said that was one of the cooler experiences. At that show, he avoided any interaction with Prince like the plague.
He says of all of the hundreds of performers/musicians he's ever worked for/with Prince was the most talented and the most diva/asshole/pain-in-the-ass.
*Local stage hands were supposed to work invisibility magic around a schedule that didn't exist. They were also supposed to hide during the show so Prince couldn't see them. They weren't allowed to interact in any way, shape or form with Prince.
