Sheila E. was big in Holland in her own right, and the audience would chant “Sheila E.! Sheila E.! Sheila E.!” So Prince would let her know that it was his stage by performing the duet “A Love Bizarre” on his own. “He would go, ‘You gotta sing “I Wish U Heaven” [his new single], and Sheila would go, ‘Which one? Was that a hit?’ ” remembers Cat. “We’d be like, ‘Uh-oh, here they go again!’ ” At the end of “Glam Slam,” after another punishing routine, Prince gave Cat a handshake. “He said, ‘Good job. You tore it up tonight,’ ” says Cat. The piano break was a highlight of the show: Prince took to the stage solo, dressed in a black eighteenth-century gentleman’s frock coat with a cane, like an uptown Amadeus Mozart. Just Prince, a microphone, and a grand piano. A recital of beautiful renditions of “When 2 R in Love,” the instrumental “Venus de Milo,” and the audience-assisted “Condition of the Heart.” He also righted the wrongs of the concert-film version of Sign “O” the Times by playing songs that weren’t included in the film like the adult nursery rhyme “Starfish and Coffee” and “Strange Relationship”—at his most charismatic and relaxed, shamelessly showing off his virtuosity. At one point, he teases the crowd for being too mawkish and singing “I think I love her” on “Raspberry Beret.” Michael Jackson was never this good, and Mozart couldn’t dance. Integrated into “The Light” act of the Lovesexy set, the encore/hits are elevated to musical nirvana. The hit “1999” finds a natural setting, as the mother of all concert finales, “I got a lion in my pocket, y’all,” Prince sings. “Her name is Boni B.” Still on high from becoming soccer champions of Europe earlier that summer of ’88, the Netherlands beating West Germany on their own patch, the crowd sings, “Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé!” essentially taking over Dortmund: a reverse invasion, lapping up every riff, the sax line from Madhouse’s “Three,” and singing along, en masse, to a concise— truly stunning—four-minute version of “Purple Rain.” With Prince’s spirituality reborn, he forsakes his “let me guide you” messiah-like aspirations by dedicating the song, wholeheartedly, “One time for the man above.” “That was the one, of all the shows I’ve seen,” says Rob Bemelen in astonishment. “The way he played the guitar. That was the one.”
The Aftershow
The Lovesexy tour aftershows were legendary. “Me and my friend Raymond van Oosterhout tried to go. We had gone to the previous Rotterdam [Netherlands] shows, but for the third show, on the nineteenth [of August], we didn’t have a ticket,” explains Rob. “We thought, ‘What if we just get a car, go to Rotterdam, and see what happens?’ So we waited outside the stadium, and when it was done, a black Mercedes with blacked-out windows left with high speed. Our Subaru Justy, one of those little Japanese cars, kept up for about two or three miles, but when he got onto the highway, he was gone!” Eric Leeds missed the aftershow with the most infamy—because of its heavily bootlegged status—at the Paard van Troje, in the Hague, Netherlands. “Everybody asks me, ‘So, where was the saxophone that night?’ And I say, ‘I’m afraid the saxophone was in bed asleep.’ ” Eric pulled a sickie because Prince unnecessarily arranged a photo shoot earlier that day. “If he was bugged about something then the rest of us had to be bugged about it too!” Eric laughs. Prince made his point though—gave everyone a bonus that showed up that night, except Eric. “It was money well spent from my perspective.” Prince was in a bad mood that night, as captured by the bootleg. When performing the stripped-back, Rhodes-laced “Still Would Stand All Time,” he can be heard reprimanding Boni Boyer for getting a lyric wrong. “Who’s the
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