There is so much to write about Prince. But for the moment, this very sad moment, all I can think about is a moment I witnessed during that Lovesexy concert. Prince was singing “Purple Rain.” He was circling the stage as the band played the song’s legendary chorus. I had went to the ticket booth the day of the concert and was unbelievably lucky to score two front row tickets that had just been released hours before the show. I sat in those magical seats watching Prince sing “Purple Rain”. As he paraded around the stage he stopped right in front of me. As that crowd sang the words “Purple Rain,” Prince looked up towards the rafters. There was a smile that came across his face. It was not just a happy smile but rather an expression of extreme pride in hearing twenty thousand people singing those wonderful words to “Purple Rain.” Prince had so much success with “Purple Rain,” that one may think hearing a huge crowd sing that song would have just seemed routine to him. But that smile that I saw defined clearly just how dear his music was, and how much it meant to him that all those people were singing those words. It was a smile so genuine and beautiful, just like the artist he was.
Photo by Scott Penner (Flickr: Prince) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons