When Prince Stole The Show

If you’ve ever browsed through Youtube looking for classic rock clips there’s a chance you may have seen a certain performance from the 2004 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony. You know the one I’m talking about, the year that Prince was inducted, and the year that blew everyone else off the stage.

It was the year that they paid tribute to George Harrison. Having inducted him into the hall for his post-Beatles work, a who’s who of Harrison’s friends took to the stage to pay tribute to the great man with a rendition of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. His Wilbury band-mates Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty were there to lead things, George’s son Dhani was next to them, and behind them on keyboards was Steve Winwood. Alongside them were musicians who had worked with both Lynne and Petty, such as guitarist Marc Mann, who was scheduled to handle the mid-song guitar solo.

But if you didn’t watch the video closely you’d be forgiven for even seeing Prince there in the first place. He’s there alright, standing in the shadows on the right hand side of the screen, almost off-stage, as the song begins.

It really was a fitting tribute to the quiet Beatle as Lynne and Petty lead the way. But it’s not really until you get to the final moments of the song that you realise something great is about to happen.

That’s when Prince emerges from the shadows and steps out into the limelight and steals the show, giving us one of, or perhaps even the greatest, live guitar solos in the history of music. His performance is something you just can’t take your eyes off, although you have to, just to gauge the reactions of those around him, because it’s then that you realise that they’re just as blown away by it was those of us viewing it online are nearly twenty years later.

And when it’s all done, when Prince has stolen the show and given the audience around the world and for years to come the performance they’ll remember until their dying day, the man from Paisley Park calmly throws his guitar off the stage and walks off. Job done.

It’s a sad fact in life that sometimes we don’t really appreciate someone until they’re no longer around. The world knew that Prince Rogers Nelson was a bonafide musical genius, but his passing in 2016 made us realise just how great his talent was, and his 2004 Hall of Fame performance, when he paid tribute to another genius was the perfect example of this man’s work. His performance at this ceremony was such that I doubt anyone, and I mean anyone, will ever top it, no matter how long the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame exists.