Video Drone
My Guitar Gently Weeps - 2004 Hall of Fame Induction: Prince, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne, and various others
My Baggage
In the hours following the announcement that a rock icon had died well before his time, I started to reflect on the career of Prince. Most of this will be included in my next piece.
I never connected all that much to Prince’s music and assumed he was just all sexy pop and silk blouses. However, the night I heard of his untimely demise, my brother sent me this video and it began to change how I felt about Prince.
I spent a decent chunk of my weekend watching Prince documentaries, re-watching Kevin Smith’s story of the documentary he filmed for Prince and his experience with him, watching tribute videos and song performances from Bruce Springsteen to the cast of The Color Purple. I watched the SNL tribute which included a never before seen performance he did at 4:30 in the morning during the 40th anniversary after-party.
My view of this musician has already been drastically altered and it all began with this video.
Quick Impressions
This song just comes trampling out of the gate, hitting strong, crisp, and then deep.
Petty is OK with the vocals, but they are very Petty.
Marc Mann is killing it on guitar.
Jeff Lynne isn’t doing it for me, which is a shame.
Guitar continues to be very good.
On wide shots you can see bright spots of color peeking through the shadows, stage right and someone is playing, but isn’t really in the shot.
Mann is really nailing this.
Wait, the mystery man, that’s Prince. I was wondering where he was.
Lynne is still kinda meh.
Lynne and Petty work much better together than separate.
At 3:25 everything changes.
Prince takes center stage and begins to take ownership of a musical instrument.
The solo is so intense, intricate, and rich.
About halfway through Petty looks a little irritated and then laughs it off.
Then Prince finds a level that transcends everything else. You can see that those on stage can feel that something special is happening. They just showed up to pay tribute to a friend and peer and ended up in the middle of a Rock and Roll Moment.
The mood on stage changes from relaxed and respectful to excited and frantic. Everyone dives into the remainder of the song.
Prince, leading from the front, closes and in one quick action, pops the guitar strap over his head and launches it in the air leading directly into a dip out move while the other musicians are gathering in the middle of the stage.
Overall Thoughts
As in my last post about Aerosmith, the Beatles hold a similar place in my music library with a ton of really good songs, but I’ve never dived too much into their albums. While My Guitar Gently Weeps is one that I don’t have any recollection of hearing until I listened to The White Album in its entirety for the first time a couple of years ago.
The song is so tight, everything is so clean and precise. Then the guitar comes in screaming and wailing and makes it great.
It has since been added to my Beatles rotation.
So, when the Hall of Fame version started out decent, but then fell a bit I was worried that I was going to be disappointed, little did I know what I had in store for me.
Where the original guitar solo is very good, this was something special. Prince touched my soul a little bit with his performance here.
His emotions seemed to vary as much as the solo itself. He starts off a little stiff, especially for Prince. He seems to be a little nervous, but his play is so good that he quickly starts to loosen up and get into it. By 1 minute into it, he seems to really start enjoying himself. He’s physically reacting to his sound, smiling at the others on stage, and feeding the growing excitement. He then really gets into it, falling back into an offstage handler, throwing things into the air, and generally owning the stage. He finally pulls it back a bit and finishes with a flourish before tossing the guitar and strutting from the stage.
I’ve probably watched the performance a dozen times since and I get goosebumps each time and feel like I have been harshly shaken out of a dream when it ends.
This immediately jumps into the top 10 guitar solo’s of all time, right up there with Free Bird, Stairway to Heaven, and Bohemian Rhapsody. These solo’s feel like religious experiences, true works of art by masters.
Summary
Most people should see this, at least once. If you are a rock fan, Prince fan, Beatles fan, music fan, or just want to have a good time, just press play. It has changed my whole perspective on an artist and fueled my desire to finally dive into his work and give it a fair shot.
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