Will The Funkiest Prince Please Stand Up

AT FIVE FEET, female and 110 pounds, I was an unlikely “bouncer” for a popular Monaco nightspot but, then again, it was Stars’N’Bars. Having opened the Principality’s first “all-sports bar” and live music venue only nine months before, Stars’N’Bars co-founders Kate Powers and Didier Rubiolo and I were used to filling in for whatever job needed doing. On this particular Wednesday night in May 1994, I was sent to “man the door” for a secret, last-minute concert by The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.

Three days earlier, Monaco was reeling from the death of Ayrton Senna. The F1 legend had been killed on Sunday, May 1, after his car crashed into a concrete barrier during the San Marino Grand Prix. On that same day, Duane Nelson, Prince’s security chief and, according to Nelson, “half-brother,” had arrived at the bar to say that two enormous freight trucks were on their way to Monaco loaded with the singer’s stage kit and they were looking for a venue to try out some new, unreleased songs. He walked around the venue, clapping his hands to check acoustics, and left without comment.

Later that Sunday night, at the request of Michael Schumacher and Keke Rosberg, several drivers and Senna compatriots—and Kate and Didier—commandeered the upstairs bar and drank into the wee hours, toasting and sharing memories of their fallen brother. Kate and Didier finally crawled into bed at 5 a.m. but were awakened by the Monaco police at 7 a.m. asking why there was a huge trailer truck in front of the restaurant. Apparently, the acoustics had been acceptable. Another truck was on its way, and Prince would be playing a private concert on Wednesday night. Kate and Didier, clearly sleep-deprived—and possibly hungover—said, “Of course!” We were all sworn to “total secrecy.”

Prince had come to Monaco to collect an award on May 4 for “Outstanding Contribution” at the World Music Awards. A year before, the American singer had announced his “retirement” from studio recording and that he would stop performing any song released before 1993 (mega-hits Purple Rain and Kiss included). Many speculated that this move was to pressure Warner Bros, his record label, to publish more albums from his massive backlog of music, more than 500 songs. The singer also revealed “on the advice of my spirit,” he would no longer be named Prince and would adopt an unpronounceable symbol featuring male/female icons as his stage name. (This, in fact, was not his first name change. Born on June 7, 1958, in Minnesota, he was named Prince Roger Nelson in honor of his father’s jazz band, The Prince Rogers Trio. Unhappy with the name for most of his childhood, he insisted that family and friends call him “Skipper.”)

Prince had decided to use his appearance in the Principality to push his case for artistic freedom. Speaking to the press at the Monaco Sporting Club ahead of the awards show he said, “It’s fun to draw a line in the sand and say, things change here.” (He was unaware that organizers had mistakenly printed hundreds of posters advertising his WMA appearance using his real name. They were soon withdrawn and new posters were made with the Love symbol. A copy of the corrected poster was displayed in Stars’N’Bars for years as part of our memorabilia collection.)

The World Music Awards that Wednesday night would feature electrifying live performances by Gloria Estefan, Whitney Houston, and Ray Charles. On stage, however, Prince lip-synced his latest hit, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, inspired by his soon-to-be wife Mayte Garcia, a dancer in his show whom he first met in 1990 when she was 16. He was 32.

The WMA performance ended at 10 p.m. and Monaco’s then Hereditary Prince Albert II hosted a dinner for the artists and celebrity presenters, to be followed by an exclusive private concert at Stars’N’Bars. Prince was anxious to showcase his new songs and left the dinner early before the “other” Prince. A protocol faux pas.

Meanwhile, at Stars’N’Bars, we waited for the VIPs to finish their dinner and arrive for the show. The concert was to be a private affair; only 120 tickets had been printed and the event had been treated as top secret. Not too top secret, apparently. Hundreds of fans had already staked out in front of our restaurant on the port. Some were members of the Purple Army who had traveled from as far away as Paris and London because clearly, even in the days before social media and the internet, there were no secrets when it came to Princemania. I also saw among the sea of faces many well-known local personalities from prominent families or businesses who had not attended the WMA but who would expect to be let in, ticket or not. My delightful job would be to somehow allow only ticket holders to enter without offending half of Monaco.

At about 1 a.m., the celebrities began to arrive but had to push through the crowd that continued to grow in front of the entrance door I guarded. One by one—if they had the requisite ticket—they squeezed through the partially opened door. I pretended not to hear my name being called frequently from the crowd. Oh dear, there are SO MANY regular customers and friends. A young man with a Nordic accent tries to enter with three others. He has no ticket and I block him. Unfortunately, because I am not a fan of Swedish pop music, I have refused entry to the group Ace of Base who have scored the world’s best-selling album of 1994 and just performed at the WMA in front of both princes. Others I do recognize: Bond girl Ursula Andress, supermodel Claudia Schiffer, and the magician David Copperfield. A prominent Monegasque taps on the door. “I’m with the Prince,” he insists. “Which one?” I ask. He’s not amused. I find out later that I figure prominently in a Prince fan blog as “that bitch at the door.”

The concert is about to begin and I run upstairs, leaving the door blocked and hundreds of fans booing behind me. The atmosphere in the bar is surreal. Prior to the concert, Prince’s aggressive security people have confiscated cameras and torn out the films, throwing the empty rolls and strips of celluloid on the floor near the entrance to the club. They search bags for recording devices. (Unsuccessfully, it will seem, when a bootleg CD of the concert entitled “STARS&BARS” appears weeks later. You can hear this on YouTube.) A Stars’N’Bars staffer nearly throws out a diminutive redhead he thinks is a stalker who has somehow slipped through my flawed sentry post. “She keeps asking where is Claudia Schiffer sitting?” he says to me. The “stalker” is Australian superstar Kylie Minogue, the supermodel’s best mate. At the bar, the Bond girl is sipping champagne, totally by herself. Fabio, the impossibly handsome “face” of hundreds of trashy romance paperbacks, flirts unsuccessfully with one of our lovely blond barmaids, who is gay.

I’m standing to the far right of the stage when Prince and Mayte waft past me (it seems that he has this unnerving habit of just appearing from nowhere). I realize that he is TINY. Like Michael Jackson, the slight, androgynous singer is 5’2” but he is wearing 4-inch heels. (“People say I’m wearing heels because I’m short,” he once said. “I wear heels because women like ‘em.” He reportedly had 3,000 pairs.) I notice as he passes that the singer is wearing a nearly-transparent rainbow-hued bolero jacket with flimsy yellow toreador pants…and clearly no underwear.

On stage, Mayte gyrates seductively and Prince opens with a blistering 3-minute guitar instrumental. He calls out to Prince Albert, “the funkiest man in the world.” (He later autographs a gold tambourine “to the real Prince.”) For the next two hours, he sings 11 songs...none of which anyone in the room has heard before. There are no crowd favorites, no Purple Rain, no Red Corvette. Prince is there to test his own personally-selected unreleased music with a live audience and he is happy with the response. Sweaty, tuxedoed men have ripped off their satin bow ties—and their shirts. The women spill champagne on their silken couture and everyone jumps onto tables and chairs to boogie, bump and grind. Even a few “Dad-dancers” can’t resist the soul-shredding guitar riffs. Prince teases the crowd: “Don’t you all got to work tomorrow?” A hundred voices scream “No!” The evening ends, finally, around 3:30 a.m. The band disappears and the guests leave. We survey the war zone before us: collapsed tables, plush sofas stabbed by stiletto heels, a sea of broken bottles and glasses, hundreds of ground cigarette butts blackening the floor, and a pair of panties?

Prince’s “brother” Duane stays behind and thanks us for the use of the room. As he leaves, he turns and says, “Oh, by the way, the Boss wants to come back tonight and do it all over again.” And we do.

By Annette Anderson

Contributor