The spectacle concluded with another guitar toss, and Beyoncé, one of the world’s more unflappable performers, was left looking rather windblown, teetering on her high heels.Īntagonism has always been one of music’s animating forces. But after a few minutes, he appeared to lose patience and cranked up the virtuosity - dancing, shredding on guitar, sliding from the depth-sounder bottom end of his vocal register into an otherworldly falsetto. You could see him straining to be courteous, to cede the spotlight a bit. A month before the Rock Hall gig, he appeared on the Grammy Awards, charging through a medley of his hits alongside Beyoncé. His competitive instincts could overwhelm his gentler, courtlier ones. He aimed not only to put on a great show but also to show others up, to singe lesser mortals with pyrotechnic displays of musicianship and charisma. On occasions like this one, Prince’s performances had a way of shifting from show business as usual - a star’s prerogative to entertain and strut his stuff - into the realm of pure blood sport. To mount a proscenium in the company of Prince, who died Thursday at age 57, was to bask in greatness and to risk humiliation. When the song ends, Prince whips off his guitar, flings it in the air and peacocks off, stage left. It’s a brazen hijacking of an In Memoriam tribute, a breach of etiquette - and a wondrous exhibition of pure showmanship and ego. It’s an attack that seems intended not just to extinguish all memory of Eric Clapton’s famous solo on the original recording, but to vanquish George Harrison and the Beatles for good measure. A huge sound comes roaring out of his Telecaster, an onslaught of notes and riffs and block chords that continues rippling and lashing for nearly three minutes. The guitarist is Prince, and what ensues is something like a cyclone. But three and a half minutes in, he saunters into the spotlight to take a guitar solo. For a while, the guy hangs back in the shadows, strumming and looking a bit bored. He’s a small man, in a dark pinstriped suit, a scarlet red shirt and matching derby hat - a look that splits the difference between toreador and pimp. Then there’s another person on stage, too, standing a bit apart from the rest, bent over an electric guitar. One of the more impressive artifacts making the Internet rounds in the last 24 hours is a video, recorded at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, of an all-star band playing the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” The performance is a tribute to George Harrison, a posthumous honoree that evening, by a group that includes his son Dhani, along with old bandmates and collaborators like Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Steve Winwood.
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