Speaker 1 (00:00):

B-R-A-Z-E-N.

Tom Wright (00:05):

Prince strides out onto the stage at the 3121 Club at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas, and it’s an intimate atmosphere, VIP booths, capacity of 900 people. And tonight, there’s an unexpected guest in the audience, Michael Jackson. Prince is an unpredictable performer, but what he does next catches even his own band off guard. Launching straight into a funky bass solo, Prince walks directly up to Michael Jackson’s table, staring deeply into his eyes as he plays.

John Meglin (00:36):

He didn’t normally start his show by walking out and doing a two- to three-minute guitar solo. This night, he did. He walked out and faced Michael Jackson in his seat and wailed for two or three minutes, and other band members started later. It was just Michael looking at Prince.

Tom Wright (00:55):

So now the crowd is trying to work out the focus of Prince’s attention.

John Meglin (00:58):

It wasn’t a large room, so within minutes, you have everybody in there looking over and pointing and saying, “There’s Michael Jackson.”

Tom Wright (01:08):

It’s February in 2007, and Prince is back on top. After walking away from one of the biggest record deals in history and spending years in the wilderness, he’s just played the Super Bowl halftime show. And now, he’s headlining a sold out residency in Las Vegas. Michael’s career isn’t going as smoothly. The King of Pop had been acquitted of child molestation charges, and now, it’s six years since he made an album. But Michael’s slump isn’t what’s driving Prince’s behavior this evening. These two pop icons, both born in 1958, they never really liked each other. Back in the 1980s, Prince had even refused Michael’s offer to duet on “Bad.”

Prince (01:48):

The first line of that song is “your butt is mine.” Now I said, “Who is going to sing that to whom? Because you sure ain’t singing that to me. And I sure ain’t singing it to you.” So right there, we got a problem.

Tom Wright (02:04):

So there was history. That evening in Vegas, as Prince stared into Michael Jackson’s eyes, it seemed as if he was taunting his old rival.

John Meglin (02:12):

There was always a big rivalry between Michael and Prince, and I believe that rivalry went both ways. It wasn’t one jealous of the other. I could feel that rivalry as well as anyone could ever feel it that night.

Tom Wright (02:37):

I’m Tom Wright, an author and podcaster.

Adam Wilkes (02:40):

I’m Adam Wilkes, a concert promoter, and this is Night of Show.

Tom Wright (02:44):

So I moved to Singapore during the COVID pandemic and got to know Adam over drinks.

Adam Wilkes (02:52):

And I was an out-of-work concert promoter sitting on my hands after 20 years of touring.

Tom Wright (02:58):

And we started to swap war stories. I told you about all the white collar crime stories that I’d covered, and you started to tell me about your life in the world of pop music.

Adam Wilkes (03:07):

And we started thinking, “Hey, why don’t we make a podcast?”

Tom Wright (03:11):

Right.

Adam Wilkes (03:12):

And we came up with this idea called Night of Show, about what goes on around a concert.

Tom Wright (03:16):

You’ve taken Ed Sheeran on tour, Taylor Swift, and it started to dawn on me that people haven’t really heard the stories of what goes on on the night of show before and after the concert.

Adam Wilkes (03:29):

We wanted to go behind the scenes and tell some of these unknown stories that really give color to fans about what goes on. When an artist goes on stage, it’s a stressful time for a promoter. Artists can be really demanding, and sometimes, we see them in their most unguarded moments.

Tom Wright (03:45):

So in Night of Show, you’re going to see your favorite pop stars in a new light. We’ll hear from musicians, promoters, and hangers on who were there.

Adam Wilkes (03:53):

And you’ll learn about what we do to keep the stars happy. Rule number one, sometimes knowing what not to say is crucial.

John Meglin (04:00):

When you’re working with Prince, you don’t talk about Michael Jackson. When you’re working with Michael Jackson, you don’t talk about Prince. And that’s just you know those rules.

Adam Wilkes (04:12):

That’s John Meglin. He’s my colleague. John and his business partner, Paul Gongaware, are legends in the music industry. Since the 1970s, they’ve taken stars like David Bowie, The Beach Boys, and Led Zeppelin on tour. In 2004, John and Paul started working with Prince.

Tom Wright (04:32):

Back then, Prince was in something of a slump. He’d struggled to get out of his recording contract and even took to being photographed performing with slave written on his face.

John Meglin (04:41):

When I had met him for the first time up at Paisley Park, and I walked back into the studio, the first thing he said to me was, “Notice I’ve washed,” and kind of ran his hand along the right side of his face where he used to have slave written on his face. So I guess it was part of him saying, “Look, it’s time to move on.”

Tom Wright (05:04):

He wanted to do things differently this time, Paul Gongaware remembers.

Paul Gongaware (05:08):

When John and I worked with him, he didn’t have an agent, didn’t have a promoter, didn’t have a business manager, didn’t have a lawyer. It was just me and John.

Tom Wright (05:18):

John and Paul had recently set up Celine Dion on her massively successful residency in Las Vegas, and Prince asked to come along. In Celine’s backstage area where John took Prince after the show, there was a wall where visiting celebrities signed their names in a sharpie, a tradition started by Oprah.

John Meglin (05:36):

At a certain point in the meeting with Prince and Celine, Celine looked at me and said, “Hey John, do you think Prince would sign the wall?” Prince’s response was, “I’m sorry, I don’t sign anything.” So unfortunately, he’s not on the wall.

Tom Wright (05:53):

Celine helped inspire Prince to stage his comeback, and he teamed up with John and Paul as tour promoters. Celine’s wall, however, wasn’t the only thing that Prince wouldn’t sign.

Paul Gongaware (06:06):

Well, we didn’t really do a deal in the sense that he refused to sign a contract. He just didn’t want to sign it because so many times he got burned by signing contracts.

Tom Wright (06:19):

It really is hard to remember now just how far Prince had fallen and the skepticism about him.

Paul Gongaware (06:24):

He wasn’t doing very well. He would announce a show three days before and try to sell it out, and he was just doing some things that didn’t make a lot of sense to people.

Tom Wright (06:36):

Prince was about to put out his Musicology album, and John and Paul came up with an idea to lift him out of his doldrums.

John Meglin (06:43):

It actually started when we were up at Paisley one, and I said, “Look, let’s just add $5 to the ticket. We’ll put the CD on everybody’s seat.” If there was one on the ground, people were diving for it, and he made more per record than he ever did in his life.

Tom Wright (07:00):

So giving away the records helped Musicology peak at number three on the Billboard 100 reviving Prince’s career, but the tactic caused an uproar.

Paul Gongaware (07:09):

The big deal was all of those counted towards Billboard’s charts. I remember the story where, I don’t know if you guys knew Londell McMillan, he was an attorney. Billboard was trying to say, “We can’t do this anymore. We can’t let you call these sales.” And Londell went to Billboard and said, “Hey, do that to the next guy if you want, but you’re not doing that to the black man.” And Billboard backed down.

Tom Wright (07:36):

HBO even filmed the Musicology tour, but a meeting between Prince and a television executive, a white woman, went badly.

John Meglin (07:43):

It was also during the same time that HBO was heavily promoting Chris Rock. They had Chris Rock on the side of buses, subways, billboards. And Prince was actually in a great mood, and he’s complimenting HBO on what a great job they’re doing with the promotions on Chris Rock.

Tom Wright (08:07):

In response, the TV executive said, “Oh, well we own Chris Rock.” Prince was furious.

John Meglin (08:14):

Prince walked up to her nose to nose, said, “Oh, you’re the great white plantation woman. You own the black man.” He did quick little spin and walked the other way, and we quickly got them out of his room into the elevator and just told them there was no deal, and they should just go home. And that’s where it ended. We have the show, but it was never seen.

Tom Wright (08:42):

Still, the tour made Prince a lot of money after some challenging times.

John Meglin (08:46):

He was very excited when Paul and I, the night before the tour ended, went into the dressing room and showed him how much he had made. He got so excited. He sat down at a little Fender Rhodes piano in his dressing room and did a 20-minute Stevie Wonder’s greatest hits repertoire for Paul and I.

Tom Wright (09:08):

So Prince has staged his comeback, and it’s no small thanks to John and Paul. Is it usual for concert promoters to play such a crucial role in a star’s career?

Adam Wilkes (09:31):

It can be. Promoters are like Swiss Army knives. And they have to adapt to any situation and whatever’s needed. And with Prince, John and Paul were a big part of him coming back. After Musicology, he followed up with 3121, which became a number one album. The album was actually named for 3121 Mulholland Drive, a mansion that Prince had been renting.

John Meglin (09:56):

He would throw these parties up there at night you tried your best to get out of because they started really late and then you never knew who was going to show up.

Adam Wilkes (10:06):

At one party, Prince jammed with Stevie Wonder. At another, Prince declined Leonardo DiCaprio’s request for a group photo. Once again, Prince was in demand. The NFL was even considering him to play the Super Bowl halftime show. To make his pitch, Prince invited television executives over to the Mulholland House to discuss the project over dinner.

John Meglin (10:29):

This is before you could stream and all that. So he pulled out the little portable DVD player, and he had old Super Bowl half times that he started playing, The Rolling Stones or U2. I don’t remember exactly which ones, but he began critiquing them. And he would say, “Well, this was good, but I don’t know if I would’ve done that. Maybe I would’ve done this.”

Adam Wilkes (10:56):

One executive asked Prince what his show would look like.

John Meglin (10:59):

At that point, Prince’s response was, “Sir, follow me.” We all got up from the table. He led us up the stairs to the living room where the entire band was standing there in position, all their instruments on ready to go. Prince walked over, picked up his guitar and said, “Hit it,” and played the 11 minutes for the three of us. He did virtually the same 11 minutes that we ended up doing at the Super Bowl, but the setup was amazing.

Adam Wilkes (11:38):

The TV executive was dumbstruck. At one point, he pulled out his lighter and began to sway to the music.

John Meglin (11:46):

It’s kind of awkward when there’s just three of you standing in a living room while the guy’s playing his Super Bowl halftime for you. But it was pretty amazing. He knew how to orchestrate. Whether it was orchestrate…

Adam Wilkes (12:01):

It’s phenomenal.

John Meglin (12:02):

… a deal or orchestrate the halftime, he knew how to orchestrate.

Adam Wilkes (12:07):

Of course, he clinched the show.

Tom Wright (12:11):

The NFL records a full rehearsal in case the live transmission fails. But this time, it was a disaster. Prince’s guitar technician, a guy named Jeff, even got so frustrated he almost left the gig, a loss that would’ve been detrimental at this stage in production. Here’s John “Bugsy” Hougdahl, Prince’s production manager on the halftime show, who was tasked with keeping everything on track.

John “Bugsy” Hougdahl (12:37):

Jeff was having a very difficult time, and Prince was torturing him. Trading guitars with Prince was a Olympic feat. Half of them would be in the air when they came to you because he’d just throw them.

Tom Wright (12:52):

Bugsy went to Prince’s trailer, and he demanded that Prince apologize to Jeff. Fearing the loss of his guitar technician just moments before the rehearsal, Prince was forced to smooth things over.

John “Bugsy” Hougdahl (13:04):

Right before they started, Prince went down on one knee to the edge of the stage and talked to Jeff and apologized to him. Everybody wanted to know what was being said because he never did that.

Tom Wright (13:18):

The rehearsal didn’t get any better, however.

John Meglin (13:21):

Well, we did the run through. It was terrible. When he went back to go back down under the stage, he hit the mic stand with his foot, and the microphone went and bumped him in the forehead. He was not a happy camper.

Tom Wright (13:38):

Prince summoned John and Don Mischer, who produced the show to his trailer.

John Meglin (13:42):

We went in the trailer and Prince motioned me to the far side and started saying, “I want you to get that tape back,” meaning the tape that they would run in the event we couldn’t do the Super Bowl. Don Mischer was at the other end and he could overhear us. He was at the other end of the trailer yelling, “I’m not giving up the tape. I’m not giving up the tape.”

Tom Wright (14:04):

In any event, of course, it didn’t matter. As Prince took the field for the NFL halftime show in a turquoise suit and orange shirt, the rain began to lash down. For 12 epic minutes, he commanded the stage shaped as his signature love symbol and delivered one of the best live performances of all time. Even the storm couldn’t destabilize him as he closed the performance with a virtuoso guitar solo on “Purple Rain.”

Prince (14:32):

Can I play this guitar?

John Meglin (14:36):

It was a magical night, and he was so excited afterward. And he just leaned over and high-fived both of us. We were starting to hear from people about how it went. But just there, we knew, the three of us, Prince, Paul, I, we just knew that something special just happened.

Adam Wilkes (15:01):

Normally after such a blowout success in the Super Bowl, an artist would go on a major nationwide tour. Prince instead was committed to playing at his new residency at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. He was obsessed with musical perfection. Here’s Bugsy, Prince’s production manager.

John “Bugsy” Hougdahl (15:21):

He rehearsed his band until their fingers were bleeding. I mean, there was no doubt about anything they were playing. It was how much torture he put them through to get to that level.

Adam Wilkes (15:34):

Prince would fire people on a whim.

John “Bugsy” Hougdahl (15:37):

He would go whisper to somebody, whether it was the wardrobe girl or his guitar tech or whoever, he would just go whisper to them or say to them on the side, “That guy is fired.”

Adam Wilkes (15:48):

And he made a lot of other strange demands.

John Meglin (15:51):

He was Jehovah Witness, and Prince hated swearing, so I tried to keep that to a minimum. He hated blue jeans.

Adam Wilkes (16:03):

What did you wear, John? I’ve never seen you not wearing blue jeans. That must’ve been the hardest part of the tour.

John Meglin (16:07):

I know, but he hated blue jeans. The guy hated blue jeans. Honestly, if I wanted to piss him off, I’d wear blue jeans with a t-shirt. Okay?

Adam Wilkes (16:19):

Late one evening, Prince pulled Paul aside.

Paul Gongaware (16:23):

And we’re done for the end of the day, and we’re kind of trying to get out of there. And Prince says, “No, John, you can go. Paul, I want to see you in the library.” So I go up to the library, and he has six different versions of the Bible, and he makes me read the same verse from each one, each different version of the Bible, and then says, “What’s different?” And the only thing that was different in one of them, instead of God, it said Jehovah. So that was the big lesson.

Tom Wright (16:55):

After the Super Bowl, Prince’s Vegas club became a major hit. He played at weekends at the Rio, and he lived in a suite at the hotel. Every night before the show, he’d drive his blue Bentley sports car from the hotel’s lobby to a back door that led to the club.

John Meglin (17:10):

There was a night where he asked Paul and I if we wanted to go for a ride in his car, and we got in the car, and we drove down the sidewalk and around the valet circle and parked the car. So we maybe went 250 feet.

Tom Wright (17:27):

A-list actors and musicians began to turn up at the Rio to watch Prince play. During the first show after the Super Bowl, Elton John got up on stage to sing with Prince on guitar.

John Meglin (17:38):

Every celebrity, every other musician, if they knew Prince was playing and they were in town, they all wanted to go.

Tom Wright (17:48):

It didn’t take long for Michael Jackson, who was also living in Vegas at that time, to hear the buzz about his old rival and a seed was planted in Michael’s mind. He would mount his own comeback show, and he began discussions with John, Paul and their colleagues about going back on stage. But first, he needed to see Prince play.

John Meglin (18:09):

Michael found out that Prince was doing the club at the Rio. So Michael started going, “Oh God, I want to go see Prince.” And we’re like, “Well, yeah, of course. He doesn’t go on till pretty late, but if you want to, come on over.” Well, there was a knock on the door, and there was Michael Jackson by himself, no security, no one. And I didn’t know what to do with him. So I took him down the little stairs into the little room that we had that we had set up as the green room, went around the corner to Trevor and said, “Mikey’s here.”

Tom Wright (18:44):

That’s Trevor Allen, Prince’s longtime right hand man.

John Meglin (18:47):

I go to Trevor and I say, “Trevor, Mikey’s here, and he wants to see Prince.” And Trevor looks at me and says, “Oh dude, he ain’t going to see him.” And I’m like, “What do you mean he ain’t going to see him?” I said, “This is Michael Jackson.” He said, “Dude, no, no, he ain’t going to see him.”

Tom Wright (19:05):

But Prince is already backstage and ready to perform.

John Meglin (19:08):

So it was getting closer to showtime. We figure when the house lights will go down, we’ll sneak Michael out. As we’re proceeding up the stairs from the little room, I see Prince who’s standing on the back of the stage. He sees me, comes walking over to me to say something and looks over my shoulder and sees Michael Jackson and immediately sprints down the hallway with Michael behind me going, “Was that Prince?” The house lights went down and put Michael into his little booth, and Prince started his show and just proceeded to walk down with his guitar, just staring at Michael Jackson and rocked away on his guitar for a good two, three minutes. We scooted Michael out during the intermission. It was a very awkward situation. So the quicker I could get Michael and his entourage out the back door and gone, the easier it made it.

Tom Wright (20:09):

So at that point, Michael realized something was off. Here’s the musician, will.i.am, who was with Michael that evening.

Will.i.am (20:19):

So I go to his house for breakfast, knock on the door, first words he says, “Why was Prince playing the bass in my face? Prince, he’s always been a meanie.”

Adam Wilkes (20:38):

Later that August, Prince went on to play 21 nights in London at the O2 Arena, a concert which John and Paul organized. It was Prince’s idea, and the promoters thought it was a huge risk to play so many nights in one venue, but it was a blowout success. Prince thrived on stage.

John Meglin (20:57):

You could look at it as a car and a gas tank. When they’re up there on stage, that’s what fills up their tank with gas. And when they walk off the stage, that insecurity is gone. That confidence has risen.

Adam Wilkes (21:11):

Michael Jackson needed some of that gas. Even if he’d been snubbed, he took inspiration from Prince. He began to plan with John and Paul for his This Is It concerts, 50 shows also in the O2 in London. Tragically, Michael’s untimely death came before he played those shows. He was only 50.

Tom Wright (21:36):

Prince also had his own health issues. During 21 nights, Paul noticed that he was in pain because of a hip problem, probably stemming from decades of live performing. But when they offered medical help, Prince denied he had any issues.

Paul Gongaware (21:50):

And that was pretty much the last time we ever saw him because like how dare we bring that up to him, how dare we talk to him about that. And we just felt for the guy. We really liked him, and we wanted to help him, and it blew up on us. That’s when it really kind of ended.

Tom Wright (22:09):

Sadly, Prince passed away in 2016, aged only 57 after an accidental overdose of fentanyl. It was a drug he was taking to help with his hip pain. During his career, he sold over a hundred million records, and he won seven Grammys. Today’s top artists from Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Bruno Mars, they all cite Prince as a huge inspiration. Although Prince was aware of his legacy, he lived for the present, for the life performance. As a Jehovah’s Witness, he believed the soul dies with the body. Late one evening at Paisley Park, Paul and Prince got to talking about such spiritual matters, and for a moment at least, Prince was not performing.

Paul Gongaware (22:51):

We started talking about stuff, and he asked me, he said, “Do you think there’s an afterlife?” And I said, “No, I think this is it.” And he said, “I agree. I think this is it.” Then I said to him, “Dude, you got to live this as a rockstar.”

Tom Wright (23:31):

Coming up next week on Night of Show.

Paul Gongaware (23:34):

Those days with Fidel, their music was banned in Cuba, and people got thrown in jail for listening to The Rolling Stones.

Adam Wilkes (23:41):

I see Mick Jagger has kind of poked his head in, so I’m like, “Look, I want to just make it clear like, guys, this is Mission Impossible. Okay?”

Paul Gongaware (23:50):

If Mick wants to go to Cuba, we got to try to figure out how to do that. And the answer was Adam Wilkes.

Adam Wilkes (23:57):

I said, “I need $50,000 in cash and then fly to Havana.”

Tom Wright (24:04):

We want to hear from you. Perhaps you experienced a life-changing moment at a concert or meeting one of your favorite artists. Send us your best stories via voice message at nightofshow.com/contact, that’s nightofshow.com/contact. We’ll include the best of them on future episodes, and you stand to win Night of Show merch, also available on the show’s website, nightofshow.com. Thanks for listening.

(24:32):

Night of Show is a production of Project Brazen in partnership with PRX. It’s written and presented by me, Tom Wright, and Adam Wilkes. The executive producers are Adam Wilkes, Paul Gongaware, John Meglin, Tom Wright, and Bradley Hope. Sandy Smallens is the executive producer for Audiation. The story editor is Joe Levy. Mariangel Gonzales is senior producer. Matthew Rubenstein is the producer. Dialogue edit, theme and original music by William Whitman. Mixing and additional scoring by Paul Vitolins at Audiography. Lucy Woods is head of research. Ryan Ho is the creative designer for the project with cover art design by Julien Pradier. Clearance counsel is Innes Smolansky, Esquire.

Speaker 2 (25:22):

Audiation.