Been sharing the YouTube video of the wonderful Prince performance with Tom Petty et al at the 2004 Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame tribute to George Harrison, ever since I first came across it. As recently as 2018 I created a longer post linking this to videos of his SuperBowl gig (and more) – “Perfection in Performance” I called it.
Always been intrigued by him throwing-off the guitar over his head as the final act.
Well, as of this month there is a new director’s cut of the same recording with more focus on Prince himself – the body language, smiles and glances shared with the band are all there to see – TP and especially Dhani who is clearly loving the whole thing.
Still can’t see the join at the end,
who catches the guitar or where it ends up?
[Hat tip to Adam Jacob for Tweeting the new link.]
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[Post Note: It seems the “throwing-off” of the guitar is legendary. Kinda obvious he must be throwing it to his roadie / minder, but in the original video it seems just to go vertically up – can’t imagine where you’d have to be to catch it. More obvious in the director’s cut that it goes forward too, and he does casually look down to see it’s safe before sauntering off – I used to think he was just clicking off a foot-pedal. And in this video, once you know the story, you can see two guys in front of the stage joking with someone who could easily be Oprah being handed it in the front row.
Google is your friend as ever. Probably deliberate good editing that the mystery remains in the video(s).]