On Friday July 27, 1984, my girlfriend (now wife) and I made our way to the Malco Theater in downtown Jackson, Tennessee to see the first Prince film, Purple Rain. This was the opening weekend for the movie. While I liked Prince, I wasn’t a huge fan. I didn’t have any of his albums in my music collection. I really liked the music videos for his songs from the album 1999. I think our main reason for going to see it on the opening weekend was that it would be fun to see with a group of hardcore, Prince fans. Our best opportunity to do that would be on opening night.
The Malco was one of two older movie theaters in downtown Jackson. It was the smaller of the two theaters and seemed to be the one in the greatest state of disrepair. I remember thinking at the time that this was going to be a big enough movie that they would put it in one of the big, new theaters on the north side of town. When they put it in a crumbling, old theater I saw it as a slight to the black people in the community and a commentary on what the theater owners thought of black artists and their fans. In retrospect, I think that they were trying to make the film more easily accessible to the people in the black community around the downtown area.
Either way, we ended up at the last showing of the film that night. The crowd was packed with extremely enthusiastic fans. The crowd loved the film and I did too. From the opening strains of Let’s Go Crazy, I was hooked. The most memorable moment of the evening was the performance of Purple Rain at the end of the film. I’m sure that most of you remember that during that song, the crowd at the club in the film are swaying their arms back and forth in time to the music. Of course the dedicated fans in the audience around us joined in with the audience on the screen swaying their arms. At one point, it was hard to tell what arms were swaying on screen and what arms were swaying in the crowd. Then I noticed that some of the arms swaying on the screen were actually shadows of the arms of people in the crowd.
I’m writing this post as the news of the death of Prince dominates news coverage and social media. Over the years, I came to appreciate Prince more and more. My favorite Prince album was Sign O’ the Times. I convinced that his Super Bowl halftime show is the best ever. I am envious of ability to write songs, arrange music and play guitar. I will continue to enjoy his music.