My First Prince Concert

My first Prince concert was in April of 1993 at the Fox Theatre in Detroit.

It was 20-year-old Dana making the 3-hour drive in the snow with his then fiance' Jennifer to see an artist that felt more like a myth than a person. At that point I had spent half of my life memorizing the words to every Prince song, collecting every Prince tape or CD I could get my hands on and being bullied in school because of my passion for Prince music...and here I was, about to see the man in person.

I held Prince and his music on such a high pedestal that I was certain this concert would let me down. I was mentally preparing myself for that let down.

Then we walk into that gorgeous venue. The ushers are not allowing us in just yet, as Prince is doing sound check. However, my fiance and I are standing right at the entrance with just a curtain in between Prince playing guitar and our anxious souls.

I moved the curtain to take a peek and was overwhelmed by the fact that I was in the same building as Prince at that very moment. I wasn't prepared for how that made me feel. I can be honest with you now and tell you that I was embarrassed about how emotional that made me.

Fast forward about half an hour...we are at our seats in the Fox Theatre. The lights go out....the crowd gets quite for a second than roars like a tornado. The black curtain with a gold Prince symbol drops and Prince seems to fly out of nowhere with a loud high pitch scream.

I wept. There's no macho way out of this. I was a 20-year-old guy in a crowd of thousands of people and I couldn't control my emotions.

Prince starts off with nothing but songs from the Symbol albums...My name is Prince into Sexy MF...then Love 2 the Nines. I was in purple heaven.

Prince was no long a mythical creature. He was a man that stood 5 feet 2 inches tall yet was larger than life. He played guitar, sang and danced better than anyone I've ever seen. He even climbed one of the statues near the stage at Fox Theatre. It was absolutely insane.

By the way there was no opening act. Just Prince and the NPG with the beautiful Mayte Garcia playing for 3 hours. It was incredible.

I have a memory of waving my arms in the air and accidentally bumping into people around me like I was drunk. But it was nothing but love. Nobody was annoyed by lil Dana. All of the Prince fam around me were feelin' the spirit too.

For Season 2 of the My Prince Story Podcast we're going to talk about your first concerts. You can send me a voice memo from your smartphone to dana@myprincepodcast.com. Wanna be a guest on this podcast? Hit me up on twitter @myprincepodcast.