One artist made Prince step up his game and reach new heights: “Listen to those people”
Anyone even considering joining a band with Prince usually competed for second place. ‘The Purple One’ was the kind of dynamo that no one could pin down for a second, and the minute everyone thought they had him figured out, he was always ten steps ahead, doing something completely different. Hence, if anyone managed to give him a run for his money, it was bound to be a fellow musical god.
Then again, when looking at Prince’s abilities, you also have to talk about which instrument he was holding at the time. Put anything in the man’s hands, and he was equally dangerous when it came to a musical duel, whether that was dominating every second of his solo at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or every single falsetto note to make him sound like some sexed-up rock deity. However, the greatest strength he had was his ability to listen.
A lot of the greatest artists of all time tend to find themselves in a rut after a while, and Prince always took the opportunity to catch any new players on the scene that he liked. There would be the occasional legend that would turn up at Paisley Park, but the fact that Kendrick Lamar stopped by for a jam session on the song ‘What’s My Name’ or having Lizzo appear on one of his songs years before she caught fire showed he knew good talent when he saw it.
Even by his standards, though, nothing could have prepared him for what Michael Phillips could do. He had already turned in time with fellow legends like Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder behind the scenes, but when Prince saw him in action, he knew that there was a different temperature in the room. For the first time since his inception, he had to get back onstage with something to prove.
It’s rare for Prince to have his back up from a musical standpoint, but even he had to admit that Phillips absolutely killed it when playing with him, noting, “I was offstage, listening to Michael Phillips take his solo. I was thinking, ’Wow, listen to those people responding, and all he’s doing is playing a saxophone’. They can feel that what he’s doing is real. Here’s one man breathing into an instrument, and the whole room feels alive. It made me want to rise up to that level when I came back onstage.”
Entertaining someone at that level is no small task, but Prince was no stranger to that kind of situation, either. Even until his final hours, albums like Piano and Microphone 1983 showed everyone how much of a presence he was when he was jamming at his house for a few hours, whether that’s going through his greatest hits or slipping in songs like ‘A Case of You’ in his set.
But as anyone like Prince would know, not every song is about a competition. Sometimes it’s just about letting the music breathe at the right time, and when going back and forth taking solos, it can feel like weaving together some beautiful musical conversation between two players rather than trying to show up what the other person is doing.
It’s hard to really encapsulate that kind of magic in words, but when musicians lock eyes on the right groove, it’s no longer about a bunch of instruments and a microphone on a stage. It’s about making sure that the back and forth lasts as long as possible before the song finally crashes to an end.
