A cover of The Rolling Stones’ Honky Tonk Woman has been hailed as a “one in a billion” experience from Prince.
The Purple Rain hitmaker would open for The Rolling Stones early in his career, and would later cover one of the band’s biggest hits. A video upload of the cover has since been uploaded to YouTube, where listeners were full of praise for the crossover. Many believed the song highlighted Prince‘s gift not just for singing, but for the guitar. Prince would play Honky Tonk Woman a total of eighteen times in his career, with the last performance of the song featuring at a show in the Grand Palais in Paris, France. Cover songs were a frequent part of Prince’s setlist across his decades of performing, with covers of Bob Dylan‘s All Along the Watchtower and David Bowie‘s Heroes also featuring in his sets.
An upload of Prince’s performance of Honky Tonk Woman has been hailed by fans, who believe it highlights how one-of-a-kind Prince was. One listener wrote: “One in ten billion this guy, for sure. Actually, there will never, ever be anyone quite like Prince again.”
Another agreed, adding: “Prince’s guitar playing seemed to be some crazy symbiotic melding of man and machine. Where the guitar and the man began and ended was impossible to demarcate. They were simply the entity that was the voice of Prince. Amazing, simply amazing.”
A third added: “Billy Gibbons is 100% right. Prince’s guitar play is beyond description. It must be felt not simply heard. AMAZING SIMPLY AMAZING!” Others have said this is their favourite guitar work from the veteran musician, with one fan saying they did not realise his talents until after Prince’s passing.
They wrote: “This is some of my favourite guitar work I have ever heard. It’s sad that it took his passing for me to realise his true talent. RIP.” Prince would perform with some of the all-time greats during his career, and would open for The Rolling Stones in some tense shows which saw Prince leave the stage early.
According to Far Out Magazine, members of the crowd hurled homophobic slurs at Prince and the band. Recalling the incident, bass guitarist Brown Mark said it was the “crazied thing I had ever seen” with the crowd throwing food at the band.
He said: “Next thing I noticed was food starting to fly through the air like a dark thunder cloud. Imagine 94,000 people throwing food at each other; it was the craziest thing I had ever seen in my life. I got hit in the shoulder with a bag of fried chicken; then my guitar got knocked out of tune by a large grapefruit that hit the tuning keys.”
Despite promoter Bill Graham attempting to calm the situation, Prince and his band were left with no choice but to leave partway through their performance of Uptown. The legendary performer would play just four songs to the crowd, and Prince vowed not to return to the follow-up show two days later.
Speaking in 1983, Jagger confirmed he understood how Prince felt but told him that if he did become a headliner in future, getting chickens and debris thrown at him would be all part of the performance.
Jagger said: “I talked to Prince on the phone once after he got two cans thrown at him in L.A. He said he didn’t want to do any more shows. God, I got thousands of bottles and cans thrown at me! Every kind of debris. I told him, if you get to be a really big headliner, you have to be prepared for people to throw bottles at you in the night.”
You can listen to Prince cover Honky Tonk Woman below.
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