Sunday, October 2, 2011

Great Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Performances, #1

In 2004, Prince and George Harrison made for a decent year, although CDNR's own Michael Anthony might disagree with the latter. The rest of the pu-pu platter consisted of ZZ Top, Jackson Browne, Traffic, The Dells and Bob Seger's still-warm cadaver.

That year's ceremony will be most remembered-for an "all-star" tribute to George and his "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" that wasn't much of an all-star tribute to start, but mainly a pseudo-Wilburys reunion (Petty and Jeff Lynne Funk) and George's kid.

At about 3:30, you see Dhani look over to stage left with a mixture of excitement, awe and "holy shit this is going to happen!" He sees Prince strapping on his ax, and since he's doing it in the song's outro, you sort of have to wonder if he even planned to jump on stage in the first place. But he does, and what happens next is Rock Hall history.

Prince unfurls one of the greatest rock solos in the history of music, and in the process does all of these things at once:

- Makes the old comparisons to Hendrix become more than just a blind bullshit racial thing. Yes, they're both black, but they also shred like mofos.

- Somehow makes Tom Petty seem whiter and limper when he falls back into the crowd while still soloing right in Mr. Into The Great Wide Open's face (4:51).

- Makes Eric Clapton roll over in his grave in advance.

Insane. Nuts. Awesome. Prince.

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