While His Guitar Gently Weeps:
How Prince took over at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

It’s hard to know when we’re living in the good times.  It’s hard to know what you’re going to look back on and wish you could have been more present for.  Maybe it’s a family reunion that turns out to be the last, or a low-rent rendezvous with a sweetheart in another life.  Maybe it’ll be tonight when you get high and watch Prince’s Purple Rain.  You might look back and think, “My gosh, that was so good.”

So, I invite you to watch two minutes and 50 seconds of Prince’s life where more than 24 million people have watched him perform the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” in honor of George Harrison.  His appearance alongside Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood and George’s son, Dhani, produces the kind of music alchemy that musicians like myself dream of when assembling a one-off band of music gypsies.

In my mind, there is no question that Prince was fully there the night of his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2004).  He clearly enjoyed his performance, and he knows his guitar solo is transcendent. It is truly electric!

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is a classic Beatle song, and watching Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne sing it with George’s son is nice.  But, to watch the full video brings into sharp contrast that with Prince, a true guitar-player-legend-performer is entering your life at the 3:24 mark, and does not exit until the end of the video.

3:24. Let’s consider that mark.  Prince has been onstage all along, but the video director has not featured him… yet.  Then Dhani Harrison smiles as he looks left, and Prince steps forward.  For the next 30 seconds, you’re in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame normalcy zone.  Keep going.  Prince starts cooking on his guitar at 3:56.

4:01. Prince does this pinch-harmonic solo that lets you know the music is flat-out ON! While these kinds of solos  are almost always bad – if anyone else were playing over a Beatles’ song, it would be straight trash.  But this is Prince, so it’s incredible.  Then he heads into these bended notes that echo the original version’s solo.  It’s haunting and sweet and distinct.  With that behind him, Prince turns to Petty and Harrison and gives them a look.  It’s almost like he’s saying, “You have no idea what you’re in for.”  He’s right.

4:33.  He does this move with his guitar that looks like he’s reloading a shotgun.   You can find other guitar players who do it.  Bruce Springsteen did it during “Badlands” in concert.  Slash has done it in videos.  It’s a cool move if you are cool.  Prince is the coolest, so no one will ever look cooler doing it than this.

4:39.  Every time I watch the next 10 seconds, I become full of inspiration.  This is how I see it:

• Prince, mid-solo, turns to face Petty and Harrison and makes eye contact
• Petty, for a moment, looks miffed.  Maybe not miffed, but not thrilled.  Then he breaks into a smile as he sees what’s about to happen.
• A grinning Harrison suddenly becomes all of us.  He is watching Prince play the solo while falling backward toward the crowd and into the arms of a security guard.

The moment is everything you want from music – admiration, joy, fun, spontaneity.  Harrison, the kid, is alive while memorializing his father.

4:56.  During a lull, Prince gives Petty a look that tells us he knows exactly what he just did.

5:05.  Deep down in a finger-tappy, Van Halen—y section, Prince delivers some of history’s best guitar face.  He is feeling it because everyone is feeling it – and he is everyone.

5:15.  Prince took us up the mountains; now he’s going to walk us back down.  After nearly two minutes of blistering riffs that would make Steve Vai curl up and die, he enters cooldown mode with a few screaming single-note string bends, followed by weird Jonny Greenwood—style ascending harmonic chords that shouldn’t feel right but fit perfectly in the pocket.  They are pulling when everything else pushes.

5:45.  Petty, Lynne and Harrison come back in with the chorus.  Prince accents the proceedings with wailing notes, just to let you know he’s still in charge.

6:00.  Prince fires of a final flurry, and the band finishes in unison.

6:10.  Prince does the coolest thing I have ever seen anyone do – an outstanding stage exit.

In closing, he takes off his guitar, throws it into the sky, and struts offstage like the “skinny dude with the high voice” that he was and always will be.