The time Prince played a secret show in Cincinnati
CINCINNATI — It was Sept. 23, 1984.
The Red, White and Blue Tour was on Bogart's schedule that day. Tickets: 5 bucks. Just a dollar more expensive than the usual show at the Corryville venue.
Al Porkolab stood with the crowd in the middle section of his venue that night. He knew something the sold-out crowd didn't know. He was silent then, just as he had been for some time about who was about to take the stage.
Lights go off. A backlit figure appears on stage.
The first organ notes of Let's Go Crazy blast through the speakers.
Remembering Prince, a prodigy and provocateur
There's that groovy organ moan. Then, a voice, still unseen, speaks: "Dearly beloved ..."
"Is that guy impersonating Prince?" a girl next to Porkolab asks.
"You idiot," her friend screams. "That is Prince!"
The Bogart's crowd knows what Porkolab knows now. And they all go crazy.
"Then this screaming," Porkolab said Thursday afternoon from his home in Beachwood, Ohio, just hours after he learned the pop-funk legend had died at the age 57. "It was an incredible show."
It wasn't the Purple One's first appearance at Bogart's. Or his last in the Queen City.
But on this night in September, the audience members were some of the first to see Prince launch the effort culminating his commercial and creative peak: This was a dress rehearsal for his landmark "Purple Rain" tour.
In close to 100 stops, the 1984 tour sold some 1.7 million tickets on the strength of such classics as When Doves Cry, I Would Die 4 U, and Darling Nikki. And of course, the movie and title track of the same name.
The eclectic musician and his band, The Revolution, were selling out future dates at 18,000-seat stadiums before Porkolab got the call about staging a stealth show at his 1,500-capacity club.
If he had put Prince's name on the ticket, "we could have sold it 20 or 30 times," he said.
"It was very special," he added. "I was very moved about it. And then I couldn't tell anyone."
The night of the performance, Porkolab took the secrecy further. Some spy stuff, like disabling pay phones nearby and hiring extra security for the doors. The city was buzzing with rumors. There was talk about a private plane landing in Cincinnati, and Porkolab couldn't be too careful.
Porkolab isn't sure exactly why Prince chose Bogart's. Maybe it was because the club had a great relationship with his CBS representative then. Or that the Minnesota native liked it when he played here another time in early years. Porkolab can't put his finger on which early year it was exactly.
Porkolab and Prince never really talked, he said. Surrounded by an expansive entourage, they exchanged pleasantries, maybe.
"He seemed to be a very likable guy," he said. "He wasn't gregarious. ... He seemed a little bit more introspective."
That 1984 show also wasn't the first time Prince and Bogart's collaborated on something clandestine. Prince sneaked in through a back door to watch his hero James Brown perform with Wilson Pickett there.
When Porkolab watched Prince from that same stage that September, he was struck by how much Prince borrowed from Mr. Dynamite. Many of his moves were patterned after Brown, who recorded some of his earliest hits at Cincinnati's King Records.
Today, Porkolab thinks of Prince as the pensive perfectionist.
He can still see him crouched over the sound console at Bogart's. Prince would run up on stage. Play a lick or two. Run back to the console to adjust the levels. Most of the stars who played Bogart's left that type of work to an engineer.
But for Prince, he was the only one who could get the sound just right. He probably couldn't have taught anyone that if he tried.
Porkolab said that's one of the reasons why Prince was already a legend back then, just a few years in his career.
"He wasn't just blessed with extreme talent," he said. "He was blessed with extreme talent that he perfected and refined. I don't think he was ever satisfied."
Follow Carol Motsinger on Twitter: @carolemotsinger
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