“He says to Mick Jagger backstage ‘They hate me!’ Mick told him, ‘if you’re going to play to a crowd this big, you have to have a rock band. You have to have a big sound’”: Did Prince’s "humiliating" Rolling Stones experience inspire his later success?

Prince and Mick Jagger.

It’s no secret that Prince’s 1981 support slot with The Rolling Stones didn’t go well. The LA Memorial Coliseum crowd, which included its fair share of Hell’s Angels, weren’t particularly taken by either his ‘punk-funk’ sound or his equally provocative look, which at the time incorporated a trench coat, a pair of bikini briefs and a pair of high-heeled boots.

Prince is known to have been understandably upset at the crowd’s hostile reaction, but in a new book about his rise to greatness that’s being published today - A Sign o’ the Times, by John McKie - it’s suggested that the events of that day may have at least partly inspired the stadium-sized success that was to come.