“It looks like this giant white castle,” Cory Wong says of Paisley Park, the huge complex where Prince used to work, live and play – and where Wong once had a bizarre experience with The Purple One.
Wong recently told MusicRadar about the time Prince paid him the biggest compliment he’s ever received about his guitar playing, telling him he had “such a sound”.
Being funk players from Minneapolis, some might say they were destined to cross paths, eventually meeting at local downtown club Bunkers, where Wong was playing in the band Dr. Mambo’s Combo.
This eventually led to an invitation to open for Prince at his Paisley Park After Dark shows, which took place at the 65,000-square-foot estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota. The creative sanctuary and business headquarters had been built in the late 1980s, with Prince even living there for parts of his career.
Wong recalls: “For the last few years of his life, Prince was doing these Paisley Park After Dark shows. He’d announce these gigs the day telling everyone to be at Paisley Park for 10pm.”
There were large and small venues inside the complex, selected depending on the scale of the event being held. Wong describes these up-close-and-personal performances as some of the most mind-blowing shows he’s ever seen.
“Some of us would come and open the night, playing until midnight,” he continues. “Maybe Prince would get up at 1am, maybe he’d come up at 3am. People never knew what they were going to get.”
He adds: “There were different versions of his band, sometimes it was just the 3rdEyeGirl trio behind him. Other times he had two horn sections and a full band. I think he was just testing things out and having fun.”
There was one night in particular, however, which Wong and his fellow attendees will never forget. The opening band came on, followed by a DJ, but as the night went on, there was still no sign of The Purple One.
“It got really late,” shrugs Wong. “All of a sudden, somebody got on stage and said, ‘Hey everyone, we’re going on a field trip, there’s a bunch of charter buses outside, everybody get out and come with us!’ And people did. We got taken to the Chanhassen movie theatre about a mile away.”
He continues: “Prince had rented out the theatre with free popcorn, snacks and drinks for everyone. Then we found out he wanted to watch Finding Nemo.
“People couldn’t believe it. Some of them had flown all the way from Australia to see Prince play but instead of that we were watching Finding Nemo in a theatre with Prince on the front row laughing his brains out. It was insane, dude!”
It was things like this that cemented Prince’s stature as one of the music industry’s greatest enigmas.
Of course, he had it all in terms of musical talents – from his guitar, bass and drum skills all the way to his ear as a producer and songwriter. But his unpredictable and sometimes downright baffling nature only added to that star quality.
“It was extreme levels of artistry,” enthuses Wong. “You see some multi-instrumentalists who are incredible, but maybe their artistry doesn’t have that je ne sais quoi or that ‘thing’. Prince had it all. He was such a quirky personality and had the style and swag to go along with it.”
