Oct 26, 2015  Prince, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne and others - 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' - Duration: 6:16. Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 82,598,344 views.

On February 4, 2007, heavy rain fell over Miami—and for those planning the Super Bowl XLI halftime show, so did a sense of dread. It’s one thing to play a football game in a storm. It’s another to put on an intricately staged concert in one.“It was the most scared I was in my life,” says executive producer, then the NFL’s head of programming.

“And I’m sure I wasn’t alone.”The man scheduled to perform was nervous, too. Yes, even Prince saw the potential for disaster. “People are like, ‘He gets nervous?’” says his musical director and keyboardist, Morris Hayes. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, he’s not nervous for himself. He’s nervous for us.’ He’s trying to make sure that we’re in the right places at the right parts. What’s gonna happen when it starts raining and the floor’s slick?”By that point, was in dire need of the Purple One’s energy. Over the course of 40 years, the event had gone from a marching band showcase to an Up With People residency, to a Disnified pageant with occasional drop-ins by pop stars like Michael Jackson, to an MTV-produced, superficially edgy spectacle that bottomed out in 2004 when to a worldwide audience of 144.4 million.

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A course correction followed, as the NFL turned to baby boomer–friendly acts Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones. And while they may have been rock legends with countercultural roots, by the aughts they’d become safe entertainment.Prince was different. Even after decades of fame, the sex symbol hadn’t toned down his genre-defying music or his envelope-pushing persona. Just three years prior, on the night that he was, his guitar solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” stole the show from a handful of less-otherworldly legends.

Unlike his big-game predecessors, Prince refused to trot out a handful of his hits and call it a night. For the intermission, the icon designed a unique 12-minute set. After all, he wasn’t about to allow himself to be overshadowed by the biggest damn sporting event of the year. Adande: I think it was a plant.Gongaware: It was one of the sportswriters.Adande: Before he could even finish the question, Prince just breaks into “Johnny B. Goode.”Hayes: He says, “All right, when we get out here, I’m gonna say this and make a downbeat, and then we just go for it.”Adande: I’ll never forget that set list. Goode” and “Anotherloverholenyohead.” Editor’s note: There was a third song, “Get on the Boat.”McClean: A bit of a wow factor.

He doesn’t tell us what he’s doing, either. We didn’t know he was gonna do that. I reacted and laughed when it happened. He’s keeping us on our toes.Arzate: That’s part of Prince’s humor. He’s a clown.

“That was typical Prince: I’m gonna fuck with you, but I’m gonna make you happy.” —Charles CoplinCoplin: That was typical Prince: I’m gonna fuck with you, but I’m gonna make you happy.Adande: It was labeled a press conference, so people weren’t in concert mode. There was a smattering of applause, because journalists don’t applaud at press conferences. Folks stayed in their seats. Maybe he didn’t go all out, but Prince’s floor is so high that it still was evident we were watching a virtuoso at work. We didn’t deserve that performance.Shelby J.: He kept y’all guessing. He kept us guessing.

He would always say, “Stay ready. To stay ready, you’ve gotta get ready.” That’s it.

We had to stay ready for whatever. He might’ve kept going and gone into another song. There were many times where you never knew what you were gonna get.Cora Coleman (drums): Rehearsals were as intense as the shows themselves.

Always ready! Always seeing ourselves beyond ourselves, as we want the audience to see us.Hayes: Prince was just a master of that kind of thing—generating interest and doing something different—and it was always a lot of fun. That’s what I liked about him. He wasn’t afraid, so he just tried stuff. And it just worked.

Prince during the Super Bowl press conference Getty Images Part IV: “He Wasn’t Upset. He Was Nervous.”Prince and his band practiced for the halftime show in a tent next to Dolphin Stadium. They had only one chance to do a full run-through inside the then-75,000-seat behemoth. It didn’t exactly go smoothly.Mischer: Thursday night we got three hours on the field itself. That’s the only time in 2007 when we actually got on the field to rehearse it.Coplin: Thursday, that’s when we brought in the FAMU marching band and all of the sort of bells and whistles.Mischer: The stage was the shape of Prince’s logo. It came out, I think, in 48 separate pieces.

It was rolled together by about 624 volunteers who had donated their weekends and one night per week for four weeks before the Super Bowl to actually rehearse the stage being put together, connected electrically, being disassembled, and rolled off.Meglen: The run-through on Thursday, they have to tape that. Because if for some reason, you physically can’t really do the halftime show, they still have to have something to broadcast to the rest of the world, right? So they tape that one. But the whole time they’re in rehearsals, Prince never turned his guitar on, and never turned his vocal mic on, so he knew what everybody else was doing at all times.Hayes: That’s why they shoot it at the dress rehearsal. If there’s something like a weather anomaly, then they’ll just run the footage, and cut it for television like it’s live.

They had it all planned out. The prep stuff, it was always intense. He’s like, on everybody. He’s on the techs.

He’s with the production. He’s out in the sound truck. It’s just crazy intense because he’s trying to cross every “t” and dot every “i.”McClean: You know how we had the little elevator on the stage where he goes down? During rehearsals he had one of these microphone stands that had the round base. And when we ran it in the rehearsals, every time we got to that part, he ended up placing the microphone stand half on the stage and half on the area that gets lowered down.Meglen: His foot hits the base of the mic stand and pops it right in his forehead. He goes down in the and he gets in a golf cart, and three minutes later, you hear on the radio, “Prince would like to see John Meglen and Don Mischer in his trailer.” Mischer goes, “What does he want?” I say, “I don’t know.” We go in and it’s just the two of us in the trailer. Prince waves me down at the far end and he starts going, “I want you to get that tape.” And Mischer can hear me at the other end and he’s going, “I’m not giving up the tape.” I don’t know where that tape is.

It would be amazing to see it.Arzate: He was upset about the sound. And part of that was, Prince is really very cognizant of how black performers are treated. And he always has a slight—not a big one—paranoia that someone’s gonna mess with the sound and make him look bad.I go to the production guys and they’re like, “We’re aware, there’s nothing we can do. When the stadium is filled, it’ll sound way better.

What’s most important is what’s on television.” I go back to Prince, I give him the rundown, and he’s still not happy. He’s like, “I need you to make sure that the sound is gonna be fantastic.” I realized he wasn’t upset—he was nervous. Part V: “Now That’s Show Business”By the time Super Bowl Sunday dawned, clouds had rolled in. The NFL’s championship game had never been played in the rain, but Mother Nature was about to change that.Coplin: I had grown up in Miami. It was just unheard of to have a driving rainstorm in February. So everybody started watching the radar and everybody kept telling us that the good news is that the radar looks like it’s gonna clear up when the show goes on. We had no Plan B.Mischer: We were aware that there was a possibility of rain.

And we worried about it, because that was water on that Mylar stage, with all that electricity and everything else. I remember the night before the Super Bowl just thinking, “God what would happen if he fell down? Or the Twinz fell down or broke a leg or something.

What does he do? Does he just step over them and keep going? What do we do?” We were dreading it.Lesley Visser (CBS Sports): I’ve been freezing in Lambeau, I’ve been in the snow in Foxborough and Soldier Field.

Mailmen will always tell you that rain is the worst.Arzate: The morning comes, and I get up really early, and it’s storming. It wasn’t like rain. It was like somebody was throwing buckets of water at the window.Shelby J.: Not just a drizzle. Not just a light rain. It was like a monsoon.Arzate: I was like, “Oh shit.”Shelby J.: We’re thinking, “Are we gonna change some stuff?

Are we gonna wear tennis shoes now?” Prince was like, “Don’t change nothing.” And that was part of him teaching us and me personally to be fearless.Arzate: I knew that the executives were concerned about the rain and about electrocution and they were like, “We can always pretend that you’re singing” and have everything off and just play the track. And Prince was like, “I’m Prince, I’m gonna play live.”McClean: I was wrapping my mind around how big the event was. I didn’t have much experience with it, coming from Australia. My only visual image of it was Michael Jackson—I remember him being out in the sunny stage with his glasses on and popping to the stage and then standing there like a robot. That was my only association with it. So, it was pretty exciting to think that we were kind of going to be doing our own version of that.Arzate: He calls me into the trailer, and of course he looks impeccable. I go, “Prince you look amazing.” And he goes, “Thank you.” And he looks at me and he doesn’t say anything.

I remember I looked like a drowned rat.Meglen: The rain was pouring down, it was Paul, me, and Trevor Allen, his bodyguard, and this little guy from CBS, with his headset. It’s like the two-minute warning and he goes, “All right, it’s two minutes time to roll.” And we’re all standing there and nobody’s doing anything.

We’re all waiting for him to come out, you know? And he’s like, “It’s one minute. It’s getting critical.” And we all look at each other.

Are you gonna go in there? I’m not going in to get him. You go in and get him! I think Trevor was going to open the door. That’s when he opened up. He was putting his do-rag on.(Prince’s hairstylist): He was like, “They’re not gonna make me do this show, are they?” I said, “Man, this is live.

Yes, you’ve got to do this show.” So he was like, “Kim, get me a hat.” And I said, “You can’t wear a hat. This is the Super Bowl!” I started tucking all his scarves in a couch and trying to hide them. By that time, they already had him in a golf cart taking him across the field.Coplin: I had made a call downstairs to the backstage area: “Are we good, are we good?” And then I finally heard from one of the people downstairs and I said, “Is Prince OK?” And then he said, “He wants to know if you can make it rain harder.” I was like, “We’re gonna be OK.”Shelby J.: Like, who says that? That was just him!Arzate: Once they call showtime for him, you can see all the people scrambling with the stage.

It’s such a production.Coplin: That stage had a bunch of moving parts and it was pouring rain. Supposedly part of the stage wheeled over a cable and severed the cable, and some very heroic guy had to plug in this cable in a pouring rainstorm and probably risk serious electrocution.Mischer: There was a man on our lighting crew whose name was Tony Ward.

And Tony, realizing we were now counting down to going on the air, took his pliers and stripped the insulation off the three cables. And he inserted them into a plug, just raw, and held that for the entire 12-and-a-half-minute duration, in the rain.

To keep the lights and all that working. I’m glad I didn’t know about that until afterward because that would’ve scared the hell out of me.Hayes: These guys went through hell and back to make sure all of the tech worked.Arzate: When they announced Prince, and you see the symbol light up and all of that, the crowd.

It’s all dark. The crowd goes nuts. And I’m like, “Are these white people really gonna be into Prince?”Berry: He comes out on the stage and he has this do-rag wrapped around his head. And I’m like, “Oh, my God!

He’s covered up my hair.”Hayes: You just have to realize that the floor is this slippery tile. It looks dope but when it got wet it was like standing on glass.McClean: Obviously the stage was really slippery and there was no way for us to control that environment except for putting little grips on the bottom of our shoes. We had planned to do that anyway, because we’re always dancing in knee boots, so we always had those on hand.Hayes: I worried about Prince because he’s got these heels on, man. And he goes for it, man. You do not want a national TV wipeout.Mischer: When we hit air I was really worried and concerned.

And then after about 45 seconds, I began to say, “This actually looks incredible. This could be a blessing in disguise.” Mist was dripping across the stage, creating this ethereal mood. Drops of water began to create stars on the lenses. FilmMagic, IncArzate: He starts performing and we hear the first few bars. I’m like, “Do we really want to be up here watching this?” I think we need to be down on the floor. And Kim’s like, “Oh my God, yes.” We take off from the suite, and then we run.

This is the dumbest thing ever. Why did we think we wanted to watch the show from here? We run through this maze. We zip through, I nearly hip-thrust Billy Joel to the ground. And I hear him say, “Oh my God, it’s Prince, I can’t miss Prince.”. “‘That man was pure magic.’ He was one that could dance underwater and not get wet.” —Kim BerryBerry: People ask me, “Was there an umbrella on the stage? How did he not get wet?” I said, “That man was pure magic.” He was one that could dance underwater and not get wet.Arzate: I look at Prince and I’m like, “Kim, am I hallucinating or is there no rain on him?” You could see a couple of droplets on his shoulder.

And we’re looking and she’s like, “It just looks like a fine mist on his face.”Mischer: We started off with “We Will Rock You.”Shelby J.: You’ve got rock, mixed with R&B, mixed with his stuff. It’s like, he knew how to weave together this perfect painting of so many different genres. My homeboy was like, “You guys opened with Queen!” I was like, “I know!” We put our little spin on it.Caro: He just figured out how to do something of that scale while remaining Prince.Shelby J.: If you go back and watch he had three or four different guitars.

He gave each guitar its own highlight. It had to be during “Best of You”—he played just a stupid guitar solo, and he’s walking out in the rain.Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters drummer, ): I was watching the game at our producer Nick Raskulinecz’s house, and since he’s doing the new Rush album, all the guys from the band were there. I mean, I’m outside smoking a cigarette with the late Rush drummer Neil Peart and someone sticks their head outside and goes, “Uh, dude, Prince is doing your song.”I have no idea why he did it, but I’d love to find out. I mean, the thought went through my head that maybe he was doing it as a sort of “Fuck you” to us, or maybe he really likes the song. Either way, it was pretty amazing to have a guy like Prince covering one of our songs—and actually doing it better than we did.Coplin: I would be watching the monitors and trying to factor my own opinion about the show, but no matter what you see in the television truck, you have no sort of sense of what people at home are experiencing. And I remember just my phone started blowing up.

Like, “OMG, this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” I just had all these people, friends, colleagues, people in the business, just really losing their minds on my texts. And that’s when I knew that this thing was really maybe even better than we thought it was gonna be.Nathan Vasher (Bears cornerback): The last two or three minutes, I peeked out of the tunnel. I didn’t want to go all the way out there, but for two or three minutes I got to witness greatness. I haven’t experienced that greatness again.Hayes: The rain started to come during “Purple Rain.” It was crazy. It was like, “Dude, you couldn’t ask for anything better than this.”McClean: When we were rehearsing, Prince was like, “So when you get to this section, I want you to stage dive.” I was like, “What does that look like?” Because I’d never done it before. I’m also not Prince where everybody’s got their eyes on me the whole time, the whole show, and they’re just dying to touch me.

Will they stick their hands up? And when we actually got to the arena, I couldn’t stage dive because the big sheet came up.Adande: If you watch the halftime performance, the way he holds his guitar when his silhouette is on the sheet is very phallic. AFP via Getty ImagesMischer: At the Olympics in 1996, we had created this shadow effect. We created shadows on a screen that was pulled up, reminded the world that saw those opening ceremonies that the Olympics started in Greece.

We had ancient Greek poses of discus throwers, javelin throwers, and all of that. We used that again with Prince and when he there were some comments about whether he was trying to make a statement.While Prince’s shadow didn’t cause the same kind of outrage that the wardrobe malfunction did, reported that more than 150 people complained to the Federal Communications Commission about it., Stephen Colbert jokingly referred to Prince’s “demonic guitar phallus.”McClean: Me and my sister, we were singers and dancers in Disney’s The Lion King. In that show there’s this African section where we all come out on stage and we’re flying these huge poles that have these beautiful rainbow kite birds on the end of them. I said, “Well, Prince is associated with doves, how about we do that same thing that Julie Taymor did in The Lion King?” I said we’ll do it on “Purple Rain,” and me, Maya, and Shelby can fly the birds while “Purple Rain” is happening.Shelby J.: It felt like I was trying to wrestle a marlin or something. Just with the wind blowing against this bird. And I just remember that moment. My arms are so sore, and my shoulders.

And I had to keep singing!Caro: I just remember at the end, just seeing him basking in that guitar solo on “Purple Rain,” with the rain coming down and I think it had this purple glow because they probably lit it that way. It just was like, “Whoa, this is really something.” This is an artistic statement rather than just a guy pushing those buttons and promoting his product. You just were in awe of him.Hayes: It’s like a movie within itself because of how it all unfolded.Coleman: It was the longest 12 minutes ever. It almost felt like slow motion.Berry: At the end, when he snatched that do-rag off his head, and threw it into the audience, I said, “Now, that’s show business. That’s how you do it.” Part VI: “I Always Make History”Even before Peyton Manning and the Colts wrapped up a 29-17 victory against the Bears, it was apparent that Prince didn’t just put on the greatest halftime show ever. He delivered one of the most iconic performances of his career to around the world. These days, almost four years since, it continues to be remembered as such.Meglen: We had a suite, so he could go and watch the second half in it.

We had a white van, a 16-seater van and we were gonna drive him from the little trailer. It’s just me and Paul with Prince.

And he’s like, two seats behind us, in the back. We started to read him all the texts we’re getting from people. And he finally leans over and he goes, “Hey guys,” and we just all high five each other.Arzate: We run through the stadium and when we show back up at the suite, he had just finished. We missed how it ended.

We walk into the suite, he’s already in the suite. I don’t know how.Coplin: I remember at the end of the show one of our producers went up to him and said, “I heard I’m not allowed to hug you.” And he said, “No, you’re not allowed to take pictures, but you’re allowed to hug me.”Adande: At the commissioner’s party, that night, after the game, we’re there and my friend, the late St.

Louis Post-Dispatch sports columnist Bryan Burwell, was there, and he told me how NFL commissioner Roger Goodell came in. Burwell goes up to him and says, “I think Prince kind of got one over on you guys.” And Goodell said sheepishly, “Yeah, that was a boner.”Caro: He took this massively overscaled event and just sort of bent it to his will.Adrian Quesada (former Grupo Fantasma guitarist): I remember hearing from a couple people in his band that they felt that there was a little bit of nervousness around the Super Bowl week with him. Which is hard to imagine. He just seems so superhuman.Hayes: After the fact, it was a lot of dap slapping, and he was happy with the way the band came off. And we went and looked at the video.

They added a lot of stuff. The CGI things.