Prince exhibition at O2

Insight into star’s quirky lifestyle on and offstage

HE WAS a brilliant vocalist, virtuoso musician and theatrical showman.

And now Prince’s legion of fans are being given the chance to get up close and personal with the late US superstar when an exhibition dedicated to his life is launched this month. The show, titled

My Name , opens on October Is Prince 27 at the O2 Arena in London, the same venue he used for a record-breaking, 21-night run in 2007.

The exhibition will give some insight into Prince’s quirky lifestyle and obsessive attention to detail.

Alongside eye-catching and custom-made guitars, his outlandish costumes will be a centre of attention.

The singer, who died last year at 57 after an overdose of the painkiller fentanyl, was an innovative, often risqué, artist. Never tied to a single genre, he played soul, funk and rock ’n’ roll, and excelled at them all.

Among the hundreds of artefacts on display are clothes from 1984’s Purple Rain tour, 1988’s Lovesexy show and his 2007 London residency.

With Prince there was never any shortage of bling and the more unusual include dazzling ear-cuffs, a diamond vest worn for US fashion magazine V and a cap with a chain veil that graced the sleeve of the 1992 single, , that

My Name Is Prince lends its title to the exhibition.

“The outfits will take people back to a moment in time,” says Prince’s director of archives, Angie Marchese, at the late singer’s Paisley Park estate outside Minneapolis. “He was very hands-on with his clothes… He’d explain how he wanted to present himself and his team would cut the cloth and put the garments together in an upstairs room at Paisley Park.”

Prince Rogers Nelson was extravagant offstage, too. The ear-cuffs were worn to an NBA basketball game. Another much-loved accessory was his diamond-studded cane.

“He was very secure in his sense of style. Once, as he was getting ready to attend a red- carpet event in Los Angeles, he realised he’d left the cane at Paisley Park. So it was flown, first class, to the West Coast. It arrived as he was getting out of his car to walk the red carpet.”

For fans willing to pay extra for a VIP ticket, the exhibition will offer a glimpse of what it was like backstage by recreating his dressing room.

For guitar geeks, a treasure trove awaits. Those going on show include a Gibson guitar (the L6-S) from the Dirty Mind tour of the 1980s, the bass used for 1989’s film sound

Batman track and a custom-built Vox model that he played live in New Orleans and Las Vegas in 2013.

Pride of place goes to the orange Cloud guitar designed for him in Minnesota. A similar model in yellow sold for £103 000 (R1.85 million) at a US auction last year.

The Paisley Park estate, which contains studios, living quarters and a concert hall, was opened to fans a year ago. – Daily Mail