Prince? Right bloomin’ diva
DIMINUTIVE rock star Prince was a small but mighty talent - and had large orders when it came to his backstage riders, a promoter has revealed.
The iconic Purple Rain singer clearly didn’t suffer from hay fever, after asking for $10,000 worth of flowers at one concert alone. Maybe he wanted to party like it was 1999.
American concert guru Danny Zelisko, who has put on more than 10,000 shows including those by Paul McCartney, Queen and Bruce Springsteen, lets slip about the requests in his new book All Exce$$ Occupation Concert Promoter.
He said: “Your role as a concert promoter is to be the host.
“A good host knows – and gets – what the guests prefer because he wants to throw a good party. The backstage area is their house.
“One rider that I thought was really out in his dressing room
there was Prince’s. His rider asked for this special kind of roses or carnations – from Holland. He wanted an entire dressing room filled with these flowers, and it was going to cost $10,000.” And instead of nipping down the nearest garage for a couple of bunches instead, Danny obliged. He continued: “I thought it was a little bit outrageous but that was what he wanted. I wonder how many shows he did with those flowers in the dressing room. “Prince must have been keeping a lot of flower companies in business.”
One of the best-selling musicians of all time, Prince was 57 when he died of an accidental fentanyl overdose at his Paisley Park home in Minnesota back in 2016.
He was reported to have requested a doctor administer a vitamin B12 shot at 6pm everyday on his 2004 Musicology tour. Danny who was a huge fan of Prince added: “He had that Greta Garbo thing going on – he did almost everything right. “He wasn’t the guy who came on and did a lot of talk shows and made every facet of his life public. He was this strange, sexy kind of guy who made this incredible music.
“I guarantee you this is one guy who wasn’t ready to check out so young. The doves sure did cry on that day.”