At the 2007 Super Bowl in Miami, Prince Rogers Nelson blew the crowd and the world away with a halftime performance that most consider the best in Super Bowl history.
In the wake of Prince’s sudden passing April 21, 2016 at the age of 57, the NFL documentary short about his halftime performance, posted by the NFL YouTube channel two months ago, has surpassed 14 million hits.
The world over, memories of Prince swim back to us. This is one specific memory, a memory shared by millions. This was a day of torrential rain, a day that Prince took to the stage and electrified the world while the skies cracked open and poured rain down upon him.
The short NFL documentary about Prince’s 2007 Super Bowl halftime show tells the tale of Prince singing in the Miami rain well.
“The morning of the game I opened the curtains of my hotel room and it was like a scene out of Moby Dick,” said Super Bowl halftime show production designer Bruce Rogers. “The wind was blowing, and the palm trees. The rain was one of those Miami rain storms that would not relent.”
That’s when legendary producer Don Mischer had someone get Prince on the phone.
“I want you to know it’s raining,” he tells Prince.
“Yes, it’s raining,” says Prince.
“Are you okay with that?” Mischer asks.
Prince: “Can you make it rain harder?”
It did rain harder. Prince graced the stage with the consummate cool for which he is famed, combining the forces of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Marvin Gaye into something else even more powerful: Prince.
The heavens poured, and Prince brought the music in a mighty way.
“I was just panicked,” said Don Mischer. “Prince was using four separate live electric guitars. The stage was made out of a very slick tile, which when it got wet, was even more slippery. He had two beautiful dancers with him, the twins. They were wearing eight inch heels. And I was thinking, oh my God, what’s going to happen now?”
Well, the crowd loved every minute of it, and the dancers moved beautifully, and Prince owned the stage with coolness and grace. From the “Let’s Go Crazy” opener to Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” to the mind-blowing closer of “Purple Rain,” even on television, the energy was palpable.
“It felt surprising. It felt spontaneous. Whatever script you might have had in your head for ‘okay, here’s what he’s gonna do,’ he didn’t do that,” said Alan Lightman, author of the Prince biography Let’s Go Crazy. “He played big epic Prince-style guitar solos, turning the bad weather to his dramatic advantage. It was almost like a special effect. He could totally lean into that and make it seem like, ‘Sure it’s raining; of course it’s raining; it’s supposed to be raining. I ordered that.’ ”
Prince stalked the stage, fireworks exploded, and he the wind and rain did look made to order.
“That Prince set is so wild. He does other people’s songs,” said New York Times senior music critic Jon Parales. “He’s not promoting himself. He’s just making music. It’s profound, it’s loud, and it’s funky, and it’s just one performer shaking the entire world.”
And that’s just what he did. He shook the entire world.
So let us end our tale of one dramatic night with an appropriately dramatic phrase from Hamlet:
“Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet Prince. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”
