Prince is to embark on a solo tour of Europe, playing piano. The tour is expected to begin in Austria on 21 November, with four UK dates – including a planned appearance at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London – though the Guardian believes not all dates have been confirmed.
The singer invited a small group of European journalists – including the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis – to his Paisley Park studio in Minneapolis last weekend, for a typically opaque event that involved a group interview, a live performance, and a club night at which no alcohol was available and vegan food was served.
At the event, he said he was planning to tour Europe without a band because he was so unused to getting bad reviews that he felt he needed to challenge himself. During the course of his session with the journalists, he invited Petridis to sing Sign o’ the Times with him. Sadly, our representative declined the opportunity to become the first Guardian journalist to perform with Prince.
A seemingly ad-hoc, barely planned tour is nothing new to Prince. In early 2014, he created a sensation in the UK when he visited for his Hit and Run tour, playing small venues with almost no notice, announced via a press conference in the front room of singer Lianne La Havas, and including a show in the King’s Place concert hall beneath the Guardian’s offices.
Alexis Petridis’s report from Minneapolis will appear in Friday’s G2 Film&Music, and online on Thursday.
