Prince’s old bandmates are hoping to join forces for a mega Purple celebration one day. Morris Hayes of The New Power Generation believes the late funk legend would have enjoyed seeing his various backing bands team up for a special music festival. “I would love to play on the same bill with The Revolution”, says Hayes. “I spoke to Prince, in around 1998, about holding a huge concert. It was when [early preparations for] 1999 New Year’s Eve were coming up. I went, ‘Dude, 1999 is going to be the biggest party ever in the history of the world. We’ve got to do the craziest gig ever for that, like at Madison Square Garden and have the show of all time. We could have ‘Prince-apalooza’ with all of the Prince family acts playing.’ We could have had our own all-day festival with Prince topping the bill. That would have been the bomb. Sadly it didn’t happen then and it never materialised when Prince was alive but I really hope that it can now, I think if we did something like that then everybody wins – all the artists and the fans.”
Both The New Power Generation and The Revolution are currently touring separately in honour of their late band leader.
Turn to page 31 for our exclusive interview with The Revolution keyboardist Matt Fink