The highs had me jumping up and down with my hands in the air. The lows brought tears to my eyes. My mouth was wide-open, but I was too in awe to scream. And this is another thing I love about Europe: They love music and don’t care how ridiculous they look. They just go nuts, leaping and waving, which is what I was doing when suddenly, Prince stepped to the edge of the stage, leaned forward, and stuck his tongue out at me. (Later on, when I told him this, he just smiled his sweetly mischievous smile.)
Out of “The Future” came the iconic chords that blow the walls open for “1999”—which had the whole place screaming along. Then came the crazy lead beat for “Housequake.” He played a lot of the big songs, “Purple Rain,” of course, and “Take Me with You,” and stuff like that. Rosie Gaines started out as the New Power Generation’s keyboardist and later stepped in with vocals when Prince was ready for a change in sound, and that night, Rosie was a wonder. She came on and killed it during “Let’s Jam It” and “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
They brought the long set home with “When Doves Cry”—and I was crying, too. When the stadium chanted and screamed him back onstage for an encore, he did “Baby I’m a Star”—insane Latin rhythms and dance moves with spins and slides—which segued to “Brother with a Purpose” and “We Can Funk.” When he launched into “Thieves in the Temple,” I felt Daddy’s grip on my elbow.
“Mayte, do you hear that? It’s Arabic—this music—this is your music!”
“You should be dancing to that,” Mama shouted in my ear over the roar of the concert. “He needs to see you dance. Maybe he’d hire you for a music video or—”
“You guys,” I shouted back, “can we please not be talking about this right now? Just enjoy the show!”
I turned my back to them and continued going completely nuts like everyone else around us until the final bars of “Respect.” They brought the lights up, and people milled toward the exits in a haze. A feeling I couldn’t define—love, unity, happiness, contagious energy—bound us all together, made us smile at one another, yield the right of way at the gates, and wave as we drove out calling, “Buenas noches.” In the car on the way back to the campground, I was practically comatose.
I was completely in awe of this performer. What he’d done on that stage—that was all I could think about. And this wasn’t a romantic thing. I wasn’t smitten with him that way. Not yet. But I’d never experienced anything so electrifying. Everyone on the stage worked his or her heart out. Everything was perfect, but nothing came off as routine or overdone. The look of it was as finely tuned as the music. At the center of it all was this supernova of a performer who danced as hard as any of the dancers and played every instrument he could get his hands on during the hundred-minute set.
With our front-row view, I could see the straining neck muscles and wardrobe drenched in sweat. As a performer who knows how to give up everything on the floor, I knew how hard these people were working. But I could also feel how their energy fed off his. Driving down the dark highway on the way back to our campsite, I could feel that force pulling me. Not to be with him, but to be an artist. To perform with absolute commitment. To dance with absolute joy. Now I know this is what inspiration feels like. Back then, I only knew I had to feel it again.
On the way back to Wiesbaden, Mama formulated a plan, and she was sticking to it. “Mayte, that Middle Eastern music—you’re going to send him a tape of yourself dancing. You should be in one of his videos.”
Daddy agreed with her, but I had one foot back in reality.
“You guys are crazy,” I said. “We don’t have anyone’s information. We don’t even know where they’ll be a week from now.”
“I’ll get the info,” said Mama. “You make the tape.”
“You’re dreaming. It’s not going to happen.”
But when we arrived back in Wiesbaden, Mama did some checking and discovered that the Nude Tour was right behind us. We saw Prince in Barcelona on July 25. From there, the show was going to Marbella and La Coruna, then to Belgium and the Netherlands, and then they’d be in Germany, performing in Dortmund and then at Maimarkthalle, a huge concert and exhibition venue in Mannheim on August 8.
“We’re going,” said Mama. “We are going, and I don’t care what it takes, we are going to get that videotape to Prince.”
“What videotape? There is no tape.”
“You’re going to make one.”
“Mama, I’m not making a videotape. I have school starting soon. I have bookings. I don’t have time or equipment to do it in a way that would be—It would have to be, you know, professional. Didn’t you see how perfect everything was? The lighting? The—the everything? And you have no way to get it to him. It’s a waste of time.”
“All it has to be is you dancing,” she said. “Just like that.”