Today we celebrate the incomparable Prince Rogers Nelson. The legendary musician was born on this day in 1958 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to jazz singer Mattie Della and and pianist and songwriter John Lewis Nelson (whose stage name was Prince Rogers). It's clear that he was born into a very active world of music, and by age 19, he had already carved his own path when he secured a record deal with Warner Bros. Records.
The world watched the enigmatic artist evolve through several notable eras of his career throughout the 1980s and 90s: the Dirty Mind era that pushed the boundaries of subject matter, the Purple Rain era that created his famous band The Revolution, and even the "Love Symbol" era when he had to be referred to as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince."
This video finds Prince and The Revolution in the height of the Purple Rain-era performing to a crowd of over 50,000 fans. They start the show with the album's opening song "Let's Go Crazy", and when Prince begins his famous introduction ("Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life..."), "go crazy" is just what crowd does.
