On this day in 1981, Prince was booed off stage after opening for the Rolling Stones at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles. It wasn't the first time. It had happened two days before. Personally invited by Mick Jagger, The Stones had good intentions in having the rising star open for their shows.
At the first concert on October 9, Prince and his band The Revolution took to the stage, only to be booed by a proportion of the 90,000 people in attendance. Apparently his act wasn’t a good fit for the crowd. The tipping point was when he opened his trench coat to reveal bikini briefs.
Things turned ugly with the crowd hurling things at the band. The abuse included racist and homophobic slurs. Efforts to calm the crowd failed and Prince left the stage, reportedly vowing not to return for the second date.
It was Jagger that persuaded him to return and give it another try. He recalled, "I talked to Prince on the phone once after he got two cans thrown at him in LA. He said he didn’t want to do any more shows. God, I got thousands of bottles and cans thrown at me! Every kind of debris. I told him, if you get to be a really big headliner, you have to be prepared for people to throw bottles at you in the night."
He did return for the second show and was booed once again. It was the last time Prince ever performed as an opening act.
