Rolling Stone Australia — July 2017

¥ON EACH NIGHTof thePurple Raintour, Prince and the Revolution

huddled backstage for a prayer. “It was a meaningful ritual,” says

bassistMarkBrown.“Thecrowdsweresoloud,anditwassocrazy,

that we needed each other because that was the only thing you had:

each other for support.” With Prince’s moviePurple Raincatapulting

thesingertowardmegastardom,the98showshedidinsupportof

the soundtrack album were like Broadway productions. Prince began

theshowascendingfrombeneaththestageonahydrauliclift,and

wentthroughfivecostumechanges.“Hehadallthesevisualcues,”

recalls keyboardist Lisa Coleman. “He’d throw a hankie into the air,

andwhenthehankiehittheground,that’swhenwewouldstop.”At

the Los Angeles Forum, Bruce Springsteen and Madonna joined

Princefortheencore,whichincludedanearlyhalf-hour-longver-

sionof“PurpleRain”.“Hewantedtotowerovereverybody,”sayskey-

boardistMattFink.“HewastheMuhammadAliofrock.”DAVID BROWNE

1984-85 ‘PURPLE RAIN’ TOUR

PRINCE

¥“ THERE WAS NO concept of charts

and no concept of airplay,” says LL

Cool J, describing the landscape for

Run-DMC’s 1986 tour, which fea-

tured LL, the Beastie Boys, Who-

dini and others as openers. That

underground status changed two

months into the tour, when Run-

DMC had a breakout MTV hit with

their Aerosmith collaboration “Walk

This Way”, from their Raising Hell

album. “Motherfuckers in the front

row started looking like the Ra-

mones and Cyndi Lauper,” says DMC

of the new white fans who came to

check out their shows. “We got a

bunch of Madonnas asking for au-

tographs.” DMC also noticed that

cross-cultural appeal working the

other way as a predominantly black

audience embraced the tour’s beer-

spraying opening act, the Beastie

Boys, then months away from re-

leasing their debut LP, Licensed to

Ill.“The Beasties were crazy,” recalls

rapper Ecstasy of Whodini. “They

created an illusion that they were

happy-go-lucky and careless, but

they were on top of their shit. They

were the white Run-DMC.” Compe-

tition among the artists was fierce. “I

wanted to chain-saw the audience,”

says LL Cool J, who was 18 years old

at the time. Toward the end of the

tour, a riot at a show in Long Beach,

California, provided fuel for neg-

ative media coverage. But Raising

Hell’s positive legacy is undeniable.

As DMC says today, “When Obama

first got elected, all my white friends

said, ‘That’s because of what Run-

DMC did.’ ” CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN

RUN-DMC

1986

‘RAISING

HELL’ TOUR

July, 2017 Rolling Stone | 69

FROM TOP: GETTY IMAGES; ROB VERHORST/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

Prince in

Inglewood,

1985

Run and DMC

(from left) in

Amsterdam, 1987