ALL TOGETHER NOW: New Power Generation, on continuing Prince's Legacy

January 26 1980 was an unremarkable day in the small town of Jefferson, Arkansas. But it’s one Morris Hayes will remember forever. He was at home watching American Bandstand with his mother when presenter Dick Clark introduced a strange young man named Prince.

“My mom goes ‘oh my gosh – this guy is just the devil’. I found out later that he was just really nervous.”

Prince and Hayes’ paths would intersect in 1992 when pop’s purple icon hired Hayes, then a funk veteran who had toured with George Clinton, to lead his backing band, the New Power Generation. It was a task to which he would fatefully apply himself until 2012, when Prince debuted the all-female 3rdeyegirl, and which Hayes now revisits as leader of the NPG touring ensemble which performs at All Together Now.

“The word ‘genius’ is thrown around a lot. With Prince I saw it on a daily basis,” Hayes recalls. “We’ve all got gifts, man – but some people have this enhanced superpower that is beyond the average mortal. To be around him 20 years and see that on a daily basis… it was crazy.”

In addition to his extraordinary musical abilities, Prince had his eccentricities. He could be obsessive, wilful and intractable and if sharing a stage with him was an honour it also had the potential to be baffling and frustrating. The way his band coped was to assume the worst and play by ear.

“He was anything but regular,” says Hayes. “Over the years I figured out there were five distinct Princes, which I numbered. I would come in, not say anything and let him start. That way I’d figure it out.”

One version of Prince was charming and knockabout – a guy with whom you could kick back or shoot some hoops.

“That was ‘number three’. He wanted to play basketball, to joke and kid around. We’d joke about our mothers, just have a great time.

“And some days he was ‘number one’ which is what I called Purple Rain Prince. When you first saw Prince that is who you thought Prince was. “On certain days you knew he just meant business. He had no time for jokes, no time for play. And you’d be wise to mean business, too, or you got a headache that day. I knew which mode to switch to instantly and match his energy.”

Prince was at the height of his powers when Hayes came onboard. In 1992, the year Hayes joined, Prince released the landmark symbol album. The record was a critical smash though also the backdrop to the first sustained clash between the singer and his label, Warner. After disagreeing over the best lead single, relations turned sour, to the point where Prince refused to record under his original name. As bandleader, Hayes had a ringside seat to one of the most titanic struggles in music history.

He also came to understand over time that when Prince was seemingly projecting aloofness or waxing enigmatic, it was often just a case of the Voice of a Generation trying to fight through jitters.

“Prince would get nervous before television shows. I don’t know why – he always killed it. But before he went on, such was his attention to detail, he was super-tense. He’d call me up, ‘what are you wearing?’

“I’d say, ‘I’m wearing the hooded thing… and he’d go, ‘no, wear the mask’. Then he’d call back and ask ‘what are you gonna wear?’ again. He was really tense. A lot of that stuff – ‘he’s this mysterious artist guy… this mysterious person’. That was mostly nerves.”

Another issue was persuading Prince to stick to a setlist. The very definition of mercurial, tying him down to something as trifling as a prepared selection of songs wasn’t in the artist’s nature. But Prince also insisted on live instrumentation – which meant his backing vocals had to be pre-programmed.

“I’d tell him, ‘I know you hate it bro – but you gotta help me to help you… you gotta give me a setlist… He hated dead air – any space between the music. So we couldn’t have any dead-time. He had to give me a set-list. Did he stick to it? No.”

Hayes was of course shocked when Prince’s death was announced on April 21, 2016. From the horror and grief coalesced a determination to commemorate his mentor and inspiration.

So he literally put the band – that is NPG – back together for a show in Prince’s hometown of Minneapolis. Assembled to honour Prince were performers who’d backed him through his glory years: Andre Cymone (vocals), Kip Blackshire (vocals), Marva King (vocals), Tommy Barbarella (keyboards), Levi Seacer Jr (guitar), Kirk Johnson (drums), Tony Mosley (guitar, vocals), Sonny Thompson (bassist) and Damon Dickson (dancer, vocals).

Such was the response, Hayes was inspired to reassemble NPG – which he describes as interchangeable revue in the P-Funk tradition – on a more permanent basis. They’ve toured Europe and the US through 2017 and 2018 and their return to Ireland at All Together Now is much anticipated.

“It Minneapolis was really powerful – that was one of the things that made us think that there was an appetite for the music. Fans truly miss Prince and, with us being from that camp, it made sense to go and play.” Some singers are replaceable – others aren’t. There is little doubt as to which category Prince belongs. Which is why NPG share the vocals among a rotating cast. The aim is to conjure the spirit of Prince, not emulate him.

“Fans would be insulted if we got some kind of impersonator. You can’t do that – you can’t be Prince.”

The other dilemma is choosing what to include and what to omit. There were so many Princes: from the balladeer of ‘Purple Rain’ to the stoic funkateer of ‘Graffiti Bridge’ and the pop genius of ‘Raspberry Beret’. “Finding the balance is fun and difficult,” says Hayes. “Some people expect to hear ‘1999’ or ‘Purple Rain’. But there are those who would like the deeper cuts – stuff they might not have gotten to experience hearing Prince at various times. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback – ‘wow I didn’t think I would ever hear that song’.”