Friday marked the one-year anniversary of Prince’s death, and the band with whom he worked most closely in his 1980s heyday, the Revolution, is still reeling from it.
The musicians — guitarist Wendy Melvoin, keyboardist Lisa Coleman, drummer Bobby Z, keyboardist Matt Finks and bassist Brown Mark — have reunited for a tour to celebrate their friend’s music, but it’s also part of their grieving process.
“It’s our shiva,” Melvoin says. When the quintet did three tribute shows in September at First Avenue in Minneapolis, where they recorded most of the soundtrack for “Purple Rain” with Prince in 1984, “the first night was devastatingly depressing. By night three there were smiles, you could feel a weight being lifted from the room. Then we walked off stage, collapsed into each other’s arms and wept.”
At 57, Prince was known for clean living, but suffered from chronic hip pain. He began using a potent painkiller, fentanyl. On April 21, 2016, he was found dead in his Paisley Park recording studio.