Following decades of his passing up the opportunity to perform at the Grammys unless he was paid millions of dollars, in 2004 Prince called the televised show’s producers and asked to perform with Beyoncé.
Despite longtime executive producer of the Grammy Awards, Ken Ehrlich (who was behind every annual telecast except one from 1980 thru 2020) trying for years to get Prince to take to the stage at the awards, it was only after Beyoncé was announced as a performer twenty years ago that the superstar singer/songwriter agreed to take part.
In an interview with Variety, about Prince Ehrlich said “He has a very limited but very impactful Grammy history. He had presented a few times where I had him on, but if you think about it, not much before ‘Baby I’m a Star’ with him and Beyoncé. Every year I would call the guy and the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘Do you have $3 million?’ I’d say, ‘No.’ ‘Well, call me next year.’ “But for the Beyoncé segment, he actually called me, and said, ‘Hey, I wanna be with Beyoncé. Can you do anything? I have this great idea.'”
Despite the performance going on to be a showstopper as the duo perfromed ‘Purple Rain’, ‘Baby I’m a Star,’ ‘Crazy in Love’ and ‘Let’s Go Crazy’, Ken revealed that Beyoncé initially wasn’t keen on a joint performance.
He explained: “That was when I went to Matthew Knowles, and then wound up with Tina at this studio while Beyoncé did a photo shoot, and convincing first her mother that she should do this, because she didn’t want to do it. She was up for ‘Dangerously in Love’ that year and said, ‘Why do I need to perform with Prince? (instead of getting a solo slot, though she ultimately got both). But Prince for me was always… it was a quest. He was incredibly enigmatic. I really was fond of him. He would try and be funny with you, you know? Sly is a better word — that’s what he was. So I tried to give that segment a little bit of who he was.”
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Author: Saul Goode
Photo: penner