Prince fans make 'pilgrimages' to Minnesota's purple landmarks

They danced, they cried, they went crazy snapping cellphone photos. Prince fans and associates came from around the world to Paisley Park, First Avenue and other purple landmarks Friday to memorialize the Minnesota artist on the first anniversary of his death. Here are a few snapshots from around the Twin Cities.

First Avenue, 7:45 a.m.: By 8 a.m. Friday, a fan had left the first bouquet of the day: purple carnations, with a few red and pink roses.

David Michaelson, 34, stopped to snap a few photos of the gold star before going to work as a basketball coach in St. Paul. His father, Ky Michaelson, was a Hollywood stunt coordinator who worked with Prince on music videos, he said, teaching him to freefall onto an air bag.

When Michaelson was a kid, too young to appreciate it, he played with trucks in Paisley Park while his dad was working.

"I know everybody feels close to him in their own little way — which is cool," he said. "That's how he made people feel, special."

Michaelson flipped through photos on his iPhone, showing shots of Interstate 35W last night, awash in purple. He and his girlfriend spent a few hours driving to different bridges and signs lit in Prince's honor.

First Avenue seemed the place to go in the morning, he said. "This is going to be what I do on this day for the rest of my life."

JENNA ROSS

KMOJ, 8 a.m.: Back-to-back Prince was the lineup Friday at KMOJ, the first station in America to play the late Minneapolis-bred star on its airwaves back in 1978.

"We're celebrating our baby, our brother, Prince," Chantel SinGs purred into the mic at KMOJ's north Minneapolis studio, down the street from the Capri Theater, where Prince played his first show

Though listeners at home or in the car couldn't see it, SinGs was dressed for the one-year anniversary of Prince's death in a crinkly purple blazer and violet lipstick.

Her eyes had teared up on the drive in to work earlier that morning, when the first song of the day aired: It was "7," her favorite.

"I grew up on Prince," said the KMOJ morning host and singer. "It's just bittersweet the man is gone."

Guests came and went from the studio, and though each was on the radio for another purpose, they couldn't help but muse on Prince.

Sharon Smith-Akinsanya was promoting an upcoming career fair for people of color, an event Prince had equipped her to run when she worked for him in the early 1990s as a nightlife producer.

Keith Mayes, a professor at the University of Minnesota, was in for his weekly segment on African-American history.

While the music played, Mayes and SinGs discussed off-air how Prince's lyrics were "deeper" than songs made today. The next track on the radio, "1999," played quietly in the room. Mayes and SinGs stopped their conversation, looked at one another and said in unison, "That's nice."

SHARYN JACKSON

First Avenue, 9 a.m.: Wearing a Prince T-shirt, Rodney Fitzgerald, of Washington, D.C., smiled before the gold star. A 51-year-old from Eugene, Ore., paused to take a photograph. Liz Larson, 36, took a "two-block diversion" on her way to work at Target to pay her respects.

Just before 9 a.m., Mary Adams and her 10-year-old daughter, Rachel, ran up to the gold star for a few photos. The pair had driven six hours from Kansas City for a Prince "pilgrimage." On their itinerary: Paisley Park, the house where "Purple Rain" was filmed, the History Center, where Prince's costume from the movie is on display.

With a little spit, Adams rubbed her the tattoo on her forearm, trying to deepen its purple hues. The Prince symbol, formed by blooming lilies. Adams got the tattoo — her first — a month ago, so that it would be healed by today.

"This is where I need to be," she said, "and I had the pull inside to come here."

Onstage and off, Prince showed Adams, an actor, how to be true to oneself as an artist, she said. "I found him in 1982, and he hasn't left me yet," she said. "He was himself, and he never apologized." Adams paused, fighting back tears. "He was a good man. I miss him. Real bad. It's hard, it's hard."

JENNA ROSS

Paisley Park, 9:45 a.m.: "We just all had to be together at this one moment in time," Nevia Washington, from Omaha, said, standing on the grass across Audubon Road from Prince's studio complex in Chanhassen as the official time of death on Prince's death certificate (10:07 a.m.) neared. She and some of the other 30 or so fans who gathered there today — also from Ohio and Wales — knew each other from the Facebook group Prince: The Living Legend. But they acted as close as siblings.

One of them, Amy Taylor, opened up about needing "a medical procedure" the next day back in Toledo, but she "needed to be here now." As the group got up and danced and sang on the sidewalk while "Let's Go Crazy" played on some phone speakers, Taylor looked like she had already been healed.

The mood turned more somber, though, at 10:07. The music changed to "The Beautiful Ones." Arms went around shoulders. A batch of purple balloons was released.

"The emotions are off the charts," Washington said. "So much crying, but so much laughing, too."

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

Nicollet Mall, 10:30 a.m.: Randy Luedtke, owner of WaconiaVille Tours, boarded seven fans from around the United States into his Prince The Tour van Friday morning. From there, fans were able to hop off for 10-minute stops, snapping photos of popular Prince stops including First Avenue and Paisley Park.

Prince songs played on the radio as Luedtke rattled off princely trivia: How Prince shopped at the Electric Fetus last year on Record Store Day, how he purchased the Purple Rain house in south Minneapolis one year before his passing.

Carla Sewell, from Illinois, boarded the van with her family Friday and purchased Prince pins from the Electric Fetus. She had her nails painted purple and even wore a purple jacket to honor the late artist.

"He's my everything," she said of Prince. "Growing up, I used to listen to his music and feel like nobody understood me like him." BEATRICE DUPUY

Paisley Park, 10:50 a.m.: "It was the best of years, and the worst of years," Bobbie Drew of South St. Paul said of 2016.

Walking the fence line outside Prince's big white complex, she recounted what it felt like being there last April 21, when she was 21 weeks pregnant. "It was just miserable," she said. "I knew I'd have to come back today, and it'd be a happier day."

She said that while showing off all the purple mementos on the fence to her 8-month-old daughter, Ellis Camille Drew, who wore a Prince onesie and raspberry beret for the occasion, and who gave fist bumps to passersby that hit them right where they needed it most.

Bobbie's friend from Denver, Chris Aguilar Garcia, noted with an adoring smile, "Life goes on."

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

Paisley Park, 11:10 a.m.: "I knew him when all he could do was dream of having a building like this, so it's a very different experience for me to come here."

André Cymone said that standing across the street from his childhood friend's 65,000-square-foot mega-studio in the parking lot for Small World Daycare Center, where 89.3 the Current's crew set up a tent to broadcast live during Friday's 24-hour Prince marathon. The radio staffers looked like the outcast kids in high school who crossed the street to smoke.

Also one of Prince's earliest bandmates, Cymone squeezed in an interview with the Minnesota public radio station as well as one with German public radio before stepping inside Paisley Park for only the second time. He was there that day to perform with the Revolution and talk on panels. His only other time there was sometime in the late-'80s or early-'90s, when Prince found out Cymone was in town from Los Angeles.

"He told me, 'Maceo's playing sax with me tonight,'" Cymone recalled. "I said, 'Maceo …? You mean, Maceo Maceo?!'" (James Brown's longtime sax man, Maceo Parker, was a hero to these Minneapolis kids.)

"Those days are over," Cymone said. "But to me, he will always be alive. I don't know how to explain it, but it's just different with losing him. I can't sit down and talk with him anymore, unfortunately, but I don't feel like he's really gone."

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

First Avenue, 11:45 a.m.: The group gathered inside First Avenue, their cameras cocked.

Tour guide Daniel Corrigan introduced himself with just a few of his many titles – onetime stagehand, official photographer and facilities guy. "This soon will be my 26th anniversary at the club," he said.

The two dozen people clapped – the first of many rounds of applause. Most of those on Friday's midday tour were from Europe, including a few from England, Wales and Sweden. Clara Blennow Nilsson, of Stockholm, wore a handmade gold necklace modeled after the gold star outside the iconic club, where Prince filmed his 1984 movie "Purple Rain."

Corrigan described first hearing the news of Prince's death a year ago. Looking out the window, he saw a woman, sobbing, walk up to the star with Prince's name with a bouquet of four white flowers. The memorial grew from there, he said: "Artworks and photographs and little red corvettes and raspberry berets." After three days, the collection was so big that "we had to stop, because it was starting to encroach on our fire door, 40 feet down from the star."

The team took the pile apart, he said, piece by piece, archiving it with the Minnesota Historical Society.

Several people again clapped.

He led the group inside. They stopped in the center of the main room, which was empty, quiet. The Prince fans were silent. Several, all at once, began to cry. One woman offered tissues. A few hugged.

Corrigan described the club's history, its sound, the way that people playing onstage "can see every face in the room." The group explored the green room backstage ("The sex room!" one guy exclaimed), admiring Corrigan's many photographs but focusing on one: A close-up of Prince, in red, playing guitar. They checked out the garage, where Prince's driver, in 2007, doodled "Prince walked thru here!" on the door. They took turns sitting in the owner's box.

Prince attended shows here, too, Corrigan told the group. He saw the petite superstar at Janelle Monae, Lauryn Hill, the local group Gayngs. One woman softly gasped.

"It just gets to you in the strangest places," said Helen Nordholm Andersson, who was wearing a T-shirt with purple bananas, a reference to the lyric in "Let's Go Crazy." Andersson trekked to Minnesota from Stockholm for her 50th birthday, a gift to herself after a difficult year. Being inside Paisley Park affected her. She had prepared for that, she said, forgoing eye makeup. But on Friday, Andersson dabbed purple eye shadow.

In such moments, "it's nice to be around these people," she said, nodding to the women beside her, "because they get you."

JENNA ROSS

Minnesota History Center, 4 p.m.: Fans gathered before a dimly lighted case, snapping selfies and group photos with Prince's most recognizable get-up.

Emily Anderson traveled from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Minneapolis to party with friends for Prince. She thought she remembered Prince's iconic Purple Rain suit as velvet. But as she got a closer look, she saw otherwise.

Flight attendant Lauren Barrett came from Georgia, using vacation time to memorialize Prince in Minnesota. It was her first time seeing the outfit up close.

"It was interesting to see his measurements," she said as she left.

Meanwhile, Suzanne Wint took notes for a research project. The St. Olaf College visiting professor is working on a project that compares Prince's local and global reputations.

"Minnesotans seemed to understand him as a neighbor, not an international artist," she said.

BEATRICE DUPUY

Paisley Park, 4 p.m.: A sign of how well they know Prince's musical instincts — even 30 years after they last played with him as a group — Wendy Melvoin and her bandmates in the Revolution unknowingly rehearsed the song "Paisley Park" with much the same spin Prince put on it for his last concert at the place he named after it. Melvoin only realized the similarities Thursday when she saw a video of her friend's final hometown show.

"I said, 'Oh, God, I told you guys we had to do it!'" the Revolution guitarist told the Celebration crowd packed into the Paisley soundstage, where Prince's "Purple Rain"-era band gave their first of two concerts Friday, the anniversary of their friend's death.

Hard to believe it, but it was actually the Revolution's first time playing Prince's mega-studio in Chanhassen, which opened in 1987 right around the time the band dissolved. Unlike their emotionally raw reunion concerts at First Avenue in September, Melvoin and her bandmates — drummer Bobby Z, bassist Mark Brown and keyboardists Lisa Coleman and "Dr." Matt Fink — kept Friday afternoon's set squarely in the "celebration" category.

They left out more heartbreaking fare like "Sometimes It Snows in April" and stuck to many of the most funked-up tunes, such as "DMSR," "Let's Work," "Erotic City" and "Controversy" along with the must-do hits, including "1999," "Let's Go Crazy," "Raspberry Beret" and "Purple Rain." Perhaps to add a spark of unpredictability around their upcoming tour dates, they also threw two 1984-era unreleased songs, "Our Destiny" and "Roadhouse Garden."

They saved "Purple Rain" for the end and let the 1,000-plus fans bask in the purple lighting glow and "woo-hoo" outro. "You're going to sing this for him, right?" Melvoin asked at the beginning. As the song came to its lilting end, she whispered into the mic, "Good night, sweet man."

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER

Paisley Park, 8:35 p.m.: The evening found the Revolution a little looser and more comfortable.

Prince's "Purple Rain" band played songs from the movie, including "Take Me with U" and "Let's Go Crazy." They dusted off other oldies including "Controversy," "Raspberry Beret" and "Erotic City."

Emotions peaked Friday as Melvoin introduced the song that pushed her to tears at First Avenue when the Revolution reunited in September for three overly emotional nights.

"He wrote 'Sometimes It Snows in April' on this day in April 1985 at Sunset Sound [studio in Los Angeles]," she said. "It takes on new meaning. I don't want to give it too much meaning."

The words were heart-tugging enough, as Melvoin had to turn around in mid-song and compose herself for a second. The 1,000 fans applauded her resilience.

When it came time for "Purple Rain," security personnel had boxes of Kleenex ready. Fans swooned, swayed and waved their arms.

"I was [in St. Paul] for the memorial tribute in October and I ran away before they did 'Purple Rain.' I couldn't take it then," said Soma Ghosh, who is from the United Kingdom. "Now I felt it was time to hear it at Paisley Park."

JON BREAM