This is Prince, the story of Sign of the Times, brought to you by the Currents in collaboration with the Prince Estate, Paisley Park, and Warner Records.

Hello, welcome to the seventh episode of this podcast. I'm Andrea Swenson. I'm an

author and a radio host in Minneapolis and this series is dedicated to unpacking the many

twists and turns that Prince made on his way to releasing his critically

adored epical double album Sign of the Times.

In this episode, we're going to talk about Prince's Epic Sign of the Times tour,

which swept across Europe in May and June of 1987,

and was filmed for the concert movie Sign of the Times.

This is the tour that introduced Prince's first post-revolution band to the world.

And he would emerge as the enthralling bandleader of a dazzling and much more theatrical stage

show. For this tour, Prince was even directing the audience to join in the production.

Ticket holders were instructed to attend the shows wearing

peach or black. There are so many incredible stories about the Sign of the

Times tour, but I thought we'd start at the same point where the sign of the times film begins by staring into

that electric blue hypnotic orb. My name is Leroy Bennett. I was Prince's production designer also co-creator, creative partner, and basically everything that we did together.

I was wondering if you could start by telling the story of the plasma ball. Oh my God, okay. Well the plasma ball

was a very trendy thing at the time in the 80s. I don't know who bought it

for him, but we had a plasma ball in the rehearsal hall or in the

studio I can't remember where it came from.

The zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt?

Well you'll never guess who introduced that to Prince.

This is Dr. Fink.

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