Prince-- Down From a Mountain

The King of Pop finally came down to speak to his subjects through television, but the music world’s Prince dived into his people.

That’s right, Prince--the other notoriously reclusive pop star who is usually shielded from the public by a combination of self-fueled mystique and burly bodyguards--stage-dived into a sea of fans during his concert at his new Los Angeles club Glam Slam on Friday.

The two-hour-plus show launched a long-awaited campaign to recapture the American public, not to mention justify the huge contract he signed for his Paisley Park company with Time Warner last year.

It’s been more than four years since Prince has done a U.S. concert tour, and he hasn’t done a formal interview since the mid-’80s.

Now he’s resurfaced with a four-song performance on “The Arsenio Hall Show” last Thursday, the Glam Slam concert on Friday and the announcement that he’ll begin a 10-city North American tour in Florida later this month, concentrating on relatively small venues, including an April 13-15 stand at the Universal Amphitheatre. There is also talk of an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” in April, and sources close to him report that he is developing a new film project.

The timing and nature of this emergence make comparisons to Michael Jackson’s recently public profile inevitable.

“He simply decided he wanted to tour the U.S. and it’s not more complicated than that,” said Prince’s spokesman Michael Pagnotta. “He didn’t time his tour to follow Jackson’s Oprah Winfrey appearance. He just wants to play. This tour’s been planned for a while.”

Although he’s still not doing interviews, Prince is giving the impression of coming down from the mountain. Music-industry watchers say that’s just what he needs to revitalize his sales power to the mid-’80s level of “1999” and “Purple Rain,” when he ranked among the hottest properties in the music and movie world.

The four albums he’s released since the 1989 conclusion of his “Lovesexy” tour have sold well. But only one has matched the superstar numbers of his mid-’80s breakthroughs, and that, the 1989 “Batman” soundtrack, was boosted by its association with the successful movie. Of his own film projects, only “Purple Rain” was a hit. 1986’s “Under the Cherry Moon” and 1990’s “Graffiti Bridge” were both commercial and critical flops.

The “ “ album has sold about 1.5 million copies in the U.S. since its release last fall. But despite the success of its third single, “7,” which reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart recently and remains in the Top 10, album sales have leveled off. The interest in Prince simply isn’t what it once was.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that when you’re in a slump you need to take measures to get out of it,” said Tommy Nast, vice president of the pop music trade publication Album Network. “I wouldn’t have him go on with Oprah or anything, but maybe it’s time he lets people get a little closer to him to see what has made him tick and see what Prince is all about.”

Said Ken Barnes, editor of the music trade publication Radio & Records, “Prolonged mystique reaches a natural limit, and then you have to do something else to keep interest up.”

Prince himself teased with his mystique Friday, opening the show with “My Name Is Prince,” a blustery boast that simultaneously inflates and pokes at the singer’s self-styled image. Taking it a step further, he performed the number wearing a hat fitted with a chain-link veil, completely obscuring his face.

But once he stripped the veil away, he revealed an artist eager to please. That sense increased as he was clearly buoyed by the crowd’s boisterous response, both to the songs from “ “ that made up the first half of the show and the more familiar older hits (including “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Purple Rain” and “1999”) that dominated the second set.

“He’s being more down to earth, and he hasn’t done that for years,” said Annastesia Barraga, a 22-year-old singer who lives in Burbank, standing first in the line of 400 paying fans who had managed to get tickets for the show. The rest of the capacity 1,200 people attending the show were invited entertainment-industry insiders, including Arsenio Hall and singer Peter Gabriel.

No one expects Prince to see the same instant sales results that Jackson’s various TV appearances produced, with Jackson’s “Dangerous” album soaring up the charts in the week after the Winfrey interview.

But a successful tour is expected to stimulate album sales, with some predicting that “ “ could reach the 3 million mark in the United States by the end of this trek.

“I think he’ll end up with a tremendous response from the marketplace,” said the artist’s manager Ron Stone, whose clients include Bonnie Raitt, Sonic Youth, Rickie Lee Jones and Nirvana. “He is a great performer and no one here has seen him for so long.”

And frankly, many of the Glam Slam fans would discourage their hero from following Jackson’s footsteps onto “Oprah.”

“He’s not that desperate,” said one fan. “That’s for when one’s career is in the toilet.”