Princely Fun

Prince was reborn Saturday night at the Hollywood Bowl.

No, the pop, rock ‘n’ funk master hasn’t gone back to using his old name. The Bowl marquee still listed the Artist Formerly Known as Prince as the evening’s attraction. And the Artist, if you will, still relies on that curvy little symbol on his albums and press releases.

But Saturday’s performance was such a superbly assured affair that it reminded us once again of all the creativity and wonder that Prince brought to the pop scene in the ‘80s--magical attributes that had largely been missing from his work for most of this decade.

“Ooh, everybody’s here . . . this is the jam of the year,” the Artist declared in the song that kicked off the 90-minute concert--his shirt, pants, shoes and hair all fittingly gold-sparkled for the gala occasion.

Even though he was speaking to a rapturous crowd, it was a bold declaration for someone whose problems in the ‘90s have gone far beyond his name game.

Long before he decided in 1993 to abandon the name Prince in favor of the symbol, the Artist had begun to lose the special touch that made him in the ‘80s one of the all-time creative and commercial giants of American pop.

Thanks to such marvelously imaginative albums as “Dirty Mind” and “Purple Rain,” Prince challenged musical and sociological boundaries so brilliantly that he went from being compared to some of the greats of contemporary pop--Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie--to becoming arguably their equal.

But the heady ascent and his prodigious talents as a writer, performer, producer and pop strategist partially stripped him of his ability to accurately measure his own work.

The blind spots stretched from his films (the hollow “Graffiti Bridge”) to concerts (his 1993 tour was a corny conceptual mess) to albums (where frequent good work was smothered by a surplus of ordinary tunes).

The Artist has blamed many of his problems in recent years on his strained relationship with Warner Bros. Records. Now that he is free of that contract, he says he has been rejuvenated.

Unfortunately, he didn’t demonstrate it in last year’s “Emancipation” album, a hopelessly uneven three-disc affair that again raised questions about his artistic judgment.

*

As if sensing the need to reestablish public trust, the Artist has decided to go to his strength: live shows. The Bowl stop was part of an ambitious tour that began in July and is expected to stretch well into next year.

Unlike the hokey damsel-in-distress sketch that opened the 1993 shows, the emphasis this time was on pure Prince, with much of the material from his ‘80s mother lode. When he reached back to such vintage songs as “Purple Rain” and “1999,” things absolutely soared.

Even on the somewhat less distinguished ‘90s tunes, including “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” the energy and dynamics of the show kept things moving.

Despite nicely tailored support from the five-piece New Power Generation band, the Artist was virtually a one-man show--sometimes absorbed by the music, other times playful in a teasingly, Chaplinesque way.

It was a frequently breathtaking performance so filled with nervous energy that he seemed at times unable to contain his own enthusiasm. At one point, he raced over to the piano, playing a dozen or so notes, then leaped on top of it. Suddenly, he was off again, dropping to the stage in a series of splits that were so spectacular that James Brown would marvel. This wasn’t the desperate energy of a man eager to regain his commercial footing but the desire of a performer out to reassert his relevance.

Throughout the concert he wove the songs around his usual message of sin and salvation.

“Look up there,” the Artist said dramatically at one spot in the show, pointing to a moon overhead that was so bright that it seemed like an elaborate prop. Unless you can explain how the moon got there, he continued, you’d better put your faith in someone or something. “Love God,” he suggested.

The only time the show sputtered was at the end, when the Artist, citing an 11 p.m. Bowl curfew, compressed his usual extended encore into less than 10 minutes.

Despite the triumph Saturday, the challenge isn’t over for the Artist. He still needs to deliver a record with the economy and imagination of his early ones. Yet this was a crucial step that reminded us why we cared so much about him in the first place. Whatever you chose to call him, his talent is again ablaze.