{"id":806678,"date":"2020-04-22T12:56:48","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T18:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=988310"},"modified":"2020-04-22T12:56:48","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T18:56:48","slug":"flashback-tom-jones-pink-floyds-david-gilmour-cover-princes-purple-rain-in-1992","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-tom-jones-pink-floyds-david-gilmour-cover-princes-purple-rain-in-1992\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Tom Jones, Pink Floyd\u2019s David Gilmour Cover Prince\u2019s \u2018Purple Rain\u2019 in 1992"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

To mark the fourth anniversary of Prince<\/a>\u2019s death this week, the producers of the Grammys put together an all-star tribute to the Purple One<\/a> with performances of his songs by John Legend, the Foo Fighters, St. Vincent, Morris Day and the Time, and many others. Strangely absent from the festivities, though, was \u201cWhat\u2019s New Pussycat?\u201d belter Tom Jones<\/a>, who experienced a late-career renaissance in the late Eighties, in part thanks to a sleek, hyper\u2013New Wave cover of Prince\u2019s \u201cKiss\u201d<\/a> that he recorded with Art of Noise. The track was a Number Five hit in the U.K. and has subsequently become one of his most performed songs live.<\/p>\n

A couple of years later, Jones decided to keep the Prince love going by covering His Royal Badness\u2019 greatest hit, \u201cPurple Rain,\u201d as part of his ITV miniseries The Right Time<\/em>, which ran throughout the summer of 1992. The show found him examining the roots of pop music with episodes dedicated to gospel, soul, country, and rhythm & blues, and he used it as a platform to team with a stunning guest list that included Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper, Erasure, and Joe Cocker, among others. But perhaps the most unexpected collaboration was with Pink Floyd<\/a> frontman David Gilmour<\/a> on \u201cPurple Rain.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Pink Floyd were experiencing a massive commercial surge at the time, after their 1987 LP A Momentary Lapse of Reason <\/em>enabled them to play stadiums throughout the late Eighties, and they were still a few years out from another monster tour in support of 1994\u2019s The Division Bell<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You can hear that confidence in Gilmour\u2019s solo for \u201cPurple Rain.\u201d Never once does he imitate or even quote Prince\u2019s original lead line. Much like how Jones made the vocal line a distinctively Tom Jones performance \u2014 with his signature deep-toned melodrama (and widening eyes on the line \u201cI never wanted to be your weekend lover\u201d) \u2014 Gilmour plays his own instantly recognizable long, weeping notes over the familiar chord progression.<\/p>\n

Years later, during the week after Prince\u2019s death, Gilmour revisited \u201cPurple Rain,\u201d though in a different way. Midway into his performance of \u201cComfortably Numb\u201d for the Teenage Cancer Trust in London, he spontaneously took his solo band into a few minutes of \u201cPurple Rain\u201d<\/a> before closing it out with his own iconic Pink Floyd solo.<\/p>\n

\n

Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To mark the fourth anniversary of Prince\u2019s death this week, the producers of the Grammys put together an all-star tribute to the Purple One with performances of his songs by John Legend, the Foo Fighters, St. Vincent, Morris Day and the Time, and many others. Strangely absent from the festivities, though, was \u201cWhat\u2019s New Pussycat?\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-806678","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-13 08:04:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}