To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Purple Rain, Prince's hometown is rolling out the purple carpet for fans in a four-day festival. Forty years ago this summer, a short man dressed in purple changed music forever. On 27 July 1984, Warner Brothers released a film written by, starring and soundtracked by a certain Prince Rogers Nelson .
The film had no known stars, no real actors and was shot on a relative shoestring. Yet when Purple Rain hit theatres, it quickly became the number one film in the US, knocking Ghostbusters off the top slot. After Purple Rain's soundtrack and the single When Doves Cry also hit number one, Prince became the first artist in US history to have a number-one film, a number-one album and a number-one song at the same time.
It may have seemed like the androgynous 26-year-old artist came out of nowhere, but he didn't: Prince came out of Minneapolis, as did his childhood friends and fellow musicians Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. They were all part of the Minneapolis scene, which produced what is now known as the Minneapolis Sound . Prince lived in Minnesota most of his life.
"Everyone of a certain age in the Twin Cities [Minneapolis and nearby Saint Paul] has a Prince story," says Elliot Powell, associate professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota, who teaches a class called Prince, Porn and Public Space: The Cultural Politics of Minneapolis in the 1980s. "They'll say, 'Let me tell you about the time I saw Prince hanging out here', or, .
