6. Prince vs the King of Pop
James Brown did not yet know who Prince was, and asked “who?” After Michael Jackson repeated it a few times, Brown told the audience that somebody named Prince would join them onstage. Prince, delighted to share the stage with his idol, did a good Jimi Hendrix impression, and performed some sexy dance moves. It started off good, but ended badly. Prince tried to get the crowd involved, but they were not as enthusiastic as he had hoped. So he decided to call it a day. As he exited the stage, Prince leaned against a prop lamppost, and both musician and prop stumbled and fell into the crowd. MJ was delighted at Prince’s mishap, and his unconcealed glee at the Purple One’s humiliation transformed what had been a mere rivalry until then into a serious grudge.
Years later, the King of Pop still savored his rival’s literal fall. As he described it: “He made a fool of himself! He was a joke … People were running and screaming. I was so embarrassed. It was all on video“. Understandably, Prince was mortified. He had not just suffered an embarrassment before a crowd, but in front of his idol, James Brown, and in the presence of his rival, MJ. So he decided to run him over. According to music producer Quincy Jones, a livid Prince waited in a limo outside the concert venue, and planned to run MJ over when he came out.
It is not clear whether Prince actually made the attempted hit and run, but as Quincy Jones told QG in an interview, he had every intention of doing so. By the late 1980s, the King of Pop and the Purple One were at the top of their game, and despite the bad blood, Quincy Jones tried to bring them together in a collaboration. His first attempt was the charity single We Are the World, which Michael Jackson co-wrote and performed in. Prince refused to participate. A few years later, Jones tried to bring them together on the song Bad, where they would sing opposite each other and perform jointly on the music video. Prince expressed some interest, but eventually declined. MJ did the music video with Wesley Snipes.
