Prince's legacy still shines in downtown Minneapolis 10 years after his death
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
Quick Read
Even in death Prince looms large over his home state — his impact everlasting.
“I don't think, until he died, we even realized, you know, how much he kind of meant to us,” said Minnesota writer Frank Bures. “It's hard to overstate the impact he had on my generation.”
Ten years after his death, people still make pilgrimages to see where Prince spent most of his life. Frank Bures researched and produced an audio walking tour about Prince for VoiceMap.
It begins at the Mary Tyler Moore statue on Nicollet Avenue.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
“This area, Nicollet Avenue over to First Avenue, there's so many great locations for telling Prince's story,” said Bures. “Also, there's like a transition from Mary Tyler Moore in the 70s as kind of the pop culture representation of Minneapolis, to Prince in the 80s… it's a nice transitional spot.”
On Bures’s tour, “In the Footsteps of Prince,” participants see filming locations from “Purple Rain” and the site of Prince’s former club “Glam Slam.” They also stop at the Dakota, a jazz club and a favorite spot of Prince’s.
“He would come in the back door. He had a table reserved just for him,” Bures said. “And he did a series of, like, kind of pop-up concerts that were a big deal.”
The Dakota was also one of the last public places Prince visited before his death in 2016.
“I mean, it was just like a gut punch,” Bures said. “It was just crazy and hard, and, you know, a lot of tears.”
After his death became public, thousands showed up to First Avenue to pay their respects to Prince. The music venue not only served as the central location in Prince’s blockbuster film “Purple Rain,” but also as a place he performed at different points in his career.
“Around in 2007, I think, he played a concert here,” Bures said, adding that Prince went on so late that the city only let him play for an hour in the early hours of the morning. This prompted the city to create a permit specifically for Prince that would allow him to perform later than other artists. Prince never got to use it in his lifetime.
“But then when he died, you know, people just poured into the streets here,” Bures recounted. “There was like 10,000 people here mourning and kind of celebrating his life and just in shock. And that's when they pulled that permit finally, so they could keep the party going all night.”
Celebrations of Prince can still be seen throughout the Twin Cities. Last year, a stage adaptation of Prince’s film debuted at the State Theatre, and Minneapolis has announced a celebration of “his royal badness” for this summer.
Prince showed people through his record-setting music that you could achieve your dreams in your Midwest hometown.
“There’s this kind of historical narrative that if you want to make it big, you got to leave the Midwest and go to LA or New York,” Bures said. “Prince kind of showed that that wasn't true…for a lot of creative people in this part of the world, you know, that just is really meaningful and powerful to see. To know that you can, you know, do great work and do great things here.”
