Prince was the only Minnesota purple at Super Bowl

Well, at least one Minnesota institution associated with purple made it to the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Prince played the halftime show in rainy Miami wearing — surprise! — Miami Dolphins colors of orange and tourquoise. The purple part of his performance was the repertoire as he played three songs from “Purple Rain,” ending with the title tune on a stage shaped like the Prince glyph outlined in purple lights, with a marching band on the field sporting glow-in-the-dark purple on their uniforms and the star playing a purple glyph-shaped guitar.

“We were impressed that he didn’t have a tarp overhead; he actually played in the rain,” said longtime Minneapolis Prince fan Heidi Vader, who saw the Minnesota icon play on the opening night of his new Las Vegas 3121 club in November. “It was fun to see him. He is smart in picking these kind of jobs like 'American Idol’ and this to expose himself to the general public. I wouldn’t have watched the Super Bowl otherwise. “My husband wanted the score to be 31-21 at halftime,” she continued, “and it might have been if not for the rain.”

Vader sighed that the song selection — including “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Baby, I’m a Star” — was predictable but she dug that Prince did what she called a Jimi Hendrix song. Indeed, his truncated take on “All Along the Watchtower” recalled Hendrix’s rather than the original rendition of its author, Bob Dylan.

In his 11 or 12 minutes onstage, Prince showed his unpredictable side as well by throwing in a little bit of Ike & Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” and the Foo Fighters’ “The Best of You.”

“I was surprised that he did the Foo Fighters and it sounded much funkier and cool than their version,” said singer-songwriter Susan Sandberg, who splits her time between Los Angeles and St. Paul. From her seat in the 14th row at the 40-yard line at the Super Bowl, Sandberg said the football fans were singing along and “Prince was psyched to be there.”

In fact, it seemed like Prince, who showed plenty of guitar fireworks, was playing more to the stadium crowd than to the TV cameras.

At one point, he tossed off his black head kerchief. Was it a wardrobe malfunction? Well, the head protector was getting wet, and he had to play his guitar for “Purple Rain.”

“Don’t it feel good?” Prince declared as the rain, which had let up when he took the stage, began to fall again as if on a purple cue. Jon Bream • 612-673-1719