Anyone who didn't know or had forgotten how much of a guitar god Prince really is, Friday night's two-song performance on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" was a good lesson. Members of Fallon's house band, the Roots, also got an education on never lending one of your prized instruments to the purple guru.
Introduced by Fallon as "one of the most legendary and influential musicians of all time," Minneapolis Celebrity No. 1 returned to the NBC airwaves for the national unveiling of his all-female band 3rd Eye Girl, the hard-rocking group he debuted on the final night of his three-night stand at the Dakota in January.
The Fallon crowd ate up his opening song "Screwdriver," which was released as a single of sorts a few weeks ago via the new site 3rdeyegirl.com. He got even heavier in the second tune, "Bambi," which ended with a crescendoing guitar solo that lifted so high that Prince finally let the instrument fly high into the air and crash to the ground. Turns out, it wasn't even his guitar.
According to Roots frontman Black Thought's Twitter feed, the instrument belonged to their guitarist Kirk Douglas.
Chris Riemenschneider
