It is largely considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Super Bowl half-time shows of all time.February 4 2007, Dolphin Stadium in Miami — with the artist formerly known as Prince, about to hit the stage.Only one problem, it was raining. And not just a sprinkle."The morning of the game I opened the curtains in my hotel room and I was like 'oh my god!'," production designer Bruce Rodgers said. "It was like a scene from Moby Dick. It was like the winds were blowing the palm trees and the rain was one of those Miami rain storms that just would not relent."Put me on the phone with Prince,” said television and live event producer Don Mischer, rallying his production team for the worst. “Now, I want you to know that it’s raining,” Mischer told Prince on the phone.“Yes, it’s raining,” answered the performer.“And are you okay?” Mischer wanted to know.The Purple One had only one question:“Can you make it rain harder?”"I was just panicked," said Mischer. "Prince was using four separate live electric guitars. The stage was made out of a very slick tile which — when it got wet — was even more slippery. "He had two beautiful dancers with him. They were wearing eight inch heels and I was just saying, 'Oh my god! What's going to happen now?' "What happened was that Prince — donning a durag, loaned by his hairstylist at the last minute — turned in one of the greatest halftime shows of them all.“Dearly beloved,” Prince told the screaming Super Bowl fans as the rain poured down, “we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.”And man oh man, did they ever.How Prince, and his incredibly talented dancers, managed to perform on a very wet, slick tile floor, in heels, is a question for the ages. Under conditions in which other performers might have backed out, or at least changed their set, Prince — and his band — refused to let the fans down.The show went on.“That Prince set is so wild,” said senior NYT music critic Jon Pareles, “he does other people’s songs, he’s not promoting himself. He’s just making music. It’s profound and it’s loud and it’s funky.""And it’s just one performer shaking the entire world.”Like a scene from a scripted Hollywood movie, he ended his stellar set with the classic rock anthem, Purple Rain."Prince treated the terrible weather as if were an asset to be exploited, and it all ended with that solo, the crowd bellowing as if it was the last song they'd ever hear and fireworks strafing the sky," website LouderSound.com reported. Prince was a man of many gifts.Despite being super talented, he could rise to the occasion like no other, and he could do so without it appearing that he really gave a damn.And I think that was largely because, it was music, real music. Music that touched our very souls. I would even say, musical genius.However, did you know that the Super Bowl XLI half-time show in 2007, almost didn't happen? And that it was saved by a pair of pliers?At the last minute, a roadie named Tony Ward was checking things and discovered that a part of the moving stage (it rides on wheels) had damaged a main power cable.Mischer explains the rest: "Tony, realizing we were now counting down to going on the air, took his pliers and stripped the insulation off the three cables. And he inserted them into a plug, just raw, and held that for the entire 12-and-a-half-minute duration, in the rain, to keep the lights and all that working. I'm glad I didn't know about that until afterward because that would've scared the hell out of me."Thanks to his heroics, the show went off without a hitch and nobody in the entire world knew what had really happened."It was one of those times where things just worked magically," said Mischer. "And there's nothing you can do but just say thank you."Prince and his band would sign the instruments and auction them off to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.— with files from LouderSound.com
