The shows were intimate and intense, 43 songs, and a range of covers from Bowie to Bob Marley. Prince, all alone on stage at a purple grand piano, started with Little Red Corvette and ended his second set of the night with a Purple Rain medley.
But as soon as the sets were done, Prince was off. No after-party. No jam. He went directly to the airport to board a jet home – the same jet that would make an emergency landing two hours later with Prince apparently overdosed on an opiate painkiller and requiring a lifesaving safe shot of Narcan.
Within a week, he would be dead – from an overdose, investigators seem to believe, of the painkiller it now appears he had been taking for years to combat crippling arthritic hip pain, a condition he would not correct owing to strong religious-based resistance to medical intervention.
But in Atlanta, on the night of Thursday 14 April, there was little to suggest to the concert’s promoter, Lucy Lawler-Freas, that the star’s life was already in danger.
