Guerilla nights: Prince isn't the only star playing secret gigs in London

Secret Prince gig? Pah. You can’t move in London these days without a star popping up unannounced, spray-painting a paving stone and taking to the stage. It’s just a sign of the times, says Phoebe Luckhurst

Yes, the artist currently known as Prince is back — and he’s chosen London to debut his new rock ’n’ roll sound with band 3RDEYEGIRL. Tuesday evening at Camden’s Electric Ballroom was the first of what is promised to be a month of “small, special and intimate gigs in and around London, announced on or the day before”, according to a spokesperson for the star.

It’s anarchic: he’s picking “iconic” venues that mean something to him and spreading the word on Twitter. Three hundred shell-shocked people saw him perform on Tuesday night. He returned again last night. And this time it was no secret — whipped into purple frenzy, fans fought Tube strikes and lashing rain to line up from 10am. By 6pm the line snaked around into Kentish Town Road. The former symbol duly took to the stage at 8pm, and then the remaining fans who had waited outside were treated to a second gig at 11pm.

“He’s here for the whole of February,” confirmed the spokesperson. “It won’t always be traditional — the Electric Ballroom was free entry and billed as a soundcheck. It’s guerrilla gigging. It has a lot to do with his new band — a three-piece, all-female rock band. The choice of venues is a reflection of that.”

“We’ll work our way up, if people like us, to bigger venues,” commented the man of the hour on Tuesday evening.

Prince — who is also rumoured to be headlining Glastonbury in June — is calling it the “Hit and Run” tour; theoretically, he could pop up at any point, on any day, in any venue, playing the opening chords of Purple Rain as a haunting klaxon. Reportedly his team are booking gigs 24 or 48 hours in advance to sustain the mystique; fans hoping to second-guess the singer should start making a note of London’s iconic venues.

According to BBC journalist Matt Everitt, who was at the small press conference held at the Hackney flat of singer Lianne La Havas, Prince said he wanted to perform at venues including Ronnie Scott’s and the recently reopened Bag O’Nails Club in Soho.

“We were heading to bed but decided the possibility of convulsing to Delirious was infinitely more appealing than collapsing into the duvet, so we dashed out of the flat,” said Alix Fox, a freelance rock journalist who attended the first night’s gig as a civilian, having heard Twitter rumours via Prince’s manager Kiran Sharma, writer Caitlin Moran and friends who are also fans. “We never thought we’d get in but the weather and Tube strike had put people off and we only queued for 10 minutes. We ran inside at midnight just before he played an extended jam version of I Like It There.”

“You felt a bit like you’d stepped into an MTV shoot from 1988,” says a colleague who attended last night. “It seemed improbable that Prince should suddenly be in such close proximity. There was a slight air of disbelief in the crowd, or perhaps simply dogged triumph, having waited all day in the cold and the wet for this. It was a very rock-heavy set, a reminder that Prince is one of the sickest guitarists out there, though a shade disappointing not to hear any more hits.”

London is becoming the capital of clandestine concerts. These days you can barely move without a pop-up Paul McCartney fest or trip over a David Bowie graffitied paving stone. In the early Noughties it was the modus operandi of grunge kids The Libertines, who’d turn up and transform fans’ homes into raucous, anarchic squats. R E M pioneered it in the Nineties, when they twice booked Islington’s Borderline as Bingo Hand Job — a code for fans, who turned up in their thousands as word of mouth spread. It’s popular with emerging bands, who rely so heavily on grassroots support and, like the Libertines, opt for rock ’n’ roll house parties in fans’ homes.

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Last year, Arcade Fire held secret gigs at the Roundhouse under the pseudonym Reflektor — admittedly a poor disguise since it’s the name of one of their albums. The Arctic Monkeys reportedly have a pseudonym for the same purpose and Blur played an impromptu gig at Rough Trade when they announced their summer of tour gigs in 2009. Lead singer Damon Albarn often plays small or secret gigs before a new album comes out or as a warm-up to a huge show — he’s got an album out in the spring with festival dates to follow, so could be planning secret shows.

A few years ago, Madonna did a short set at Koko at very short notice. Last summer, Mumford & Sons played a few songs with Edward Sharp & the Magnetic Zeros on a Thames Clipper boat on the way to their big Olympic Park show.

“It works for both the artist and the fans,” says John Earls, a freelance music journalist who has been reviewing gigs for the past 15 years. “For fans, there’s nothing better than seeing a massive artist like Prince in a tiny venue — literally 10 feet away. And for the artist, it’s massive publicity: it builds up the buzz. Last night hundreds of people were locked out.”

“In Prince’s case it was so last-minute and it seems it was genuinely secret. In a lot of cases, the word about the gig will have started leaking out. I knew he was doing a press conference and suspected there might be a gig to follow, but it wasn’t announced until about 11pm. Usually, if you leak it in the right way, the venue gets rammed. But this was intimate.”

Prince comes to London - in pictures

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The season continues apace: last week Maxïmo Park held a small gig at Shoreditch pub The Sebright Arms to celebrate the release of their comeback album. Reverend and the Makers are in the midst of a gig circuit in fans’ homes — those who prove they pre-ordered the album could win the chance to host a gig. Birthdays Dalston and The Old Blue Last in Shoreditch — run by the team behind VICE — are favourite venues for small impromptu gigs. South London band The Melodic are reportedly publicising the release of their album Effra Parade by holding a gig-parade on the streets of Brixton in March.

“For the musicians I think it’s about remembering where they’ve come from and going back to their roots playing small venues,” says DJ and KISS FM presenter Charlie Hedges. “I spoke to Example last week and he is doing exactly the same this year — playing small venues across the UK. I think it’s almost going back to those Motown days when artists would put on events in small jazz cafés. Now you hear about smaller gigs more quickly because everything is online.”

“Secret gigs and clubs cause media scrambles, social media meltdowns and genuine excitement about events that otherwise might not have received half the press,” says Nick Stevenson, publisher of Mixmag, the world’s biggest dance music magazine. “The shows or clubs might not even be that good but the fact that the attendees feel privileged to be there make them seem better than they are — it’s a trick VIP rooms have been using for years. Surprise events add a much needed boost of spontaneity into an industry where booking festival or gig tickets 10 months before has become an unwelcome necessity.”

Prince’s ultimate goal is to circumvent the music marketing machine — skipping press conferences for purring into a microphone in a Camden ballroom — and whip up more hype than conventional methods ever could. It’s a big change from his last UK appearance in 2007, when he played to 20,000 fans at the O2 for 21 nights straight.

He joins Super Bowl queen Beyoncé, who released a surprise album in December, generating 1.2 million tweets in 12 hours, and Arcade Fire, who released Reflektor very suddenly, following a promotional campaign comprising esoteric graffiti and leaked YouTube videos. The xx announced their new album by replying to a single fan on Twitter — naturally, the tweet went viral. Last January, Bowie announced his new album by releasing a single and video directly online, Where Are We Now? Each time, fans were thrilled to the point of hysteria; controlled leaking by management maximised the hype.

“Prince has always understood the power of mystique,” says Alan Edwards, CEO of PR agency the Outside Organisation. “We worked with him on gigs in the past and he is a fantastic exponent of ‘less is more’. I’ve been besieged with calls asking if I know anything about the mystery gigs in recent days, so it’s obviously been an enormously successful strategy. Prince also has the genius and ability to pull off amazing live performances.

“Interestingly, with all these great campaigns, Bowie, Beyoncé and Prince, normal access to the artist is nonexistent, which helps send the excitement and interest level off the scale. It’s simplicity, brilliantly executed.”

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