Tommy Barbarella, keyboardist and former member of the New Power Generation, talked with Jill Riley about the concert film Prince & the New Power Generation: Live at Glam Slam, premiering on the closing night of the 45th annual Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival.

Listen to the full interview in the player above, and find a complete transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Jill Riley: You're listening to The Current, the 45th annual Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, also known as MSPIFF, April 8 and runs through Sunday, April 19, and the closing night film is something pretty special, especially for Prince fans, Prince & the New Power Generation: Live at Glam Slam. So it was January of 1992 that Prince & the New Power Generation played an incredible show, an epic show, at Prince's downtown Minneapolis club, Glam Slam. And the video footage from that night was tucked away into Prince's vault until now, this was the first ever performance of the Diamonds and Pearls Tour, almost like a sneak peek for the Minneapolis audience. And one of the musicians who was part of the performance, keyboardist Tommy Barbarella, was a member of the New Power Generation from the early 90s to about 1996 and he's here to talk about the concert film and what it was like to play the show. Tommy Barbarella, it's so nice to meet you.

Tommy Barbarella: Nice to meet you too.

Jill Riley: I wonder if we could go back to the early 90s. Now, for certain generations, the space where Glam Slam was located has gone through different name changes over the years. I mean, in present day, Cowboy Jacks. and before that, it was Epic. And before that, it was The Quest. But at one time, it was Prince's club Glam Slam. So I wonder if we could go back to that time and talk about the club a little bit.

Tommy Barbarella: Well, I remember him talking about building this club, and it was one of three Glam Slams around the world, I think Yokohama in Japan, and then the one in South Beach that we often went down to play at. But he was excited about the club, you know, he always likened his band to a family or a gang like it was us against the world. “We want the other bands to be scared of us about how tight we are” and stuff like that. And he'd like to hang out with his band. We were his closest circle, so he wanted to have a club in town that we could hang out at. And if you remember, he had a booth upstairs in the back. I think it was the corner booth that was kind of his spot, it was always roped off. And we would go down there all the time, and hang out, and they'd bring in acts to play there. There were always concerts there, and a lot of lot of people he wanted to play there, he wanted to hear. But the hanging out thing was, especially on the road or anytime, because we rehearsed all the time. We rehearsed every day except Sunday, we had this phrase called "Mandatory Fun Night" where it's like, "Oh, we got to go hang out at the club" And sometimes it's great, but sometimes you were tired and you didn't always want to go have "fun at the club," because you wanted to rest. But yeah, “Mandatory Fun Night” was many nights.

Jill Riley: I'm on the line with Tommy Barbarella, and you know all the rehearsing, and all of the hard work is on display in this new concert film: Prince & the New Power Generation: Live at Glam Slam. So there's this legendary night in January of 1992, where you guys played this show that was fire. Can you talk about that show and how it came together? Because, for anyone who isn't familiar with this time, this was the Diamonds and Pearls era.

Tommy Barbarella: Yeah, you know it was early New Power Generation. That was the first official New Power Generation band. We hadn't toured yet. We'd been together about a year, I think this was in January, February. So that band started almost exactly a year before that lineup, and we hadn't done a proper tour yet. So we had played a lot of one off dates. We did the Arsenio [Hall] show. We did a lot of TV dates, but just spot stuff here and there. It was an interesting time too, because it was, in some respects, kind of a comeback for Prince. After Purple Rain, his record sales and popularity, you know, he was always Prince, but it had declined a bit, and he was making a concerted effort to really come back into the public eye, which is why we did all the shows. And I remember, we did Arsenio, that was the first time anyone had ever done the whole show. It wasn't just musical guest does one song and then the other side. We did the whole show. We did the hour, and that was amazing. Before the show, he added the horn section. He asked Michael Bland to put together a horn section of some local people. And this was, I think, the first performance with that horn section. So that was new, and it was a really fun time. It was an exciting time. There was a lot of joy, and you'll see that in the film. I remember seeing this film the first time few years ago, and footage of it, and I think the edit is different now, but I just remember you saw Prince in his final years, and the way he looked in his face, it was different. There was some darkness there. And when you see this film, and you see — the amazing thing is Scotty McCullough, who directed this, he was up there with the camera right on him. So we get all these great close ups of Prince, Prince's face, and you just see this joy and excitement in his eyes. And I remember when I first saw this footage, I teared up because it was like, "Oh my God, that's the guy I remember," because he didn't look like that later. And to me, that's the coolest part about this concert film, is the joy you see in him. He was really having a good time.

Jill Riley: Yeah, I was able to catch a preview of this footage in this form of Prince & the New Power Generation: Live at Glam Slam, and I was feeling that just watching it, like this is joyful. This is exciting. This is, I mean, quite frankly, it was fire. I mean, Rosie Gaines, incredible. You, and Michael Bland, The Steeles are there, and there's the new horn section. Even Mayte [Garcia] dancing at the beginning. I was really moved. I felt like I was really getting choked up. Now, you mentioned the camera crew being there. How did the show come together? Did Prince just tell everybody like we're playing at the club tonight, and there's going to be a video crew there, and this is what we're doing. Because if I remember correctly, it's not like things were planned three months in advance with something like that with Prince, right?

Tommy Barbarella: Yeah, I honestly don't remember the details. But you know, we were rehearsing for the show, and I just remember we were rehearsing in the soundstage at Paisley, with the stage we were taking on the tour, which had a big catwalk in the back and a huge lighting trust. I mean, it was a pretty big production, which obviously didn't all fit on the stage of this club. So it was, it was scaled down quite a bit, and so didn't have all the bells and whistles. It was a lot of the show, for the most part, it was the show that we were going out to do, which, if you know Prince shows, it was like 80% the same every night, 70 to 80% but that other 20, 30% it's like you didn't know what was going to happen, and you had to watch him like a hawk, you know. And also, you know the stories of Prince being on tour, the band plays the concert at the arena or the stadium, and then later that night, they play at a club, the club gig. And those are really fun because it was just stripped down, just whatever kind of gear they could get rental gear, so it's a lot more loose. And so this one at Glam Slam, was kind of a nice mixture of both, where it was the big production, but it also had a lot of elements of that loose club gig as well. So that much I do remember. The interesting thing is, so much happened in those days with him. It was so bang, bang every day. So when I get with the other guys, everyone remembers different things, no one remembers anything quite the same way. And I know that memory is like that as you get older, in those days especially because so much happened so fast. If you ask Michael and me the same questions, you're going to get different answers.

Jill Riley: Yeah. Well, there was certainly a documentation of January of 1992 Prince and the New Power Generation, and the Live at Glam Slam concert film, which is screening at the upcoming 45th annual Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival. It is the closing night film. Tommy Barbarella on The Current, a member of the New Power Generation in the 90s, and just an incredible rebirth for Prince and creativity, and just an incredible era, the Diamonds and Pearls era especially. And you get to see the film at the Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival. Tommy Barbarella, thank you so much for joining The Current. Appreciate talking with you.

Tommy Barbarella: My pleasure.

Jill Riley: You are listening to The Current.

Credits

Guests – Tommy Barbarella
Host – Jill Riley
Producer – Nilufer Arsala
Digital Producer - Natalia Toledo

External Link

MSPIFF45 FILMS – Official Website