MONTREAL – Last March, John Edward Gumbley and the crew at Muzique night club on Saint-Laurent Blvd. got a call from Prince’s management team.
The star, who has always had a special connection to Montreal, was coming to town for two shows at Place des Arts and they were looking for a place for the musician to have an aftershow.
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The team was originally told that Prince would be at their club to relax after the show, but were warned to have equipment on hand just in case Prince wanted to perform.
It was his last show in Montreal.
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“We set up a stage, had the equipment ready and then the night-of, we just kept looking back at the room by the back hall where he was hanging out,” Gumbley told Global News.
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In the early hours of the morning, the music legend decided he did want to play and several hundred fans got to see a concert of a lifetime.
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“Normally when you see a star, they’re thirty feet away, but he was less than five feet from us, you could almost touch him,” Gumbley told Global News Thursday.
“When someone is that talented, they have an aura about them, you could feel it as he was walking through,” said Jason Tull, a co-owner of Muzique.
After the show, Gumbley was asked to book aftershows for Prince in other cities.
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He said he realized in the last few weeks that the star wasn’t well.
“I was in the middle of booking his aftershow in Atlanta when they canceled that whole tour,” he told Global News.
“And then, when it came to Miami and Nashville, they said they were postponing, so I knew he was sick, but I’m shocked that he’s gone.”
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The memorable, intimate and impromptu concert ended up being the last chance for his Montreal fans to see the music icon perform.
He died Thursday, April 21, at his estate in Minnesota.
Prince was 57.
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