New Power Generation’s Morris Hayes is planning a festival in honour of Prince.
The 55-year-old musician was a member of the late ‘Purple Rain’ hitmaker’s backing group for many years appearing on several albums, most notably 1991’s ‘Diamonds and Pearls’, and toured with him extensively.
He claims to have discussed the idea of holding a special one-off event featuring all of the musicians that worked with the music icon – who sadly passed away in April 2016 at the age of 57 – with the ‘Raspberry Beret’ singer headlining in the late 80s.
Despite the star’s death, Morris hopes that one day they can still go ahead with the music extravaganza and he’s hoping to bring it to the British capital.
He told the Daily Star newspaper: "When Prince was alive one of my dreams, and I spoke to Prince about it around 1998, was to hold a huge concert. I was thinking like The Time, Sheila E, all of the bands and all of the Prince acts if we just all got together and had our own all-day festival with Prince topping the bill.
"That would have been the bomb. Sadly, it didn’t and it never materialised when Prince was alive.
"But I really hope that it can now happen, I think if we did something like that then everybody wins – all the artists and the fans."
Meanwhile, New Power Generation – which includes Tommy Barbarella and Andre Cymone among others – are set to head into the studio to record a brand new album.
The group reunited after Prince’s death and have been back on the road playing tribute concerts to the legendary pop star packed with his hits.
The new music will incorporate the style of their former mentor and lean on the lessons he taught them about songwriting.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, Morris said: "We’re going the studio soon and we’re going to be working on stuff. We’re gonna come together like we used to back in the day, we’re going to set up shop and just jam. We already have stuff that we’ve been working out on the road. I think we have a good head start on some really killer stuff. I’ve been saying to the guys that it’s cool to go out and play these great songs and celebrate Prince’s legacy and that’s really cool and we all enjoy that because we all love that music. But really the destiny for the NPG at this point is what we create ourselves, what we come up with as a band and showcase what we’ve been taught and what we have learnt from all those years working with Prince for as long as we did. It would be unfortunate if we didn’t have anything to show from all we’ve learned, I believe we’re going to have some good songs."
Morris Hayes planning Prince tribute festival
