Bruce Springsteen honours Prince as tour kicks off in Minneapolis

Bruce Springsteen and Prince shared mutual respect and, now, a connection over Minneapolis. (Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

No one would blame Prince and Bruce Springsteen if they had been rivals.

In 1984, they were two giants vying for one musical throne. In August of that year, Prince’s “Purple Rain” knocked Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” from the top of the charts.

But rivalry never took root. Instead, the man known as “His Royal Badness” and the one called “The Boss” shared something else — mutual respect and genuine affection.

Now, nearly a decade after Prince’s death, the two are connected once again — this time by Minneapolis, the city that forged Prince and that Springsteen has risen to celebrate as it fought back against U.S. President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration surge there.

Springsteen kicked off his new tour in the city Tuesday with a cover of Prince hit “Purple Rain,” a song he last performed nearly a decade ago.

In January, he released “Streets of Minneapolis,” an anti-Trump and anti-ICE protest anthem written after the deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents.

The New Jersey native first flew to Minneapolis in January to perform the song and performed it again at the No Kings rally in nearby St. Paul, Minnesota on Saturday, telling the crowd of many thousands: “This past winter, federal troops brought death and terror to the streets of Minneapolis. Well, they picked the wrong city.”

Prince likely would have said the same thing.

After George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police in 2020 — just over four years after Prince died from an accidental fentanyl overdose at the age of 57 in April 2016 — a meme spread fast as protests erupted around the country and the world: “Nobody thought the revolution would start in Minneapolis…except Prince.”

It was a nod to his band, The Revolution. And to who Prince was.

Prince spent years using his platform to advocate for others by fighting for artists’ rights, the Black Lives Matter movement and underprivileged youth.

A year before he died, in response to the death in police custody of Freddie Gray, Prince wrote “Baltimore,” traveling to the city to perform the song at a rally and releasing a lyric video that ended with a statement from him: “The system is broken.”

“It’s going to take the young people to fix it this time,” he said in the statement. “We need new ideas, new life.”

Springsteen has lived by the same code — standing up for unions, for veterans, for the forgotten. In 2001, he performed a song called “American Skin (41 shots),” to protest the killing of Amadou Diallo, shot to death by officers with the New York City Police Department.

He has been outspoken about his opposition to the Trump administration and recently allowed the American Civil Liberties Union to use his hit single “Born in the U.S.A.” for an ad campaign around the Supreme Court’s consideration of Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship.

But what bonded Prince and Springsteen wasn’t politics. It was music.

Prince admired the way Springsteen both held his audience and commanded his band, he told Rolling Stone in an interview in 1990. “There’s one man whose fans I could never take away,” he told the magazine with his signature wit.

The two men attended each other’s shows. Photographer Steve Parke, who served as Prince’s art director, recalled going with Prince to Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love tour in 1988.

“Prince had mentioned to me how, much like Prince, Springsteen could put on like a three-hour show,” Parke told CNN. “I think he was respectful of somebody who could be out there and do that for as long as Springsteen did too.”

The feeling was mutual. Springsteen has made his admiration for Prince clear over the years, opening his Brooklyn concert days after Prince died with a cover of “Purple Rain.”

He later told Rolling Stone he “felt a great kinship” with Prince.

“When I’d go to see him, I’d say, ‘Oh, man, OK, back to the drawing board,’” Springsteen said.

L. Londell McMillan, Prince’s longtime attorney, friend, and business partner, told CNN he understood the bond completely.

“One thing about Bruce Springsteen is that he’s just authentic. He’s true and real in his own skin,” McMillan said. “Prince was also authentic and didn’t care what anybody was saying. Real recognized real.”

Two men from different cities, different sounds, different worlds. One Black. One white. Both uncompromising. Both unafraid.

Prince is gone. But his city is still standing — and still fighting. With The Boss in its corner.