The Ultimate Live Experience
| European tour by Prince | |
| Associated album | The Gold Experience |
|---|---|
| Start date | March 3, 1995 |
| End date | February 19, 1996 |
| Legs | 2 |
| No. of shows | 31 |
| Prince concert chronology | |
The Ultimate Live Experience was a short European concert tour by Prince promoting his then-unreleased The Gold Experience album. The concerts were notable for containing very little prior Prince material; only new material and cover songs were featured. Some exceptions were "7" and newer songs released on "Prince" projects such as The Hits/The B-Sides and Come. Also, the never-before performed B-side "I Love U in Me" was featured.
An extension of the tour known as the Gold Tour was launched in 1996. The concerts featured mainly songs from the album, but also started adding prior Prince fan favorites.
The Ultimate Live Experience was performed during a chaotic period in Prince's life and career. He had lots of new music written but then record company Warner Brothers refused to release it at the speed that Prince wished, leading to public feuding. Meanwhile, Prince had already released the album Come with no promotion and was trying to get The Gold Experience released as well. During this time, he made many configurations of the album and this tour presents songs that he likely planned for the album (though not all would make the cut), as well as very rarely played cuts from the Prince period, with the exception of "7".
While the previous year's Ultimate Live Experience tour presented Gold Experience prior to its release, the long overdue album had finally hit shelves in late 1995 and this tour was now a "proper" promotion. However, by this time, Prince had been playing some of the material for nearly two years and many of the songs were shortened to brief medleys. Conversely, Prince had formerly said he would not play "Prince" material anymore, but that idea was apparently tossed to the wind with this tour. Several fan-favorites such as "The Cross", "Do Me, Baby" and "Sexy MF" were regulars, along with the Gold material. Also, Prince started performing a cover of Joan Osborne's "One of Us", which he would include on his next album, Emancipation.
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