27 years ago Tom Jones and David Gilmour performed an astounding version of Prince's 'Purple Rain'

In theory, these three names—Prince, Tom Jones, and David Gilmour— shouldn’t even appear in the same sentence. But they just appeared in the same sentence for a weird and wonderful reason: Jones, the husky-voiced baritone pop crooner, once recruited Gilmour, the psychedelic maestro from Pink Floyd, to help reinterpret Prince’s eternal rock ballad "Purple Rain" on stage.

At first, it might be hard to compute what such a cover song might sound like. If you throw "Purple Rain" in a blender with "It’s Not Unusual" and "Comfortably Numb," would said blender just explode? Well, sort of—and that’s part of what makes their live take so fun. The performance dates back to 1992, during an episode of the limited TV series Tom Jones: The Right Time, in which the singer explored how modern popular music had been influenced by disparate genres like country and soul.

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"Powerful elements came together decades ago to give the world a unique, totally new music," Jones says to introduce the episode in question. "Popular music today owes much to the sound of spirituals and gospel." And from there, without warning, he launches into the Prince cover, all decked out in a sharp purple suit and belting on a shadowy stage bathed in purple light.

Jones doesn’t attempt to bend his style to fit Prince’s—instead, he goes full-force into his signature delivery, singing both the melodies and spoken-word sections with a deep, rattling vibrato. At one point, he lets loose a dramatic scream as the camera pushes him on his intense face. Gilmour, meanwhile, leans into his stadium-rock side, alternating between textured chords and a lengthy guitar solo that sounds like a more laid-back version of his playing on Pink Floyd’s "Comfortably Numb."

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This wasn’t just some rote genre exercise for Jones—he was an established Prince fan, having covered the artist’s minimalist funk hit "Kiss" on stage back in the late '80s. (He also recorded a studio version of the song with synth-pop act The Art of Noise, and their version became a Top 5 hit in the U.K.) In 2021, per Express, Jones spoke to BBC Radio 2 about having a friendly exchange with Prince in 1989. “First of all, I met him in London," he said. "It was his birthday, and I was invited to go there…So I said: ‘Thanks for the song, 'Kiss.’ And he said: 'Well, thanks for doing it!’…I didn’t ask him if he liked it or not, but we had a little chat then." The singer added that 1999, he bumped into Prince in a hotel lobby—they wound up going to a club, where they "talked all night."

While the rock legend invited Jones to visit his recording studio and work on music, that meet-up never took place. Prince, sadly, died in 2016. “That’s one of my regrets," Jones said. "When people ask if I have regrets: Yes. I regret that I didn’t go to Paisley Park and record with him because we could have come up with something." The results from that collaboration would have been fascinating. But at least we can revisit Jones’ unique take on "Purple Rain." It is unusual, and that’s part of its staying power.

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