Prince comes to Dublin on Saturday evening on a mission to make amends for the cancelled concert which cost him dearly three years ago.
The singer’s road crew were erecting the stage this morning in glorious sunshine with Met Éireann forecasting a perfect warm summer’s evening for Saturday’s concert at Malahide Castle.
It will be Prince’s first time in Ireland since a cancelled show in Croke Park in June 2008 which ended up in the Commercial Court. He had to pay €2.2 million in damages, interest payments and legal fees to MCD promoter Denis Desmond.
Despite the court case, Prince approached rival promoters POD directly to play a one-off concert in Ireland as part of the European tour which he is just completing.
Robbie Butler from POD admitted that the previous cancellation had preyed on the minds of his fans when the concert was first announced, but since Prince has fulfilled all the dates on the European leg of his world tour, that fear has now dissipated.
The promise of good weather on Saturday will also help ticket sales, he added.
The concert will have a capacity of 28,500 - the biggest to date for Malahide Castle, which has in the past hosted concerts by Radiohead, Eric Clapton and Neil Young among others.
The capacity is half the 55,000 tickets which were sold for the aborted Croke Park show.
It will be Prince’s only standalone show in Europe – the rest have been part of festivals. Support for Saturday's concert comes from Hypnotic Brass Ensemble who recently shared the stage with hip-hop legends De La Soul at the Galway Arts Festival.
“I have been talking to his band and his production manager. He wants to come to Dublin and he wants to prove a point. He wants to come and do a great show,” Mr Butler said. “The only problem we will have on the day will be getting Prince off stage.”
The concert is scheduled to start at 8pm and Prince is due to play for three hours with the last Dart scheduled to leave at 11.30pm.
Prince is one of the few artists who does not have a website – such is his distrust of the internet – but he did respond to an email from The Irish Times music writer Brian Boyd in which he said: "I'm going to play as long as they let me at Malahide Castle when I come over. Tell Dublin to bring their dancing shoes. It's going to get real funky."
Gar Holohan from the Holohan Group, which is handling the logistics for the concert, said extra Dart services will be sufficient to cater for fans if they decide to come by public transport. Both lines will be used to take fans away from the concert and into central Dublin, he said.
He also predicted that the event would attract no more than 1,500 cars, although there are 3,000 car parking spaces.
"We are expecting an audience that are older and more discerning who want comfort and don't want queues," he said.
