After a report by TMZ that Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl halftime show would feature a Prince hologram, at least one of the Purple One’s closest friends and collaborators is saying that he would have hated the idea.
“Prince told me don’t ever let anyone do a hologram of me. Not cool if this happens!” wrote drummer Sheila E on Twitter.
Super Bowl LII (that is 52 for all you non-Romans) is being played Sunday night at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, so it would seem fitting to pay tribute to Prince at the halftime show. But Prince, a deeply religious and spiritual man, apparently was horrified by the prospect of hologram representations, as he told Guitar Player Magazine back in 1998. (H/T to Fader.)
“That’s the most demonic thing imaginable,” he said of holograms. “Everything is as it is, and it should be. If I was meant to jam with Duke Ellington, we would have lived in the same age. That whole virtual reality thing… it really is demonic. And I am not a demon.”