New York - AFP
A Morris Day played Prince's arch-rival in "Purple Rain" but three decades later, the Purple One is inviting his film nemesis to perform at his home studio.
Prince announced a concert at his Paisley Park studio complex outside Minneapolis on Friday night with Morris Day and The Time as the main attraction.
The show, revealed via social media on Tuesday, is not advertised as featuring Prince but marks a rare appearance by Day on the star's home turf after years of apparent distance.
As a teenager before his rise to stardom, Prince played with Day in clubs in Minneapolis.
Day starred in the 1984 cult classic movie "Purple Rain" as a flamboyant artist who tries to kick "The Kid" -- Prince -- off the billing at the First Avenue club.
The real-life relationship between the two remains a subject of conjecture, but Day and Prince have done little together since the 1990 film "Graffiti Bridge," the sequel to "Purple Rain."
Prince, 57, has increasingly been opening the doors to Paisley Park, his state-of-the-art studio and vault for master recordings that holds a mythical status for fans who enter.
Last week alone Prince put on a concert at Paisley Park in which he sang and performed on unaccompanied piano -- a first in his career -- and on another night hit the turntables as DJ for a dance party.
Prince has described the Paisley Park events -- where guests have their names at the door with no physical tickets -- as a way to avoid price-gouging scalpers, an issue that contributed to his cancellation of a recent planned tour of Europe.