Tracy Morgan, soon to appear at The A.V. Club’s 3rd Annual 26th Annual Comedy Fest in early June, is one of millions of people still working through grief over the death of music legend Prince. As a video posted to his official Facebook account shows, the comedian and actor has a very particular method of paying tribute to the fallen rocker. Before he takes the stage in Las Vegas, a terrycloth-robe-clad Morgan plays an enthusiastic air guitar solo to the bathroom mirror to the strains of Prince’s 1987 hit “Sign O’ The Times.” He calls this part of his “pre-show ritual.” The moment has been captured by the comedian’s wife, Megan Wollover, in a video that is simultaneously sweet, intimate, poignant, and endearingly goofy. “I love you, Prince,” the comedian says in his description of the video. That love is apparent in every frame. Morgan carefully lip-syncs the bleak, apocalyptic lyrics (“Their idea of fun is being in a gang called The Disciples, high on crack and toting a machine gun”) while enthusiastically stomping his foot on a bath mat to the rhythm. He almost seems to be in a trance.
Morgan also plays tribute to another late musical legend, Michael Jackson, in a similar Facebook video, again shot by Wollover. In this one, Morgan mimes the legendary Eddie Van Halen guitar solo from 1982’s smash hit “Beat It.” “I love you, Mike!” he adds. The division between public performer and private person vanishes here.
[via Vulture]