Springsteen, ‘SNL’ pay tribute to Prince

Bruce Springsteen opened his show in Brooklyn on Saturday night with an emotional tribute to Prince, performing “Purple Rain.”

Springsteen and the E Street Band took the stage at the Barclays Center bathed in Prince’s preferred purple lighting, leading the crowd in a singalong of the late pop icon’s most famous song.

“Prince forever,” Springsteen told the New York crowd at the end of the song. “God bless!”

Springsteen’s Prince tribute wasn’t the only one seen in New York on Saturday night.

NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” which was supposed to be airing reruns, instead produced a career-spanning retrospective  of Prince’s “SNL” performances in a special hosted by former cast member Jimmy Fallon.

“Other people may have been on the show more times or performed more frequently,” Fallon said. “But there was always something different about a Prince performance — it was special, it was an event, it was Prince.”

NBC also shared Prince’s most recent “SNL” appearance, which never made it to air: his surprise performance at the afterparty for the show’s 40th anniversary special in February 2015.

Fallon recalled that around 4:30 a.m. during the star-studded party at New York’s Plaza hotel, comedian Dave Chappelle told him that Prince was in attendance and said he should try to get him to perform.

“I just said, ‘Prince, if you’re in the room, I dare you to come up and sing something with us,’” Fallon said.

The crush of celebrities in attendance, including Paul McCartney, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, suddenly parted and — with “a cloud of purple smoke,” Fallon said — Prince took the stage for an impromptu version of “Let’s Go Crazy,” with Fallon, Chris Rock, Cuba Gooding Jr., Martin Short and Maya Rudolf serving as backup singers.

"Dearly Inebriated," Prince told the crowd before launching into a raucous version of the 1984 hit.

“He got up and it was unbelievable,” Fallon said. “He just destroyed.”