In the hours after we learned of Prince’s death last week, one video seemed to go more viral than any others: Prince, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Steve Winwood paying tribute to George Harrison at the 2004 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony. During their performance together, Prince ended what was otherwise a staid, respectful tribute by playing a long, blazing, generally incredible guitar solo and completely wiping everyone else off the stage.

There are a few reasons why that one so suddenly went viral. For one thing, it was one of the few Prince-related videos on YouTube; the artist had been notoriously quick to wipe his own image off of the site. But it was also proof of Prince’s virtuosity and presence; he was able to stand on a stage full of legends and do that.

Petty has now spoken with The New York Times about the experience of standing on that stage while that was happening. Here’s what Petty said:

Olivia Harrison [George’s widow] asked me if I would come along and induct George. I was told, “Well, Prince is going to play too,” and I was like, “Wow, that’s fantastic.”

Look, we got Prince here willing to play lead guitar. Why should we give him an eight-bar solo? Over a solo that — the Beatles solo, everyone knows it by heart and would be disappointed if you didn’t play that particular solo there. And Prince was a great fan of George’s, and the Beatles in general, but I think he particularly admired George. I think George would have liked it a lot…

You see me nodding at him, to say, “Go on, go on.” I remember I leaned out at him at one point and gave him a “This is going great!” kind of look. He just burned it up. You could feel the electricity of “something really big’s going down here.”…

It’s funny because just a few days ago, he was in mind all afternoon, I was thinking about him. And I had just been talking with Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles — he wrote their “Manic Monday” song. She was telling me the story of that, of how she came to have that song and meet Prince. And I was thinking about him a lot that day, and I almost told myself I was going to call him and just see how he was. I’m starting to think you should just act on those things all the time.

The Times article also has recollections of the night from some of the other people who were there. Check it out here.