The Rise of Prince 1958-1988

by Hahn, Alex

  Bernadette readily welcomed Prince despite her large family. He and Andre shared a bedroom on the second floor, with each carving out a portion for themselves. The varying temperaments of the boys showed up in the room’s arrangement; Prince folded his clothing and made his bed meticulously, while Andre’s side was usually cluttered and disorganized.[135]

  After months of playing music at John Nelson’s apartment in the afternoons, Prince and Andre reached out to Prince’s cousin, Chazz Smith, as a potential drummer. Chazz set up his drums in his family’s back yard and invited his friends to bring over their equipment. The impromptu jam session attracted an audience of neighborhood kids, but also created such a din that the police were called. Chazz’s father was adamant that the incident not be repeated, and told the group to find another space.[136]

  The Andersons had a basement that conceivably could be used as a rehearsal space, but after years of disuse it was decrepit and filthy. Andre, Prince, and Chazz spent weeks clearing it of spiders, cobwebs, and centipedes before bringing in their equipment.[137]

  An exuberant chemistry emerged among the trio as they developed cover versions of songs by Santana, Grand Funk Railroad, and others. Chazz, who had previously known Prince to be a skillful piano player, was shocked at how quickly he had picked up the guitar. In a clear attempt to show off, one afternoon Prince played Carlos Santana’s complex solo on the 60s classic “Soul Sacrifice” note-for-note.[138]

  Meanwhile, the dankness of the basement remained an issue, as did Bernadette Anderson’s complaints about the noise. Seeking a backup option, they approached Terry Jackson about using his family’s basement. The lanky and intense Jackson, who had played drums and percussion instruments since age ten, got his mother’s permission and then asked to join the band. The others agreed, and the band, now a four-piece, began to seek its first gig.[139]

  ***

  Starting with 8th grade, school bussing took Prince to Bryant Junior High School on the south side of Minneapolis. On weekdays Prince would often stay at the home of his aunt Olivia Nelson, which was much closer to school. On weekends he slept at the Anderson residence, and by day the band rehearsed in the Jackson basement.

  At school, Prince adopted an approach not unlike that of his father at Honeywell, accomplishing his duties efficiently and avoiding scrutiny. The impish and sometimes combative behavior he demonstrated around friends and some of their parents disappeared, and he was deferential to authority figures.[140]

  Prince, like his fellow adolescent males, also began to develop an interest in their female classmates. He compensated for his nervousness around girls by writing lines in a spiral notebook that he memorized and then used when approaching them.[141] But these scripted efforts not surprisingly came across as ham-handed. Prince’s small stature added to his insecurities, particularly with girls who were experiencing growth spurts and thus towered over him.[142]

  With his efforts at teenage romance largely stymied, he spent long hours in the school’s music rooms, where he caught the attention of one of Bryant’s outstanding teachers, Jim Hamilton, who had played piano in Ray Charles’ touring band. The Bryant music program was robust, so much so that all students were required play an instrument. Many had both innate talent and musical pedigrees like those of Prince and Andre; keyboardist Jimmy Harris, for example, was the son of well-known local pianist Cornbread Harris. Among this talented and motivated student body, it was typical for students to play multiple instruments – in fact, it was relatively unusual for them not to.

  Hamilton observed that while Prince was not musically head and shoulders above his peers, he demonstrated discipline that was perhaps even excessive. But Hamilton warmly encouraged Prince’s efforts, assigning him complicated pieces and even providing him a private practice room.[143]

  The competitive atmosphere prompted Prince to engage in one-upmanship by mastering more instruments than any of his peers. One day, student Terry Lewis, himself an extremely skilled bassist, heard from outside a practice room what he thought was Jim Hamilton playing the drums. When he entered, he saw it was Prince.[144]

  Hamilton also taught a class called the Business of Music, where students learned the legal and financial basics of the industry. Here again, Prince demonstrated rigor, showing an unusual interest in arcane topics like publishing rights. Prince also sought information on this topic from Pepe Willie, a musician and the boyfriend of one of Prince’s cousins. Now living in New York, Willie was peppered with questions about copyrights and other legal matters during a lengthy phone call. Perplexed at the interest of a teenager in such issues, Willie demurred and said they would speak when he was next in Minneapolis.

  Music was not, however, Prince’s singular focus; he tried out for the junior varsity basketball team and made the squad despite his small stature. His shooting was below average, but his speed and ball handling skills were effective on the court. As with music, he was fiercely competitive.

  The Afro that Prince had kept closely cropped in grade school was now becoming massive, which seemed like an effort to compensate for his height. But in the eyes of some friends, his hair only underscored the slightness of his frame. One afternoon, as Prince and his friends walked down the street with the sun at their backs, Terry Jackson noticed that the shadows cast in front of them caused all of their Afros to appear abnormally large.[145] Jackson laughed and teased Prince for looking like a character from the Flintstones television show known as “The Great Gazoo,” who wore a huge helmet that made his head disproportionately large to his body. Jackson began using the nickname “Gazoo” for Prince, which caught on among some of their friends. Some extended family members continued to call him Skipper. He tolerated both nicknames cheerlessly, but such shifting appellations were commonplace in the neighborhood, and a standard part of the way young men in the city joshed with each other.

  Chazz, Andre, and Terry Jackson were very much denizens of the Northside, and Prince’s ties with these friends, through the band and sometimes living at Andre’s home, continued to strengthen. At the same time, he developed two other friendships with people who lived on the south side of Minneapolis, and who could not have been more different than his bandmates.

  Paul Mitchell and Duane Nelson, themselves best friends from a young age, were both outstanding young athletes with imposing frames. Mitchell was handsome and charismatic, the classic big man on campus. The more reserved Duane Nelson was in fact Prince’s half-brother, the son of John Nelson and his first wife Vivian. Duane, who had been born about two months after Prince in August 1958, had grown up in Vivian’s home after his father left to live with Mattie Shaw. (It would eventually be revealed, decades later, that Duane’s father had actually been another man, but by the time of this revelation, Duane, John Nelson, and Prince himself were all deceased.)[146]

  Owing in part to their mutual interest in sports, Prince became close friends with Duane and Paul. Because Prince’s abrasive behavior tended to provoke fights and his small stature invited bullying from other students, Duane and Paul began serving a protective role in a manner not unlike bodyguards. “He was a little guy with a big mouth,” Mitchell recalled of Prince. “It was good he had someone to take care of him.” There was also a reflective side of the Mitchell-Prince relationship, with the two enjoying long, relaxed conversations in Mitchell’s home.[147] At yet other times, they had boisterous fun, such as when Prince and Mitchell pretended they were professional wrestlers and staged their own matches in Aunt Olivia’s basement.

  Prince was anxious to join Duane and Paul on the football team, but his size inhibited his progress. Prince waited game after game to be put on the field, with Mitchell typically sitting beside him to offer comfort. Mitchell recalls that while Prince’s love of basketball was genuine, his interest in football was more pragmatic. “He just wanted to be on the team to be around us, and he saw that girls liked it,” Mitchell recalled.

  Prince’s opportunity seemed to have finally arrived during one game as
the coach called his name. Prince grabbed his helmet and ran down the bench. But the coach, rather than putting Prince in, instead ordered him to wave his hands around the coach’s face to prevent him from being bitten by mosquitoes. Crestfallen and humiliated, Prince walked away. “He came back and sat down and said, ‘I’m done,’ Mitchell recalled. “He never came to football practice again – he would just sit in the stands and wait for us.”[148]

  Incidents like these caused Prince to become even more provocative, which could have led to violence absent the protective presence of Duane and Paul. “He would say some of the meanest things to people,” Mitchell recalled. “A lot of it was pent-up anger and frustration, and feeling like his parents didn’t want him.”[149] Prince’s accumulating resentments led him to sometimes be abrasive even towards his friends, resenting their success in athletics and football. “As much as he liked us, he felt envious that things were easier for us,” Mitchell said.

  Prince developed a strong crush on classmate Kim Upsher, who happened to also be Mitchell’s steady girlfriend. For Prince, this only underscored that Mitchell, by now the football team’s quarterback, had the size and magnetism that he lacked. While Prince did not try to steal Mitchell’s girlfriend, he channeled his feelings into a film script for a high school class. The screenplay cast Mitchell as a malign version of himself, an athletic bully who shoved Prince whenever he made overtures towards Upsher’s character. In the end, Prince’s character employed Kung Fu fighting moves to vanquish Mitchell’s character and then head off into the sunset with Upsher.[150]

  The subtext of the film script – Prince’s frustration and desire to win – could not have been more obvious, and Prince’s behavior toward Mitchell continued to oscillate between warmth and resentment. But they were also in some sense best friends, two very different characters with a powerful emotional connection.

  ***

  When not spending time with Duane and Paul Mitchell on the south side, Prince busied himself in the Jackson basement with Andre, Terry Jackson, and Chazz. Chazz, by virtue of being the oldest member, emerged as the leader of the group.[151]

  Minneapolis was a competitive hotbed of young musicians from high schools throughout the city. “There was a band on every block,” Terry Jackson recalled. The group played a wide range of cover songs, but focused on rock artists such as Chicago, Santana, and Grand Funk Railroad.[152]

  As the leader, Chazz took it upon himself to name the band, but he was fickle and changed it several times before settling upon Soul Explosion.[153] The band began playing gigs, which were easy to find. Bernadette Anderson was a leader at the local YWCA and also became a proud booster of the band, eagerly booking slots for them. People throughout the neighborhood enjoyed seeing the competition between young local groups, which became part of the Northside’s lively atmosphere.

  After honing their skills at casual gigs, the group entered a “battle of the bands” competition. The performance went well, and Terry Jackson delivered a stirring vocal on a rendition of the War song “Slippin’ Into Darkness” to close the set.[154]

  Soul Explosion left the stage feeling they might have prevailed. But after the votes were tallied, a group named Phoenix was announced as the victor. Prince and Andre looked at each other despairingly. Moments later, an ebullient Chazz ran up to them and exclaimed that they had won. He had changed the name of the group to “Phoenix” immediately before the competition.[155]

  ***

  Now having completed ninth grade and reached age 15, Prince felt a strong sense of community in the band, and had two other close friends in Duane and Paul Mitchell. Yet the wounds he had experienced as a result of effectively being rejected by both of his parents remained raw. Prince was equal parts anger and charm, and seemed torn between a desire for friendship and an urge towards solitude. And these seemingly contradictory impulses would remain on full display as Prince and his friends prepared for the next phase of their lives.

  4. Grand Central

  What Prince now craved was greater privacy, and he sought to reorder arrangements in the Anderson household to fulfill this goal.

  To Bernadette Anderson, the idea seemed ludicrous – Prince wanted to swap the bedroom that he shared with Andre for a basement that was only marginally fit for human habitation. She resisted, uncomfortable with the idea of banishing her surrogate son to lesser quarters. But Prince remained adamant, and Bernadette finally relented. Andre, seeking in some manner to follow suit, also abandoned the second-floor bedroom for a room in the attic.

  Prince set up a bed in the dank space, arranging his clothing and guitar around him. At night, the basement became a sanctuary where he could noodle on his instrument and write down the lyrics that were starting to take shape in his mind.

  Meanwhile, dynamics in the band started to shift, with Chazz relinquishing his leadership role and decisions becoming democratic. A permanent name was finally chosen: Grand Central. Singing duties were shared, with each member handling lead on songs that were best suited to their voices. Prince, who usually sang in a low register, was able to effectively emulate Sly Stone, a favorite of all of Grand Central’s members.

  The brilliant and creative Sly, together with his band the Family Stone, served as a key influence for the group but also a cautionary tale as a result of his self-destructive drug use. “I’m not going to be like Sly – I’m going to practice my ass off like James Brown’s band,” Prince boasted to his bandmates one day in the basement. But Sly and his band provided tremendous inspiration through their innovations of the funk form. Among other things, bassist Larry Graham pioneered “slap bass,” a technique of attacking the strings with one’s forefinger and thumb to create a percussive sound, on the group’s 1970 single, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” Andre incorporated the technique into his sound, and Prince was strongly influenced by the rhythm guitar playing of Sly’s brother Freddie as well as Sly’s vocals.

  As Prince and his compatriots assimilated influences and developed their sound, the competition between the many bands in the neighborhood became fiercer. The level of talent in the community was not only exceptional, but other bands typically had more experience. One group, the Family, was led by a bassist named Sonny Thompson whom many considered the best pure musician in the community. The Family was also visually intimidating, wearing long black jackets onstage that looked like a gang uniform. Another prominent group, Flyte Tyme, boasted an outstanding roster of more seasoned players, including Jimmy “Jam” Harris on keyboards and Terry Lewis on bass, and was fronted by a powerful vocalist named Cynthia Johnson.

  The competition motivated Prince and Andre, who also began to write original material, often creating songs more quickly than they could teach them to each other. They practiced on their instruments in their respective precincts of the Anderson household – Andre in the attic and Prince in the basement – developing embryonic riffs. Then, they would come together to hear each other’s ideas and, more often than not, meld them together.

  The band soon added a new member: Linda Anderson, Andre’s sister. The move was prompted in part by John Nelson’s purchase of a compact Farfisa organ for use in the basement. This added a new dimension to the sound and, just as critically, allowed Prince to translate his own keyboard ideas into the band’s repertoire. He often instructed Linda on exactly what to play.

  The band developed a tremendous cohesion through hundreds of hours of rehearsing and gigging, and its reputation in the neighborhood and across Minneapolis grew. The dream of becoming professional musicians was common among young local musicians, just as it had been for many of their parents. And for the Grand Central members, that notion began to seem plausible as they received more praise.

  One afternoon, during a reverie in the Jackson basement, Prince and Terry mused about what would happen if either of them became famous. A pact was made: if anyone made it first, that person would come back and include the rest of the Grand Central members.[156]

  At such
moments, there was a powerful sense of shared mission and even destiny among the band members. But at other times there were intimations that one member, Prince, had started to chafe at the democratic and communitarian elements of Grand Central. This emerged more clearly when the notion of expanding the group was proposed.

  The idea was broached by Andre, Chazz, and Terry Jackson, who all favored adding David Eiland, known as “Batman” in the neighborhood, as a saxophonist and rhythm guitarist. Eiland sometimes played with Flyte Tyme, and this offered a potential means of poaching a member from a rival.

  Prince, however, was adamantly opposed, and went so far as to threaten to quit the band. The depth of his resistance was surprising, but even more so his willingness to issue an ultimatum. Grand Central typically made decisions by majority vote, but in this case, one member was seeking to exercise a veto, thereby threatening the band’s structure and even its very existence.

  Despite all other members of the band favoring Eiland’s addition, they finally acquiesced to Prince. “That was his first power move,” Jackson recalled. We let him have his way.”[157]

  ***

  Prince and his close friends engaged in adolescent games and explorations, testing their imaginative powers and sometimes incorporating surreal elements. Among other things, Prince, Andre, Chazz, and two other classmates formed a private clique based around a fantasy of being space aliens who had been given human form at birth. One member showed Jackson detailed charts of the star system from where the aliens had originated, as well as a diagram of a space ship they intended to build.[158]

  Jackson, dismissive of a concept that he considered juvenile, declined to join but remained curious where the idea would go. One afternoon, Jackson surreptitiously followed them back to Chazz’s house after seeing them picking cattails near Bassett Creek on the Northside. In the Smith family kitchen, the group boiled the cattails in a cauldron on a stove and declared that they were creating “survival food” for their alien race.