Prince

by Ronin Ro

  Moon said he was in New York with his older half sister Sharon. “I called him on the spot and told him to come back to Minneapolis.” Husney added that he would protect his creativity, shop this new demo, and get him a record deal. “He said Okay, and came back to Minneapolis,” Husney recalled.

  Prince couldn’t believe his luck. Husney’s call came at the perfect moment—he was just leaving his half sister Sharon’s house after their bickering over money. And while he liked Husney, Prince didn’t yet commit to anything. Husney said he loved the self-produced tape; and no outsider should produce his records. “I don’t know whether I really agreed with him at the time,” Prince admitted. Husney’s vehemence fascinated him but Prince still questioned whether he was “old enough or smart enough” to handle the job. “It sounded,” Prince explained, “like a big term. You know, ‘Producer’ of an album.”

  He returned to André’s basement, but this time with more confidence: There were people who wanted to manage him. Soon, he met Husney in person, and was impressed. Husney had experience promoting, and said Prince should produce his own records.

  Word of Prince had begun to spread. A manager in LA now wanted to meet with him. Very suddenly, on the basis of that Moon tape, Prince was becoming a hot commodity. He reportedly made a quick trip to California, where this potential manager offered him a gold guitar. But there was something about the manager and his offer that said to Prince “back away”

  In December 1976, Prince called Husney, who had left his job at the agency and raised fifty thousand dollars from investors toward a label.

  Prince signed to Husney’s American Artists, Inc., and the young musician saw life change for the better. Husney rented him an apartment downtown. And with Shampagne keeping his Stratocaster guitar (as the formation of that “company” had insisted), Husney bought Prince new instruments. He even provided a cash allowance.

  “Owen believed in me,” Prince later said. “He really did.”

  In early 1977, Husney tapped Bobby—a runner at his ad agency and the brother of his former bandmate David Rivkin—to watch over Prince. By now, Bobby had come by the studio and seen him in action at the piano. A drummer himself, Bobby recalled in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “I was taken immediately”

  Since Prince didn’t drive, Bobby was charged with taking him to get his license. “We found an apartment,” Bobby added. “We bought musical gear.” They hung in his Pinto station wagon and caught Santana’s show at Northrop Auditorium. Some nights, Bobby remembered, he helped move Husney’s office furniture aside and, with André joining in, they played jam sessions that lasted until dawn.

  Winter continued, and Husney installed Prince in Sound 80 Studios. It was time for him to record a real demo. At the mix board, Bobby’s brother David, who had worked with Grand Central in the studio in 1975, engineered while Prince single-handedly performed 3 twelve-minute songs: a new version of Moon’s “Soft and Wet,” “Make It Through the Storm,” and his schmaltzy new “Baby” “He did all the instruments,” David told the Star Tribune, and Prince treated the studio itself as another.

  Overdubs and multitracks banded together. Synthesizers created the illusion of a full orchestra, a horn section, or organ line. His songs drew from jazz, blues, pop, funk, and rock. “I got hip to Polymoogs,” he said of these sessions. These polyphonic (two-handed) synthesizers let him avoid the piano and clavinet sounds heard on other albums.

  Before a session, he hummed each part into a tiny cassette recorder. “The horn part, the guitar part, he had it all separated,” David recalled. (“Prince: An Oral History,” 2004) Before each take, Prince told himself this was his only shot. Whatever instrument he played had to sound perfect. The approach resulted in an entire band “playing with the same intensity” Come time to sing, Prince needed privacy. If someone stopped by, he had Rivkin turn off the lights. When Rivkin’s wife saw him singing “Soft and Wet,” Rivkin recalled in the Star Tribune, he glanced over at her with embarrassment.

  No one could deny the young musician’s immense talent. Husney was impressed with his young client. He had “the vision and astuteness of a forty-year-old man.” He sat and listened, absorbing everything. He spent nights in the studio. He didn’t “get high with the guys.” Until now, Husney had dealt with hard-drinking, or drug-using musicians. “Not Prince,” Husney continued. “That would destroy his chances of making it, and he wanted to make it.”

  During visits to Cliff Siegel’s home, he sat for hours, watching tapes on Siegel’s rare and expensive videocassette recorder. And despite—or perhaps because of—his height, he gave his all during their spirited games of basketball.

  “He was always quiet and always a gentleman,” Siegel recalled. He wasn’t open about feelings but outlined goals—“to do films, be Number One, and produce other groups.”

  Husney thought it was a nice dream.

  Husney remembered Prince’s image taking shape during his late-night talks with Prince and André: there would be suggestive visuals, a cultivated mystique. They’d develop costly promotional kits, and retain control of ancillary rights. Husney also said “Prince Nelson” wouldn’t do. He told him to drop the surname and simply refer to himself as “Prince.”

  It was time to put the image of Prince into place. They enlisted young photographer Robert Whitman. Prince fixed his Afro and chose an outfit—his managers helped decide which—and with Whitman carrying his Nikon 35mm camera, loaded with Tri-X black-and-white film, they hit the street. For one shot, Prince posed near a wall outside Schmidt Music Company, with the old building, aging cars, and a woman behind him. Other street shots showed him strolling in his extravagant getup. For one, he smiled as he raised his middle finger.

  They traveled to Husney’s well-appointed home, where Prince was photographed at a piano. Then he sat in a chair and held a guitar. Three or four sessions filled seventeen rolls of film. Some were standard head-shots. Others emphasized his Afro with dramatic lighting. After Whitman and his managers chose the most effective, they moved on to the press kit.

  He didn’t include press articles or “eight million pictures,” Husney explained. Only one sentence per page. “The music would speak for itself.” Prince also reportedly shaved two years off his age, claiming he was only seventeen, to make him seem even more gifted. After creating fifteen kits, seven or eight went out to major labels. “And we sent the tape, itself, on a silver reel. It was reel-to-reel, not cassette,” an older-fashioned, higher-quality medium for his music.

  Despite all the attention that went into this extravagant packaging, Prince wasn’t an easy sell. Many executives saw “a young black kid coming out of an island in the North” and didn’t rush to buy in, Husney explained. But the package was undeniably compelling: a teen with a regal name playing, singing, and producing everything.

  Husney called Warner, where Russ Thyret (who once co-wrote a hit with Stevie Wonder) could sign acts. He claimed CBS was flying Prince out to LA for a meeting. Did Warner want to meet? Thyret said yes. Then Husney called CBS and A&M to say Warner was flying Prince out. Do they want to meet? “I lied my way in everywhere to get him in,” he told author Alex Hahn. “Jealousy is what makes this business go around.”

  Five major labels soon wanted meetings: Warner, CBS, A&M, RSO, and ABC-Dunhill.

  That spring, Prince joined Husney and attorney Gary Levenson on a flight to Los Angeles. Many executives on the West Coast favored jeans, cowboy boots, and untucked shirts left open at the neck, so Husney and Levenson opted for three-piece suits. “We had one made for Prince, too,” Husney told the Star Tribune.

  At the meetings, he felt confident someone would want his 3 twelve-minute songs. He let his managers do the talking, and they played the demo. He would enter to mumble a few words, acting shy in spite of his open-collared shirts, tight jeans, pointy black boots, and long, feathered hair. CBS was intrigued, but they had reservations—and doubts—about his abilities. So they booked time at Village Recorders—they wanted to see
if he could actually produce. Indignant, he nevertheless rerecorded “Just as Long as We’re Together” for watchful executives.

  After a flurry of meetings, they finally met with their first contact, Russ Thyret of Warner. Other executives wined and dined them, handled the check at fancy restaurants, and promised “homes in Beverly Hills.” But Thyret met them at his home, sat on the floor, and talked music. “There was a real, genuine bonding there,” said Husney. He hoped they’d wind up with the man. Prince meanwhile had concerns about marketing. Every major record company had a separate, black music department and felt it was easier to market whites as rock and blacks as funk, soul, R&B, or disco. To avoid people shoehorning him into disco, Prince emphasized a small-town upbringing among white and black friends.

  “I’m an artist and I do a wide range of music,” he told Thyret. “I’m not an R&B artist, I’m not a rock ‘n’ roller.”

  Thyret understood.

  Back in Minneapolis, they were amazed. While RSO and ABC both passed, every other major company called Husney, even Herb Alpert, co-owner of A&M. Husney told A&M and CBS that Prince wanted to produce, and a three-album deal. A&M would agree to a two-record pact. Prince and his people weren’t interested. CBS offered three but wanted Earth Wind & Fire’s Verdine White producing. “That destroyed the possibility of Prince going with CBS,” said Husney.

  That left Warner. When Husney told them Prince needed to be his own producer, “they thought I needed valium.”

  Thyret passed his endorsement of Prince to Mo Ostin, the chair of Warner. Warner A&R man Lenny Waronker also urged Ostin to sign him. Waronker had worked with him since 1966, when thirty-nine-year-old Ostin, vice president at Reprise, added the twenty-six-year-old to his artist development team. Ostin rose to become Warner chairperson in the early 1970s, but he promoted Waronker with him. Both were low-key, honest talent scouts used to dealing with capable eccentrics.

  Ostin considered everything. “There was a fierce competition,” Ostin told Roger Friedman. “Columbia wanted him. Lots of people. But we convinced him we had the mechanism to make him a star.”

  And so, Prince, just nineteen years old, signed with Warner on June 25, 1977. His contract reportedly called for three albums in twenty-seven months, the first to be recorded within six months. The three were to cost $180,000—the usual $60,000 per disc allocated to acts like The Ramones. If he submitted them by September 1979, Warner could renew the contract for two years (for another three albums) and an additional advance of $225,000. If Warner wanted a second option period after this—in September 1981, for a year and two more albums—the company would advance him yet another $250,000.

  Husney called it perhaps the most lucrative contract ever offered to an unknown. “Well over a million dollars,” he said. Another time, he said it set a precedent and was “the biggest record deal of 1977.”

  And with a record deal and steady income now secured, Prince breathed a big sigh of relief. He got an $80,000 advance up front. And if Warner exercised its options, he’d be paid for making music for five years, until September 1982, and have seven albums to his credit.

  Suddenly, the anger that had driven him—the need to succeed not just to prove himself, but to but prove others wrong—dissipated. With his signature on “a piece of paper and a little money in my pocket, I was able to forgive,” he told Rolling Stone. “Once I was eating every day I became a much nicer person.”

  Warner was “taken with the simplicity of his music,” an executive recalled. Still, some Warner executives were shocked by his ballad “Baby,” Prince recalled, “’cause it was about a cat getting a girl pregnant.” As summer continued, Ostin suggested a collaborator for Prince in the studio: Maurice White, leader (and drummer) of Earth Wind & Fire, a group whose slick sound made hits of “Serpentine Fire” and “Shining Star.” Ostin figured White could mentor him. But Prince had already rejected CBS’s attempt to include White’s brother Verdine. He felt Earth Wind & Fire’s horn-heavy sound was closer to disco, which he predicted would fade. When Husney ran Ostin’s idea by him, Prince replied, “I gotta do my own album. Maurice White is not producing. You go tell the chairman of Warner Brothers that I’m producing.” He then filled a lengthy memo with every reason it wouldn’t work. Husney related it to Ostin, who continued to insist on a co-producer.

  As CBS had when they were considering a deal with Prince, Warner executives were invited to a studio session to watch Prince do his thing. So after another flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, he reached Amigo Studios, set up his instruments, and again recorded his demo song, “Just as Long as We’re Together.” As Husney told it, whenever Waronker and other executives quietly entered and left the room Prince “thought these people were janitors.” Waronker tells a different story. He says that Prince noticed him and producer Russ Titelman there when he arrived. To his amazement, Waronker said, he told Prince, “Play the drums” and Prince did, then added a bass line, and some guitar. After forty-five minutes, Waronker seemed convinced, according to Debby Miller in Rolling Stone. “We didn’t want to insult him by making him go through the whole process, but he wanted to finish,” Waronker recalled. By now, the Warner A&R man had decided, “This kid could do all of it, play all the instruments and know exactly what sound he wanted.”

  He told Prince, “Yeah, fine, that’s good enough.”

  But, Husney later told author Alex Hahn that he still had doubts. “Okay, we’re going to have to burn a record on the guy.” Not the most glowing endorsement, but one that at least inspired sighs of relief at Prince’s camp. They could record an album without a co-producer.

  “We won,” Husney said.

  Before Waronker left, however, Prince had something he needed to say. He was lying on the floor, Waronker told the Star Tribune. As Waronker came his way, he faced him.

  “Don’t make me black,” he insisted.

  Waronker thought, Whoa!

  “My idols are all over the place.” He named a few from different genres.

  “That, as much as anything, made me feel that we shouldn’t mess around with this guy,” Waronker later said.

  Though he seemed to be given an assurance that he could produce, Prince said this session didn’t resolve the issue entirely. “Warner’s had a lot of problems with it at first, but Owen was fighting for control for me,” Prince said. They made him do a demo. “So, I did it, and they said that’s pretty good.” They wanted another and he did that, too. “Then they said, ‘Okay, you can produce your album: And they waited a week to call me back and they said I couldn’t.”

  The label’s issue wasn’t just concerning Prince’s ear for his own music. Recording was difficult and costly. A producer needed more than a working knowledge of contraptions and sound levels. A one-man band and songwriter might also not have an intangible “record sense,” the ability to recognize hit material. Warner wanted someone else involved, so everything stalled, frustrating Prince to no end. They went back and forth “a few more times,” and in the end, both sides won. By late September, Ostin and Waronker enlisted veteran engineer Tommy Vicari, who worked with Santana, Billy Preston, and others, to executive produce—to protect the label’s investment and ensure the debut had marketable moments. Vicari—and possibly Warner—chose to book time up north at the Record Plant in Sausalito, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco—a peaceful setting far from Hollywood. The label also rented a home in Corte Madera with a great view of San Francisco Bay. Upon arrival, Prince, Vicari, Husney and Husney’s wife Britt all unpacked and chose beds.

  Meanwhile, from the sidelines, Warner awaited the first album from their costly new prodigy. And as they would find in the weeks—and months—that followed, their fears of having a young, untested musician take the helm were well founded.

  3

  EVERYBODY OUT

  PRINCE STARTED RECORDING HIS FIRST ALBUM, FOR YOU, ON October 1, 1977. With Warner expecting results, he wasn’t the same blithe and playful Prince he had been while
recording demos for Husney back in Minnesota. He barely even spoke with Vicari or assistant engineer Steve Fontano, who told author Alex Hahn that “He was definitely out to make a statement: ‘I can do it all, and you can kiss my ass.”’ Prince viewed Vicari as a potential Warner-installed obstacle. If Vicari suggested improvements, Prince replied with a few words, then ignored his comments. When Vicari and Fontano tinkered with equipment, Prince watched, asked questions, and then returned to ignoring them. After a few weeks, Husney told Hahn, “Prince already wanted him out … and Tommy was heartbroken, because he had just been treated like shit.”

  Prince’s repertoire was mostly rhythm and blues but he included a few ballads and—despite his reported misgivings about the genre—more than a few disco-worthy moments (open high hats whisking along during breaks, synthesizers playing upbeat riffs, artificial drumrolls, winding guitar riffs).

  One session, he knocked out a mellow drumbeat. Minutes later, with bass guitar in hand, he played a taut funklike bass line. On the guitar, he added sinuous melodies. Next, behind the synthesizer, he played sharp notes, and droning, dreamlike riffs that would have been at home on a disco single. Then, behind the mic, he sang his mellow lyric, “Soft and Wet.” It was a come-on to a young woman, with cheesy singles-bar lines (“Hey lover,” he utters). But Prince thought it worked, and kept adding backup vocals, cooing its chorus, and offering feminine cries.

  “He seemed to be one of these guys who could hear the entire song in his head, before he even played it,” assistant engineer Fontano explained to Hahn.

  He wanted to handle everything himself. When he finished basic tracks, Prince insisted on having his friend and previous studio engineer David Rivkin come west from Minneapolis to the Bay Area to tape vocals. Once Rivkin arrived, Prince relaxed, and they hung out together after work. André also came out west, to show support for his friend and contribute. In the wings, he hoped to play bass, but the opportunity never materialized. Prince felt he had to gain Warner’s confidence, make his name, and deliver parts that met his own increasingly high standard for excellence. So André was left to kill time by telling people he’d create his own album. “He kept saying, ‘I’m going to do my thing,’” Rivkin recalled.