by Ronin Ro
“As a whole, Prince’s performance clearly indicated he has extraordinary talent,” Bream wrote of the night. More experience and refinement would, he added, guarantee “a royal future for Prince.”
The first night went off well, all things considered, but with Warner executives flying in for his second night, January 7, 1979, there was much more pressure. It was also an audition of sorts, to determine if Prince was ready to earn money on the road, with Warner providing tour support. Before the show, Pepe led the Warner people to choice spots on the balcony.
Prince meanwhile was somewhat nervous, Dez recalled. In light of the technical problems the night before, Prince had been extremely cautious this time. He made sure the equipment worked and that there would be no feedback. Another glitch like that was the last thing he needed.
The executives, meanwhile, watched tentatively; their limo sat outside with the engine running as Prince performed. It was a relatively small audience, but they were responsive. Women screamed whenever he performed a dance move.
Pepe, meanwhile, watched the Warner executives. He wanted to determine their reaction, but he couldn’t tell. Warner executive Carl Scott, however, liked what he saw. “It was unbelievable,” he said later. “I just couldn’t believe I was watching it.” There was genius and magic taking place “but I didn’t know what it was.”
It was heartbreaking, then, when they decided he wasn’t ready yet.
Prince told the band Warner wanted him to record another album before touring. He didn’t say much, but his band members sensed he was down on himself. Dez understood. As he told the Star Tribune, “We were still individuals and not a band yet.” Still, they tried to cheer him up, Dez saying, “Put it behind you. We did fine.”
Though Warner let him do as he pleased with his debut—even going way over budget on the recording—Prince began to question what he heard from Husney and Warner. He had tried not to make waves, he claimed, “because I was brand new, and stuff like that.” But clearly that wasn’t working. He had to do it his way. If he didn’t, “sooner or later down the road I’m going to be in a corner sucking my thumb or something,” he later said to Musician. He only had one career. He wouldn’t ruin it. “I just want to do what I’m really about.”
The lack of a tour really gnawed at him. He kept rehearsing his band nonstop, working out what he wanted to do on stage. But nothing was set.
This more than any other moment was when Prince’s relationship with Husney, one of Prince’s first, biggest supporters, began to sour. He later cited the label as a factor in the dissolution of their professional relationship. “I was being real stubborn and bullheaded, and Owen didn’t realize how to get it out of me, and make me stop,” he said. “And, I don’t know, our friendship died slowly after that. It just got strange.” It may have been the label’s decision not to tour, but it was his manager who endured the fallout.
Pepe felt it was simpler than this. At the time, Prince kept his drums in the basement of Pepé’s apartment. It was freezing down there, so Prince called Owen for a space heater. Busy waiting for a return call from William Morris, Owen couldn’t drop everything and bring it over.
Warner did what it could for the debut. But not even the singles “Soft and Wet” and “Just as Long as We’re Together” could help the album rise above No. 163 during its five-week stay on the Pop Chart. During this period, Prince formed Ecnirp Music, his name in reverse, and registered “Do Me Baby” and other new works as his own creation.
When Warner called for another album and advanced him thirty thousand dollars, he needed representation more than ever. He was introduced to Don Taylor, a manager that handled reggae talents Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley. Taylor assigned employee Karen Baxter to handle Prince’s project. Baxter soon regretted it. “This guy was just too weird for me,” Taylor told author Per Nilsen. “I never knew where he was coming from.”
At Warner, executive Carl Scott remained a supporter. He let Bob Cavallo and Joe Ruffalo know Prince needed a manager. The duo, childhood friends from New York, handled funk and R&B stars Earth Wind & Fire, and Ray Parker, Jr. They also worked with one of Prince’s idols, Sly Stone. Scott told them to pay attention to this guy. Maybe talk with him. They wouldn’t regret it. Prince heard from them, they hit it off, and Cavallo and Ruffalo became his new managers after buying the unexpired part of his contract with Husney and American Artists, valued, Per Nilsen explained, “at some $50,000.”
And as two of their employees arrived in Minneapolis to help with day-to-day chores Prince began to focus on the next step in his career: a second album.
4
PRIVATE JOY
WITH MANAGEMENT FIRMLY SQUARED AWAY, PRINCE COULD write his next album in peace. “After the first record, I put myself in a hole, because I’d spent a lot of money to make it,” Prince said. With Prince, he wanted to “remedy all that” by consciously creating a “‘hit album.”’ He began to craft danceable works.
But he still didn’t want a producer. New co-manager Cavallo invited engineer Gary Brandt to get involved since Prince had refused to work with Maurice White from Earth Wind & Fire. Cavallo felt Brandt, even as engineer, could help get the best sound.
In late April 1979, Prince packed his bags and caught a flight to Los Angeles, where he moved into another rented house on the edge of town, sharing it with Perry Jones and Jones’s cousin Tony Winfrey, both affiliated with Prince’s new managers Cavallo and Ruffalo.
Alpha Studio was located in Brandt’s home just outside of Los Angeles. Where Prince spent five months recording and mixing For You, his managers booked just a month for his second album. With a lower budget, he planned to knock this out quickly. He’d work without an “executive producer,” record only the songs he’d written, and limit himself to sixteen tracks (though the studio’s two 24-track recorders could provide 48).
Some days his limo—arranged by new managers—dropped him off in the early afternoon. Most times, it arrived at night. He asked Brandt to keep women out of the studio. Instead of creating music on the spot, he wanted to re-create only his nine home demos, and improve them, if possible. At the board, Brandt watched him work. “He already had everything in his head,” he told Per Nilsen. “He knew where the parts were going so it was just basically getting it onto tape.” But he soon began to add new melodies and arrangements.
He usually made each session last about twelve hours. And since “he knew little about quality rerecording,” Brandt told Housequake.com, he let Brandt determine how sounds were processed and recorded. When Brandt proposed where to place microphones, he was “reasonably open-minded”—a big step from when he was recording For You. Brandt felt comfortable enough to slide levers or twist various knobs on the mix board while playing songs back, auditioning various echoes, delays, and effects that, he felt, Prince never considered.
“I Wanna Be Your Lover,” now one of Prince’s most revered tracks, was about a jilted, penniless suitor vowing he could make a woman happy. He sat behind the drum kit, ready to bang it out. Brandt used a customized AKG 452 microphone to record his snare. With the basic track down, he added funk riffs on guitar and bouncy synthesizer melodies.
They kept recording. Now instead of the AKG 452 mic, he wanted a Shure SM57, an old horse when it comes to studio recording. Brandt felt it was a mistake. Prince insisted and got his way, Brandt recalled, but “the rest of the tracks sounded less snappy”
He sang in his falsetto again and kept trying to cover all bases by setting pop-rock and almost folk numbers alongside funk and R&B. Only this time it worked: The music wasn’t as cluttered. The synth wasn’t in everyone’s face like on For You. Some songs, he actually used a piano. He also threw in two rock-flavored cuts.
By June 13, 1979, he had his nine songs down, and he sat with Brandt to create rough mixes. He figured he’d tape them, study them at home, form ideas, then return, and perform the real mix.
But Brandt had two other projects booked. “He expected me to do anythin
g he wanted but he wasn’t even known at the time.” His managers told him Brandt was busy. He told them to change Brandt’s mind. Brandt couldn’t do it; two complete album projects were bringing four months of income. “Warners [sic] would never have done that at the time so that was that.” His managers got him into Hollywood Sound Recorders, in Los Angeles, where he recorded final touches and overdubs, mixed everything, and, after having some second thoughts, yanked two songs, “Oh Baby” and “Darling Marie,” from the album.
After publishing every song through Ecnirp Music Inc. and BMI, he moved on to the cover. Again, he created the concept. Photographer Jurgen Reisch snapped a shot of him against a light blue backdrop, without a shirt, expressionless, his hair blown out. The rear sleeve photo found him in underwear, with long hair and an earring, riding a winged horse (created by superimposing dove wings on an image of a rented horse). He wanted calligraphy; Terry Taylor provided it. Finally, he sat to write the credits. He included a list of thank-yous. God was first. Then band members, friends, Warner, Pepe, various attorneys and managers, Cynthia Horner (editor of black teen fanzine Right On), “and all the beautiful people who got into my first album, I love you all.”
And just as quickly as he had begun the album, he moved on to the next.
Within weeks, Prince had his band joining him to record a rock album under the group name The Rebels. It was a good time to shift gears. Labels were glutting the market with so many disco singles and albums, even ardent fans were bored with the sound. And many rock radio stations were staunchly opposing music with any disco or dance influence. This album, he revealed, would feature “everything from New Wave to R&B,” Dez recalled. Dez was delighted. Recently, he had introduced Prince to the music of The Cars, a Boston-based New Wave group whose works fused Doors-like keyboards to roaring guitars and Ric Ocasek’s icy vocals.
Prince’s band arrived in Boulder, Colorado. In the studio July 10, they started a collaborative album. After hearing they’d write and receive credit, guitarist Dez, bassist André, keyboard players Gayle and Matt, and drummer Bobby brought their best ideas. “I wasn’t sure what he’d want,” Dez said of the rock material. “I just presented what I liked.” For eleven days, until July 21, Prince and the band recorded Dez’s “Too Long,” “Disco Away,” and an instrumental. Dez was thrilled. “We had a blast,” he recalled. “We worked, we played, we ate lots of shrimp.” Even better, “I was allowed to do what I wanted to do.” They moved on to André’s song, “Thrill You or Kill You” and another of Andre’s melodies. Prince meanwhile wrote four: “You,” “If I Love You Tonight,” “Turn Me On,” and “Hard to Get.” “You” mixed forceful guitars with lighthearted synth effects and Gayle singing in a high voice that evoked Prince’s falsetto. There were few lyrics and the ones there were sounded “quite odd,” the magazine Uptown noted. “You, you drive a girl to rape,” she sang. At another point: “It’s true; I’d kill myself if I didn’t make love to you.” Still, Gayle had no problem with the material. If anything, she thought the songs were “Different, fun, great to play with the musicians in the group.”
“If I Love You Tonight,” meanwhile, was as gloomy as his Prince number “It’s Gonna Be Lonely,” with a downbeat chorus (“All I need is some company to help me through the night”). Still, everyone was excited about the album’s imminent release. “They were mostly our songs, not all his,” Gayle explained. It was “rock that was consistent with his sound,” Dez said, “as opposed to what a purely rock-oriented band might play”
Then, without a warning, Prince pulled the plug on the project. “It just kind of went away,” Dez said.
Prince never explained why.
“Prince had the open doors,” Gayle Chapman said. “He gleaned what he could, made use of what worked, and ran with it.”
On October 19, 1979, Warner released Prince’s second album, called simply Prince. Some reviews called it glossy, unoriginal, even sophomoric. Others focused on his inventiveness, his odd fusion sound, and vastly improved songwriting. Prince said years later it all sounded “pretty contrived.” Emerging just a year after For You, Prince certainly found him showing improvement on a number of fronts. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” crystallized what Prince was about as a performer, the lonely underdog that craved—but also sometimes rejected—acceptance and love. “Sexy Dancer” fitted his tight new sound to a post-disco anthem. “Do Me Baby” was a stately slow jam. Everything sounded more confident; he was writing better songs and hinting at the darker places his ballads would head in years to come. Prince was a big step up from For You and announced the arrival of a talented, determined R&B act with a new sound and, more importantly, a distinct worldview. But his sound was still in transition; the album wasn’t enough to make him as big a name as Michael Jackson and Kool & The Gang, the acts Prince reportedly viewed as his biggest competition.
Within weeks, Prince debuted on the charts. One single had become a runaway hit. The poignant disco number, “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” topped Billboard’s Soul Chart, Prince’s first Soul No. I, and it reached No. II on the Pop Chart. Radio stations nationwide kept playing every note of it. Sales passed 500,000 (his first Gold-certified single).
“It surprised me that it became a hit,” he said. He wasn’t trying to create one. “I basically make songs I like.” Regardless, life for Prince changed immediately. Warner executives couldn’t be happier now. Some felt confident he could go on to deliver variations of this hit.
On the strength of the single, Prince made the Billboard 200. The album was quickly racing toward the 500,000 sales mark. His record deal in 1977 may have hinted at Prince’s potential for commercial success, but the brisk sales of Prince cemented it.
Success with the rock market, however, eluded him. Warner released his guitar-heavy “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” as a single but it landed on the R&B Chart.
Still, with his sophomore work selling more copies, and its single popular on black and pop radio, Warner felt there was no more need to wait: He was ready to tour.
The two Prince albums may have created a cult following in Detroit and northern cities, but it was the success of his single that got him invited onto the high-rated Saturday morning dance show American Bandstand.
January 25, 1980, in the green room, host Dick Clark entered and greeted Prince and his band. Once he left, Prince faced the band members. His expression made Dez think, Uh oh, something’s coming.
“This is what we’re going to do,” Prince began. “When Dick Clark talks to you, don’t say anything.” When cameras rolled, he continued, they’d play two songs then join Clark for the usual banter. But when Clark posed questions, they should stay shut. It was rude, weird, and nothing a relative newcomer should pull, but Prince was out to make a statement.
They performed his pop hit “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” along with “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad.” Then the band surrounded him and Clark. Cameras rolled. Clark expressed amazement that he hailed from Minneapolis of all places.
“That tripped me out,” Prince recalled in the Star Tribune. Clark kept talking but the comment ate at him. “That really gave me an attitude for the rest of the talk.”
Clark asked how long he’d been playing.
Prince stared at him and held up four fingers. He adopted a lewd facial expression.
The appearance might have put off some viewers, but it made its mark. Dez felt it was pure genius. “Dick Clark talks about it to this day”
The Bandstand appearance and another on the NBC musical variety show The Midnight Special left people wanting more. His hit remained on radio. Prince sales—and those of his single “I Wanna Be Your Lover”—now soared past the 500,000 mark. As February 1980 approached, the Recording Industry Association of America began the process by which to certify the album Gold.
To maintain career momentum, his handlers asked New York-based publicity legend Howard Bloom for ideas on how to expand Prince’s white audience. As author Roy Shuker reported, Bloom felt Prince�
��s next tour “could be critical.” They should book two dates in each regional market, Bloom wrote. Have Prince open for a major black headliner like Cameo or Parliament, and play each town’s New Wave dance club. “The idea is to go after the black and white audience simultaneously,” Bloom explained. “Neither date will conflict with the other. The white kids who would go see Prince at the Ritz would never go to the Felt Forum (a New York funk auditorium) to see Cameo,” he wrote. “The black kids who flock to see Cameo wouldn’t think of going to the Ritz.”
Before they knew it, they had their chance to put the plan into effect.
Rick James (born James Ambrose Johnson, Jr. in Buffalo, New York) needed an opening act. James was a decade older and known for sporting braids, leather outfits, and boots in the P-Funk mold. By autumn 1979, his Fire It Up was in stores. His third release in eighteen months, it included the usual rock and R&B, disco, and a hit single called “Love Gun.” When none of its songs crossed over, James filled his fourth album Garden of Love with ballads. Motown released Garden on New Year’s Day, 1980. “Big Time” became a hit, but James now heard segments of his black audience claiming he recorded soft-lit ballads for white approval.
He needed to get back out there to command crowds, to yell, to serenade marijuana and sex, and to make lewd gestures to his female backup singers—to reestablish himself, in short. But for this latest tour—called Fire It Up—James needed a strong opening act. “There was a record burning up the airwaves called ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’ by some cat named Prince,” James remembered in his memoir. He liked that Prince played guitar. James’s handlers all agreed Prince would be great. James bought his album “and really enjoyed it, especially ‘Sexy Dancer.’ I thought the kid was pretty funky.” He asked Warner for a video, watched it, and felt Prince reminded him of himself, “except that he didn’t move as much.”