This project could have not been accomplished without the support of the
Minneapolis Star and Tribune. The bulk of the research was done in preparation for a
series, “Our Royal Rocker,” for the newspaper, and other information herein was
gleaned over the years while covering the music scene for the Star and Tribune. Special
thanks to managing editor Tim J. McGuire and librarian Bob Jansen for their
cooperation, and to my editors, Chris Beringer and her predecessor, David Eden, both
of whom not only put up with my kvetching but also went to bat for me.
We couldn’t have shown you this view from Minneapolis without the contributions of
an exceptional trio of photographers. My gratitude to David Brewster for his patience in
the pits and long hours in the darkroom, to Greg Helgeson for being there from the
beginning and always having the right attitude, and to Mark Peterson for his eagerness.
And thanks, too, to Chicago’s Paul Natkin, the hardest-working photographer in rock
music.
Other thank-yous to Lindley Boegehold for her unflagging enthusiasm and needless
nudging and to Barry Lippman for his latent passion for purple; to Sandra Choron, who
has a hungry heart but deserves a purple one for her design; to Bill Hammond and Bob
Oskam for the ace editing; to Esther Newberg and Kathy Pohi for playing Monte Hall
and Jay Stewart; to Tom Hart and Bob Weinstine of Winthrop, Weinstine and Sexton
and Stephen D. lsaacs for their advice; to Bobby, Matt, Dez, Andre, Gayle, Lisa, Mark,
Wendy, Morris, Terry, Jimmy, Jellybean, Monte, Jesse, Jerome, Paul, Gerry, Mark,
Vanity, Susan, Brenda, Apollonia, Sheila, and David for their talents and to Alan, Jamie,
Bob, Joe, and Steve for their facilitating; to Mattie Baker for being a good mother; to
Chris Moon, Owen Husney, Charles Orr, Tommy Vicari, Betsy Smith, Paul Mitchell,
Ronnie Robbins, and others for their memories; to Kevin for the introductions,
friendship, and legwork; to Les Schwartz at Warner Bros. Records for earfuls of
information and to Nancy Ambrosio of the Howard Bloom Organization for giving good
phone; to the folks at First Avenue for their belief and commitment; to the staffers at
Schon Productions for their persistence, and a special tip of the hat to Tim for the
backstage pass; to Anne for inspiration; and to Jan for wisdom, tolerance, and muffins,
not necessarily in that order.
And, most importantly, thanks to Prince, for his vision, his courage, and for staying
at home.
He used to hang around backstage at concerts with his manager. Back in 1976, he
was aloof, with kind of a cocky look about him. He never seemed to talk to anyone, but
he always seemed to be observing and absorbing under that huge Afro.
Maybe it was his manager’s idea. After all, Owen Husney tried to keep this kid
away from other people in the music business and, using his instincts as the owner of
an advertising agency, Husney was continually trying to infuse his various projects with
enigmatic qualities. Or maybe it was just the way the kid was. Who knows for sure?
In any event, from Day One there was this mystery, this mystique. The kid’s name
was simply Prince. No last name, Husney told everybody, just Prince. Convinced by a
record producer who had discovered the young talent, Husney believed he had found
the next Stevie Wonder. So he decided to make Prince sound extra special. He fudged
Prince’s age by two years to make the young prodigy sound even more extraordinary.
And then he magnified and exploited what was there: a quiet teenager who played all
the instruments himself on his demo tape.
On the promotional package pitched to record companies Husney included three or
four photos and three or four very, very brief quotes: “My first drum set was a box full of
newspapers. The snare was the flap of the box. It sounded good when my phonograph
was up loud!” Husney’s theory was an old one: What you don’t tell people is more
enticing sometimes than what you do tell them, because it makes them want to know
more. “I actually began that shroud of mystery,” the manager admits now, “and Prince
carried it to the limits.”
Indeed, Prince has fueled the mystique by not granting interviews. In fact, he’s not
very talkative around anyone he doesn’t know well. For instance, guitar hero Stevie Ray
Vaughan was sitting next to Prince in July ‘84 at a Bruce Springsteen concert in St.
Paul, and he tried to introduce himself. Getting no response, he turned to the hometown
hero and said, “If you’re Prince, then I must be the Queen Bee.” He still got no
response.
When Prince has talked, he hasn’t said much or he has made up stuff, especially
after having felt burned by some early misquotes. “He’s not a great interview—he’s not
very talkative,” said Jim Farber, who interviewed Prince for Playboy magazine in ‘80.
“He was friendly enough; he wasn’t nasty or surly, or have any kind of attitude at all. He
talks very slowly and quietly, and he doesn’t really have that much to say. You could tell
that he was gearing up for a no-interview policy at the time; he seemed to be doing it
during the interview.”
Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times conducted the last formal interview with
Prince late in 1982. “He was real quiet and shy, sitting on the floor, almost neurotically
fragile,” recalls Hilburn. “It was like he was holding back certain things. He kind of
responded to certain questions. And after a while he started answering more and more
and faster and faster. Then toward the end he reversed back to his shell again.”
The turning point for Prince and the press was when he encountered Barbara
Graustark of Newsweek magazine in early 1981. She conducted a nearly three-hour
grilling about his pained past and licentious lyrics. However, she left Newsweek and
didn’t publish the interview until more than two years later in Musician magazine. “He
was a shy and unsure creature,” she wrote in Musician, “small as a leprechaun and just
as elusive. He communicated with the gravity of a crestfallen child speaking in short
grudging bursts of words that nevertheless revealed a great deal more than he wanted
anyone to know.” After the session with Graustark, Prince grabbed his press agent and
said, “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Rolling Stone magazine pledged $10,000 to hire famed photographer Richard
Avedon if Prince would agree to an interview for a cover story in early 1983. Prince
submitted to the photo session, but he passed on the interview. When it came to
another cover story for Rolling Stone in the summer of ‘84, Prince walked out on a
photographer who had been sent to Minneapolis from Toronto.
Prince was a bit more accessible early in his career. I conducted the first one-onone interview with him on the last day of 1978. He was doing a hastily arranged concert
and needed publicity; one of his band members knew me and thought it was worth
publicizing the show in Minneapolis’s evening paper. Prince and I had actually been
formally introduced about fifteen months earlier. That was at the Record Plant studios
outside San Francisco, where he was recording his first album. We were introduced by
Husney, but we never even shook hands. He just sat back in the corner in the studio
behind the drum kit with his headphones on. He wouldn’t say anything to me, despite
my days of negotiating with Husney and coming halfway across the country to talk to
him, the local boy who was about to make good. In fact, he wouldn’t even play any
music with a stranger in the room. He just had the engineer play back some tracks, and
they worked on a rough mix.
He was a bit more cooperative on that subsequent winter afternoon in Minneapolis
when he wanted to talk about his first professional gig. Then in early 1980, he actually
called on the phone to converse in advance of his second concert in his hometown, and
it was as if we were old friends. There were several informal chats over the years—
backstage, at a concert, or on the street. One Saturday morning in March 1982 his aidede-camp called me at home and said Prince wanted to do an interview with me the next
afternoon before his concert in a Minneapolis suburb.
Since when was Prince soliciting interviews? Especially one for which he hadn’t
even been solicited. Nevertheless, I dutifully showed up at Met Center in Bloomington at
the appointed time. I was ushered back into the hockey locker room—turned—dressing
room where Prince sat on a couch with Dez Dickerson, the guitarist in his band. A
couple of cameras were set up along with bright klieg lights—obviously the interview
was being filmed for something. I plopped myself down on a chair opposite the
musicians, pulled out a notebook and tape recorder, and began interrogating them.
After the second or third question, drummer Bobby Z entered and announced he was
going to make a sandwich. But he couldn’t find any mayonnaise on the nearby table
covered with trays of meticulously arranged cold cuts. He ran over to me and grabbed
me by the collar of my fur coat. “Where’s the mayo?” he demanded. Then he went
berserk. He hurled a couple of food trays against the wall, kicked over the food table,
and upset the couch Prince and Dickerson were sitting on. All the while, the interview
continued as if nothing else were going on in the room. Dickerson even kept talking
after he and the couch had both been upended.
“Cut!” End of scene. End of interview.
The concert was filmed, and so were a few steamy scenes at Prince’s house. End
of the movie. It became a private reel. Two years later, for some strange reason, Lisa
Coleman, keyboardist in Prince’s band, apologized to me for the incident.
I had another close encounter with Prince at the third annual Minnesota Music
Awards in May of 1983. I presented him with the Musician of the Year award. We shook
hands and it was the first time he looked me straight in the eye in all the years I’d known
him. It was the sixth and final award Prince won that night, and he grabbed the
microphone and asked, “Do you want to hear us play?”
The curtain opened and he turned to an assemblage of musicians that included
members of his band, the Time and Vanity 6. “It’s gonna be in C and it’s gonna be bad,”
he told them. And then they jammed on a loose version of “D.M.S.R.” He strutted across
the stage with Vanity and grabbed the mike. “Watch this, Jon Bream!” Unfortunately, I
never saw the great move, because I was out in the hallway, phoning in my story to
make the deadline for the next morning’s paper. There was no doubt, though, that his
comment was in reference to my review that morning of the Motown twenty-fifth
anniversary TV special. I had suggested that Michael Jackson demonstrated a stage
presence and dancing that was just as thrilling as Prince’s.
Prince and I last talked June 7, 1984, at First Avenue, his favorite club in
Minneapolis. “Happy Birthday,” I said as I grasped his lace-covered hand.
“Thank you. Thanks for coming to my party.”
He almost seems human, doesn’t he? Sometimes. But he does put up walls and
play games; there seem to be roadblocks at just about every turn. He won’t talk on the
record or in-depth anymore, and neither will most of the people around him. Yet stories
about him have been told so many times that they have become legend, regardless of
whether they are fact or fiction. For example, there are tales of him discovering a cache
of pornography hidden among his mother’s Better Homes and Gardens magazines, but
she says it isn’t so. Andre Cymone has talked about him and Prince acting out various
fantasies with young ladies in the basement in which the two young musicians once
lived, but people who knew them then say it isn’t so.
Is Prince black or white? Is he straight or gay? He asked the questions himself in
an autobiographical song called “Controversy.” Or has he just cleverly created a
monster and marketed him with the elan of a P. T. Barnum?
We’ll try to answer those questions and many more. We’ll try to demystify the
Prince who would be King by taking you to Minneapolis, where Prince Roger Nelson
was born, bred, and still lives. We’ll take you Inside the Purple Reign.
—Jon
Bream
Minneapolis,
Minnesota
Sept. 1, 1984
JON BREAM, A NATIVE OF THE TWIN CITIES, HAS COVERED POPULAR MUSIC FOR THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR AND
TRIBUNE SINCE 1974. HIS MUSIC REVIEWS AND FEATURES ALSO HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN SUCH NATIONAL MUSIC
MAGAZINES AS BILLBOARD, CREEM, AND ROLLING STONE AND IN NEWSPAPERS AROUND THE COUNTRY, FROM THE
BOSTON GLOBE TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES.
Bobby Z, with his girlfriend Vicki in tow, is cruising through the crowd at First
Avenue, looking for his dad. It’s after 10 P.M. and Bobby, drummer for Prince’s
Revolution, is supposed to be onstage already. But it’s Prince’s party, and he’ll do what
he wants to.
Prince is cruising through the crowd himself. Alan Leeds, logistics expert, is
clearing the path; Chick Huntsberry, the ultimate bodyguard, is bringing up the rear.
Prince is sandwiched in between, hanging onto a hand of each of his attendants. He
stops to chat with Allen Beaulieu, the Minneapolis photographer who has shot some of
his album covers. Oh, there’s an old friend, and there’s someone who helped with the
movie. Prince is making the rounds.
It’s a hand-picked crowd—invitations only and “Members First,” an exclusive group
of friends of the people who work at First Avenue, the hip danceteria where Prince
hangs out and filmed most of the concert sequences for Purple Rain. The Members had
to shell out $20 per ticket. Actually, Prince wanted to charge $25 when he realized how
high his expenses were, what with the Record Plant’s mobile recording facility being
brought in from New York at a cost of at least $25,000. But the tickets had already been
printed and were scheduled to go on sale. And First Avenue refused to make a change.
“He’s not God,” said one staffer.
No, but this is his birthday party. And his twenty-sixth year is going to be the
biggest year of his life.
His movie, Purple Rain, will be released in a few weeks. The soundtrack album is
due any day, and the single “When Doves Cry” has soared to the top of the charts. He’ll
soon be the hottest figure in the music business, more talked about than the Jacksons
and more in demand than Bruce Springsteen.
Tonight is his first full-fledged concert appearance since a benefit performance at
First Avenue ten months ago. From an artistic standpoint, Purple Rain is history, and
the prolific Prince has new material and a new look to share with his friends. Purple is
the color, of course. The purple lamé trench coat is no surprise, but the purple scarf with
the black fringe draped over one eye is. And so, too, the pink and purple brocade outfit.
There’s no doubt that Prince is entering his Sgt. Pepper’s phase with a bit of a Louis
XIV touch for the ‘80s.
Musically, some changes will be evident tonight. “If you’re expecting to drive my
little red Corvette,” he tells his favored few after he takes the stage an hour later than
scheduled, “you won’t. We’ve got some stuff you will recognize and some you won’t.”
“Irresistible Bitch,” the B-side from “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” and “Doves” and
its flipside, “17 Days,” are the only familiar tunes. The rest of the night is devoted to new
material that’s a lot funkier and more soulful than the rock-oriented sounds of Purple
Rain.
He looks a year older than when he was onstage here last summer. There’s more
character, more age, more emotion in his face. The energy is still there. He’s mastered
those James Brown moves he’s been studying and practicing—high-heeled spins that
give way into splits. The gospel- influenced vocal screams are more abundant than in
the past. One thing is certain tonight: Prince has got a brand new bag.
“This song is dedicated to that little girl over there,” he says, pointing to a woman at
the sound board. “That’s Sheila E.” She smiles and stares at him for the whole song; he
gazes back at her. The ballad is dreamy, the chemistry is obvious.
Next comes the X-rated “Erotic City,” which will end up as a B-side on another new
single. The Revolution is cooking tonight. For a group that hasn’t played publicly in
nearly a year, it couldn’t be hotter and tighter. The lead man is loose and smiling. But
the audience is strangely blasé. These trend mongers don’t know what to make of new
tunes like “Possessed,” “Our Destiny,” “Something,” and “All Day/All Night.” They want
to party to the Prince they know and love. But the night isn’t over.
It’s off to a sculptor’s studio about a mile away in the warehouse district,
Minneapolis’s answer to New York’s Soho. Security is tight—no invitation, no
admittance. Five muscle bound guards in black T-shirts, white suspenders, and jeans
are there to make sure.
It’s a party in purple—purple napkins, purple plates, purple stars on the tables.
There’s a five-tier wedding cake decorated with purple music notes, piano keys, and a
45 of “When Doves Cry” instead of a bride and groom. The song isn’t on the sound
system, but just about every other hot dance record of the past few years is, courtesy of
First Avenue’s disc jockeys. Even favorite oldies by Earth, Wind & Fire and the Spinners
are mixed in with the latest by the Time and Apollonia 6.
Sheila E., dressed in a long coat, has flown in from the West Coast along with
Prince’s managers: Bob Cavallo, Joe Ruffalo, and Steve Fargnoli. Andre Cymone, once
Prince’s bosom buddy and now a less- than-amiable rival, is here along with his mother,
Bernadette Anderson, who took Prince into her home during his high school years.
Prince’s mother and stepfather have turned out, too, along with three hundred or so
friends from school, the old neighborhoods, and the music world.
It’s home folks, and that means Prince has parked his bodyguard at the front door
and left his standoffish Prince persona at First Avenue. The birthday boy takes to the
crowded dance floor in his white ruffled blouse and black Vegas-style pants and vest.
It’s party time. No star moves here—there isn’t room. He’s not partial about partners;
every lady gets a turn. His energy is staggering. He may step outside for a breath of
fresh air on this rainy summer night or stop at the bar for some fruit juice. But he’ll
outlast all his guests.
It’s 5:05 A.M. The private concert ended more than four hours ago. The sun is
coming up over downtown Minneapolis. Most of the party guests have gone home. The
bar has long been closed, and Prince’s stepfather, Hayward Baker, is hunched over in
his chair next to the bar, catching a few z’s. “Controversy” is blasting on the sound
system in the next room. Prince comes flying through the doorway. He glances at Baker
in the corner and floats back to his dance partner without missing a beat. It looks as if
he’s going to party until 1999.
Mattie Shaw doesn’t remember being introduced to John L. Nelson back in the
1950s. She just kind of knew him from dances at the Phyllis Wheatley settlement house.
It was where blacks on the north side of Minneapolis often socialized. Nowadays, of
course, they’d call the place a community center, which, in fact, they do.
Nelson, a lifelong musician, had a little jazz trio and he’d been around quite a bit.
Shaw was a singer and the mother of one child. Nelson hired her for his Prince Roger
Trio.
Even though there was a sixteen-year age difference between them, Nelson and
Shaw eventually married, and she dropped out of the group. He worked as a plaster
molder at Honeywell, an electronics firm, and played piano in his group or wherever he
could get a gig. Two and a half years after they married, Mattie, then twenty-four, gave
birth to a son, and they named him after the band: Prince Roger Nelson.
He was born at 6:17 P.M., June 7, 1958, at a Jewish hospital in south Minneapolis.
Mom called him “Skipper,” because she called her forty-year-old husband “Prince” and
“because he [her son] was small in size and he just was real cute—he was a darling
baby.”
Of course, there was plenty of music around the house and young Skipper was
naturally attracted to it. “He could hear music even from a very early age,” his mother
said. “When he was three or four, we’d go to the department store and he’d jump on the
radio, the organ, any type of instrument there was. Mostly the piano and organ. And I’d
have to hunt for him, and that’s where he’d be—in the music department.”
When he was five, he composed his first song by banging two rocks together. A
year later, he was telling his mother he was going to be a star. At age eight, he had a
piano lesson with a woman across the street, but he refused to go back. His mom
wanted to know why. “Because she wants me to play what she wants me to play, and I
want to play what I want to play.” Even back then, the little Prince had his own ideas.
The first seven or eight years appear to have been a pleasant middle- class
existence for Prince and his sister, Tyka, two years his junior. However, in the few indepth interviews he has given, Prince has talked about a tormented childhood with
parents who fought. His mother, who holds a master’s degree in social work and is now
a social worker for the Minneapolis school system, says she and her husband had
“normal disagreements.” Every kid invariably has something he or she wishes would be
different in their childhood, she observes in commenting on her son’s remarks.
Moreover, she notes that Prince was young when he granted his interviews and implies
that he tended to make things up.
For instance, both Mattie and John Nelson, although light-skinned, consider
themselves blacks. Yet Prince has said in interviews that his father was part Italian and
his mother a mixture of things. ‘1 think all blacks are racially mixed,” says Mattie. “My
grandfather, his grandfather—it was a racially mixed family, both my family and his
dad’s family. I never did a family tree.”
John Nelson left when Prince was about ten, and soon thereafter a stepfather came
into the picture. Prince didn’t get along with him. Hayward Baker apparently tried to win
over his young stepson with gifts, but Prince wanted companionship. So he moved in
with his dad on the south side of Minneapolis and then bounced to an elderly aunt’s
home.
On the south side, Prince lived in another pocket of black families. There was no
black ghetto per se in Minneapolis, the population of which is less than 3 percent black,
just concentrations of black families. The households on the north side were sprinkled
with pockets of Jewish families, whereas the southsiders mixed with Lutherans of
Scandinavian descent. Northside folks, who tended to be lower-income, liked to tease
their brothers and sisters on the south side about being bourgeois. Prince got to know
both sides of town.
On the surface, Prince seemed to be a happy kid. But inside, something was
churning. Something was missing. He didn’t have a home life like the other kids. He’d
see his dad on weekends, but although his Aunt Olivia was good to him, she was just
too old to give him the proper attention. He hung around a lot with the jocks from school,
like his stepbrother Duane Nelson and Paul Mitchell. They watched football and pro
wrestling on television (Prince would imitate the local announcer interviewing characters
like Mad Dog Vachon and the Crusher), played an electric football game, or shot
baskets at nearby Bryant Junior High School. When he wasn’t at his dad’s, communing
with the organ or piano, Prince was likely to be at the Mitchells’ a couple blocks away.
He’d arrive at 7 AM., go to school with his buddies, and then go to practice—and
sometimes stay at the Mitchells till bedtime.
At one point, the guys went through a phase when they used to tickle and tease
their moms. You know, it was a sign of warmth and love and fun. However, there was
no mom in Prince’s life, so he used to tickle Mrs. Mitchell. “A lot of people felt sorry for
him,” said Paul Mitchell. “He would get on people’s nerves sometimes; I think it was just
his frustration lashing out at people. I think he was trying to be cute and get attention.
He didn’t get it at home. We kind of helped him. I think at times he had to feel left out
because he just didn’t have anyone. But he never talked about the family problems,
even to Duane.”
Duane, who was in the same grade as Prince, is not a blood relative. His mom
married Prince’s dad. Because Prince’s parents divorced and remarried people who
themselves were divorced, his family tree has many twisted limbs: He has one sister,
one half-brother and two step-siblings through his mother’s second marriage, and four
half- and step-siblings through his dad’s second marriage.
Prince had a big family but no real home. He was the kind of kid who would just
show up at someone’s house at dinner time and be a welcome if uninvited guest. In a
way, he was spoiled.
Sometimes he’d start saying something about his family to a friend, then suddenly
he would stop. He just couldn’t get it out.
“He’s got to have some kind of antipeople feelings,” observed the Reverend Art
Erickson, who supervised youth activities with which Prince was involved at Park
Avenue Methodist Church. “He told me a story once about how his stepfather locked
him in his room for six weeks and wouldn’t let him out and the only thing in there was a
bed and a piano, so he learned to play the piano. Personally, I think a lot of his
background feeds into his life. In high school, he retreated into himself quite a bit—he
would eat lunch alone and he became very reflective. The divorce, a lot of things hurt
Prince. And out of that hurt probably comes a lot of his expressions today—a lot of
anticuIture, antifamily, antiestablishment, anti-institutional feelings.”
If Prince was religious, it was in his own personal way. He spent time at the
neighborhood church and attended the obligatory Bible study sessions and choir
practice. But he seemed more interested in the basketball team. In fact, when he was in
the ninth grade, he and Mitchell coached a team of fifth and sixth graders at the church.
However, shortly thereafter, Prince bounced back to the north side to Bernadette
Anderson’s big brick house. She was a divorcee raising six kids of her own while trying
to get a degree at the University of Minnesota, yet she took in Prince. He wasn’t exactly
a stranger to her—her exhusband had played in a band with Prince’s dad. And now
Prince became almost a brother to Anderson’s son, Andre. She gave the two teenagers
freedom to do whatever they wanted in the basement, as long as they made it to school
the next morning. Both young men have told tales of sexual encounters of many kinds,
which may be part fantasy and part reality. One thing for sure, though, Prince and Andre
listened to a lot of music: Grand Funk Railroad, Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and Santana.
“Midnight at the Oasis” came ringing through the vents at Central High School just
about every day. Everyone knew who was playing the haunting instrumental version of
Maria Muldaur’s hit song; it was the kid sitting in the hallway with the big Afro and big
acoustic guitar—Prince Nelson.
Just about everyone at Central knew who he was. It was an inner city school that,
in the mid-’70s, was a mixture of whites and blacks, Jews and Lutherans, poor and rich,
with even the sons of the chief of surgery at the prestigious University of Minnesota
Hospitals. Prince was quiet and shy and pretty much blended in with everyone else. But
he could play music like no one else.
On occasion he’d walk into jazz ensemble class, in which he wasn’t enrolled, pick
up an instrument, take a solo and “kill it,” and then just walk out. His music teacher used
to lock up the music room at lunchtime so Prince could practice in solitude. He used to
sit in the hallways and play his guitar a lot even after the bell rang. “That kid,” the drama
teacher told the school’s music director, “isn’t going to amount to anything.”
Huh? And to think that only a few years later, when the same kid came back to visit
Central for an assembly, the students got so hysterical that Prince had to be locked in
the office and never got a chance to face the student body. “He was in my office,”
recalled Dannie Gomez, a Central assistant principal at the time, “and he had some of
the saddest eyes I’d seen in a long time, like something had happened to him way back
when.”
At Bryant Junior High, Prince was pretty much a jock. At least he tried to be. He
played baseball, football, and basketball. He was quick and agile and had great
endurance. In fact, he was good enough in basketball that in ninth grade he made the
junior varsity team at Central High, a perennial athletic power in football, basketball, and
track. He was the sixth or seventh man on the team, an excellent ballhandler and a
good shooter, according to coach Richard Robinson. The problem was that, at five-foottwo, Prince was too short. “Probably with a different group of people he would have
been a starter,” the coach noted. “But, as they turned out, they were probably the best
ball team that ever came along at Central. I knew he wanted to be starting and felt he
should be starting. He was unhappy and he expressed that many, many times. He
always has been a person who felt he had to do things his way.” In fact, Prince quit in
midseason of his sophomore year and retreated to his music.
Going from junior to senior high, he seemed to become withdrawn. He’d sit or stand
by himself in the cafeteria, never eating but staring at people. He was so quiet in the
classroom that some of the teachers didn’t try to get through to him. He didn’t
participate much in class discussions. Oftentimes he occupied himself making artistic
doodles. He never got into trouble or found himself in the principal’s office, and he got
pretty good grades, seemingly without studying hard.
The few people who got close to the reserved but obviously talented student—and
no one claims to have really penetrated his shell—talk about his sense of humor.
Sometimes it was sophisticated verbal stuff; other times it was pure pranks. In dramareading class at Central, Prince once put a tack on the chair of an unsuspecting Ronnie
Robbins, his R&B guitar rival. Some of the students were aware of it, so when the
chubby victim screamed, Prince got a big chuckle. However, Prince was more likely to
engage in verbal jousting with his buddies—you know, running down each other’s
families the way kids do. He didn’t like being the butt of jokes as much as he liked
dishing it out. But he sure had his share of nicknames, from the cruel ‘Butcher Dog”
(because neighborhood kids thought his face resembled a German shepherd’s) to the
taunting and obvious “Princess.”
On the other hand, his humor could be sly. His ninth grade algebra teacher
happened to have a pair of pants that were exactly the same pattern and style as
Prince’s. “Every great while we’d end up wearing the same pants on the same day,”
George Headrick said, “and he’d say, ‘That’s a nice looking pair of pants you have on.’”
Prince dressed pretty much like everyone else. Some days he favored platform
shoes, others track shoes. There were shirts with hoods and occasional rhinestones,
and his hair was braided into cornrows from time to time. Then on the warmer days you
might see him in a tank top with cutoffs, sandals, and socks. He did ask a friend, Betsy
Smith, to make him a knit hat like the kind that Sly Stone wore, sort of a gladiator’s
helmet with string-straps dangling with huge balls. So she crocheted him a pink and
blue hat like his idol wore.
Another of Prince’s idols was Carlos Santana. In fact, Prince signed Smith’s junior
high yearbook, “Keep It Black, Carlos Santana.” (A few years later, after the young
musician had met his idol, he told Smith he didn’t like Santana because the guitar hero
was too into his guru.)
Prince always seemed to have a girlfriend of sorts, but his friends never considered
him a ladies’ man. He was kind of shy around women and self- conscious about his
height. He did stay pretty tight with one of his girlfriends from school days—a
cheerleader who was about his height— and she ended up with a small part in Purple
Rain. He wasn’t too sociable, and when he did go to parties, he steadfastly stayed away
from booze. He wasn’t exactly a wallflower. Ironically though, his stepbrother Duane,
who was a foot taller, was voted best male dancer in their senior class.
In high school, Prince was absorbed in his music. He did well in music theory,
guitar class, and stage band. His music teacher, Jim Hamilton, who had played with B.
B. King and Ray Charles, sensed that Prince and several other of his students at
Central and North High (which Prince attended briefly during his sophomore year) had
futures in music—Andre Anderson, Prince’s former bassist, who now records as Andre
Cymone and produces others; Terry Lewis, who played bass in the Time and now
produces records; Mark Brown, bassist in Prince’s Revolution; and Terry Casey, lead
singer of Mazarati, a Minneapolis R&B band that Brown produces. “At that time,” the
teacher observed, “when it came to business sense, performance, and playing, I would
bet ten dollars to a penny that Andre would be the guy to make it.”
In junior and senior high, Prince and Andre played in the same band— Grand
Central—along with Andre’s sister, Linda, on keyboards, Morris Day (later lead singer of
the Time) on drums, and William Daughty on percussion. The group favored sneaky
funk arrangements of tunes by Larry Graham, Michael Jackson, Carole King, and
Grover Washington, with Prince taking the horn parts on his guitar voice-bag. The
songs grew into long jams and almost lost their structure as tunes. But the intros were
slick, the choreography exceptional, and outfits showy, if not always matching. And
Prince, the doodler, designed a logo for the group.
Grand Central, from the north side, was one of three rival groups of young blacks in
Minneapolis. There was Cohesion on the south side and Flyte Tyme, which later
evolved into the Time. Battles of the bands at local hotels were the order of the day, and
sometimes Valentine’s Day, New Year’s Eve, or a fashion show would mean a job.
Prince sang in falsetto and exhibited a certain reluctance to look at his audience. Even
so, he had a magic presence. For instance, one night in ‘76, Champagne, which Grand
Central had been rechristened that year, was facing off against Cohesion. Prince had
already left the band, but he made a guest appearance and simply blew Cohesion off
the stage.
Some days Prince and Andre wandered to downtown Minneapolis to Chuck Orr’s
guitar store and checked out bass guitars for two or three hours at a time. Andre always
did the talking, but both did the playing. Orr’s store became sort of a haven for a lot of
young, ambitious players. One time the owner locked the door in the afternoon and just
let a bunch of musicians jam until long after 8 P.M. ‘It was a total black happening,” Orr
said. (Just a few months later Prince commissioned the shop owner to make him a
guitar and a bass with white ivy vines on the fingerboard.)
Prince was serious about music as a profession. There was talk of some interest
from Isaac Hayes, the hot buttered soul rapper from Memphis, but Prince decided he
didn’t want to go with the Shaft man. He wanted to finish school and pursue his own
dreams. They were clear. In the Central High graduation program, Prince listed his postschool plans as “Employment—Music.” To that end, the youngster had taken classes
from Hamilton in song copyrighting, recording, and other music business topics, but he
never finished them. Still he had enough sense to contact a professional musician in
New York who had married his cousin to ask about setting up to publish his songs.
In school, Prince wasn’t much for sharing his music. He might light into one of his
tunes and then stop after thirty seconds. But he’d pay attention to the music of other
students. In fact, some players thought he was copping their ideas and incorporating
them into his own music. That seemed to be his style—always absorbing. Even back
then, he had this aura or mystique about him. In his own unspoken way, he always
seemed to have his way.
“I’m about to be a star,” he said to Ronnie Robbins one day in ‘76.
Responded Robbins: “I know you are.”
In the music industry, the Twin Cities area is known as a vanilla market. Blackoriented radio stations just don’t exist as in the rest of urban America. And the major
commercial radio stations have been resistant to much black music, even material that
reaches the mainstream. For instance, when a local studio group known as Lipps, Inc.
reached Number One on the pop charts with “Funkytown” in April 1980, no Twin Cities
commercial station would play it. Not one station.
Back in the ‘70s, there was a sunrise-to-sunset black radio station in Minneapolis
that couldn’t even be picked up across the river in St. Paul. So Prince and his buddies
spent a lot of time listening to KQRS, one of those classic free-form progressive-rock
stations of the early 1970s. They’d hear the Allman Brothers, Edgar Winter, Hall &
Oates, Jimi Hendrix, Wendy Waldman, Santana, and Shawn Phillips, a big Twin Cities
favorite. And they’d hear about a place called Moon Sound. Producer Chris Moon
handled the sound for live concerts by Brian Auger, Taj Mahal, Charlie Daniels, Jerry
Jeff Walker, and others broadcast on KQRS, and his Moon Sound studio was
advertised prominently on KQ.
So when Prince and his group Champagne decided they wanted to make a fourtune demo tape, they headed over to Moon Sound. It was a $25-per-hour, eight-track
studio in a building where the previous tenant, a photographer, had hanged himself.
Moon was an electronics type in his early twenties who wanted to make music but
couldn’t play an instrument, so he started a recording studio. His family had left England
when he was thirteen and landed in Hawaii. Three years later, he showed up in the
dead of winter with an Aloha shirt and soft British accent in Edina, Minnesota, one of
America’s wealthiest suburbs.
Shortly after graduating from high school, Moon launched his studio. During the day
he worked in a recording studio at a downtown advertising agency and at night at Moon
Sound, where he made demo tapes for local groups and cut commercials. Moon fancied
himself a lyricist, and was on the lookout for a composer. For ten years, he’d been
writing poetry, and he figured that songs would be a good way to get his thoughts out.
One day after a session with this five-piece band of black high school kids, Moon got a
hunch about the quiet, low-key, down-to-earth guitar player.
So he approached Prince Nelson about collaborating. He offered him a deal—no
charge for the recording and free use of the studio to experiment in exchange for writing
the music, singing the lyrics, and playing guitar on Moon’s song. The other members of
Champagne weren’t crazy about this idea, and their manager—drummer Morris Day’s
mother—was against it. But Prince decided to go ahead with the project. It precipitated
his departure from Champagne.
Moon and Prince made a deal—they’d split the take 50-50—and they shook on it.
Every day after that this shy high school kid with the big Afro would show up at Moon
Sound with a guitar in one hand and a malt in the other. Sometimes he’d sit around and
work on stylized versions of his autograph. Should he dot the ‘i”? Or maybe crown it
with a heart? Or he’d practice his dance spins. One day, he even cut a jingle for a local
clothing boutique. Sometimes they’d take photos of Prince’s girlfriend, who was hoping
to become a model. Meanwhile, the transplanted Englishman was calculating how to
write a hit song.
“It was like two little kids with an exotic Erector set,” said Moon. “I know what it
should look like and you should put the pieces together.”
What kind of song would it take to make this energetic but quiet kid a sensation?
One featuring sex, of course, but it couldn’t be blatant. How about “implied naughty
sexuality?” the ad man in Moon schemed.
The song was called “Soft and Wet.” Moon wrote the words in about fifteen minutes
one morning at the ad agency after he’d been out partying the night before. He took it to
Prince, who then worked something out on the piano. The next day Prince came back
and laid down a guitar line. Moon said he’d line up a bass player, but Prince said, never
mind, he’d do it himself—and did. Then he added the drums and the other parts.
They had a song and they had a direction. Moon came up with more lyrics but
needed a break from his two-job lifestyle. So he went camping one weekend and left
Prince the keys to the studio, along with the lyrics and written directions on how to
operate the recording console. Prince slept in the studio and began to figure things out
himself. It was perhaps then that he got the idea of recording and producing records
entirely by himself. He could spend hours working on a single track.
What drove him to be a perfectionist is unclear. Maybe it was his first professional
endeavor in the recording studio. While Prince and Moon continued to collaborate on
tunes for a demo tape, the high school senior also played guitar on a 1976 session
backing Pepe Willie, a singer from Brooklyn whose dad had worked with Little Anthony
and the Imperials. Willie, who came to Minneapolis after marrying Prince’s cousin, had
landed a contract to cut a single with Polydor Records. He had a band called 94 East,
but he also brought Prince to Sound 80, Minneapolis’s only first-class studio.
Polydor had paired Willie with veteran producer Hank Cosby, who’d made a name
for himself at Motown Records working with Stevie Wonder on “My Cherie Amour” and
other hits. Cosby was a heavy-set man who characteristically sat in the control room
eating popcorn. He was from the old school and, well, not easy to get along with.
Anytime one of the musicians made a suggestion, Cosby would snap back, “Yeah, I
already thought of that.” Whenever Prince wanted to go back and redo a guitar line to
get it just right, Cosby wasn’t interested. Prince seemed more impressed by the attitude
of the fastidious man working in the studio next to him—Cat Stevens.
So it was back to Moon Sound to finish the demo tape. Meanwhile, Prince
graduated from Central High. He showed up late to the ceremony and didn’t even get a
tassle for his mortarboard. But that didn’t matter. It was his eighteenth birthday, and he
had bigger and better things to look forward to.
Moon and the young musician completed six songs and chose three of them—”Soft
and Wet,”“Baby,” and “Love Is Forever”—for the demo tape. Prince took the tape with
him on a visit to his sister in New York. Moon, ever the hustler, promised to line up
some interviews.
However, Prince found himself walking in cold and getting cold responses. After all,
Moon simply called a record company, asked the name of the president, and then
asked to speak with him. When the president’s secretary asked Moon which artist he
represented, he’d say, “Prince.” It was “Who?” and “Good-bye.”
So Moon had to come up with a new ploy.
“Who’s your artist?”“Stevie Wonder,” he told the secretary boldly, and the call went
through to the president. “Let me explain, it’s not Stevie Wonder. But you have to hear
my artist.”
The big shots couldn’t believe Moon’s routine; Prince got appointments. But the
only two offers he could muster would have required him to give up the publishing rights
to his songs. He’d learned enough about music publishing in teacher Jim Hamilton’s
class at Central and from Pepe Willie not to give in so quickly.
Meanwhile, Moon, knowing he was not cut out to be a manager, pitched the threesong demo tape to Owen Husney, a partner in a Minneapolis ad agency who had
promoted concerts and now managed a couple of acoustic performers. The producer
told Husney that he’d found the next Stevie Wonder, then put the tape in the deck.
“What’s the name of the group?” Husney asked. “Prince.”
“How many people?”
“One.”
Husney was kind of amused.
“Isn’t it hot?” Moon asked after the tape had played through.
“Pretty interesting,” the manager replied.
“I’ll leave the tape. I’m telling you, it’s the next Stevie Wonder.”
Moon called Husney again the next day. “One guy, huh?” Husney mused. “How old
is he?”
“Sixteen. I’m telling you, it’s Stevie Wonder all over—except he’s not blind.”
These conversations between Moon and Husney went on for about a week. Then
Husney played the tape for some of his friends on a boat ride one night, and they really
dug it.
He phoned Moon the next day. “I think you may have something here.”
Good-bye, Big Apple. Hello again, Minneapple.
Owen Husney convinced Prince to come back home. He gave him an allowance,
bought him several instruments, set him up in an apartment near Minneapolis’s most
popular barbecue joint, and began the selling of Prince.
Husney brought in engineer David Rivkin, who had written songs with Gram
Parsons, to help polish the demo tape at Sound 80. He hired a fashion photographer to
do a series of portraits and then put together a promotional brochure of photos and a
few tersely worded captions. (‘The more I didn’t say, the greater the curiosity,” Husney
figured.) He prepared fifteen brochures at a cost of $100 each and placed Prince’s
demo tape in silver-colored reels. He then put on his three-piece suit—”Everyone in L.A.
was in Hawaiian shirts and jeans and I wanted to catch ‘em off guard”—and peddled his
tape.
He had to lie to get appointments—do things like show up at A&M Records without
an appointment and insist, “You told me two o’clock!” That kind of tactic had paid off in
previous years when Husney was pitching his acoustic acts. You know, the old, “Well,
Columbia is flying me out and while I’m here I thought you might like to It got him in the
doors and resulted in a few nibbles.
This time, however, the record labels swallowed Husney’s bait. A&M, Columbia,
and Warner Bros. all extended offers to Prince. However, there was one priority.
Husney insisted that this teenager who’d played all the instruments on his demo tape be
allowed to produce his own record. “It was,” the manager later reflected, “the greatest
thing I could do to protect his creativity.
A&M proffered houses in Beverly Hills and the others dangled huge sums. But
Warner Bros. vice-president Russ Thyret, whom Husney had met in his days as a
concert promoter, drove the out-of-towners around Los Angeles and then took them
back to his home to discuss the record business, not just the money. On the strength of
that old friendship, Warners won out. It was reportedly the biggest signing for a new act
in 1977—three albums for what Husney insists was more than $1 million. Even so, the
label was reluctant to let Prince produce his own album. Warners wanted Maurice
White, the leader of Earth, Wind & Fire. Husney was adamant. He proposed a test: Put
Prince in the studio and have him construct a song in front of three experienced
producers—Gary Katz of Steely Dan fame and Warners staff producers Russ Titelman
and Lenny Waronker. After an hour and a half—less than halfway through the song—
the nineteen-year-old passed the test.
Warners nevertheless insisted that an experienced studio hand be involved in the
project as “executive producer.” Tommy Vicari, who had worked with Billy Preston,
Santana, Gino Vannelli, and Paul Williams, was sent to Minneapolis to meet Prince. The
Los Angeleno didn’t quite know what to make of this teenager who lived in a messy
apartment with a waterbed on the floor, garbage all over the kitchen, and 45 rpm
records nailed to the wall next to a poster of Chaka Khan. But then it was time to go to
the studio.
Sound 80 was the closest thing to state of the art that Minneapolis had. After all,
Leo Kottke regularly recorded there, and Bob Dylan, Kiss, and other national acts had
done sessions there. However, there was some problem with the equipment at Sound
80, so Prince’s album couldn’t be recorded in Minneapolis. Husney vetoed the idea of a
Los Angeles studio, because he didn’t want to expose Prince to the we-gotta-make-a-hit
mindset of the record business. The Record Plant, located in the solitude outside San
Francisco, was an acceptable alternative.
So Prince and Husney and his wife, Britt, moved into a house in Mill Valley,
California. Vicari also stayed there, and engineer Rivkin and Andre Anderson, Prince’s
best friend, were sometimes around as well. Britt essentially mothered Prince, cooking,
combing his Afro, taking care of the house, the dog, etc. Husney functioned as
babysitter as Prince and Vicari went to the studio six days a week, working from about
three in the afternoon until maybe five or six in the morning.
During the day they might shoot baskets or sit around and listen to records in
Prince’s room in the basement. A George Duke, Santana, or Earth, Wind & Fire record
would come on and Prince would compare the sound to the rough mixes of his own
recording sessions. He liked to listen to Fleetwood Mac, too, but he refused to listen to
any Stevie Wonder records. He idolized the man he had often been compared to, and
he simply didn’t want to be too influenced by him.
Prince clearly knew what he wanted to accomplish in the recording studio, and
Vicari was there to show him how to do it. The newcomer asked a lot of questions, and
he learned a lot about sound and keeping instruments in tune. Sly Stone happened to
be working in another studio at the Record Plant and stopped by one night to see what
was going on. But Prince didn’t have much to say to the man he had idolized. The funny
thing was that he’d talked at length to Vicari about how much he admired Sly and then
when he met him, clammed up and left Vicari to steer the conversation. On another
occasion, the engineer took Prince to meet Carlos Santana, perhaps the musician the
youngster most admired. Prince was a bit more talkative and cordial at Santana’s
house, but hardly expansive. “When other people are around, you’re dealing with a
different person,” Vicari later observed. “When Prince is alone with people he trusts,
he’s not at all introverted.”
Vicari and Prince talked a lot. The producer, ten years older than the artist, became
sort of a big brother to him. Vicari sensed that Prince had something to prove; maybe it
was because he didn’t get along with his dad and that was so frustrating to him.
From time to time, Prince headed down to Los Angeles for various business
reasons. He’d always get in the rental car, locate his favorite R&B radio station, and
crank up the volume. Sometimes he’d get into a goofy mood. Once, he, Husney, and a
couple of others decided to pull a Chinese fire drill at a stoplight. But Rivkin, who was
driving, banged his car door into a big gold Cadillac. They all looked at the Caddy; the
driver looked like actor Lloyd Bridges. He signaled them over to the curb, and they
pulled over behind him. Suddenly Prince announced, “Let’s get out of here! Quick!” And
they sped off.
In February 1978, Prince went to Los Angeles to attend the Grammy Awards with
Vicari. They rented a limousine and the producer’s wife spent three weeks making a
special sequined suit for the budding recording star. Unfortunately, Vicari had neglected
to check on the location of their tickets—the balcony. The promising new Warner Bros.
artist had to stand in line to get into the Grammys. It was somewhat symbolic of the
whole experience of those early California days.
The sessions dragged on and on. The young pro and the even younger rookie had
different ideas about what they wanted the record to sound like. After five months in the
studio, the record “went stale on me,” Vicari reflected. When it came time to mix the
tracks, he was simply burned out. And Prince, who had played twenty-seven different
instruments on the album, insisted on elaborate overdubs of all the sounds. It became
evident that here was a perfectionist who wanted to do it all. He even erased Vicari’s
name from the engineering credits on the tape box and wrote in his own name.
“If I do some mixing on the record, can I get mixing credits?” Prince then asked
Vicari.
“Look, why don’t you press the record and take the picture, too?” the executive
producer retorted.
Having spent their days and nights together for nearly half a year, Prince and Vicari
basically had grown too close. It became obvious that the young artist wouldn’t
compromise his views. So Vicari moved out of the Mill Valley house into a hotel. Prince
refused to okay the hotel bill. Meanwhile, the entire project was running way over
budget.
By the time the album was finished Prince had accumulated a studio bill of about
$170,000. “Soft and Wet” sneaked to Number Ten on Billboard’s R&B chart, but the
album, For You, as critic Stephen Holden observed, sounded like Todd Rundgren
imitating Smokey Robinson, not like the next Stevie Wonder.
Warner Bros. was anxious for a return on its investment. Prince had already spent
more money on the recording of his debut album than he had been allotted to make
three albums. Sure enough, he had done the requisite autograph parties and, in his
manager’s presence, given interviews to radio disc jockeys and writers for teen- and
black-oriented magazines. But the record company wanted Prince to promote his
records by the tried and true way, concerts. In fact, Warners had advanced him an extra
$50,000 in “tour support” to help defray the expenses of going on the road.
So after the release of For You in the spring of ‘78, the one-man recording band
began assembling a road band. His longtime buddy and bass player Andre Anderson
was already involved, and drummer Bobby Rivkin, whose brother had engineered some
of Prince’s recording sessions, had, been jamming with them for months. There would
be some referrals and auditions, as well as newspaper ads and auditions. Prince
wanted his musicians cut from his mold—young and hungry.
On a winter weekend in the first week of 1979, Prince was finally going to take the
stage. He had had a chance to debut in New York’s Madison Square Garden but
instead chose a Friday and Saturday night at the Capri Theater, a second-run movie
house in the north Minneapolis neighborhood in which he’d grown up. Tickets cost $4 in
advance at Music City, a downtown record store where he and other black music lovers
shopped, and at the Foxtrap, a downtown black disco that years later became the
model for a club in the film Purple Rain.
The expressed purpose of the concerts was a benefit for the theater whose owner
wanted to convert it into a nightclub. The real purpose was so Warner Bros. executives
could, after a two-year relationship, finally see what this studio prodigy could deliver
onstage.
At the time, Prince was without a manager; he and Owen Husney had parted ways
several weeks earlier. So the singer turned to Pepe Willie, his thirty-two-year-old cousinby-marriage, to put the concert together. The band had been rehearsing for four or five
months in the basement of Willie’s house in a well-heeled neighborhood near Lake
Harriet, but this gig was arranged on short notice. There wasn’t time to design and
distribute posters, and little chance to get ads on the radio. So Prince turned to the
Minneapolis evening newspaper, hoping to publicize the concert through an interview.
It was a late afternoon, crisp and cold. Rehearsal had just wound down and
keyboardist Matt Fink and Roger Dumas, a synthesizer supplier and programmer, were
still toying around with equipment. Prince had an acoustic guitar in his hand; a denim
poor-boy hat obscured his Afro and his eyes. This would be his first one-on-one
interview—no manager to interrupt with the right answers for the shy speaker, no
photographer clicking away (because Prince simply wouldn’t allow it). Just a dog
occasionally barking in the background, a strum here and there of guitar, and a soft,
monotone voice.*
What kind of show can we expect?
Wild.
Are you nervous about it?
Yeah. But after we start I think we’ll be okay.
How does it feel after spending so much time recording the material by yourself to
play that same material with other people?
Different. It’s complicated at times. It’s fun when you hear it come back with
someone’s else’s interpretations.
It must sound different to you.
Well, yeah. Deep down I can tell it’s different. But on the surface it sounds
sometimes better because it’s a live situation. Somebody else has just that part to take
care of. It’s not just me doing everything and trying to keep my energy level up at all
times.
Is it difficult to make the transition from one-man band to being in an ensemble?
It’s hard.
Do you think having played in other groups before helps you?
No, not really. That was such a long time ago. I haven’t played onstage in like three
years. I’ve forgotten most of it.
How did the promotional tour go?
It was weird. I liked the food drive [in North Carolina] because I was in a small
section in the radio station and people could come in and I could talk and stuff like that.
But on Saturday night we did an autograph party for two thousand people. It was
hysterical.
Did you just sit around and sign autographs?
No. For about twenty minutes, and then the crowd started getting too large.
What did they do?
There was supposed to be a disco, but I only got to sign for about one hundred,
and they just started rushing the stage and we had to leave. It got really bizarre. Then
they [the organizers] were just like throwing posters off the stage. It was just mad.
What kind of reaction did you get from people on a one-to-one basis? What did
they ask you?
Mainly everybody asked me if my real name was Prince. That was the main
question. And “What does ‘Soft and Wet’ mean?”
What does it mean?
Are you asking me?
Yeah.
Do you want to hear my new song? . . . [It means] Whatever you can draw from it.
They asked me about it on the radio, and I told them it was about deodorant. I don’t
think they believed me.
What other kind of things did they ask you?
One kid asked me if my mother helped me write “Soft and Wet.” And, um, they
asked me how long it took to make my album. Did I really do everything by myself?
Earlier you were talking about the importance of having hometown talent in your
band and how your own music doesn’t even get support here from the rest of the music
community.
I've never really thought about it too much. I’m going to get depressed now.
What qualities do you think you have that have made you successful?
Being tall. I don’t know. I can’t really say. I can’t answer that. You’d have to ask
someone else.
Let me put it a different way. What do you think your strengths and your
weaknesses are?
I'm a sucker for good legs. . . . I don’t think I have any strengths. It’s hard for me to
talk about myself. I can tell you what Matt’s strengths and weaknesses are.
What do you see as your goals at this point?
I want to be a janitor. I do. [Laughter from the interviewer.] Don’t laugh. No. I want
to produce other groups after a while. And I want to do an album with the band as soon
as possible. Maybe after the second tour is over.
You were talking about your new songs.
We’ve got a few songs we’ll do at the Capri that I’ll probably never record on an
album because they’re too spicy.
Why wouldn’t you do them on a record?
They corns off well in a concert situation, but on a record.. . albums and concerts
are pretty much different. I like to make an album and get it out like a book or
something. And concerts you just want to excite. I’ll probably never do them on an
album—they’re pretty wild and they come off well visually.
When you write your stuff, what instrument do you write on?
Lately it’s been coming through dreams. I’ll dream something, and if you dream
something and go back to sleep, you forget it. But if you wake right up and stay up with
it, you’ll remember it and maybe get something out of it. I did that last night. I dreamt
that my dad wrote a song and it was really a nice song. I remember that I woke up and
really liked it, but I couldn’t stay awake. Sometimes I write them on a guitar. I’ve written
songs on everything. I’ve written songs on drums.
When did you first start writing songs? How old were you?
Five. I didn’t really write it, but I just sang it and remembered it, kept singing it. I
wrote that on the rocks. I had two rocks—that’s how I wrote that.
Then you progressed.
Yeah, I moved on to bigger rocks, bricks. [Chuckles from the interviewer.]
Do you actually write out the songs or just play them for a copyist?
I haven’t really needed that for a while. The first couple of bands, we mainly worked
on feel and did things out of our head. In this band I can tell somebody what I want, and
I can give them a different idea if I want them to change it. We don’t read. They may
read music, I don’t know. I haven’t asked them. But we don’t have any music.
Earlier you said there’s not a lot of incentive around here like there is in, say, L.A.
Have you ever thought of moving someplace else to be more stimulated?
I don’t need any stimulation myself. I know a lot of other people might. I like it here
‘cause it’s quiet. There are other places that are quieter, so I don’t worry about losing
that. But I know there are a lot of people who would like to see this place really boom.
In your formative years, what did you listen to?
I didn’t do that too much then, either. I was an optimist [sic] or something. I didn’t
like the music so much. I liked to make it, but I didn’t like what was going on. It was all
sort of manipulated by the business. People write their best songs before they get in the
business. A lot of my songs that will be on my next albums are songs I’ve written from
years ago. They’re from the heart. You write them when you’re down and Out or
whatever.
Why do you always sing in falsetto?
Because when my voice changed it went down, and I couldn’t get any power out of
it. I couldn’t get any life, so to speak. The energy—I couldn’t get it from that voice. With
the higher voice, it was easier to hit the higher notes. There’s something about the word
high that I like. There’s something about the word. And it also hurts in my lower voice to
sing, when I sing too hard. It doesn’t hurt in my falsetto.
What did you think of the way they promoted you as the youngest producer for
Warner Bros. who did everything himself? It was almost to the point that it was hype.
I tried not to listen to it too much. That’s why I stayed here and lived here. I’m away
from all of that. I don’t see the posters and magazines and stuff like that.
How does your ego handle that? You’re a well-known quantity in some cities, and
you’re sitting here in the middle of the wilderness, where no one knows you.
I like it. I like it a lot. People change when they find out who you are. Like the public.
I make my best friends when they don’t know what I’m about. If they do the exact same
thing I do, they tend to put up guards, and it’s kind of frustrating because they expect
you to be an egomaniac. It’s kind of hard. The way I am now, I was always. I suppose if
I lived in California and rode around in limos all the time and had people waiting on me
hand and foot, then maybe that could make you change. People with the strongest
minds change to some degree. But I’m not into all of that. I’m right here and this is
where I’ve always been.
You and Owen used to go to a lot of concerts. What were you looking for?
I’d go to concerts like I go to movies—it’s just an escape. I think Owen was doing
most of the work as far as what made things work smoothly. Concerts and movies are
nice because it’s an escape from real life. You can just bury yourself in something else.
I don’t really listen to the music so much at concerts as just looking at the players and
wondering what they’re thinking about.
What’s going to go through your mind and your audience’s mind when you’re at the
Capri?
First of all, I’ll be terrified. It’s going to be a small amount of people. It’s going to
take a while to block out that there are people out there. I find it extremely hard
performing for people. It’s like my band—I found it hard singing and playing in front of
them at first. But after I got to know them better, it’s really easy now, and we all bounce
off each other as far as energy goes. Before I can bounce off the crowd, it’ll take a few
songs. I think it’ll be the same with them, too. I’m really free and open once I get to
know a person. But when I first encounter someone, I’m really laid back and cautious, I
guess.
You have to build up a trust and rapport.
I’m constantly getting called shy and stuff like that. I don’t feel shy, but I guess I
sometimes come off that way to people. At any rate, I don’t want to come off as shy to a
crowd. So I’m working on that.
Do you feel having gone through all this that you’ve missed out on anything in life? I
mean you’ve been heavily into your music for a long time.
I did, but I don’t regret it. I missed out on a lot. I used to like to play sports and I had
to quit that. I used to want to go to college, and I certainly don’t have time for that. At
one time I wanted to get married, and I don’t have time for that.
I wanted kids, too, ‘cause I really like kids. But I don’t have time for that, either. I
think mainly the things I missed out on, my mind just changed. Like right now I don’t
want to get married or have kids or play sports. I think I’ve done what I wanted to do in
life, teenage life.
What are you thinking about for the next album?
I’m constantly trying to do different things, you know. Whether they be better or
good, it doesn’t matter. It only matters to me. If I find Out that it’s for the worse, so?
What it boils down to is that nothing means nothing except, you know, love. As long as
I’ve got that, I don’t need money. If I went broke or something, it wouldn’t faze me. Love
and music—as long as I’ve got that, everything’s cool. Everything.
What are your plans from here?
Just go out and play, and we’ll be revamping the show constantly. I hope to sell a
lot of records. People that aren’t hip to it, I hope they do get hip to it. Because I'm going
to be around for a while until something freaky happens—like a thunderbolt or
something. I really want people to catch on to what I’m doing, because I’m going to do a
lot of different things. If I’ve got people behind me that love and care about me, I can
help change things.
Are you concerned about your image? I don’t think Warners knows whether to
market you as black, disco, or pop.
I have a lot of really nice acoustic songs I’d like to record just because; it’s like
“Three Times a Lady.” I didn’t write a song like that, but I’m using that as an example.
That was a song that just couldn’t be stopped—it just broke everywhere. It didn’t matter
that they were black or whatever. Sometimes I’m tempted to just not do another single
like “Soft and Wet” and just do something out of the ordinary. Then if that hits, then
people would, I guess, realize. I don’t want to be trapped into one particular thing that
would be hindering, because I would like to do a lot of different things.
What will Warners think of that?
They’re going to come see us perform on Saturday. Everybody has the big
impression that I’m really quiet. You know, if he doesn’t talk, then he probably won’t
dance or sing too much. I have to put to rest all those accusations, I guess.
I guess you’ve got the image already.
I didn’t like to do a lot of interviews, and I didn’t do a lot because I got misquoted a
lot, you know. A lot of writers have a way of switching words around, and it comes off
like you don’t know what’s going on. Plus I found it really hard to open up to people, and
I’ve been trying to work on that a lot lately within myself. That’s one of my
weaknesses—sometimes I just won’t talk to people at all. I’m trying to get over that. It
hurts your business, as well.
I get the idea that you spent so much time at home getting into your music that you
didn’t have the time or energy to relate to others.
Yeah. That’s it, you’re right. I don’t know, it’s like I get high off of playing my music
or going to a movie alone or going to a concert or something like that, because I can
just fantasize about anything I want when I’m doing those things. When I talk to people
it’s almost a routine. They’ll tell you what they want you to know and you have to
[know}—it’s really dumb, and you’re supposed to accept that and give your response. I
don’t like to talk too much; I like to act. I’ve done a lot of strange things as far as that
goes. I’m getting out of it slowly and trying to relate to people a little more. I think I best
relate performing and playing music. There’ll be a time probably when I won’t do any
interviews. I know they’re important right now ‘cause people won’t know what’s on my
mind. I don’t mind doing them with people I can bounce off of rather than they ask the
same stupid questions—”What kind of food do you eat?” It doesn’t really matter.
Is there anything else you want to talk about?
First of all, I’d like to say this was about the most interesting interview I’ve done.
I’ve never talked this much in my life. [Giggles.] I swear.
Show time. January 5, 1979.
Mr. Carl Ray of KUXL, Minneapolis’s only black radio station, grabbed the
microphone. He jived about the prodigy who composed, produced, arranged and played
all the instruments on his album, the youngest producer in the history of Warner Bros.
Records. “Give it up for the next Stevie Wonder—Prince I”
The image was all his own—a blousey shirt unbuttoned to the waist, a vest, blue
jeans, and unheard-of legwarmers over the jeans. He was a cool, cocky, sexy
showman. The moves and gestures were grand, like Mick Jagger’s; the voice a
fascinating female falsetto, like Smokey Robinson’s. The sound was indulgent and
energetically funky, like the Isley Brothers (with Jimi Hendrix as their guitarist) meeting
Sly and the Family Stone. About three hundred people discovered an uproarious hardfunk sound unlike the smooth falsetto of Prince’s record.
He opened with the soft, catchy “For You,” moved into a jazz-funk-rock
instrumental, then the dance-oriented “Soft and Wet,” a couple of new hard-funk tunes,
an acoustic piece, and closed with “Just As Long As We’re Together.” Backstage, there
was jubilation—a nervous kind of celebration—in a cramped basement dressing room.
Time for a quick champagne toast and then it was out to the lobby to meet and greet
fans, friends, and relatives.
Prince sat atop the refreshment stand, his legs straddling the sides, autographing
copies of his full-color Warner Bros. poster as he had done so many times before in
other cities. But this was home. He looked regal, yet nervous. The smile was reluctant; it
was hard to accept praise from faces he knew. A preteen cousin asked him for a kiss.
He obliged with shy embarrassment.
Prince and his band would repeat the performance the next night in front of one
Warner Bros. vice-president and three department heads. But plans to tour with Ashford
& Simpson, Chaka Khan, or Santana later in the year never materialized. The group
wouldn’t hit the road until the fall, after the release of Prince’s second album. And that
headline tour of clubs would be cut short due to illness.
*Interview © January 5, 1979, Minneapolis Star and Tribune
“I Wanna Be Your Lover,” a peppy tune with breathy falsetto vocals, reached
Number One on the soul charts in December of 1979. That greatly pleased Warner
Bros. But Prince had other dreams.
“The second record [featuring ‘Lover’] was pretty contrived,” he told Robert Hilburn
of the Los Angeles Times a few years after the fact. “I just made it a hit album.” The
song landed Prince and his band on TV’s “American Bandstand” and “Midnight Special.”
After the group lipsynched its way through the hit, Dick Clark sauntered into the picture
and declared, “I can’t believe you come from Minneapolis!”
The tone of the comment did not sit well with Prince. So he copped an attitude that
didn’t sit well with Clark. “How many instruments do you play?” the ageless host asked.
“Thousands.”
Prince came off as rude. But he didn’t see it that way. “That tripped me out when
Dick Clark asked how I could come from Minneapolis of all places,” Prince said shortly
after his first TV encounter in January of 1980. “That really gave me an attitude for the
rest of the talk. Music is music. A place is a place. I don’t know where he expected me
to come from.” Maybe this was the first appearance of his rude-boy attitude.
A few weeks later at a concert in Minneapolis he revealed the real Prince. He came
onstage in zebra-pattern bikini briefs and leg-warmers. And he made “I Wanna Be Your
Lover” seem like a candy-floss come-on. Right onstage in front of 2,600 people, he
French-kissed keyboardist Gayle Chapman. And as his dad sat in the orchestra pit at
the Orpheum Theater, Prince tore into “Head.”
“I think we’ve become stranger—our personalities,” said the bandleader, comparing
how the group had changed since its first Minneapolis performance thirteen months
earlier. “I think we are a little bit more comfortable in our image. We all felt that we’ve
wanted to dress this way, talk this way, and play this way. When we first went out, it was
like shock treatment. Because some of the places we played were really behind and
they [audiences] were older, too, so they were really tripped.
“We know for a fact that we can’t dress in three-piece suits or glitter outfits, or we
can’t dress so raggedy till no one will want to watch us anyway. It’s just basically us. I
wear what I wear because I don’t like clothes, It’s the most comfortable thing I can find.
I’ve gotten a lot of criticism for it. Everybody thinks I’m gay or a freak and all kinds of
things like that [giggles] but it doesn’t bother me. It’s just me. That’s the way I am. I let it
all hang down.
“People should wake up to life like that and not worry what everyone else is
thinking about them. In the ‘60s, it was just like that; nobody cared what anybody else
thought. People would go to concerts with their mother’s clothes on if they wanted and
paint all over their face and it didn’t even matter. They were just as wild as the acts
were, if not wilder. It was live. Everything now is getting commercial and cool. We’ll
suffer a slow death like that—musicians and audiences.”
Kids, he said, are the smartest members of the audience. That’s what he learned
on his truncated first tour. “They’re ready for a change. You have to tell them the truth
now. You can’t play around when it comes to politics, lyrics, music, school, busing, the
whole works. They just seem a lot more aware. The older people are going to have to
listen to them.”
Yet Prince doesn’t aim his songs at kids. He essentially creates material that he
likes. “I like to surprise. I like excitement.” And that became apparent in 1980. During a
spring tour opening for Rick James, Prince often drew bigger ovations than the
headliner. Then that autumn, his message became loud and clear on the album Dirty
Mind. Brother-sister incest, lesbianism, oral sex. There were no limits for this licentious
libertine who paired X-rated lyrics with a heavy drum sound, Jimi Hendrix—inspired
guitar, and coy synthesizer lines. And the critics loved the new avatar who broke the
rules of hit-making pop and bridged the gap between black and white music listeners.
In early ‘81, Prince’s group graduated to headline status, and the players found
rabid fans just about everywhere they went. For instance, in Denver, the band was in a
trailer-turned-dressing room behind a club called the Rainbow. Teenage girls
surrounded the vehicle and began pounding on it. A window broke, a hand reached in. It
was a real effort for the band members to get from the dressing room to the car. And
then a wild goose chase through residential neighborhoods ensued as the band tried to
shake the trailing fans. A similar type of chaos occurred in Baltimore, as thousands of
people milled in the streets after a Prince concert, making their way from the concert to
the band’s hotel a block and a half away.
In October, Prince and his band were invited on “Saturday Night Live” to sing “Party
Up.” Eddie Murphy befriended the young singer and began showing up on the group’s
next tour. Other stars began making their admiration of Prince known. Billy Gibbons of
ZZ Top presented him with a miniature guitar in Houston. Mick Jagger and the rest of
the Rolling Stones asked him to open two of their concerts at the Los Angeles Coliseum
in front of 100,000 people.
However, what seemed like a golden opportunity became a nightmare.
It was a sunny Friday afternoon in front of a typical rock ‘n’ roll crowd. If there had
to be a warmup act, these folks would rather be seeing ZZ Top than Prince.
Nevertheless, the Minneapolitans received a good ovation after their second number.
During the third tune, however, a few crumpled- up paper cups came flying at Prince. It
shook him up and he decided to change the order of the songs he had planned to play.
On the fourth tune, the cohesive feel of the band began to disappear. And to make
matters worse, this was the first gig for new bassist Mark Brown. Prince had never
encountered hostility onstage before, and he stormed offstage after performing only
twenty minutes.
Bill Graham, the dean of rock promoters, grabbed the microphone and chastised
the rowdy few—and got the raspberries for it. The story hit the local radio stations and
newspapers. Prince went home to Minneapolis with no intention of returning for the
second concert Sunday. Manager Steve Fargnoli called, urging him to return to L.A.
Even Jagger phoned. Guitarist Dez Dickerson, the real trouper in the group, spent an
hour and a half on the phone, trying to convince Prince to try it again with a raunchier,
more rocking set.
Prince relented and returned to Los Angeles. But the whole thing had snowballed,
and before the band played even their first note, a plastic bag filled with chicken parts
came flying onstage. Prince just grabbed his shoe and put it in his mouth like a dog.
The setback was only an isolated incident, however. Prince bounced back with a
double-barreled attack. He addressed political and religious concerns on the album
Controversy and showed yet another side of his personality by launching a new,
straight-ahead R&B groove band called the Time. The one-man recording band and
Morris Day, the drummer from his band in high school, actually recorded most of the
Time’s debut album by themselves. Then the twosome recruited some more musicians,
put them in flashy zoot suits, and before long, “Get It Up” and “Cool” were cruising up
the black music charts and the Time was happening and opening for Prince on tour.
The next year Prince decided to put together an all-female group called the
Hookers. He rechristened his trio Vanity 6 and took them into the recording studio to
sing over the instrumental tracks he and Dickerson had recorded. In late ‘82, Vanity’s
“Nasty Girl” became a major novelty hit in R&B and dance circles.
Prince was a nonstop schemer and dreamer. As he approached his 1982
homecoming concert in Minneapolis, he got the notion to make a movie—a concert
movie with a few other off-the-wall scenes to fill out the footage. With about ten days
notice, Prince’s people contacted rock video pioneer Chuck Statler, who had worked
with Devo, Elvis Costello, and others. His Minneapolis-based Location Services filmed
Prince in concert and in erotica in his bedroom. The resultant 16-mm movie was never
released, but the seed for Purple Rain was planted.
However, before it could germinate, the prodigious Prince recorded 1999, a
rapturous, two-record dance set that became a turning point in his career. Rolling Stone
magazine named him rock artist of the year for ‘82. His tours began selling out in arenas
all over the country, and his following—once chiefly black—was becoming whiter and
whiter. The next year, on the strength of the Top Ten hits “Little Red Corvette” and
“Delirious” (sung without his falsetto), 1999 became a multi-million seller. He’d still get
down and dirty on “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” or B-sides like “Irresistible Bitch” and
“Horny Toad.” But one thing had become clear: The little Prince would be King of Rock
‘n’ Roll.
The members of the Revolution call him The Kid to his face. Behind his back, it’s
the Ayatollah, Boy King, or Napoleon.
“The Kid” comes from one of the early tags that Warner Bros. Records, critics, and
the music industry hung on Prince. They called him the Wunderkind. One of the guys in
the band saw it on a T-shirt being marketed and shortened it to “The Kid.” The other
nicknames are derived from . . . well, the obvious. At five-foot-three, Prince has physical
similarities to Napoleon, and some contend their styles and attitudes have something in
common. Prince has been depicted as a dictator, a tyrant, and a control-freak. Some
dime-store philosophers theorize that it is because there was so little control in his life
as a youth that he desires strict regimen now. Others attribute it to his simply being a
perfectionist who demands as much of others as he gives himself.
Is he too demanding? he asks in “When Doves Cry,” certainly his most personal
song. Or, as the song alternately poses, is he just like his father—too bold? Maybe he’s
like his mother, because she’s never satisfied?
“I’m still reaching for the top, where I want to go in life, because I’m a striver,” says
his mother when asked if she’s never satisfied. “And I think he’s a striver. He has his
goals and he wants to go so far.”
What is Prince striving for?
“He wants to be the biggest of the big,” says someone who has worked with him.
The only analogy manager Steve Fargnoli likes to use is Elvis Presley.
“He definitely works at an accelerated pace,” the manager observes. “As a result,
you have to adapt to the artist He certainly sets high goals for himself and, as a result,
for everybody else around him. Basically, the only problem is finding people willing to
work as hard as he does. He demands one hundred percent effort of himself and,
therefore, anything he’s involved with—even on a friendly basis, he expects the same
thing from others. People interpret it as control. But he’s asking, ‘Why doesn’t
everybody work as hard as I do?’ He’s not trying to prove a point.”
For instance, band rehearsal schedules are rigorous. Prince’s band rehearsed for
about a year and a half and played only two gigs. At the beginning, his musicians were
practically afraid of him; not only were there fines for tardiness to rehearsal, but he had
this Pharaoh-like aura. He would make the records all by himself and then give tapes of
finished songs to individual band members. In two weeks, they were expected to know
the material. Although in 1983 he began using his band in the studio for the first time, he
still drives them hard, expecting them at the rehearsal studio at 10 AM. for eight-hour
sessions. What he’s seeking is the best out of his band—the controlled best.
His impact at a rehearsal is powerful. Both the acting and dance coaches for Purple
Rain noticed how much harder their students worked when the film’s star was at a
training session. Or just listen to Terry Lewis and Jimmy (Jam) Harris, former members
of the Time.
“We’d rehearse for like four hours and think we were tired. We’d go through the set
twice and sit around and talk for two hours,” reminisces keyboardist Harris, who now
has a successful production company with Lewis. “If Prince would come in, we’d work
five or six hours straight, over and over—no breaks. We had done more in that practice
than we had done in like maybe two weeks of practicing before [without him].”
“He would work you past what you thought were your capabilities,” says bassist
Lewis. “He would show you that it’s nothing but hard work that makes successful
people.”
“The best teachers are the people that know the most, and nobody knows more
about the music industry than Prince,” says Harris. “He brought stuff out of us at the
time that we didn’t think we could do. We’d get frustrated and creatively stifled, and our
record would be at the top of the charts and our tours would be sold out.”
“Tyrant? No,” concludes Lewis. “Genius? Yes.”
“There’s no pretense,” Harris sums up. “You know that going in.”
Prince has rules for members of his Royal Court. No formal interviews or even
substantive conversations with members of the media unless authorized by him. And if
they’re authorized to talk, each subject has been properly programmed with a particular
pat spiel to deliver. He dictates what they will wear onstage and offstage, or at least
while they are in the public eye as a group. He tells them where to be and when to
jump. Newcomers on the payroll are told not to initiate conversation with him, simply to
speak when spoken to by him.
Call it an empire, call it a business. Either way, Prince runs it all. His managers are
mere facilitators rather than the more traditional decision- makers and leaders. Nothing
major gets done without the Kid’s approval. In ‘83, for instance, his Minneapolis-based
fan club was forced to dissolve after only a few months because the organizers could
never get Prince to approve the issuance of anything other than an autographed photo.
He doesn’t like to talk about creative endeavors—he simply wants the magic to happen.
And if you want to talk heavy-duty business with Prince, call his accountant in Los
Angeles. By the way, it’s the same guy who handles Michael Jackson’s ledgers.
Lewis and Harris are the only members banished from the Court. They’ll tell you it
was a mutual parting of ways but that it happened faster than they anticipated. What
precipitated their early exit was an independent production project. Lewis and Harris
had been writing and producing material for other groups, including Klymaxx and the
S.O.S. Band. On a day off from the Time’s tour with Prince in 1982, they went to Atlanta
for a session with the S.O.S. Band. The next morning they went to the airport, planning
to arrive in San Antonio in plenty of time for that evening’s concert, but they spent the
entire day at the airport, snowed in. So Jerome Benton, who takes the role of singer
Morris Day’s valet in Time performances, strapped on a bass guitar and made like he
was playing the instrument onstage while Prince actually stood in the wings playing the
bass lines.
“Missing that show was worse than having to leave the group,” Lewis reflects.
“That was the most impacting experience I’ve ever had in my life,” says Harris.
Others have left the Royal Court on their own accord. They tell stories about latenight phone calls demanding deliveries of food and drink or musical performances in the
recording studio. They talk of a lack of artistic freedom, and egos that refuse to be
subservient to Prince’s. Or they mention such impulsive actions as his calling the
president of Warner Bros. and demanding the firing of a vice-president.
“I liked him better before,” says Britt Husney, who, along with her husband, Owen,
practically adopted Prince for two and a half years in the late ‘70s and then disappeared
completely from his life. “He lost something . . . or maybe he found something.”
Actually, Chris Moon, the producer who discovered him, was the first to be
eliminated from the picture. After helping him make the original demo tape that led to
the Warner Bros. contract, Moon’s name was dropped off one of the two songs he
cowrote on the first album. In retribution, he later got rights to one of their other
collaborations, “Make It Through the Storm.” Now Moon travels around the Twin Cities
in a DeLorean and sells condominiums.
Manager Husney parted with Prince in late ‘78 because he just got too close and
could no longer discuss business. He has since been instrumental in getting recording
deals for four other black acts from the Twin Cities.
Keyboardist Gayle Chapman exited from the road band in ‘80 because her religious
beliefs didn’t jibe with Prince’s bold sexuality; her whereabouts are unknown. Bassist
Andre Cymone, Prince’s closest friend, wanted a career of his own and parted company
in ‘81; he’s now a jealous rival managed by Husney. Minneapolis aide-de-camp Jamie
Shoop, dispatched from Cavallo, Ruffalo and Fargnoli to babysit the Court, couldn’t
handle the demands of the situation and returned to Los Angeles in ‘83 to work for the
management firm. That same year guitarist Dez Dickerson, the most identifiable
member of Prince’s band, and Vanity, lead singer of Vanity 6, left to seek their own
spotlights in music and film respectively.
Also in ‘83, Time keyboardist Monte Moir split to join the Flyte Tyme production
company of his friends Harris and Lewis, who had gotten the boot the previous year.
Following the release of Purple Rain in the summer of ‘84, singer Morris Day and
guitarist Jesse Johnson also fled from the Time after arranging for separate solo
recording deals.
There’s no question that Prince has a well-focused vision of what he wants. His
mother spotted it early. Manager Husney laid the groundwork for the young visionary by
fighting to let Prince have control over his records. When it came time to put together a
band, the Wunderkind had a concept: blacks and whites and women, too. And along the
way there happened to be Jews, gays, and veritable rock ‘n’ roll rookies.
It’s not easy to articulate or define Prince’s vision. He’s self-conscious about being
different for the sake of being different and trying new kinds of things, bending rules,
breaking rules, and setting new standards. Perhaps it was best explained by Emmywinning William Blinn, who was hired to write the screenplay for Purple Rain. Prince told
the TV veteran what kind of film he wanted. “The word he used was a picture that
people would think of as weird but couldn’t get away from,” Blinn said. “He’s got
something he wants to communicate. I don’t know if it’s something you could write
down; it’s an attitude more than anything else.” Or as Prince told the Los Angeles Times
in 1982, “My goal is to excite and provoke on every level.”
Prince has to push boundaries in order to be different. Sometimes his efforts come
off as self-indulgent, other times as experimental, occasionally brilliant. Who would have
thought a demo tape like the X-rated Dirty Mind could be released as an album and
establish Prince as the leader of a new breed? Who would have thought a jazzy, fourminute romp like “Delirious” could be pared to less than two and a half minutes and
become a major hit single? Or who would have thought a song without any bass, “When
Doves Cry,” would be a smash dance sensation?
His musical vision is all over the spectrum. There’s a dark side to the Prince
character—and he knows it—and a straightforward side. Since he couldn’t sell such a
multiphrenic personality under one name, he had to find outlets for his prolific output of
material. So he created the Time, a straight-ahead R&B band that favored long-winded
jams, and Vanity 6, a female lingerie act that combined straightforward R&B music with
cartoon sexuality. Prince and guitarist Dickerson actually wrote the material (and got the
songwriting paychecks) for the first records by Time and Vanity 6, even though Prince
credited each recording group for the songwriting on the albums. He simply didn’t want
the new entities riding his coattails.
To further keep his name from the projects, Prince invented an alter ego, an
engineer named Jamie Starr. It’s one of the different people inside Prince. “He’s an
older guy,” said someone who knows, “a more experienced producer.” People inside the
Royal Court used to go to great lengths to say Jamie was not Prince. Morris Day was
even programmed by the Howard Bloom Organization, which handles publicity for
Prince and his troops, on how to respond to the question during his first interviews. And
Apollonia, one of the newer princesses in the Court, goes out of her way to tell
interviewers about Starr without even being prompted. Prince himself has openly denied
that he is Jamie Starr. In the last interview he granted (to the Los Angeles Times in
1982), the only things Prince volunteered without prompting were: “One, my real name
is Prince. Two, I’m not gay. And three, I’m not Jamie Starr.” Yet the Copyright Office of
the Library of Congress indicates that Starr is a pseudonym.
Some people suggest that Starr was created simply for tax purposes, because
Jamie Starr is no longer given credit on outside projects. Now it’s simply “The Starr
Company.” Fargnoli defines that organization as a musical repertory company that
includes all members of Prince’s Revolution, the Time, Apollonia 6 (the new incarnation
of Vanity 6), and Sheila E. and her band, the 1984 addition to the Royal Court. They
romp around a remodeled warehouse that Prince bought in a Minneapolis suburb in
May 1984 for $450,000 in cash. The facility, which features two recording studios and a
concert-size rehearsal stage, is but ten minutes away from the owner’s house.
His home is a rather ordinary two-level wood structure of recent vintage. What sets
it apart from the other homes in an area populated by farmers and urban professionals
who want to live by an exurban lake is, well, its color—bright purple. Furthermore, the
wooded property is surrounded by a black fence that can be operated electronically
from the house, and there’s a huge satellite TV dish outside the house. The three-car
garage houses a purple limousine, a purple motorcycle, and a black BMW sports car
with crumpled-up dollar bills in the glove compartment.
Prince can be an extravagant spender. He never does anything halfway. Because
he grew up without much disposable income, some people say he doesn’t understand
the value of the dollar. Prince indulges in flamboyant street clothes that are
interchangeable with his flashy stage designs; they are created by the same designers
who make Earth, Wind & Fire’s stage outfits. His jet-set lifestyle has found him, on a
whim, arranging for a plane to take him to the Jacksons’ concert in Dallas, where
hundreds of fans mobbed him as he tried to escape from the sound booth at concert’s
end.
Prince doesn’t just lavish favors on himself. He’s a generous boss, say people who
have worked for him. For instance, he’s been known to keep people on the payroll even
after they leave the Royal Court. In 1983, the bonuses he gave band members
amounted to two-thirds of what their annual salaries were. When Dickerson got married,
he and his wife, Becky, received a VCR from Prince. He’s also generous with those not
on the payroll, such as surrogate mother Bernadette Anderson, who received a
microwave oven for Christmas and once was flown by him to his concert in Milwaukee
on Mother’s Day. The boss urged the three members of his band who live in the Twin
Cities (Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman reside in Los Angeles) to buy houses in 1984
because they would be making big bucks and be needing a tax break.
Perhaps the least understood side of Prince is his humor. Associates depict him as
having a terrific sense of humor. Dickerson, the most experienced player in any of
Prince’s groups, says he laughed more in that band than in any other he’s played in.
“He’s very aware of the gamut of emotions that different people have regarding him,”
the guitarist says.
Prince is the kind of jokester who will dress up in Hollywood-quality makeup and
costume, hop a plane to attend a screening of the movie in which he stars, and
purposely walk right by his managers in the theater lobby, relishing the fact that they
didn’t recognize him. Prince can be very dramatic. He likes to dress up and he’s very
affected by movies. He’s emotional, sensitive, and vulnerable, say the people who have
been close to him, but he tends to put up walls in front of strangers. He’s a listener, not
a talker. And he can be as absorbent as a sponge.
Screenwriter Blinn observed a strange combination of shyness and theatricality in
this Jekyll/Hyde character. He found Prince unwilling or unable to communicate his
ideas in a linear fashion. “It was like if you asked the kid what he wanted for dinner and
he’d say, ‘I’m not really sure but I think it should have tomatoes, salt, wine, potatoes,
onions, and peas’ and list the rest of the ingredients. Pretty soon you’d say, ‘I think
we’re talking about a beef stew.’ He’d say, ‘Yeah, that sounds good.’ He always comes
at you sideways.”
Over the years, Prince has been just as strangely protective about his music and
other ideas. For instance, when he first started recording, he relied on Minneapolis
synthesizer programmer Roger Dumas to help him with the alien keyboard instruments.
However, after Dumas demonstrated the machine, the young musician wanted privacy.
One day, for example, the programmer had spent a considerable amount of time
helping Prince achieve a sound on a synthesizer in a recording studio, and then Prince
sat down at the control board, ready for work. He turned to Dumas and asked, “Do you
still have to be here?”
But Prince has matured and adjusted his ways over time. For instance, he used to
be standoffish about signing autographs in public. Now he is more accommodating. Of
course, he calls attention to himself with his loud outfits, heavy eye makeup, and largerthan-life bodyguard, Chick Hunts- berry. A former evangelist, pro wrestler, and Orkin
exterminator, the six- foot-six, 300-plus-pound protector looks like an inflated Santa
Claus, with arms that are bigger than Prince’s legs. Drawing that much attention can get
scary for the diminutive star, who has traveled with a bodyguard since 1980.
God seems to be important in Prince’s life. In the liner notes to every one of his
albums, he has thanked God. Before every concert, his band members gather by
themselves in a room and share a prayer that speaks to God. And he wears a big silver
cross around his neck. Yet Prince could hardly be called religious when singing his
lascivious lyrics. He has said that some of his songs disturbed his father, yet his mother
fully understands the message. “I think in this generation, that’s an okay thing,” she
says. “It’s in existence and to deny it is wrong. That’s him. He wants reality to be reality
and doesn’t want people to hide it all. I think that’s what he is trying to say to the world.
It’s here; accept it and help children with it. Don’t tell them ‘Turn that off’ or ‘Don’t want
to talk about it.’
Anyone who has known Prince at just about any time during his life will tell you how
obsessed he is with music. Although he might not admit it, he checks out a lot of music
and is aware of what’s current, what’s hot and what’s not. He’s gone to see Bruce
Springsteen, Sheena Easton, Lionel Richie, and the Eurythmics in concert, although he
didn’t necessarily stay until the end of each show. After he saw George Clinton at First
Avenue, he reportedly went to the studio and wrote “Erotic City.” When Tina Turner
showed up at the club and kicked off her set with a version of his “Let’s Pretend We’re
Married,” a smile spread across Prince’s face. But he doesn’t often make the backstage
scene.
Prince periodically goes to First Avenue or other local clubs to check out bands—
he always has his eye out for new talent to develop and, because of his clout within the
industry, Twin Cities musicians are careful not to cross him. Every once in a while word
spreads around town that he is auditioning musicians at his warehouse, whose
recording studios are modeled after his favorite, Sunset Sound in Los Angeles.
His whole life seems consumed by music and, at times, women. There is no time
for hobbies; there are no drugs in his life and only an occasional cognac or champagne.
When he is particularly involved in a musical project, he has been known to stay up for
days at a time. That can tax the people who work with him. Even though his associates
admit that Prince has been unusually happy in 1984, he can still be a “hard-driving son
of a bitch if he wants to,” said someone who has felt the wrath.
Well then, just what is it like to be in Prince’s Court?
“In the private sector, when you get away from him, it gives you an inner peace,
knowing you’ve been one of the few, the proud . . . the Marines,” says one who has
been there.
Prince compliments his people often; his negative comments come just as easily.
The bottom line, though, is that the rewards balance the bad times, associates say.
“The bruises heal,” notes Dickerson, who left under amicable terms.
In the end, the question becomes: Just how big is Prince’s ego?
“No bigger than David Bowie’s ego or, for that matter, Dan Rather’s,” says
Dickerson. “He’s obviously aware of what he can do. To me, I consider that being a
realist.”
To put it another way, Prince sees that he has few rivals. There’s Michael Jackson,
whom he’s very much aware of. They are only a year apart in age, both appeal to black
and white audiences and, as some critics have pointed out, Prince plays the Rolling
Stones to Jackson’s Beatles.
Compare him to the Stones, Elvis, Jackson, or whomever. Just how far can Prince
go?
“With the proper amount of money and the right bodyguard, he could do anything,”
says someone who knows him well. “Without the money and the bodyguard, he’s a
different story.”
Why does Prince still live in Minneapolis?
That question is asked of Minnesota music industry insiders more often than
anything else. After all, outsiders point out, Bob Dylan didn’t stay in his home state. No,
the Hibbing-bred troubadour was not well-received in his days at the University of
Minnesota coffeehouses, so he headed to Greenwich Village. His mother and brother
live in the Twin Cities, however, and Dylan has a farm west of the metropolitan area,
where he spends summers with his children.
Other musicians who once called Minneapolis home have left, too—Milwaukee
native Al Jarreau spent two years in Minneapolis before finding stardom in Los Angeles;
sidemen Willie Weeks, Bobby Lyle, and Stan Kipper had to head to the West Coast to
find jobs with the likes of George Harrison, the Doobie Brothers, Bette Midler, and Karla
Bonoff. Rockie Robbins, Sue Ann Carwell, and others moved west after winning
recording contracts, but it hasn’t been smooth sailing.
Some musicians, however, have successfully stayed in the Twin Cities—the
influential ‘60s blues-folk trio of Koerner, Ray and Glover; rhythm ‘n’ bluesman Willie
Murphy, who produced Bonnie Raitt’s first album; the Trashmen, who cashed in with
“Surfer Bird,” and the Castaways, who triumphed with “Liar Liar” in the ‘60s; ‘70s
transplants Leo Kottke, the acoustic guitar ace, and Michael “Bluer Than Blue” Johnson;
producer Steven Greenberg of Lipps, Inc. and the 1980 hit “Funkytown”; and such
recent favorites as the Suburbs, a new-wave band, and the Replacements and Husker
Du, a pair of hard-core heroes. And, of course, Prince, the only rock star born, bred, and
residing in the Minneapolis area.
So why does he stay?
It’s home. Friends, family, familiarity, four seasons. He likes living in the big small
town known as Minneapolis. He likes the quiet of the suburbs and exurbs, where he has
lived in three different houses since making his first album. He likes the big-city
excitement just twenty-five minutes away at the downtown club known as First Avenue.
He can be a big fish in a small pond, swim at his own pace whenever he wants and
however he wants. (The only other big fish to call the Twin Cities home these days are
baseball star Dave Winfield from St. Paul and politician Walter Mondale.) There is no
big media splash every time he steps outside, no paparazzi, few fawning fans. He may
call attention to himself in a purple limousine, flashy clothes, and with his cartoon of a
bodyguard, but people give him space.
Prince is something of a loner. He doesn’t seem to have any close friends. You’re
likely to see him around town with his bodyguard, his Los Angeles-based manager
Steve Fargnoli, or someone else on the payroll. Away from work, he’s not especially
tight with his band members. They may talk on the phone, but he hasn’t been to the
homes of his three sidemen who live in Minneapolis. In fact, he doesn’t even know
where they live and doesn’t keep track of when they change girlfriends.
You might find Prince at Shinder’s magazine and bookstore in downtown
Minneapolis, around the corner from First Avenue. He’ll stop in, browse through the
music magazines, not buy any, and leave. He has been known to frequent Rudolph’s, a
ribs joint near the first apartment in which he lived by himself; he usually prefers shrimp
to ribs. Anyway, junk food is more his style.
You won’t find Prince at a lot of parties unless he’s throwing them. He does like to
dance, though. His favorite spot is First Avenue, a bus depot that was converted to a
nightclub in 1969. It sits between Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis’s answer to New
York’s Times Square, and the warehouse district that houses artists’ studios, trendy
bars, and yuppie restaurants. He sneaks into First Avenue sometimes with bodyguard
Chick Huntsberry, sometimes unaccompanied. Prince used to show up with Vanity, take
to the dance floor, and carry on in a very subdued but cool manner. Other times he
repairs to the VIP box, a balcony table adjacent to the manager’s office, where recordcompany representatives often sit to watch their acts perform.
From time to time, there’s a record under Prince’s arm. When he’s comfortable with
the mix of a new single, he brings it to First Avenue to check the reaction of those
assembled on the dance floor. Sometimes it’s just a tape, other times a preliminary vinyl
pressing, the label of which is usually decorated with original artwork by the singer and
composer. He might leave the record with the deejays or might take it home for a bit
more work—there’s no telling with Prince. One night he showed up at the club with his
hair dyed orange and slicked back. Few people recognized him. And to think a few
years earlier he had thrown a temper tantrum outside his favorite bar when he was
denied admittance on a sold-out night.
The Kid clearly has an affinity for First Avenue, which he rented for a month to film
the concert sequences for Purple Rain. He also has utilized the club, which holds 1,200
people, for pretour dress rehearsals or just as a place to play on short notice.
In March of ‘81, a group called Controversy appeared on the calendar at First
Avenue. Lo and behold, it was Prince previewing his material for the Controversy album
and getting ready to launch his tour In August of 83 Prince played a benefit at First
Avenue for the Minnesota Dance Theatre. Loyce Houlton, the feisty head of the
longtime local modern dance troupe, cornered Prince in the hallway at her studios
where his Court was at dance classes and asked him to play a benefit. He agreed.
It was $25 a ticket. Bring in the expensive mobile recording unit from New York
City. And introduce the world to new guitarist Wendy Melvoin and a batch of new songs
that would turn up in Purple Rain. People were stunned to hear him play in such a rock
n roll vein, to hear the title track start like Bruce Springsteen, carry on through Dylan
and come off ultimately like Jimi Hendrix. And he even threw in a rare rendition of a Joni
Mitchell tune. Houlton responded with a bouquet of flowers and a kiss for the sheepish
Prince.
He looked more in control when dancing with Stevie Nicks at a post concert play in
a Bloomington, Minnesota, hotel after his 1982 concert at Met Center. It was an
exhausting show near the end of the tour and Prince had to be carried back onstage by
Chick for the encore. Yet only 5,000 people had turned out in this town where no major
commercial radio station would play his records. It all turned around the following year
as Prince rode his little red Corvette to triumph back home. Met Center was sold out
and Prince played before the largest white audience of his career.
Onstage in Minneapolis he smiles more than at any other place and concertgoers
see as wide a range of expressions from him as viewers of Purple Rain did. He has
expressed his appreciation of the local fans in acceptance speeches at the Minnesota
Music Awards and Twin Cities Black Music Awards. Actually, his first comment at the
Minnesota Music Awards found him in his rude-boy mood. After he was given the award
for Musician of the Year in 1982 at the Prom Center in St Paul, he asked, "When are
they going to give the one [award] for the best ass?"
The next year, he was honored with six awards, but was backstage at the Carlton
Celebrity Room, watching the Motown twenty fifth anniversary special on TV, and sent
manager Fargnoli to collect the booty and announce that "Prince is on his way." Sure
enough, the local hero paraded down the center aisle in a banana-colored satin suit with
Chick. He introduced his bodyguard to the assembled and handed him the awards. He
thanked Minnesota for its support and capped the night with a ten minute jam on
borrowed equipment with members of his band, the Time, and Vanity 6.
In ‘84, Prince agreed at the eleventh hour to perform at the Minnesota Music
Awards. Dez Dickerson had been scheduled to perform, but his band was called on tour
with Billy Idol. Prince and the Revolution filled in with no advance announcement to the
crowd. He unveiled his new Sgt. Pepper’s of the ‘80s look—satin paisley suits with
ruffled shirts. He strutted up and down the runway of the Las Vegas-style showroom,
pranced across the stage, did spins and splits, and stole the evening before it was half
over.
“We’re very proud to be part of the Twin Cities,” he said.
After the second song, he basked in the darkness, waiting for the fans to insist on
more. His mid-show star turn was awkward enough, but this kind of grandstanding
seemed even more off-kilter. Then he added an unplanned third song to his steamy
twenty-minute set and disappeared. He never bothered to come out and accept any of
his three awards that night, not even the inaugural Hall of Fame plaque he’d been
awarded along with Dylan and Murphy. Instead, he dispatched members of the
Revolution to pick up the spoils.
Then two weeks later, he strolled out at the close of the Black Music Awards to join
the Time in a version of “Jungle Love.” Morris Day wasn’t around and Jesse Johnson
had already sung “The Bird.” Then out came this creature in a black shawl and big
round sunglasses to lead his troops through a festive R&B groove. His cameo done, he
danced offstage to the waiting Shelia E. and Chick and out the door.
It was a rainy November afternoon on Hennepin Avenue, and Purple Rain was
rolling in amid a cloud of secrecy.
Winter is not a smart time to begin filming a major motion picture in Minneapolis
unless, of course, snow is intended to be part of the scenery. But Purple Rain just had
to be different. A first-time director, first-time producers, a cast of musicians who had
never acted before, let alone made a movie. Time was running out—the film had to
wrap by Christmas in order to make the projected spring release date, so the weather
didn’t matter.
Hennepin Avenue was cordoned off so the streetwalkers, gays, street people, and
just ordinary business folks who customarily walk on the avenue wouldn’t end up as
walk-ons in the movie. Morris Day; Mr. Cool, and Apollonia, the new woman in town,
were the subjects of the dramatic scene. Four cops were stationed at the roadblocks to
keep unwanted photographers away. Press embargo was the word. The unit publicist
muttered something about first-time actors being nervous with outsiders around. And
the word had been delivered (and a signature required acknowledging such) to any and
everyone on the payroll: Don’t talk to the media or you lose your job.
One brave—or naive—soul who served as Prince’s stand-in for camera and lighting
checks made the mistake of talking about his job to City Pages, one of the Twin Cities
arts weeklies; he was pink-slipped. One extra in a concert crowd scene was overheard
talking about his job as a radio disc jockey; he was immediately given his paycheck and
ushered to the door. Some reporters sneaked in by signing up with a local modeling
agency as extras for the concert crowd scenes and found they had to show up at 7 AM.,
sit around in an unheated movie theater across from First Avenue, and wait to be called
for action. Twelve hours of duty for $35 and a box lunch from a local deli. Of course, the
reporters eventually got bounced from the set, too. Things just had to be done Prince’s
way—in secrecy.
Prince had been thinking about making a movie for years. And his managers—Bob
Cavallo, Joe Ruffalo, and Steve Fargnoli—had wanted to expand their activities beyond
recordings and concerts into film. The rock star intentionally confined his videos to
staged concert footage, waiting to make his dramatic debut on the silver screen. There
had been offers, including a chance for the title role in the Little Richard story. But the
plan wasn’t just to make a movie, but to make this movie.
The first step was to bring a little Hollywood credibility and know-how to this crew of
cinematic neophytes, someone who could help draft a screenplay based on Prince’s
vision.
Enter William Blinn.
The forty-six-year-old Ohio native had won Emmys for his work on a segment of
“Roots” and Brian’s Song, a made-for-TV movie. He’d worked on “Starsky and Hutch”
and other TV shows; at the moment he had a break in his schedule as executive
producer for TV’s “Fame.” Blinn's mission was to help the film producers reach an
audience beyond Prince's musical following; they wanted him to deliver a script with
linear structure, story involvement, and room for music.
So the Hollywood veteran came to Minneapolis in March of ‘83 to watch Prince in
concert. The only real thing they found in common was an admiration for Debbie Allen,
one of the stars of “Fame.” Nevertheless, they talked about concepts for this movie
called Dreams. Prince knew the background of his character and the general feel of the
film. In Blinn's words: “Prince wanted a picture that would shock you, I guess, without
being The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” There were more conversations and a draft,
more conversations and another draft. Blinn came up with what he considers an
“emotional biography"—in other words, what happens in the film did not necessarily
happen to Prince in real life, but the emotional result had a common denominator with
his life. But it was time for Blinn to return to Hollywood for another season of “Fame.”
Enter Al Magnoli.
Bob Cavallo had been especially impressed with the film Reckless, a young adult
romance set in a mill town. He contacted the movie’s director, James Foley, who was
booked but suggested his film editor, Magnoli. The producers scrutinized Magnoli’s
award-winning college film Jazz and then arranged a breakfast meeting. In ten minutes,
the thirty-year-old would-be director came up with a storyline and a style—he wanted
the film to reflect the energy of rock ‘n’ roll by employing quick, elliptical editing—moving
forward, backward, anything out of the ordinary. His style was to come in the side door if
he could.
Magnoli met with Prince and discussed concepts. They never really talked about
Prince’s life, and all the director knew about the rock star was what he had read in a
Rolling Stone magazine profile that spring. Anyway, Magnoli wasn’t pleased with Blinn’s
script; it was too interior and darkly psychological, with lots of flashbacks. So he hung
out with Prince and the Royal Court for a month and then holed up in the Marquette
Inn—a short two-block walk from First Avenue—for three weeks in June and developed
a new screenplay.
Meanwhile, Prince and the members of his Royal Court were busy preparing for the
movie. Blinn had encountered actor Don Amendolia at commencement exercises for the
American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. In his talk, Amendolia had mentioned
that he’d appeared in a play in Minneapolis, and Blinn later picked up on the cue and
told the actor about this Minneapolis film project. Would he like to be the drama coach
for these neophyte actors?
Amendolia, who that fall went on to costar in TV’s “Mama Malone," set up shop at a
warehouse in St. Louis Park, a Minneapolis suburb. For three days a week for three
months, he conducted acting classes as Blinn worked on the script. Actually, they were
improvisational exercises and theater games—ask one student to mimic the voice of
another, ask one student to mimic the actions of another, memorize and present
monologues from such obscure plays as True West, Streets of New York, and Cloud
Nine (the play that had brought Amendolia to Minneapolis’s Cricket Theatre).
The coach was pleased with his students. He realized that not all of these
musicians were excited about doing the film and thus their attitudes varied. “Jerome
[Benton] was a hard worker. Morris [Day] wasn’t as interested as some others, but he
had natural abilities that others didn’t have. Vanity was lazy. She’s so beautiful and
she’s good. I think she didn’t like to work hard. Prince was very, very good. He had the
ability to be absolutely focused on what he was doing with little trouble. He’d flip right
out of his persona and be whatever character he had to be. He’s very shy, as most
actors are to a degree. But he was always willing to shed his shyness. He took direction
very well, probably the best. He asked a lot of questions and he’d get it right away. He
absorbed everything handed to him. He was very serious about it. Whenever anybody
didn’t work, it bothered him. He’s a perfectionist.”
Concurrent with the acting classes were dance workouts conducted by John
Command at the Minnesota Dance Theatre. Actually the dance sessions began in April
of ‘83 and continued until the wrap in December. Command, a teacher and performer in
local musicals, had been contacted by Prince’s personal secretary to give the musical
troupe “six years of dance training condensed into six months.” The sessions were long
and grueling—advanced Jane Fonda or Chippendale workouts for two to three hours at
a time in an oppressively hot downtown dance studio (two blocks from First Avenue).
The turnout varied from zero to twenty-five. The women seemed to be more into it than
the men, except for Benton, who was the hardest worker and seldom missed a class.
Command found Prince a remarkable raw talent. “He’s always extremely limber,
very agile and real good in the air. He would be able to suspend himself in the air like a
ballet dancer. We did a tremendous amount of work on his pirouette turning.” Some
people say Prince had been watching old films of James Brown, others speculate he
just wanted to perfect some macho moves that would set him apart from the electric
boogie style of Michael Jackson.
By autumn, a revolt was threatening Prince’s Court. Vanity, the former First Lady in
his life who was slated to be the female lead in the film, was inexplicably out of the
picture. Rumors were that she’d demanded too much money. Magnoli said it was
because she received a better offer from director Martin Scorsese for The Last
Testament of Christ. Coproducer Fargnoli said she dropped out for “business reasons,”
but he wouldn’t elaborate. In any event, the casting call went out. More than 750 young
women auditioned for director Magnoli in New York and Los Angeles. Time was tight—
the filming was going to begin in two weeks in Minneapolis.
Enter Apollonia.
Patricia Kotero (she swears her middle name is Apollonia), a would-be singer,
would-be dancer, would-be actress, and Vanity look-alike from Santa Monica,
California. Vanity’s of Scottish and Eurasian descent, and Apollonia is a “Latin-German
Jew.”
After an audition in L.A., it was off to Minneapolis to meet Prince. She was in a
hotel room, improvising a scene with Magnoli, and in walked His Purpleness. “He asked
about my experience—singing, dancing, and acting. And he looked at me very seriously
and said, ‘Do you believe in God?’” Then they retired to a deli and talked about life, the
movie, and children. Next was a drive in his purple limousine and she sang along with a
cassette tape. The final stop was First Avenue to see her dance. She got the part.
The only professional actors in the cast were Clarence Williams III, best known as
Linc on TV’s “Mod Squad,” and Olga Karlatos, who had worked opposite Marcello
Mastroianni, Gregory Peck, John Gielgud, and Robert De Niro; they would play Prince’s
parents. Their scenes were filmed in Los Angeles. “Prince was sensational to work
with,” said Williams. “He has a kind of center—it’s an Oriental expression; he’s very
secure in what he does. And he’s open to suggestion.”
Most of the rest of the scenes were filmed in thirty-two locations in and around
Minneapolis. Apollonia went skinny-dipping in near-freezing weather in a lake near
Henderson, Minnesota. Some interior scenes were shot on a soundstage in the Twin
Cities and others in Los Angeles. A few outdoor scenes also had to be filmed in L.A.,
after the snow fell in Minnesota.
Besides the weather, first-time director Magnoli had to contend with an ensemble of
first-time actors. He had to keep them as natural and relaxed as possible in front of the
camera. So he shot quickly with few takes. By contrast, professional actors Williams
and Karlatos preferred to rehearse during the shooting, so their scenes were shot over
and over.
Meanwhile, back in California, producers Cavallo, Ruffalo, and Fargnoli were trying
to arrange for a distributor for their $7 million production. Having initially worked with
theirs and Prince’s money, they didn’t actually seal the deal with Warner Bros. film
division until after the shooting began in November.
Of course, the one question everybody has about the movie is: What is the
significance of the title Purple Rain?
Blinn doesn’t have the faintest idea. One of the last notes he received from Prince
said something about finding a way to work “Purple” into the title. Co-screenwriter
Magnoli says it’s the title of the climactic song during which the protagonist encounters
the women he loved.
Purple is clearly Prince’s color. It stands for royalty; it represents sexual liberation.
Although he didn’t show a public propensity for the color until 1982, he has long been
fascinated with it. In 1976, he wrote out the lyrics for the recording of “Soft and Wet”
with a purple felt-tip pen. And he penned a song that year called “Leaving for New York”
whose first line referred to “purple lawns.”
Wendy Melvoin, guitarist in Prince’s Revolution, has her own interpretation. “I think
the song represents a change in someone’s life, a good change” she says. “It means
freedom to me. The whole idea of ‘Purple Rain’ is that it’s mystical.”
Maybe the question should be put to Prince. But, then, he’s not talking.
The kids are lined up behind the barricades on Hollywood Boulevard, thinking
about a little red Corvette.
Here comes a yellow Cadillac. It’s Morris Day. “What time is it?” he asks as he
struts out with his walking stick.
Here comes a silver Rolls-Royce. It’s Apollonia. She’s a study in lavender—
lavender see-through gown decorated with gold sequins and lavender feathers,
lavender suede boots, and deep lavender nail polish. She strides up the lavender
carpeting and poses for the paparazzi, who are standing behind purple crowd-control
ropes.
Welcome to Hollywood.
Here comes a purple limousine and the screams of the five thousand fans are
deafening. Prince steps out in a purple lamé trench coat, carrying a purple flower. With
a catatonic stare in his eyes, he marches directly into the theater, escorted by Chick and
three or four other security personnel. Suddenly the fans boo, because Prince didn’t
stop for photos or an interview with MTV’s Mark Goodman, who is playing rock’s version
of Arme Archard greeting the stars in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre.
“Don’t feel bad,” Goodman announces over the public address system. “He doesn’t
talk to anyone.”
Other stars had talked to MTV earlier after alighting from their limousines. Warner
Bros.’ carefully orchestrated guest list included an unusual mixture of music, movie, and
television stars.
Christopher Reeve admitted he’d been a Prince fan for only a month. Morgan
Fairchild arrived with her boyfriend, who had been a cameraman for the movie; she had
been in Minneapolis with him for part of the filming. The guys from Quiet Riot said they
were Prince fans because “we like to dance.” Christopher Cross showed up because “I
got an invitation” but, after further questioning, admitted he admired Prince’s
imagination. “Prince is bad,” declared Eddie Murphy. John Cougar Mellencamp showed
up at the gala Hollywood premiere in his usual T-shirt and jeans and snubbed the
paparazzi by entering the theater through the twenty- five-yard gauntlet lined by just
plain folks.
Others met MTV and the paparazzi: Pee Wee Herman, Weird Al Yankovic, Little
Richard, Devo, the Talking Heads, Kiss, X, Heart, Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire,
Rockwell, Ray Parker, Jr., Patrice Rushen, George Duke, Lionel Richie, Melissa
Manchester, Robbie Robertson, James Ingram, Shalamar, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey
Buckingham, Rickie Lee Jones, Donna Mills, Lisa Hartman, Henry Thomas, Kevin
Bacon, Charles Haid, Levar Burton, Harold Ramis.
“I can’t believe all the stars,” gushes Prince’s mother as now she, too, walks the
star gauntlet.
“This is the greatest day of my life,” adds her husband, Hayward Baker, who
jokingly refers to himself as “the meanie.”
Minneapolis meets Hollywood. And it seems Purple Rain has taken the
entertainment capital by storm.
Yet movie coproducer Bob Cavallo is pacing around nervously outside the theater:
One of his partners, Joe Ruffalo, looks cool with his date, Beverly Sasson. Director Al
Magnoli looks confident. The advance reviews have been glowing and Warner Bros.
has placed the film in nine hundred theaters instead of the planned seven hundred
theaters for this opening weekend. But now’s the true test after litmus screenings in
Denver and San Diego.
The invitees have settled into their assigned seats in the storied theater. About five
hundred tickets at $10 apiece had been sold to fans alerted by tiny print in a newspaper
ad. Some waited in line as long as twelve hours to get a ticket, and now they scream
when Prince enters the theater with a phalanx of bodyguards. The lights darken. The
show begins.
The moment Prince’s image spreads across the screen the girls go wild. They
swoon when he kisses Apollonia. They go crazy during the concert sequences.
Applause ripples through the theater when Dez Dickerson’s band comes on the screen.
Purple Rain invites audience participation. When the bar manager in the film tells Prince
his music makes no sense to anyone but himself, a young woman blurts out, “It does to
me.”
"I love you,” interjects another.
“I love you more,” declares someone else.
But the real Prince sneaks out before the movie is over. He has a party to attend.
Where’s his purple limousine?
There is no thirty-foot canvas painting of Prince hanging in front of the Palace
Theater, as there was at Mann’s Chinese. (The hand-painted advertisement would be
stolen about a week later and a $1 000 reward offered for its return.) Nevertheless, the
Palace is a portrait in purple— purple searchlights outside; female guests are handed
purple orchids as they enter; inside there are purple flowers in centerpieces and
entwined on the railings; purple balloons and purple streamers hanging from the ceiling;
purple napkins and lavender tablecloths.
In the humid, crowded main room, people are nibbling quiche, meatballs, and pasta
salad. MTV has again set up shop, and Goodman’s asking the stars to give their
reviews live on cable television.
“It was a gas,” Buckingham pronounces. “The cinematography was excellent.
Prince was as strong on film as you would expect him to be.”
“I’m a Prince groupie,” smiles Murphy, who in ‘83 had told Rolling Stone magazine
that Prince was the only music personality with whom he’d trade places. “I loved the
movie. I think the man’s a genius.”
Would you still like to switch places with him?
“No. I’ve got too much money now.”
“Compared to other rock ‘n’ roll movies like Help or something, this was far better,”
opines Mellencamp, who once stopped a concert in Tulsa to play “Little Red Corvette”
on his boom box the week the album 1999 was released. "It was nice just to see Prince
talk.”
“I’m proud of Prince for taking the whole Minneapolis scene along with him,”
observes Richie. “There are followers, and there are leaders. He’s killin’. This is just an
extension of his life story, and now everyone is going to want to make their own movie.”
Says Steven Spielberg: “I’m exempt from giving reviews.”
Robertson, who has worked in both music and films, says Prince should be
commended. “This isn’t great movie-making, but in terms of putting film and music
together, he has made a contribution.”
Despite Robertson’s less-than-glowing summary, it’s clear that Purple Rain is a hit
with Hollywood. Coproducer Cavallo has now loosened his tie and lit up a victory cigar.
The group of musicians from Minnesota are a bit overwhelmed. It’s a three-story party—
dancing in front of the stage in the main room, an open bar on the balcony landing, and
an air-conditioned lounge with a jazz pianist on the top floor.
“I feel sixty feet tall,” declares a wide-eyed Jerome Benton, valet for the Time, who
has been getting rave reviews.
“This is like a dream come true,” adds Time drummer Jellybean Johnson.
“It didn’t hit me how big Prince is until I got here and saw the limos and having to
stop for pictures coming into the theater and just having someone telling me where to
go,” says Paul Peterson, nineteen, a new member of the Time.
But veterans Bobby Z and Matt Fink of the Revolution have a bit more perspective.
They’ve been there from the beginning, seen the highs when Stevie Wonder, Bruce
Springsteen, Sting, Magic Johnson, and all the stars came to their L.A. show and the
lows of getting booed off the stage at the Rolling Stones concert in L.A. “This is
monumental in the history of entertainment, with Minneapolis and L.A. coming together,”
says Fink. “The movie had a lot to say about relationships and interpersonal
relationships and family problems.”
“Prince is bringing back the days of old Hollywood,” says Bobby Z. “The people that
are jaded got excited about his. You can feel the genuine excitement.”
Yet Prince is nowhere to be seen. He refused to appear earlier before the MTV
cameras, and he hasn’t shown his face at his party all night. Finally, it’s show time: an
unnamed group of break dancers from Minneapolis, then Sheila E., Prince’s latest
project. Her Bay Area band is dynamite, and she delivers the goods in a tantalizing,
see-through turquoise outfit. She plays percussion, sings like an angel, and comes on
like . . . well, sort of a female version of Prince. She pulls Ray Parker, Jr., out of the
audience, sits him down in a chair front and center, and proceeds to sing “Next Time
Wipe the Lipstick Off Your Collar” to him while teasingly trying to peel off his clothes.
She playfully grabs his crotch and proclaims, “You’re the kind of guy who comes home
with the smell of another girl on your jockstrap.” Lionel Richie falls out of his chair,
feigning a faint. Sheila used to play percussion in his band, and now he’s discovered
that “she’s got balls.” Says Parker, “She’s worse than the other woman.”
But just where is the main man in her life, the man of the moment?
It’s 12:20 AM. and Prince and the Revolution take the stage. A sculpture of a huge
hand holding a bowl rests behind them. The Olympics are to begin in two days, and
Prince is ready to light his own torch. Flash, bam, boom! It’s “17 Days,”“Irresistible
Bitch,” and “When Doves Cry.” Spins, splits, an eight-foot jump from atop the amplifiers.
What an explosive cameo performance! No thank-yous or any words from the Kid. It’s
his party, and he can do what he wants to.
The next night Purple Rain opened around the country. There were long lines at
many of the theaters. In Minneapolis, people were scalping $4.50 tickets for $10. In
Calumet City, Illinois, police had to be called in to disperse three hundred angry people
who had been turned away at the box office. Purple Rain edged Ghostbusters as the
highest grossing film in America that weekend, with a take of $7.8 million.
But still Prince hadn’t done anything for his hometown. He had insisted that the
movie be made there, but Warner Bros. insisted that the premiere be in Hollywood to
garner the requisite media attention. There wasn’t enough time to bounce back home
and have a big to-do there. Somehow, though, Prince wanted to send a message to his
home folks.
So on a Tuesday morning some two weeks after the movie had opened, Prince’s
people contacted First Avenue’s management and asked if the Revolution could come
play. Maybe it was his way of saying thanks to First Avenue for its contribution to the
movie, or maybe it was his ad hoc version of a Minneapolis premiere party. Manager
Steve Fargnoli had a suspicion that Prince would play a gig at First Avenue that week.
Maybe Friday, he figured, because it was keyboardist Lisa Coleman’s birthday. But
when Fargnoli got off the airplane from Los Angeles that evening he was told “tonight’s
the night.”
There was no advertising, just word of mouth. Tickets were only $2.50, about half
the price of admission to the movie itself. It was Prince’s first public appearance since
the movie had opened. It was a turnaway crowd (though members of the Cars and
Wang Chung were let in after their concert at Met Center). In fact, so many people
lingered outside First Avenue that the police showed up outside the club for the first
time in recent memory.
Prince stood behind the movie screen, which only minutes earlier had been
covered with his “Let’s Go Crazy” video. In a squeaky soul voice (someone said it
proved that Prince did sing on the first Time album), he took his Revolution through a
James Brown jam. Then it was like seeing Purple Rain live—Let’s Go Crazy,”“Darling
Nikki,”“The Beautiful Ones,” a too-fast version of “When Doves Cry,”“Baby, I’m a Star,”
and “Purple Rain,” during which the bar-goers waved their hands over their heads just
like the extras in the audience at First Avenue in the movie. For a treat, Prince tossed in
“Delirious” and a couple other oldies and the “Chicken Grease” jam, during which he
showed off some jazzy guitar work. The major difference between this performance and
the movie, though, was the Kid himself. He was deliriously happy. No one had ever
seen him smile so much onstage. He even carried on past closing time.
Afterward, he burst into First Avenue’s tiny dressing room. He was beside himself.
“These people,” he blurted out. “They are the nicest people. They make you want to
give and give.”
A few nights later, he visited his mother. He was happy and talkative. “That’s not
like him to be so talkative,” she said. Maybe he was finally satisfied.
Prince, a one-man recording group, first assembled a touring ensemble in 1978 but
did not use the players extensively in the recording studio until the Purple Rain album in
1984. in 1982, he dubbed them the Revolution.
Here’s a history of Prince’s fellow revolutionaries:
Bass—Andre Anderson of Minneapolis (renamed Andre Cymone after his middle
name, Simon). He played in Grand Central and Champagne with Prince in junior and
senior high school. in ‘81 he departed for a solo career and has since developed a cold
rivalry with Prince. He is managed by Owen Husney, who used to manage Prince.
Cymone records for Columbia Records and produces other groups, including the Girls.
He was replaced by Mark Brown of Minneapolis, formerly with Fantasy, a local R&B
band.
Drums—Bobby Z (né Rivkin) of St. Louis Park, Minnesota. He played with countryfolkie Kevin Odegard, who had worked with Bob Dylan, and with Pepe Willie’s 94 East,
which once used Prince as a session guitarist. Later Rivkin worked as errand-runner for
Prince’s first manager, Husney, who also ran an advertising agency. Bobby Z (it’s a
family nickname) is the brother of David Rivkin, a St. Paul engineer who worked on
Prince’s demo tape and still helps him edit singles.
Guitar—Dez Dickerson of North St. Paul, Minnesota. After having toiled with
various Twin Cities rock bands, including Whale Bone, Revolver, and Romeo, he
answered an ad in a local weekly paper to join Prince’s band. The most visible member
of the group, Dickerson departed in ‘83 to form his own band, which has toured
extensively, opening for Billy Idol, and appeared in Purple Rain. He was replaced by
Wendy Melvoin of Los Angeles, a roommate of keyboardist Lisa Coleman. Melvoin had
no previous professional experience, although she had studied jazz guitar for several
years. She is the daughter of jazz keyboardist Mike Melvoin, who played on the Beach
Boys’“Good Vibrations,” Barbra Streisand’s “Evergreen,” and Frank Sinatra’s “That’s
Life,” among other records.
Keyboards—Matt Fink (aka Doctor Fink), also of St. Louis Park, Minnesota. After
having worked with the B.T. Rockets and Zachariah, two Twin Cities rock bands, Fink
bugged Husney for an audition. He originally performed in a prisoner’s striped uniform,
before switching to a surgical gown. He dyed his hair purple for Purple Rain and now
finds himself besieged by autograph seekers all over the Twin Cities.
Keyboards—Gayle Chapman of St. Louis Park, Minnesota. A friend of one of
Prince’s cousins, Chapman left the band in 1980 because her religious beliefs were
incompatible with Prince’s lyrics. She was replaced by Lisa Coleman of Hollywood,
California, daughter of well-traveled L.A. studio percussionist Gary Coleman, one of
Mike Melvoin’s best friends. (Now their daughters are best friends and roommates.) A
graduate of Hollywood High School, Coleman had no previous professional experience,
although she studied classical piano for many years.
Although this band was essentially put together by Prince in 1981 as his outlet for
R&B groove tunes, the group basically existed in another incarnation called Flyte Tyme.
Named after a song by jazzman Donald Byrd, the group evolved in 1974 from a
power trio into an R&B show band complete with horns. Cynthia Johnson, a converted
horn player, was one of the group’s early lead singers until she left to become the voice
behind Lipps, Inc. and the 1980 sensation “Funkytown.” Sue Ann Carwell did a stint as
lead singer before gaining a solo contract with Warner Bros., and then Alexander
O’Neal took over. He was Prince’s first choice to be lead singer of this new Bus Boyslike black rock ensemble, but he turned down the offer. Nevertheless, Prince ended up
luring away O’Neal’s sidemen, pairing them with a different singer.
Lead singer—Morris Day of Minneapolis. The drummer in Prince’s high school R&B
groups, Day helped Prince put together the first Time album and then recruit the rest of
the band. With his cartoonish dandy persona, Day used his charming presence to great
advantage, especially in Purple Rain. He made plans to pursue a solo career in the
summer of ‘84 by moving to Los Angeles and enlisting the management firm of Katz,
Gallin and Morey, best known for its work with Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin.
Bass—Terry Lewis of Minneapolis. A state track champion sprinter, Lewis became
serious about music after incurring a football injury his senior year in high school. A
founder of Flyte Tyme, he became the musical leader of the Time but left in ‘82 to form
a songwriting/production company with Jimmy (Jam) Harris; together they’ve produced
R&B hits for the S.O.S. Band, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Cherrelle, Cheryl Lynn,
Klymaxx, and others. Lewis was replaced in 1982 by Gerry Hubbard, Jr., of
Minneapolis, who had played with O’NeaI’s band, Alexander.
Drums—Jellybean Johnson of Minneapolis. He played with Lewis and two others in
a group called Wars of Armageddon and became a founding member of Flyte Tyme. He
has played on sessions for Lewis-Harris recordings.
Guitar—Jesse Johnson of Rock Island, Illinois. He came to the Twin Cities and
worked with the R&B show groups Enterprise and Band of Pleasure. He was drafted to
play in the guitar-less Flyte Tyme but never actually played a gig with the group
because Prince approached him about the Time. Johnson signed a solo recording
contract with A&M Records in the summer of ‘84, and he produced two songs for singer
Janet Jackson, younger sister of Michael. Johnson is managed by Owen Husney,
Prince’s first manager.
Keyboards—Monte Moir of Minneapolis. He played in a series of neighborhood
bands and joined Flyte Tyme while studying finance at Augsburg College. He left the
Time in 1983 to join the Lewis-Harris production team. His replacement is Mark
Cardenas, a Los Angeles native who had been working in jazz-fusion circles in
Minneapolis for about two years before he was invited to join the Time.
Keyboards—Jimmy (Jam) Harris of Minneapolis. A drummer who switched to
keyboards, Harris gave up performing to work as a disc jockey in both radio and discos.
After a stint with a progressive R&B group known as Mind and Matter, he joined Flyte
Tyme in the early ‘80s in time to become a member of the Time. He left in ‘82 to form
Flyte Tyme Productions with Lewis; among their 1984 projects is an album by
Alexander O’Neal.
Harris’s replacement is Paul Peterson from Richfield, Minnesota, a member of the
Twin Cities’ first family of jazz. His mother is a distinguished jazz singer and pianist, his
late father was the organist at Minnesota Twins games, and his siblings—bassist Billy,
singer Patty, and pianist Ricky— have been recipients of Minnesota Music Awards for
being the best on their respective instruments. (Ricky was chosen as an original
member of Prince’s band but dropped out to work with Minneapolis singer Rockie
Robbins, who has recorded for A&M and MCA.) Peterson played bass in his sister’s
jazz combo before joining the Time in 1983. He has been tapped to be the lead singer
of the Family, a Prince project expected to be introduced in either the fall of ‘84 or early
‘85.
Valet—Jerome Benton of Minneapolis. A former football player and bank clerk,
Benton was a roadie for Flyte Tyme. His dancing and dramatic ability led to his role as
Day’s onstage valet and a critically acclaimed portrayal in Purple Rain.
Prince wanted to start a girl group. He had a concept, an image and a sound. He
was going to call them the Hookers. They would be a racy lingerie act. However, they
became known as Vanity 6 when he introduced them in the summer of ‘82.
Lead singer—Vanity (née Denise Mathews) from Toronto, Canada. She was a
model and nudie actress who made a couple of films under the name of D. D. Winters.
Prince met her in Los Angeles at a music awards show when she was with Rick James.
In ‘83, she turned up at the Grammys on the arm of Prince. He created his female
singing group around this perfect vamp, even though he admitted privately that she
wasn’t much of a singer. He insisted that Vanity appear with him on the cover of Rolling
Stone in the spring of ‘83. However, that summer they had a falling out both
romantically and business wise. During rehearsals for Purple Rain, she dropped out of
the Royal Court and moved to Hollywood to pursue a film career. (She was to have
appeared as Mary Magdalene in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Testament of Christ, but
production was halted because of lack of funds.) She now records as a solo artist for
Motown Records.
In the fall of ‘83, Patty Kotero, from Santa Monica, California, was drafted and
dubbed Apollonia by Prince, and the group was rechristened Apollonia 6. Her father
was a nightclub owner, and she a “restaurant brat” who spent time in Los Angeles, Palm
Springs, and Mexico. She studied keyboard and dance in school, played in an all-girl
junior high rock band called the Purple Flirts, and acted in a few community college
plays. After striking out at numerous auditions, Kotero landed her first professional
acting and singing role in Purple Rain.
Backup singer—Susan Moonsie of Minneapolis. Perry Jones, who managed Prince
for a few months in 1979, met Susan and her sister at a Minneapolis disco and
introduced them to Prince. She had been writing songs since she was twelve. Five
years later Prince asked her to join Vanity 6.
Backup singer—Brenda Bennett, from Boston. Prince discovered her in a
Massachusetts bar while on tour in ‘81. A year later, he invited her to join Vanity 6. She
also has contributed background vocals to Prince’s records.
Born Sheila Escovedo, from Oakland, California, she is the daughter of welltraveled percussionist Pete Escovedo, best remembered for his tenures with Santana
and Azteca. She began playing congas at age five with the Escovedo Brothers, studied
violin for five years, and at age fifteen took to the road with Azteca, singing and playing
percussion. She then hooked up with George Duke’s jazz-fusion ensemble for three and
a half years before recording two duet albums with her father. Thereafter Sheila divided
her time between recording sessions and tours with Con Funk Shun, Herbie Hancock,
Jeffrey Osborne, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, and Lionel Richie. Prince, who had met
Sheila while recording his first album, invited her to help out on the soundtrack album
for Purple Rain, and then they collaborated on her debut solo album, The Glamorous
Life, which was issued in the summer of ‘84.
Jokingly referring to themselves as Spaghetti Inc., this threesome has served as
Prince’s managers since mid-1979. Their other clients include Earth, Wind & Fire; Ray
Parker, Jr.; Philip Bailey; the Call; the Time; Apollonia 6; and Sheila E. The Los
Angeles-based music management firm, which has specialized in black acts, entered
the film business in 1983 as producers of Purple Rain.
Bob Cavallo, a New York City native, opened a nightclub in 1960 during his senior
year at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (It still exists under another name,
the Cellar Door.) After two years, he returned to New York and became comanager and
coproducer of the Lovin’ Spoonful. After Joe Ruffalo became his partner in the late ‘60s,
they managed Laura Nyro and John Sebastian. In ‘69, the partners moved to Los
Angeles and took on three fledgling groups—Little Feat; Weather Report; and Earth,
Wind & Fire. Those associations later led to overseeing the careers of Deniece
Williams, the Emotions, and Valerie Carter.
Joe Ruffalo was a boyhood friend of Cavallo’s in New York City. He earned an
M.B.A. at George Washington University and became an electrical engineer. An
engineering firm he was working with decided to get into the entertainment business,
but the stock deal fell through. Ruffalo signed on with his old buddy Cavallo in music
management.
Steve Fargnoli, while a teenager in Rhode Island, worked as a stagehand at the
Newport Jazz Festival. He subsequently tried his luck as a singer, promoted some
college concerts at Boston University, worked as a jazz booking agent in New York, and
then served as booking agent and road manager for Sly Stone for two years in the mid’70s. Fargnoli was asked by Warner Bros. Records to see if he could help get Prince’s
band on the road. He became Prince’s agent, then joined Cavallo and Ruffalo’s
management firm and brought Prince in as a client. He is the partner most involved with
Prince’s music career.
ALBUMS
For You, April 1978
Prince, August 1979
Dirty Mind, October 1980
Controversy, October 1981
1999, October 1982
Purple Rain, June 1984
SINGLES
“Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?”/”Baby,” October 1977
“So BIue”/”Soft and Wet,” June 1978
“Just As Long As We’re Together"/"In Love,” November 1978
“I Wanna Be Your Lover”/”My Love Is Forever,” August 1979
“Still Waiting”/”Bambi,” March 1980
“Uptown”/”Crazy You,” September 1980
“Dirty Mind"/"When We’re Dancing Close and Slow,” November 1980
“Controversy”/”When You Were Mine,” September 1981
“Let’s Work”/”Ronnie Talk to Russia,” January 1982
“Do Me, Baby”/”Private Joy,” July 1982
“1999”/”How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?,” September 1982
“Little Red Corvette”/"All the Critics Love U in New York,” February 1983
“Delirious”/"Horny Toad," August 1983
“Let’s Pretend We’re Married”/”Irresistible Bitch,” November 1983
“When Doves Cry”/”17 Days,” May 1984
“Let’s Go Crazy”/”Erotic City,” July 1984
ALL RECORDINGS RELEASED BY W ARNER BROS. RECORDS.
APOLLONIA 6—Sex Shooter” (Warner Bros. 45, 1984)
DEBRA HURD—”Gotta Broken Heart Again” (Geffen 45, 1983)
CYNDI LAUPER—”When You Were Mine,” on She’s So Unusual (Portrait 1983)
STEPHANIE MILLS—How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore,” on Merciless
(Casablanca, 1983)
MITCH RYDER—”When You Were Mine,” on Never Kick a Sleeping Dog (Riva 1983)
SHEILA E.—”The Belle of St. Mark,”“Shortberry Strawcake,”“Oliver’s House,”“Next Time
Wipe the Lipstick Off Your Collar,”“The Glamorous Life,” and “Noon Rendezvous” (with
Sheila Escovedo), on The Glamorous Life (Warner Bros., 1984)
THE TIME—Get It Up,”“Girl,”“Oh Baby,”“The Stick” and “Cool” (lyrics by Dez Dickerson,
music by Prince), on The Time (Warner Bros., 1981)
“777-9311,”“One Day I’m Gonna Be Somebody,”“The Walk,”“Gigolos Get Lonely
Too,”“I Don’t Want to Leave You,” and “Wild and Loose” (with Dez Dickerson) on What
Time Is It? (Warner Bros., 1982)
“My Drawers,”“Chili Sauce,”“If the Kid Can’t Make You Come,”“Ice Cream Castles”
(with Morris Day), “Jungle Love” (with Day and Jesse Johnson), and “The Bird” (with
Day and Johnson) on Ice Cream Castle (Warner Bros., 1984)
VANITY 6—”Nasty Girl,”“Wet Dreams,”“Drive Me Wild,”“3 x 2 = 6,”“Make Up,”“Bite the
Beat” (with Jesse Johnson), and “If a Girl Answers (Don’t Hang Up)” (with Terry Lewis)
on Vanity 6 (Warner Bros., 1982)
REN WOODs—"I Don’t Wanna Stop” on Azz Izz (Elektra, 1982). The song, which
Prince has never recorded, was later pulled from the album at his request.
“Since We’ve Been Together” (1976)
“Gotta Stop Messin’ About” (1980)
“Lisa” (1980)
“Wouldn’t You Love to Love Me?” (1980)
“God (Love Theme from Purple Rain)” (1984)
*Including songs the Copyright Office confirms as registered under the pseudonym Jamie Starr