- 1958 -
06-07-1958 : Prince’s Birth
Prince Roger Nelson is born at Mount Sinai Hospital, Minneapolis.
His father, John L. Nelson, was a pianist, and Prince was actually
named after his jazz trio, the Prince Rogers Band. To support his
family, John also worked as a plastic moulder at Honeywell
Electronics, an electronics company. Prince's mother, Mattie Shaw,
sang with John’s group until marriage and motherhood caused her to
seek more stable ways of earning a livelihood. Mattie left the band
and obtained a master's degree in social economy and worked for
the MPLS school system. Both are native from Louisiana, and they
moved to MPLS in the early fifties, leaving the overt racism from the
south to look for work in the more liberal state of Minnesota. They
consider themselves black, although Prince has said that his father is
part-italian and his mother “a mixture of a bunch of things.” His
Mattie Shaw
mother was more specific : “I think all blacks are racially mixed. It
was a racially mixed family, both my family and his dad’s family.”
Prince has made many contradictory statements about his racial
heritage simply because he “never wanted race to be an issue” in his career : “I wanted people to
respect me for my music, not whether I was black or white.”
Because Prince’s parents divorced and re-married people who themselves were divorced, he has, besides Tyka, one half-brother
and two step-siblings through his mother’s second marriage, and four half and step-siblings through his father’s second marriage.
From his first marriage, John had two daughters, Lorna and Sharon, and a son : John Jr. Mattie was the mother of a son named
Alfred. Prince was named after his father’s stage name. Mattie called
him ‘Skipper’ because “he was so small in size and he was just real
cute, he was a darling baby.” According to Charles Smith, Prince’s
second cousin, “Prince didn’t want to be called Prince at all.” The
Smith family lived nearby and Charles was a close friend from very
early on. “To us kids, Prince was hs dad. Everyone called Prince
‘Skipper.’ I tried to call him Prince one time, but he got really mad. It
was many years later, probably in junior school, when he started
liking the name Prince. And then he got mad when he was called
Skipper !” A sister, Tika Evene (usually called Tyka, after the name of
a famous US TV show, ‘The Tika’), was born two years after Prince.
“My name was very different, and with Prince at the school as well,
we got teased about our names all the time. I mean, back in the
sixties, no one was called Tyka and Prince.”
Prince’s parents seem to have had very different temperaments.
Sixteen years older than Mattie, John was serious, quiet, softspoken,
and obsessed with his music, while Mattie was more lighthearted and
John L. Nelson & Prince
extroverted. Prince has described his parents in various interviews :
“My mom’s the wild side of me; she’s like that all the time. My dad’s
real serene; it takes the music to get him going. My father and me,
we’re the same. He's a little sick - just like I am !” Prince clearly
inherited many character traits from his father, who has said : “I
spend a lot of time by myself, writing and composing music. That’s
the most important thing to me. I don’t care to meet strangers. I
express myself through my music and my son does too. That’s how
we communicate our feelings. A lot of his talents comes from God,
maybe some from me.” Tyka agrees that the reclusive, withdrawn
side of Prince today comes from his father : “Our father is very
withdrawn. If it's 75 degrees outside he has all the shades down. We
lived like that for years. Prince is like that in his house, so am I. It's a
hereditary thing.” According to Charles Smith : “John and Prince are
very similar. Both are kind of eccentric and a bit weird, and you have
to really get to know them. Mattie was the one that was wild, while
John was very, very cool. John taught Prince everything about
keeping everything clean. We all liked his style. He had clothes that
matched his shoes.”
Prince grew up in the northern part of Minneapolis, a predominantly black, lower-middle class area, with a small Jewish community.
Southern Minneapolis, where many Lutherans of Scandinavian descent live, is considered the bourgeois part of the city. Founded
by French settlers in the 17th century, Minneapolis is the largest city of Minnesota, a sparsely populated state in the north of the
USA bordered by Canada, Lake Superior and the upper Midwestern states. Minnesota is a land of prairies, farmland, bluffs, forests
and lakes. More than 11,000 lakes are over four hectares in size. Lake Superior is the largest fresh-water lake in the world.
Minneapolis together with its neighbouring "twin" city, St. Paul (the Mississippi River separates them), has a metropolitan area
population of 2.3 million (17th largest in the USA). The cities began as frontier towns with mostly German, Irish and Scandinavian
immigrants. The name Minneapolis is derived from the Dakota Indians’ name for water ("minne") and the Greek word for city
("polis"). Although referred to as the Twin Cities, Minneapolis is more
contemporary and trendy, while St. Paul is more historic and earthy in
nature. One trait that the two cities have in common is their cultural
vibrancy. Over 75 art galleries dot the Twin Cities, and with over 90
theatre companies, they offer more theatre than any other city in the
USA outside of New York. They also offer a wealth of diverse places
to hear music, from gigantic sport arenas to cozy jazz clubs, and from
concert halls to rock clubs and "video-dromes" filled with thumping
dance music.
The Nelson family lived at 915 Logan Avenue in the northern part of
Minneapolis (a new house was built in the mid-90), a predominantly
black, lower to middle class area. Minneapolis’ population today is
around 400.000 people, of which 13 per cent are black. Just east of
Minneapolis is St. Paul, its “Twin City.” Minneapolis has a reputation
as a liberal city, with a history of less racial problems than most of
other American cities. “I was very lucky to be born here because I
saw both sides of the racial issue, the oppression and the equality,”
Prince has said. “I got the best of all worlds here. I saw what
happened here, and it’s not like what happens in, say, Atlanta.”
- 1965 At 7, Prince attended John Hay Elementary School (just south of the present Lincoln Elementary school, now a vacant lot). He met
Andre Anderson (later, Cymone) in the third grade, and Prince, Andre and Charles Smith (Prince's cousin, their grandmothers are
sisters) struck up a close friendship. “We really kind of connected at John Hay,” Charles recalls. “Prince lived on Logan, he would
pick me up on Sheridan, and then we’d pick up André, who lived on Russell Avenue. Then we’d all go to school, on Penn Avenue.
It was a great school.” Prince and André had more of a link than they first realised. While visiting Prince’s home one time, André
noticed a band picture of John L. Nelson’s piano. He recognized the bass player next to the pianist : “It was my father. I couldn’t
believe it, because Prince and I immediately got on so well, and here we had something else in common. It was deep.”
Prince spent time at the neighborhood church, attending Bible study sessions and choir practice. Like many of the black families
living nearby, Prince’s family were practicing Seventh Day Adventists. “The most I got out of that was the experience of the choir.,”
Prince later commented. Prince and Tyka were bussed to school on a trial basis when Minneapolis schools were being desegregated in 1967. The experience left a lasting impression on both of them as Tyka remembers : “When we had to run to get on
the bus, we were chased by people. I thought it was because we were the new kids. I didn’t know it was because we were black. All
the boys would stand outside the bus and fight off people who wanted to get at us. This happened every day. We had to go and eat
at people’s house because there weren’t any school lunches. But nobody would feed us, and I thought it was because they didn’t
like me, not because I was black. I didn’t know I was black.”
However, schools began to bring together blacks and whites in 1967. The decisions of the Federal Court to allow black children to
attend white classes and vice versa to redress racial segregation. This experience left a lasting mark in the Nelson family. Prince
will treat this subject in the autobiographical song "The Sacrifice Of Victor". Prince has talked about a troubled childhood, with
parents who quarrelled all the time. In most recent years, he has hinted in interviews and songs like "The Sacrifice Of Victor",
"Papa" or "Da, Da, Da" that his father was abusive. And when asked in 1996 which was the most autobiographic scene in the
Purple Rain film, he replied : “The scene with me looking at my mother, crying.” Regardless, Mattie said she and her husband had
"normal disagreements." Charles also believes the depiction of Prince’s childhood as miserable is vastly exaggerated : “I never saw
Prince or Tyka getting treated really bad. Their mother did everything in the world for them ! To me, he and Tyka were spoiled.
Everybody thought Prince was cute. He was so little and he had a natural talent at everything. Nobody felt sorry for him.”
Prince’s father was a crucial inspiration. He once recalled seeing his father’s band play when he was about five years old : “It was
great, I couldn’t believe it, people were screaming. From then on, I think I wanted to be a musician.” He has also described how he
was lifted up on stage during a James Brown concert a few years later. Another musical influence on the young, impressionable
Prince, was his older half-brother, Alfred, who lived at home with him and Tyka. He was into James Brown and had his hair like
Little Richard. “He had an incredible voice but he was a strange cookie,” recalls Charles. “Nobody really knew anything about him.
He would climb out of his window in the basement. Me and Prince would go into his room, and he would scare us by sneaking back
in. He was the weirdest dude.” According to Charles, Alfred was later declared metally disturbed and committed to a state mental
institution in St. Peter, a town 60 miles south of Minneapolis.
Music was always an integral part of Prince’s childhood. With both parents musically inclined, it was little wonder that he was
naturally attracted to music. He began playing his father’s piano when he wasn’t at home, picking out tunes such as the themes to
the then popular Batman, Dragnet, and The Man From UNCLE TV series. Quite soon, he was improvising his own songs. “He
could hear music even from a very early age,” says Mattie. “When he was three or four, we’d go to the department store and he’s
jump on the piano, the organ, any type of instrument there was. Mostly the piano and the 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 would play piano,” his father says. “He would copy me, but
he could also do things I couldn’t do.” Tyka and Prince often sing with their father when he works on arrangements of his own
music. Prince has said that he wrote his first song, entitled "Funk Machine,” at the age of seven.
- 1968 In 1968, when Prince was 10 years old, his parents separate and filed for
divorce after a 13-year marriage. Prince's father moved out of the
household, leaving only his piano behind. The emotional crisis of the divorce
brought Prince and his sister Tyka very close together, as she remembers :
“Our mother had to take three jobs to keep us going, so Prince became my
brother, father, and my mother - everything. I can vividly remember the day
my father left, I just stood in the front room with this little guy and I looked up
at him and said, "Now what?"” After John’s departure, Mattie had to work
hard to keep the family going, leaving Prince and Tyka to take care of
themselves most of the time. “I was brought up by Prince and the television,”
Tyka recalls. “I quite often think I’m a character from The Little House On
The Prairie. And neither of us can watch it without bursting into tears. Prince
taught me everything I know. We grew up spending a lot of time on our own.
That made us creative. He taught me to draw and write stories. When my
mother and father divorced, he was the only person living in the house with me, so he took on the father role. My mother was
working three jobs, keeping everything together.”
After his father left, Prince began to explore the piano that had been left behind. Playing music became an escape and a way for
Prince to “communicate what I was feeling. I spent a lot of time alone and I turned to music. I played all the time. The music sort of
filled the void.” A few years later, Prince’s mother married Hayward Baker. Prince had trouble adjusting to his stepfather’s discipline
and they didn’t get along. “Prince was resentful when Haywood came on the scene,” Charles observes. “He was just starting to get
to know his dad. And for him there was no comparison. Prince resented him telling him what to do. I used to hear them argue and
sometimes I’d be in the middle of the arguments because I was often here. He used to argue with his mother : “Oh, be quiet mom !”
And she’d say : “You’ve got 19 weeks of punishment, Skipper. You ain’t gonna see the summer !” But even if she said so, he didn’t
really have to stay on punishment.” In a candid interview, Prince said that he felt that his parents’ divorce was probably the most
crucial experience of his life : “I was living at home with my mother and Tyka. When my step-dad arrived when I was nine, and I
disliked him immediately, because he dealt with a lot of materialistic things. He would bring us a lot of presents all the time, rather
than sit down and talk with us and give us companionship.”
- 1970 Aged 12, Prince left home and moved in with his father, who lived in an apartment south of downtown Minneapolis. Because he
didn’t get along with his stepfather, Prince spent a lot of time away from home during his early teens, staying with his father and an
aunt. “I was there the day he ran away from his mother,” Charles recall. “She said : “Be home at nine !” Prince said : “No, I’m
running away. Are you gonna come with me ?” I said I was going to run away with him, but I was lying. As soon as nine o’clock
came, I went home. But Prince really left and went to his father’s.”
Prince attended Bryant Junior High School (now the Sabathani Community Center), which was close to his father’s apartment. He
took part in youth activities at the Park Avenue Methodist Church, supervised by the Rev. Art Erickson. “He told me a story about
his stepfather locking him in a bedroom for six weeks with nothing but a bed and a piano,” says Erickson. “Personally, I think a lot of
his background feeds into his life. The divorce – a lot of things hurt Prince.” When Prince’s father remarried he acquired another
step-brother, Duane Nelson. “Prince and Duane really got close,” recalls Charles, “We always treated him like he was Prince’s real
brother. Duane lost his mother when he was going to high school, and it hurt him really bad. I could see Prince and him getting
even closer after that.”
Prince had always been interested and active in sports, playing basketball, football and baseball, eventually making the junior
varsity basketball team at Bryant. Prince’s coach, Richard Robinson, remembers Prince for his quickness, ball-handling skills, and
pinpoint shooting : “Defensively, he was kind of a liability because he was so short. He was a sixth and seventh man on a very, very
good basketball team, maybe the best that ever came out of Minneapolis. He came off as insecure. Everybody liked him, but he
seemed like he had this kind of need to prove himself.” Also at the Bryant Junior High School, Duane Nelson, whose mother had
married John after her divorce with Mattie, became a close friend of Prince. Prince’s troubled home life made him introverted; he
was considered shy and reclusive and became known as a loner : “I was considered strange. I recall having a lot of strange
dreams. I spent a lot of time alone. I didn't have any real friends when I was growing up.” Prince has often had a hard time in school
and he had to endure a fair amount of bullying because he was so physically slight. He had his share of nicknames, including
"Princess" or "Butcher dog," because the kids thought his face resembled a German Sheperd’s. “ I went through a lot when I was a
boy,” Prince later said. “They called me sissy, punk, freak and faggot. See, the girls loved you, but the boys hated you.” Prince’s
half-sister Lorna says that he was “always bullied” in junior high school. “Every day the bigger kids would wait for him. He dreaded
walking up those steps. They used to jeer at him because he was so short and had a black-italian background. What really hurt him
was the taunts he used to get at baseball practice.”
Prince was quite ambitious in school and got good grades, although he has said in interviews that he never really liked it : “I was a
poor student in as much as I didn‘t like the work and I wouldn't give anything to my teachers. If you had a little extra to give and
didn’t give it, they said you were being rebellious.” Prince was so quiet in some classes that people tended to forget he was there.
Despite his shortness, he was a good athlete, and he enjoyed playing basketball, football, and baseball. In fact, he was good
enough in basketball to make the junior varsity team at Central High School in Minneapolis. He played in the basketball team of the
school with his friends Paul and Duane Mitchell, who later played at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.
Prince did very well in music theory, guitar class, and stage band, and from very early on he was serious about music as a
profession. To that end, he took several classes in song copyrighting, recording, and other music business topics. He began to find
friends and gratification through music, and playing music became a way for him to express himself : “I realized that music could
express what you were feeling and it started coming out in my songs - loneliness and poverty and sex.” Part of his motivation was
to get out of the shadow of his stepbrother Duane, who excelled at basketball and football : “He always had all the girls around him
and stuff like that. I think I must have been on a jealous trip because I got out of sports. I wasn’t bad at basket, but my brother was
better and he wouldn’t let me forget it. I just wanted to do something else - something they couldn't do.” His music teachers
usually locks the music room during lunch for Prince to exercise without being disturbed. One of his teacher, Jim Hamilton
remembers him as an enthusiastic student without being remarkable. Prince takes part in extracurricular Hamilton’s "The world of
music." As he has found his way, Prince spends less time playing sports and he left the basketball team during his second year of
study. He was becoming more and more isolated and had the reputation of being a loner.
To a large extent, Prince grew up free of the established musical trends. There was very little of interest going on in Minneapolis in
the early seventies when he started playing music. He later claimed that the normalcy and remoteness of Minneapolis provided just
the atmosphere he needed to immerse himself in music : “We basically got all the new music and dances three months late, so I
just decided that I was gonna do my own thing. Otherwise, when we did split Minneapolis, we were gonna be way behind and
dated. The white radio stations were mostly country music, and the one black radio station was really boring to me. For that matter,
I didn’t have a record player when I was growing up.” In the sixties and seventies, before Prince put it on the musical map,
Minneapolis didn’t have anything remotely like the music scenes of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Memphis, Detroit, etc.
Minneapolis has long been considered the record distribution capital of the States. No less than 30 per cent of the records and
tapes sold in America pass through the Twin Cities. The record distributors were instrumental in establishing a small local recording
scene in the early sixties. Two well-known records recorded in Minneapolis in the sixties were "Liar Liar" by the Castaways and the
Trashmen’s "Surfin' Bird". The sixties also witnessed a flourishing folk scene in the Twin Cities that attracted local kids Bob Dylan
and Koerner, Ray & Glover, an influential white folk/blues group. However, in the seventies, most of the Twin Cities musical talents,
including Al Jarreau, Sue Ann Carwell, and Crow, moved to either coast.
Since Prince’s worldwide success with Purple Rain in 1984, over 30 Twin Cities-based artists have been signed to major-label
contracts. Strong institutional and corporate support of the arts, the Midwestern work ethic and the harsh winters that encourage
musicians to stay inside and practice help explain why Minneapolis has become one of the most important music centers in the
world. Despite the fact that less than three per cent of Minneapolis’ population is black, it is the local black musicians that have
garnered the most attention : Prince, the Time, Morris Day, Alexander O’Neal, Jesse Johnson, Andre Cymone, the Jets, and Jimmy
"Jam" Harris’ and Terry Lewis’ projects at Flyte Tyme Productions. There are several theories about the success among black
musicians : the absence of black radio stations has helped in creating a unique sound; the lack of clubs where black musicians can
perform have encouraged them to write original material; there are many active church choirs, and a positive attitude towards
creative people. Ben James, a music teacher in St. Paul, also thinks that the dreams of underprivileged blacks about making it is
important : “I’ve never run into so many confident singers. I think the survival skills among black musicians are a lot higher than
those of the average white musician. The white students don't dream, as a group, as much because their fantasies are fulfilled a
little faster financially. So psychologically the dream is part of the survival skills of the young black musicians I see here.”
Adonis / Skipper / Elaine
When Prince was only 12 he was forced to get a job to pay for his milkshakes. Walking down the High Street, he spotted an advert,
"Help needed in Dogs Home - apply to Adonis Williams." Luckily our man got the job and he and Adonis became lifelong friends,
with Prince being given the nickname Skipper after their favourite Border Collie. One Saturday at the Dogs Home, a certain Elaine
Gray turned up. Oh, Joy ! They all cried, for it was she who owned Skipper the Border Collie. After an emotional farewell to the dog,
Prince, Elaine and Adonis agreed to keep in touch. Recently Prince's devotion to this dog has come to the surface. He has written
songs about his old pal, including Play in the Sunshine, Alphabet St. (where Prince took Skipper for his walks) and, not surprisingly,
I Would Die 4 U. I can exclusively reveal to you that within the grounds of Paisley Park, Skipper has his home along with Elaine and
Adonis.
Elaine Gray and Adonis Williams = a group called Elevation. They recorded a single in 1985 entitled "Traitor". Illuminated label,
catalogue number LEV 66. Credited as playing guitar - correct, PRINCE. Bet you'll be off checking the bargain bins at the record
shops now .......
- 1972 Prince didn’t stay long with his father before he was thrown out after being caught with a girl who
had called round to visit him. His father was very strict. Prince describer years later how he
begged and pleaded with his father to take him back : “He said ‘no’,’ so I called my sister and
asked her to ask him. So she did, and afterward told me that all I had to do was call him back, tell
him I was sorry, and he’s take me back. So I did, and he still said no. I sat crying at that phone
booth for two hours.” Prince stayed temporarily with his aunt Olivia, who was a strict, religious
elderly woman. He would usually sees his father on weekends. While Olivia was good to him, she
was too old to give him proper attention. “He appeared happy, but a lot of people felt sorry for
him,” says classmate Paul Mitchell. “He would get on people’s nerves sometimes; I think I 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.”
When he was 14, Prince started at Central High School which was only a few blocks from his
father’s home. Prince was always well-dressed, usually wearing slacks and a jacket instead of the
more common T-shirts and jeans. He was so quiet in classes that few of the teachers could get
through to him. Regardless, he achieved good grades, seemingly without studying hard. Principal Mel West remembers him as “an
average to slightly above average student.” Social studies teacher Gene Anderson recalls : “Prince was a real smart kid, he could
do a lot of things in 10 minutes it took some people a whole hour to do.” Because Prince was so shy most students were unaware
of his musical prowness. “No one knew Prince was talented until one lunchtime, when he and his friends put on a little show in the
lunch room,” says Audrey, a fellow student. “The kids didn’t realise he had all this in him. You only ever saw him hanging out with
his brother, Duane. I would always say ‘Hi’ to Prince, but he would only mumble. Duane was more popular with the girls.” Those
closer to Prince remember his sense of humour. “The best way to put it is what he was a good practical joker,” says Greg Boone, a
high school classmate. “He had kind of a sly image around people. He was the last one you’d expect.”
Although he and Duane hung around the ‘jock’ crowd, Prince was more of a follower than a leader of the clique. He didn’t drink or
smoke, normally staying on the sidelines at parties. Regardless, Boone says that Prince had “a personality that girls liked” and he
had a girlfriend, a cheerleader named Kim Upsher, who would remain a close friend for many years. Prince did well in music theory,
guitar class, and stage band in high school. He had a natural ability with any instrument he spent enough time with. Robbins
noticed his musical talent very early on : “He’d walk into a jazz ensemble class even though he wasn’t enrolled in it, pick up an
instrument, kill it, and just walk out.” His music teachers used to lock the music room during the lunchtime breaks so Prince could
practice undisturbed. One of his music teachers, Jim Hamilton, remembers him as an enthusiastic but not particularly outstanding
student. “One of his greatest qualities was the work ethic,” says Hamilton. “If he wanted to accomplish something, he would really
work at it. If there was something he was going to practice, he would sit there for an hour or two hours, and he would not stop until
it had been accomplished.” As he found his niche with music, Prince spent less time with sports and he quit Central High’s
basketball team in his sophomore year. He seemed to become increasingly withdrawn and developed a reputation as something of
a loner. Prince later said he “missed out on a lot, but I don’t regret it. I missed out on socialising. But I get high off playing my music
or going to a movie alone.”
It was at his aunt’s house that he encountered a man who would soon become an important presence in his life : Pepe Willie, who
was dating Prince’s cousin, Shantel Manderville. ‘I was twenty-three, he must have been thirteen,’ Willie told me, ‘because he was
just a little kid. I didn’t pay him no mind.’ But a few years later, when Prince was crashing at his friend André Anderson’s house
(Prince’s warm feelings towards Anderson’s mum Bernadette are expressed in the autobiographical song ‘The Sacrifice of Victor’)
and had enrolled in an after-hours course on ‘The Business of Music’, he started having phone conversations with the older man.
According to Willie, Prince considered him an important source of wisdom. Pepe Willie’s uncle, Clarence Collins, was an original
member of doo-wop band Little Anthony and the Imperials, and through this access, Willie had learnt about the music business.
Part of his education had come from being around the band and becoming a runner, fetching cigarettes, hamburgers and
cheesecake for artists such as Chubby Checker, the Coasters, Ike and Tina Turner and Dionne Warwick. But as well as this
backstage access, he also attended lunches, dinners and business meetings with his uncle and the band, educating himself to the
point where he was able to explain to the young Prince about copyright, publishing and performance rights organisations. ‘He asked
me, “What’s this publishing all about ?”’ Willie told me. ‘I said, “When I come to Minneapolis I’ll sit down and talk to you about
it.”’ Willie was also a musician of some skill. ‘When I was first started in the music business in Brooklyn, I was a drummer. And
then by the time I left New York I played a little guitar.’ When Willie came to Minneapolis, he witnessed Bernadette Anderson
disciplining Prince. ‘Bernadette reminded me of my own family. She was like his mom. I went to pick Prince up one time, and
Prince had this girl downstairs that he was getting busy with, and he had done his business, and Bernadette walks in the door
from work and asks Prince, “Did you go to school today ?” And Prince goes, “No, I didn’t.” And immediately she started whipping
his butt, right there in front of me, in front of the girl, everything. She busted him up. That was great, man.’
After living with his father and Aunt Olivia, Prince eventually moved in with André’s family on the north side of Minneapolis, where
he stayed for the remainder of his high school years. André’s mother, Bernadette Anderson, was a divorcee raising six kids of her
own while trying to get a degree at the University of Minnesota. “Bernadette was an absolute amazing part of his life,” says Charles.
“She was mom to everybody. You didn’t get out of line. You helped with the chores. As soon as the car came with all the groceries,
she shared everything with everybody. I don’t know how they did it or how she could afford it. She was cool. You didn’t disrespect
grown-ups.” Prince and André initially tried sharing a bedroom. Prince and André became best friends, even though André feels
they were really quite different as people : “We were really separate people and divided the room to prove it. I took a piece of tape
and put it in the centre of the floor and up the walls. My side was packed with junk, clothes, T-shirts, trumpets, saxophones, guitars,
you name it. Prince's side was immaculate. His clothes were always hung up or folded. He even made his bed every day.” Prince
couldn’t stand André’s messiness, and the two were often arguing, so he soon moved into the basement. Prince was helpful and
responded to the respect and freedom he was given. It seems that he felt some stability and sense of belonging. André’s mother
has fond memories of the years when Prince lived with the family : “He was a considerate, good kid. He didn't get too close to
people and he kept a lot of feelings to himself. He kept himself to himself. He never said much, but he was an emotional volcano
that could erupt at any moment. The fury showed itself when schoolfriends teased him about his height, because he loved
basketball and you need to be tall for that. They were very cruel.”
Andre and Prince used to jam in the Anderson basement. Clearly, they were both musically talented ; at the age of 14 they
mastered several instruments, including guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums. Chuck Orr, a music store owner in Minneapolis, was
able to follow the early development of Prince. Andre and Prince used to buy instruments in Orr’s shop and occasionally they would
practice there : “André and Prince were great friends and they both just liked to come in and play. I don 't pretend to be a great
authority but I recognize talent and, oh God, could Prince play ! He definitely had it ! He could do darn near anything he wanted to
do.” Prince’s friendship with André is now seen as a pivotal period in his life. The years in André’s bedroom have become the
proverbial contradiction : partly truth and partly fiction. Exaggerated tales of wild sex parties and all-night jam sessions are now part
of the Prince myth. Tyka warns against swallowing the stories too quickly : “Prince and André have really wild imaginations. Some
of the things they say they did only happened in their minds. Prince always wants people to think he was cool, but I’m his sister, I’ve
seen him.” Prince’s second cousin Charles Smith also thinks much of the stories are sheer fantasy : “Everybody was basically
scared of girls. We talked a lot of mess. We
didn’t have a whole bunch of girlfriends. Prince
had girls bringing him Hendrix posters, but they
were just friends. It wasn’t any wild, sexual kind
of relationships.”
Prince has also made great play of discovering
a lust for sex from magazines his mother left
lying around. Prince has later said that he
believes the magazines were his mother’s way
of teaching him about the birds and the bees. “I
think, though I never asked about this, that
there was some plan to initiate me heavy and
quick,” he remembers, “so I was given Playboy
magazine, erotic literature. I think it really
affected my sexuality.” However, Tyka gives
the impression of a highly normal sexual
upbringing : “Prince liked to say things like that
because he liked to have fun with the truth. Our
upbringing wasn't a strict one, but then again a
lot of things weren't talked about. Nobody runs
into their house and says, "Mom, I heard
somebody masturbated today. What's that ?"
We never asked our parents about sex, we
learnt it from the kids on the street. God knows
how Prince learnt what men do. Maybe from
Andre.”
Inside The Purple Reign (84)
By Jon Bream
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 in-depth 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. “I 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 ex-husband 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.
- 1973 Soul Explosion - Grand Central (Andre Cymone / Linda Anderson / Charles Smith)
Prince and André used to spend endless hours jamming and listening to records in the
basement. They soon became proficient at several instruments, taking turns at playing
guitar, bass, keyboards, and drums. Despite having to endure the music at all hours,
Bernadette understood that their diligence was something more than a passing fancy. “All
the time they’d play,” she recalls. “Sometimes it’d drive me crazy. I’d be in bed, and
everyone’s supposed to be sleeping, and all of a sudden I’d hear this guitar in the
basement, and Prince was playing Minnie Ripperton, and singing it. Sometimes I’d go holler,
and other times I’d just let him go ahead. Then above my head was André doing the same
thing.” In 1973, Prince and his close friends, Andre Anderson and Charles Smith, formed a
group together, they were about 13 years old. Prince's father bought him his first electric
guitar, which he quickly learned to play in his own style : “I tuned it to a straight A, so it was
really strange. When I first started playing guitar, I just did chords and things like that, and I
didn’t really get into soloing and all that until later.” Prince decides that he would play guitar
in the group, while Charles was going to play drums and André bass guitar. “The idols we
looked up to seemed to have a certain amount of freedom and we envied that,” says
Charles. “They could do what they want and be rebels. So, it was very simple. I just said :
“Let’s start a band. We’re going to do this for the rest of our lives. Music to us was an
escape, so we would not have to be slaves for somebody else. We tried to imitate the
Jackson 5. Prince was singing “I Want You Back” (a big hit in 1969). We first thought is was
a girl singing that. The Jackson 5 was a big inspiration because they were our age and we
thought we could beat them. We said : “We’re just as talented, and we’ve got the same kind
of vibe and everything, except we ain’t really brothers but we’re related in one way or
another.” Our families knew each other and were intertwined. We’d seen The Jackson 5 making it, but they seemed too
‘bubblegum’ to us because we were more into Sly Stone and heavier stuff. Stevie Wonder was Prince’s main person; he loved
Stevie’s work, but he said : “Man, I could do that !” And the same with Sly, except for the fact that he knew Sly was always blasted,
and missing his concerns and stuff. Prince would go : “I’m not going to be like Sly, I’m going to practice my behind off like James
Brown’s band, and I’m going to have everything so tight that you’re not going to be able to say anything about it.” We always were
competitive.” The group was initially called Phoenix, a name suggested by Charles, who got it from an album by Grand Funk
Railroad (Return Of The Phoenix, released in 1972), a white, heavy rock group that they all liked. The others rejected the name,
however, and for some time they called themselves Soul Explosion, after a TV show, before settling for Grand Central.
They rehearsed in the basement of Charles’ house. Occasionally, they would set the equipment up in the backyard and jam for
hours, drawing people from the neighborhood. “We thought we could do that, until one day when somebody called the police,”
Charles remembers. “And then we went to André’s house, because he said : “Well, come over and practice at my house, my mom
will let us do it !””. Andre's sister, Linda, became a member of Grand Central after Prince taught her to play keyboards. Andre’s
neighbor, Terry Jackson, who played percussion, also joined the band as it enabled them to rehearse in his home. “André’s
basement had all these centipedes and spider webs, and it was always flooded,” remembers Charles. “Our equipment was always
in danger of getting wet. We knew Terry, because he lived next door, and he said : “Come over to our house and practice instead.”
So we ended up rehearsing there. In fact, we went back and forth between Terry and André’s basement.”
Grand Central was originally an instrumental group, but when they started to get public gigs, Prince began singing. They played
mostly the popular hits of the time, such as songs by Sly and The Family Stone, Graham Central Station, Jimi Hendrix, Santana,
Tower of Power, Earth Wind & Fire, Ohio Players, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Parliament, Funkadelic, The Isley Brothers,
Bobby Womack, Billy Preston, The Spinners, Gladys Knight and The Pips, The Four Tops, Carole King, and Grover Washington.
Also some white bands, like Chicago, Grand Funk Railroad, The Doobie Brothers, Three Dog Night, and Steely Dan. Their only
original composition was a funky uptempo track called "Do You Feel Like Dancing ?". Prince, André, and Charles divided the
singing between them. “Basically, I was the lead singer,” says Charles. “If we played Sly Stone, Prince sang just like Sly. Whatever
we did, we tried to imitate the originals. When we did Earth, Wind & Fire, I did Philip Bailey’s falsetto parts, Prince liked the lowerregister things.”
Andre ‘Cymone’ Anderson
Smith residence :
Do You Feel Like Dancing ?
Do You Feel Like Dancing ? is an unreleased track performed live, and perhaps recorded, in 1973 as one of the few original
compositions known to be played by the band at the time, along with Danger Lover, Funk It Up and Sex Machine (they mostly
played cover versions of current hits). It is not known who in the group wrote the track, or if it was a collaborative effort, but it is
certainly possible that this is Prince's earliest known composition. It is not known if the track was later considered for inclusion on
any project.
The quiet one : A high school classmate recalls the Artist as a young man
By Jon Tevlin, Star Tribune
It was no "Purple Rain," but the movie Prince shot at Minneapolis Central High School had some of the artist's hallmark themes :
He wrote, directed and starred. He played the self-conscious underdog. And, of course, he got the girl. Schoolmate Robert Plant
remembers the film class well. He was in a group with Prince and his best friend, Paul Mitchell. Prince conceived of a movie in
which a small, shy kid tried to win the heart of a pretty
cheerleader. "He had a crush on a girl named Kim
Upsher," said Plant. "So the movie was about him trying to
get the girl. Paul Mitchell played the team quarterback -which he was -- and every time Prince was with the
cheerleader, Paul would come by and push him out of the
way and walk away with the girl." Cut to Prince in the
library, reading a book on kung fu. In the final scene,
"Prince pulls this kung fu move and walks away with the
girl," Plant said. To those of us who roamed Central High in
south Minneapolis, he was the little guy with the big name
and the Afro to match : Prince Rogers Nelson. We just
called him Prince. He walked almost unnoticed in the
uniform of the day : An open shirt with large collars, maybe
a pair of "baggies" over platform shoes, a "choker" around
his neck. His hair was teased into an enormous dome that
Buckminster Fuller would envy, and his upper lip wore a
faint moustache. Pass him in a hallway, and he'd meet your
eyes, smile and nod.
In class, he'd seem bemused, but never impolite or rowdy.
You wouldn't see him in the adjacent alley where some kids
gathered to smoke pot before class, or hanging across the
street, where they could smoke cigarettes with impunity.
"He was very quiet," said Al Nuness, Prince's sophomore
basketball coach and physical-education teacher. "Very
low-key. He was so shy you couldn't believe it to see him
perform in front of people." Although he was obviously
smart and a decent student, "he never said anything in
class," Nuness said. "He is one of those students everybody
talks about, but he was an average kid that you really
Morris Day, William Doughty, André Cymone, Linda Anderson
didn't notice very much." Except when he played music, which he did nearly every day in the Central music room. Football players
coming in from practice could hear him banging on the piano or the guitar, hours after other students had gone home. During lunch
hours, the music teachers locked the door for him so he could practice without interruption. Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the
Oasis" was a favorite. The prodigy of Prince is well known : He learned to play piano at age 7. By seventh grade, he joined a local
dance band, Grand Central, and played in it until age 16. Despite his shyness, he was confident. In a 1976 interview in the school
newspaper, he said: "I was born here, unfortunately. I think it is very hard for a band to make it in this state, even if they're good.
I really feel that if we would have lived in Los Angeles or New York or some other big city, we would have gotten over by now."
'A real good kid'
Don McMoore never saw Prince's instant success coming. McMoore was an assistant principal - and the school enforcer - during
those years. Racial tensions sometimes led to fights. There was a fair amount of drug use. If you spent much time with McMoore,
you were probably a problem student. Prince didn't spend any time with McMoore. "He was a real good kid," said McMoore. "I
don't remember him getting in trouble at all. I admired him for his ambition; even though he was very small, he played
basketball. Though his hair made him look like he was 6 feet tall." Nuness said he "had to chase Prince, Paul Mitchell and [Prince's
brother] Duane Nelson out of the gym all the time. They were always sneaking in there to play, bringing their bikes and their
dogs in. But they were all good kids."
In fact, he said, "Prince was a darn good basketball player. The problem is he just didn't grow." His class had one of the best
basketball teams in Minnesota history, and Prince couldn't crack the giant-sized lineup despite great quickness and ball-handling
skills. He wasn't pleased. As youth leader for Park Avenue United Methodist Church - where Prince had his first wedding in 1996 Art Erickson saw him almost every day throughout his teens. Prince came to play ball, and also went to church camp. Erickson
made the rounds at local schools, so he often would join Prince at lunch. Blacks, whites and biracial kids segregated themselves, and
Prince normally sat with the biracial kids, Erickson said. One day, the budding musician told Erickson that his home life was
troubled, and that his stepdad had sometimes locked him in a room for hours. There was a piano in the room, and Prince taught
himself to play, said Erickson.
He believes Prince's continuing religious odyssey is not a gimmick, but a search to find meaning in his remarkable, controversial
life. "There are periods in people's lives when they sense the bottom, and reach out for something," Erickson said. "Prince has been
doing this for years. I don't know [whether] he has many friends. That's the problem with his story. He's a musical genius, but
just who is Prince ? I don't think anyone knows."