The Rise of Prince 1958-1988

by Hahn, Alex

  Jackson, as a result of refusing to participate in the clique, became somewhat ostracized by his friends. Adding to Jackson’s resentment was that Prince and Andre, taking advantage of the fact that his family never locked the door, frequently entered his family’s kitchen and took food. One afternoon, when Jackson found Prince and Andre stuffing themselves with snacks in the kitchen, he became enraged, prompting Prince to remove a rake comb that he kept in his Afro and throw it at Jackson. Prince then fled the home with Jackson in pursuit.

  Jackson grabbed a golf club in the hallway and chased Prince down the sidewalk, hoisting the club at Prince as he ran. The club bounced off the ground and did not appear to hit Prince. But while Jackson viewed the incident as an example of adolescent squabbling that got out of hand, Prince felt differently; he began to nurse a grudge against Jackson that would never entirely heal.[159]

  ***

  The high school nearest the Anderson household was North High School; it had an almost 50 percent minority population, which was a legal trigger for desegregation. As a result, after completing his studies at Bryant, Prince was assigned to attend Central High, almost half an hour away from the Northside by bus.

  Prince retained an affection for basketball, and successfully tried out for a very strong junior varsity team at his new school. But despite being a solid six or seventh man, the overall quality of the team – it was in fact one of the best high school squads in the state – kept him out of the starting five. He vocally complained to coach Richard Robinson about a decision he deemed wrongheaded and unfair, but to no avail. Despite his skills, his size had become a factor; he remained well below average in height among his peers, no more than five feet, two inches.

  Over at North, Andre found himself frequently buttonholed by classmate Morris Day, a flamboyant personality who also played drums. Aware of Grand Central’s growing reputation, Day pestered Andre about replacing Chazz as the band’s drummer, claiming that he would take them to the next level. Chazz was frequently late to rehearsals as a result of his commitment to the Central High football team, but Andre’s loyalty to his friend for the moment outweighed such considerations, and he rebuffed Day’s overture.[160]

  Undaunted, a few days later Day pulled Andre into a band room and climbed up onto a set of drums elevated on a riser. Intent on impressing him, Day tore into the drums, which he had not known were unsecured. The set came crashing down, and Andre, worrying that he might be blamed for damaging the equipment given his reputation as a troublemaker, quickly fled.

  Within days, an undeterred Day again insisted upon auditioning for Andre. Taking Andre to his home, where he had his own kit set up, Day played along with the Tower of Power’s 1973 hit “What is Hip,” a song with exceedingly complex syncopation. Day nailed it flawlessly, and Andre soon reported back to Prince and Terry Jackson that they should consider replacing Chazz with Day. Prince and Jackson, meanwhile, had also been evaluating yet another drummer, a classmate named Keith King. King’s talents were outstanding, and he also sang, making him a suitable replacement for Chazz in this respect as well. Prince and Terry decided to evaluate both King and Day as candidates. Chazz, meanwhile, remained oblivious to this swirl of activity.

  Day and his mother, LaVonne Daugherty, lived on the northwest side of town, and King on the south side. Both locations could be reached via a bus that travelled up and down Hennepin Avenue; Prince and Jackson decided to take whichever bus came first. They ended up catching the northbound bus, and arriving at Day’s home, they were treated to the same rendition of “What Is Hip?” that had impressed Andre. Stunned, they told Day on the spot that he was Grand Central’s new drummer. Keith King, meanwhile, never received his chance.

  Decades later, Terry Jackson saw King on a Minneapolis bus, disheveled, smoking a cigarette, and speaking unintelligibly. When Jackson got closer, he was shocked to hear him mutter something about Prince.

  Startled at King’s state, Jackson found himself wondering how much of a role luck had played in Day having more than his share of success as a musician, while King had ended up in such a sorry condition. As Jackson put it, “History was determined randomly by which bus came first.”[161]

  ***

  Morris Day had achieved his goal of being Grand Central’s drummer. Now the problem was how to tell Chazz Smith that he had been thrown out of the band. The situation remained fraught, particularly because of the family relationship between Chazz and Prince. The group began secretly practicing with Day when Chazz was not available, and pondered what to do. An important talent show was rapidly approaching, and Chazz himself had been responsible for booking the event.[162]

  Believing firmly that Morris’ superior skills would help them win the competition, Prince told the band they had to act. When Chazz arrived at rehearsal late after football practice one afternoon, Morris stepped out from behind a staircase, and it was announced that Chazz was being replaced.

  “Who sold me out?” Chazz shouted as tears flowed from his eyes. A silence filled the room. Then, one by one, the other band members pointed at Prince. A crestfallen Chazz retreated, his social and musical bond with his companions largely severed.[163]

  When practice finally began amidst a subdued atmosphere, it was clear that something fundamental had changed, even beyond the band’s membership. Emotional considerations had been cast aside, and what had been an afterschool band had taken a major step towards becoming a professional ensemble. And in the process, Prince Rogers Nelson had forcefully and definitively seized the mantle of leadership.

  ***

  As the reconfigured Grand Central developed its sound, Prince began exploring a technique that would have profound implications, not only for himself but ultimately for the very direction of pop music in the 1980s.

  The idea emerged after Prince and Jackson attended another Sly Stone concert in Minneapolis. The event itself was spectacular and dramatic, with Sly arriving in a helicopter and taking the stage with his massive band. Prince remained relatively impassive as he studied the group’s sound. He focused in particular on the intricate trumpet work of Cynthia Robinson, which provided a melodic counterpart to the band’s gritty bottom end.

  [164]

  Seeing the concert prompted Prince to think more about the use of horns in R&B music. His conclusion was an unusual one – he decided that a keyboardist such as Linda Anderson could imitate, for example, the lines that Cynthia Robinson played in Sly Stone’s band. “Prince came up with the concept of horn lines on keyboards after that,” Terry Jackson recalled.

  Because horns were such a mainstay of R&B, Prince’s conscious elimination of this element was a declaration of his intention to innovate. Writing rock and funk songs in a manner that borrowed from others was not enough; at only age 16, he was already thinking of ways to develop new stylistic concepts.

  ***

  The Grand Central lineup was completed by another percussionist named William Doughty, who went by the nickname “Hollywood.” The band had a strange appearance; two of its members, Prince and Doughty, were extremely small, drawing an odd contrast with the other members, and particularly with Terry Jackson, who was about 15 inches taller. Prince’s attire stood out; while his bandmates dressed either casually or with elements of ’70s garishness, Prince emulated his father with neatly pressed pants and button-down shirts.

  John Nelson himself was now an increasing presence in Prince’s life, having been galvanized by his son’s success with music. Nelson attended many of the band’s gigs, giving members pep talks before and after shows, as well as shooting photos.

  Soon, a formal patron emerged for the group: Day’s mother, LaVonne Daugherty, who became the group’s de facto manager in 1974. Andre immediately developed an unrequited crush on the sexy and confident woman, who in turn viewed Grand Central as a potential route to a career in show business. Daugherty had an elaborate contract drawn up by an attorney that established the band as a legal entity called “Grand Central Corporation.” Each band m
ember signed on their own behalf, although their parents’ signatures were also required to give the document validity. Following the contract’s execution, the band itself was renamed Grand Central Corporation.

  Daugherty was assisted by Pepe Willie, who had returned to Minneapolis from New York, now ready to answer Prince’s questions about the music business. Willie attended some of the group’s rehearsals, and quickly noticed Prince’s increasing dominance. He would often stop the band mid-note, put down his guitar, and impatiently demonstrate to keyboardist Linda Anderson what to play.

  Impressed by Prince’s instrumental skills, Willie asked him to serve as a guitarist on a series of recording sessions for his own band, 94 East. The sessions, which took place in late 1975 at a Minneapolis studio called the Cookhouse, gave Prince his first look at a recording studio. His work ethic stood out; when the group took a break, Prince kept practicing. Upon their return, he scoffed at their indolence.

  The day after the session, however, Prince had lingering doubts about his performance. He asked Willie to be allowed to re-record one guitar part; Willie acquiesced, making arrangements for an engineer to meet Prince at the studio while he played golf.

  While Prince’s precision was greater this time, the net result was less positive. The equipment settings at the studio had been changed from the previous day’s setting, and Prince’s part no longer sat comfortably into the mix. The perfect had turned out to be the enemy of the good.

  ***

  All of Grand Central’s members were anxious to record the band’s own demo, and LaVonne Daugherty agreed to pay for time at ASI studio, a small 16-track facility on the Northside. The group proceeded to cut six original songs, a mixture of compositions by Prince, and Andre. The sessions were engineered by David Z. Rivkin, who would play an important role for Prince in years to come.

  With the demo complete, Daugherty contacted funk musician Isaac Hayes, best known for composing the soundtrack to the movie Shaft in 1971. Hayes had recently formed his own label, Hot Buttered Soul, and liked the idea of signing a band of teenagers who might be able to follow in the footsteps of the Jackson Five. He began making grand predictions of success to Daugherty, who passed them on to the Grand Central members.

  Andre, believing that financial success was imminent, dropped out of high school. Prince, hedging his bets, elected to continue his studies at Central. And as days turned to weeks without a formal contract being proffered, it soon became clear that Hayes’ lavish promises had been illusory. In fact, he was in dire financial straits that would soon lead to bankruptcy.

  Prince’s wariness had been vindicated, and as a result he began to develop confidence in his instincts relative to business matters. And indeed, starting with this event, his decisions in this area would be unfailingly accurate – even when extremely unconventional – for the better part of a decade.

  For the time being, however, those instincts had merely helped mitigate a setback rather than improving his fortunes. His frustrations about the lack of progress grew.

  Shortly afterward, Prince was interviewed about his musical activities by the Central High School student newspaper in February 1976; he informed the reporter that a record was being readied, hopefully for a summer release.

  In truth, the band’s path forward was anything but clear. Confounded by the constraints of the music industry’s structure, where the power to make or break a band sat in the hands of remote potentates, Prince needed someone to “discover” him in order to break through. Instead, he found himself stuck in land-locked Minnesota, where access even to a professional recording studio seemed unattainable, and where local amateurs were guiding his career.

  “I think it is very hard for a band to make it in this state, even if they’re good,” Prince complained to the high school newspaper. “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.”

  5. Graduation

  As his final year at Central High School continued, Prince spent more time during the week at the home of his friend Paul Mitchell, who lived on the south side of Minneapolis, near school. Mitchell’s family, like Andre Anderson’s, welcomed Prince. And while Prince continued to show a caustic streak, his warmer, more playful tendencies prevailed in the congenial atmosphere of the Mitchell home. “I felt he kind of wanted a family. He would argue with my mom, mess with us and laugh,” Mitchell remembered. “My sister would get mad at him for eating all of the food.”

  His friendship with his half-brother Duane Nelson also remained strong, and although Prince’s formal involvement with sports had ended, he, Duane and Paul remained frequent visitors to local basketball courts and football fields.

  In some ways, life in the neighborhood where Prince, Duane and Paul lived was idyllic, with a strong sense of community and wide interest in both sports and music. And yet both the south side of the city and the Northside remained working class neighborhoods where crime and, in particular, substance abuse remained uncomfortably close to the surface.

  Examples abounded. Prince and Tyka Nelson had grown up noticing that their grandparents were conspicuously heavy drinkers, something that Tyka attributed to socio-cultural issues. “It goes back to slavery – when you finally get to come in from the fields, you want to sit down and relax and have a drink, and that’s kind of the way we were brought up around my grandparents,” Tyka recalled later.[165] John Nelson’s first wife, Vivian, had become an alcoholic and died in 1973, leaving Duane Nelson devastated.[166]

  Regrettably, what had taken hold among parents and grandparents would often re-emerge among children. Tyka Nelson ended up addicted to drugs before eventually repairing her life.[167] Duane Nelson developed a drug problem that would make him a recluse and lead to an early death.[168]

  In short, despite the hardiness, resourcefulness, and talent of so many of this community’s residents, none were immune to the darker forces that plagued most urban centers during the early and mid-1970s. In many cases, the psychic and physical wounds suffered during that period would carry forward for decades.

  ***

  With the potential Isaac Hayes deal having evanesced, the atmosphere around Grand Central became glum. This disappointment had impacted not only the band, but also their large community of family members, supporters, and fans. Grand Central was by now one of the most notable young bands in the entire state, which was what had seemingly led them to a cusp of a record deal in the first place. At the same time, it was clear that without a professional demo tape, the success of the group would be no better than regional. “It was always to the point where the band was going to take off, and then it didn’t happen,” Tyka later recalled.[169]

  Obstacles abounded. First, they lacked the money to book time even at low-end studios. LaVonne Daugherty was unable to provide additional funds after the Hayes fiasco, and Pepe Willie was focused on his own plans and interested in Prince as primarily a studio musician or sideman.

  For all the community and friendship Grand Central offered, Prince quickly began to see its limitations. He tired of playing cover songs, and new musical and lyrical ideas were rapidly taking shape in his mind as he played guitar and piano in the Anderson and Jackson basements in early 1976.

  Prince began employing an ingenious, if extremely rudimentary, method of multi-track recording that allowed him to explore these ideas – specifically, by using two cheap cassette machines that he had signed out from the Central High music program. He began by recording a vocal and guitar part. Then, while playing the performance back, he recorded it onto the second cassette machine while singing and playing another part. This process continued at least one more round.

  The results were atrocious from the standpoint of fidelity, but the process demonstrated what could be accomplished in a professional studio, if only Prince had access to one. Because Prince was a proficient singer in three ranges – falsetto, mid-range, and low range – combining them in a single mix opened up immense p
ossibilities.

  One of Prince’s first recordings using this primitive process was a cover of the 1975 hit “Sweet Thing” by the funk group Rufus, which featured a young singer named Chaka Khan. Prince’s version evoked the original, but his vocals had a wider range than Chaka’s, even as they displayed a similar femininity.

  In recording original material, Prince began to explore heavier guitar work in addition to layered vocals. All told, this work in the basement constituted an explosion of creativity in which Prince explored a myriad of styles, themes, and approaches. The music evoked the late 1960s at times, showing elements of psychedelia and even folk.

  It was not possible to record drums using the cassette recordings, or even to effectively amplify guitars. But given access to a studio, Prince began to believe that he could create full recordings without the assistance of other musicians. This approach had been tried rarely on major commercial records, and typically by much more seasoned musicians. For the most part, R&B and funk were considered communal forms of music; this was certainly the approach of Sly & the Family Stone and most groups who followed in their footsteps.

  At the same time, it was fairly well known that at least one prominent African-American R&B musician, Stevie Wonder, recorded his songs track-by-track in the studio, playing drums as well as keyboards. This presented a clear template for what Prince wanted to accomplish.

  For the time being, however, his fate was linked to that of Grand Central, which now adopted a new name, Shampayne. The change was in part to avoid confusion with the national funk group Graham Central Station – an offshoot of Sly & the Family Stone headed by bassist Larry Graham – and also because Chazz Smith claimed that the name “Grand Central” had been his creation.