by Hahn, Alex
Afterward, Prince exuded warmth and encouragement, a reminder of the better times they had enjoyed during the long nights of recording at his home studio. Carwell, aware that Prince was about to go on tour with the Time in support of his 1999 album, wondered if she might be included as a second opening act. Perhaps, she thought, her fortunes had again taken an unexpected turn.
But in the weeks after the show, there was no phone call from Prince or any representative. As months went by, it became clear to Carwell that Prince’s overture had, in the end, meant essentially nothing. Her inclusion at the Minneapolis concert had been the product of some whim, and his brief interest had waned into indifference.
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Notwithstanding her many setbacks – some involving Prince, others not – Carwell righted her career and became a sought-after session singer for artists ranging from Rod Stewart to Christina Aguilera, as well as a successful live performer in her own right. Remnants of Prince’s sessions with Carwell exist: “Wouldn’t You Love To Love Me?” was later recorded by another protégée, Taja Sevelle. Unreleased versions of that song and another Carwell number, “Make It Through The Storm,” are in existence, including one with her vocals.
Prince and Carwell continued to run into each other from time to time over the years, but his curt manner demonstrated that resentment over her leaving his band had never healed.
“He was still mad,” she recalled. “I think he was pissed at me for about twenty or thirty years.”
9. Against the Wall
As April 1978 arrived, Prince’s live band was complete and his first album was about to hit the street. Consistent with the marketing strategy that he and Husney had followed from the start, the album was prominently billed as a one-man production. Chris Moon was credited as cowriter of “Soft And Wet,” and Tommy Vicari received his executive producer title, but the credits otherwise stated that the album was “produced, composed, arranged, and performed by Prince.”
Unfortunately, the buzz that Husney tried to create with journalists failed to mask the lack of compelling material on the album, and few publications reviewed the album, positively or otherwise. The commercial performance of For You also fell short of what Prince and Warners had hoped for; it initially sold just 150,000 copies in the United States, reaching a respectable No. 21 on Billboard’s Soul Chart but only No. 163 on the Pop Chart. Prince remained far from the public’s radar screen as pop music was dominated throughout 1978 by the soundtracks of two blockbuster films, Saturday Night Fever and Grease.
Nonetheless, Husney continued to pour his energies into promotion, which eventually began to bear fruit in select urban markets. During a promotional appearance in Charlotte, 3,000 boisterous young fans showed up, creating a scene that at once thrilled and perturbed Prince. “All of a sudden you get thousands of screaming kids saying that they love him – he didn’t understand that,” observed his friend and mentor Pepe Willie. “He felt like a piece of meat being carried around.” These activities did not meaningfully boost the fortunes of the album, which remained stalled on the charts.
Prince refused, however, to acknowledge any deficiencies in the work. Believing that the album was simply not being effectively promoted, Prince started griping to Husney and Russ Thyret, the official at Warners with whom he had the most contact. A frustrated Thyret, who had energetically pushed the album to radio stations, complained to Husney that Prince had unreasonable expectations and didn’t understand the music business. It was hard for the manager to disagree.
Seeking an outlet for his frustrations, Prince began to barrage Husney with all manner of unusual demands, including that he repair broken toilets and sinks. Husney, justifiably incensed that his hard work on much more important issues was going unrecognized, began to feel like a glorified gofer.
Things finally came unglued over Husney’s refusal to perform yet another menial task. While he was awaiting a phone call from the William Morris Agency about a potential concert tour, Prince called and insisted that he immediately bring a space heater to the rehearsal studio. The manager explained the importance of the William Morris call and asked if Pepe Willie or someone else could handle the chore. Prince became indignant.
“You know what, fuck you,” Husney told him. “Just go get your own goddamn space heater. I’m not going to do that.”
Later, even after tempers had cooled, Husney felt matters had reached an impasse and told Prince that they should part ways. Prince seemed surprised and said he wanted Husney to stay, but he made no concessions as far as what the manager’s role should be. He wrote Husney a three-page letter outlining his duties; it was filled with just the sort of demands Husney felt were beyond the pale. Uninterested in such a role, Husney stood by his decision to quit.
The rupture left Prince in managerial limbo. Pepe Willie stepped in to help on a temporary basis, but lacked the time or experience to serve as a full-time manager. With a full band on the payroll and the commercial fortunes of For You petering out, it was obvious that help was needed, and quickly.
Indeed, concerns were now developing at Warner Bros. about Prince’s progress, the increasing chaos in his business affairs, and the large amounts of money he had burned through. His capital at Warners was being depleted, literally and figuratively. Now, the replacement of Husney with Willie set off further alarm bells.
Above all, touring support for the album was needed, and the label executives were anxious to see the progress of Prince’s live act. But seemingly little had been accomplished – with nearly six months gone by since the release of For You, the band had not even played a show.
As the label executives made their candid concerns known, the stakes for Prince quickly came into focus. Although his contract was not in jeopardy, he did face the prospect of falling out of favor with his key supporters at Warners, which could in turn doom the chances of his second album. “Prince’s feeling was, ‘We’ve got to put on a show, or this thing is going to fade away,’” recalled Bobby Z., who shared these fears. “We felt like, we’ll charge three dollars a ticket or whatever, but we’ve got to do something, get out of the basement and play.”
Unfortunately, the band had not fully cohered. Grand Central had taken years to develop into one of the strongest groups in Minneapolis; Prince had overconfidently assumed that he could accomplish something similar with his new ensemble in a matter of months. But with the complaints of Warners Bros. mounting, there was no further time for delay; Prince’s opportunity to develop his band more gradually had come and gone.
Pepe Willie hastily organized two shows at the Capri Theatre in north Minneapolis for January 5 and 6, 1979, the second of which was to serve as a showcase for Warners executives who would be flying in from California. This would in effect be an audition: unless Warners offered a green light and the necessary financing, a national tour would not take place.
The temperature on the night of the show turned out to be 20 degrees below zero, a kind of metaphor for Prince’s current fortunes. Only about 300 people showed up, who were primarily friends, family members, and other local supporters. They responded enthusiastically out of loyalty, but Prince, playing live for the first time with his new band, seemed tentative and hesitant. He kept his back to the audience at times and fumbled his stage banter.
Matters worsened as the much more important second show took place. The bitterly cold weather, atypical even for Minnesota, felt arctic to the Warners executives who were accustomed to the balmly warmth of southern California. Prince and the band, already feeling less than confident after the first show, squirmed as the executives watched grimly from the balcony. “The show was very tense, very awkward,” recalled Bobby Z. Causing further problems, Dez Dickerson used the occasion to experiment with a wireless guitar; it malfunctioned, creating embarrassing gaps in the set. Even worse, his wireless transmitter picked up signals from local radio stations and police radios, causing bizarre noises onstage.
Prince’s cousin and former bandmate Chazz Smith
, who drove home with Prince after the show, found him nearly in tears. “He thought the show was shit,” Chazz recalled. “I kept trying to talk to him, and he wouldn’t even talk.” Husney, upon speaking to Warners’ officials afterward, faced a grim reaction. “They told me that the show was a complete disaster,” he said.
The official decision came within days: Prince was not ready for a major tour. While not surprising in light of the weak performance, it was a devastating message. “He was crestfallen,” Dickerson remembered.
The implications were many. This also meant that Warners viewed For You as beyond rescue. And without a tour, Prince had no way of recouping some of the huge sums of money that he had expended over the past year. “There was quite a bit of debt to the label, and his back was against the wall,” recalled Bobby Z.
Prince’s trio of key supporters at Warners – Mo Ostin, Lenny Waronker, and Russ Thyret – had by no means given up, but they viewed the need for a professional management team as critical. Casting about for options, they contacted the Los Angeles firm of Cavallo & Ruffalo, which had handled Little Feat and other acts. Prince, anxious for help and understanding that by this point he had little choice, agreed to give the firm a try.
The move brought two important figures into Prince’s orbit at a critical moment: firm employee Steve Fargnoli, who became Prince’s day-to-day manager, and principal Bob Cavallo. Prince felt an immediate personal synergy with Fargnoli, a lofty thinker who percolated with ideas and enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle. Bob Cavallo was in many ways Fargnoli’s polar opposite, an avuncular family man with a crisp, calm manner. He took over the business side of things, aided by his considerable financial expertise.
As his ties with these new arrivals strengthened in the coming months, Prince’s spirits lifted. The sting of the botched showcase at the Capri wore off, and Prince redoubled his efforts to get the band in touring shape. His mood was further improved by a romance with Kim Upsher, the former captain of the cheerleading squad at Central High who had then been dating Prince’s friend Paul Mitchell. Upsher had an all-American kind of attractiveness – as Mitchell put it, “very cute with the sweetest smile and beautiful dimples.”
Despite having a crush on Upsher throughout his years at Central, Prince had deferred to Mitchell. Now, with his friend no longer in the picture, he and Upsher became passionately involved.
Mitchell, who had moved away to Missouri to attend college on a football scholarship, had not kept abreast of Prince’s activities since high school. He now received a phone call from Prince with several pieces of news. “I signed with Warner Brothers Records, and by the way, I’m also dating Kim,” Prince told him. The call seemed like a gesture of respect towards Mitchell, as well as a means for Prince to demonstrate what he had accomplished.
It was indeed obvious to Mitchell how much had changed. During high school, Prince relied on friends and relatives for food and shelter, and had turned to Mitchell and Duane Nelson, his half-brother, for protection from students who otherwise would have bullied him. Mitchell had seen Prince humiliated by the football coach, outclassed at basketball by his taller friends, and turned down by potential girlfriends.
All of this seemed to have been turned on its head. Prince had a major label record deal, was dating the high school cheerleader, and even had a shot at stardom. Mitchell, who at Central High had seen Prince’s competitive fires burn stronger as his frustrations accumulated, found himself not particularly surprised at how things were turning out.
“Yeah,” Mitchell chuckled to Prince upon hearing that he was dating Kim Upsher. “I figured you would be.”
10. No Girls Allowed
In April 1979, with his business affairs having been stabilized by the arrival of his new managers, Prince flew from Minneapolis to Los Angeles to start work on his second album. He was joined by Bobby Z. Rivkin, who continued to function as a combination of bandmate, friend, and logistical aide.
Following the tepid performance of the first album and the disastrous showcase concerts in Minneapolis, the pressure on Prince to improve upon For You was tremendous. But Warner Bros. officials, despite their concerns about his progress, nonetheless agreed to dispense with an executive producer for the second record. They had no worries about Prince’s professionalism or technical abilities, and realized he was impervious to feedback from authority figures. Having ceded Prince an immense amount of control from the start, there could be no retreating from this approach.
Prince, while pleased that he would endure no meddling from a villain like Tommy Vicari, was nonetheless open to the views of a handful of band members and technical staff, including engineer David Z. Rivkin, with whom he had now been working for years. He had come to agree with Rivkin and others that For You suffered from overproduction, and was determined not to repeat that mistake. Prince thus planned to take a radically different approach to production; he would work quickly and efficiently, with far less attention to technical perfection.
The sessions took place at the little-known Alpha Studio, a humble facility in the home of engineer Gary Brandt, a friend of Bob Cavallo’s. A far cry from the iconic Record Plant, it in fact was much more suited to Prince’s needs and work style. Although the studio had a 24-track recording machine, Prince elected to use its 16-track board instead, which by nature restricted his ability to clutter the songs with overdubs. The sessions typically lasted at least 12 hours, with intrusions kept to a minimum. “No girls were allowed in the studio,” Brandt recalled. “That was one of his requests.”[184]
Andre Anderson also flew out from Minneapolis for the sessions and was allowed to contribute the occasional idea. Bobby Z., who did not perform, watched the album take shape day by day. He offered light feedback when asked, but above all knew how to be unobtrusive. “You don’t get in the way of him recording,” he recalled. “You can suggest things and do things, but if he’s hearing it in his head, just get out of the way.”
Prince approached the task of songwriting with renewed vigor, creating strong, simple melodies. Funk numbers like “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and “Sexy Dancer,” were taut and infectious. Their lyrics, meanwhile, bristled with emotional and erotic energy. Going back to his days with Grand Central, Prince’s intention had been to straddle the worlds of rock and R&B. That approach had been somewhat discarded with For You. Now, Prince felt confident enough to create an album that covered a fairly broad range of territory. He recorded two guitar-heavy rock songs, “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” and “Bambi,” both of which improved greatly upon “I’m Yours,” For You’s token rock number. There were also several ballads, including “It’s Gonna Be Lonely,” which was enhanced rather than overwhelmed by its layers of vocal harmonies. Another ballad, “When We’re Dancing Close and Slow,” took its title from a lyrical passage in the Joni Mitchell song “Coyote” (from Hejira, 1976), hinting at the subtle but outsized influence her work had on Prince.
Indeed, since his childhood Prince had been an avid listener of this eclectic and inventive folk-rock artist. When Prince was about ten years old, he attended one of Joni’s performances and sat in the front row. She noticed him perhaps because young African-Americans were relatively rare at her concerts – particularly in predominantly white cities like Minneapolis – but also because his strange, intense eyes remained locked on her throughout the show.
The standout track from the Alpha Studio sessions was clearly “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” which featured strong hooks and a remarkably crisp sound, in part due to Gary Brandt’s use of a customized AKG microphone for the snare drum. Prince loved Shure 57 microphones – a widely used but lower-end tool – and insisted, after learning what Brandt had done on “Lover,” that the 57 be used for the remainder of the sessions. As a result, the snare sparkled less on other numbers, with the contrast between “Lover” and numbers like “Sexy Dancer” being clear. But aside from this questionable decision, Prince and Brandt created an album with a consistently bright and pristine sound.
; After principal tracking was complete, scheduling issues at the studio prompted a move to Hollywood Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, where staff engineer Bob Mockler was assigned to work with Prince on overdubs. The album was completed by July, and Warners began preparing a publicity campaign.
The next task was to improve the strength and cohesiveness of Prince’s live band so that Warners would authorize a tour in support of the second album. But rather than drill on the new material, he and the band flew to Boulder, Colorado and began work on a side project he dubbed “The Rebels.” They settled into the Mountain Ears Studio in Boulder and began working on ideas that included substantial input from other band members, in particular Dickerson and Andre.
As with the Sueann Carwell project, Prince’s goal – a lofty one for an artist with only one release under his belt – was to create an album that Warners would release and promote. Work continued over an eleven-day period, with the results ranging from Rolling Stones-style blues rock (“Hard 2 Get”) to a more ambitious funk-rock hybrid sung by Andre (“Thrill You or Kill You”).
Dickerson, for one, found himself doubting the material and wondering why the band wasn’t rehearsing songs from Prince. “What are we doing? Where are we going with this?” the guitarist later recalled thinking. But there was some method to Prince’s madness; the collaborative ethos built up the band’s morale and improved its chemistry. By the end of the sessions, Prince himself had largely lost interest in the notion of the Rebels as a separate project, but his band was unquestionably stronger than when it had arrived in Boulder.
By the time of Prince’s return to Minneapolis in late-July 1979, Warners’ campaign in support of the second album, to be called Prince, was set to get underway. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” was selected as the first single, and it rose quickly up the Soul Singles Chart following its release in August 1979. Meanwhile, two new showcase concerts for label executives were arranged for the same month; this time, the band’s assured performance impressed the executives. “After the first song, I could see that we had them,” Dickerson recalled. “They left the place absolutely buzzing.” Warners agreed to bankroll a tour, and Prince’s career again became a priority for the label.
