The Rise of Prince 1958-1988

by Hahn, Alex

  Prince thought about it and decided to follow Dickerson’s advice. And as the bodyguard began accompanying him almost everywhere, Prince came to feel comforted by having a human barricade against the world, not unlike the security provided by his athletic friends Duane Nelson and Paul Mitchell during high school. Soon, he and Huntsberry became inseparable.

  For the rest of the entourage, there was a downside to this new arrangement, as suddenly their access to Prince was restricted. “It was a turning point for the closeness we used to have,” noted set designer Bennett. The symbolism of Huntsberry’s imposing presence at the dressing room door was clear to Prince’s colleagues: they were no longer nearly as welcome.

  ***

  As the tour continued, a more serious source of tension emerged: the Time was becoming a crack funk outfit capable of upstaging Prince. Guitarist Jesse Johnson and bassist Terry Lewis were more technically skilled than their counterparts in Prince’s band, and Day had emerged as a charismatic frontman. Gradually, both bands became conscious of a growing rivalry. “To a point it was real positive,” observed Time keyboardist Moir. “On our side it was, ‘Let’s kick his ass tonight!’ But after a while, it became unhealthy.”

  As the tour went on, Prince began to feel upstaged, and the Time chafed at Prince’s domineering tendencies. Members wanted to write their own music, which they doubted Prince would ever allow. Then there was the issue of money. The Time had taken off commercially, but the band members were living on a small weekly salary. “At one point, Jesse Johnson and those guys were eating peanut butter out of a jar in their hotel rooms so they could save what little money they got so they could have something when they got home,” said Prince’s cousin Chazz Smith. “And Morris didn’t have any money, either.”

  ***

  During a break from the tour in January 1982, Prince attended the American Music Awards in Los Angeles. His old nemesis Rick James was performing, along with Stevie Wonder and other artists. Although Prince had trounced him on the Fire It Up! tour, James had enjoyed a massive hit in 1981 with “Super Freak,” a laurel that so far had eluded Prince.

  The two men encountered each other at a party following the show. Prince was immediately drawn to the stunningly attractive woman on James’ arm, 23-year-old Denise Matthews. Her copper skin, sexual magnetism, and overall appearance in many respects mirrored Prince’s. “It’s been said that when they met, they both stopped in their tracks; looking at each other, it was like seeing themselves, but of the opposite sex,” said soon-to-be tour manager Alan Leeds.

  Matthews’ looks and surface confidence masked a difficult past. Born in Niagara Falls, Canada, she had suffered frequent physical abuse at the hands of her alcoholic father. After he died when Matthews was just 15, her mother also descended into alcoholism. Nonetheless, Matthews managed to graduate high school and left for Toronto to pursue a show business career. Despite having little native acting ability, she landed the lead part in the B-movie Tanya’s Island, about a damsel pursued by an ape in a tropical paradise. But this did little to jumpstart her career. And so Matthews, like so many other young women from across North America pursuing the same dream, set her sights on Hollywood and moved to Los Angeles.

  Upon encountering Matthews at the party, Prince made immediate advances, which she rebuffed; he again propositioned her with an early morning phone call to her hotel room, and she again demurred. But upon learning that she was also a singer, he hatched an idea: Matthews should join him in Minnesota after the tour to participate in the Hookers, his all-female side project.

  With neither her romance with Rick James nor her faltering career offering any reason to stay in Los Angeles, she agreed, cognizant that his offer certainly came with romantic strings attached. And thus Matthews, at heart a vulnerable and volatile person, entered into a relationship that would be an ill-formed hybrid of professional, romantic, and sexual elements, one in which her agency and power would be limited at best. This dynamic would affect her in ways she could not have foreseen.

  ***

  As the tour’s second leg began in late January, the Time continued to upstage Prince on many evenings. At a show at the Capital Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey – the final night of three back-to-back shows – the Time’s set was relaxed and confident. Prince’s set was more wooden, and during the interlude of “Head,” his guitar was out of tune both with itself and with Mark Brown’s bass, prompting him to truncate the segment.

  Tension continued to build as the tour neared its conclusion. On March 8, 1982, a show took place at Minneapolis’ First Avenue club that was planned as a Prince-only gig. Prince played a rock-heavy set that included intriguing new material, including “All the Critics Love U in New York,” featuring dueling solos by Prince and Dickerson.

  At the end of the short set, Prince called the members of the Time onstage to perform a few songs, but he held on to his own microphone to interject comments. “This is my stage,” he said tauntingly to Day. He also threatened to have Chick Huntsberry remove one of the Time’s members – ostensibly a joke, but one whose underlying hostility was apparent.

  At the end of the Time’s mini-set, Prince brought his own personnel back for “Partyup,” but unexpectedly kept Morris on the drum set. Suddenly, Day – and the audience – got a tantalizing taste of how things might have unfolded if Prince had chosen his hotheaded high school friend over the more restrained Bobby Z. Rivkin. Day coaxed “Partyup” along at a faster-than-usual tempo, masterfully shifting the dynamic range throughout. Then, mid-song, Prince let Day take a drum solo that showed off all of his pyrotechnic skills. This, far more than the smarmy caricature that fronted the Time, was the true Morris Day – a savvy and skilled musician capable of essentially leading a band from behind the drum kit.

  As the Time’s set – having ultimately been co-opted by Prince – concluded, the audience and participants alike felt dizzied. The evening had been a strange admixture of elements, with Prince’s behavior running the gamut from beneficence to hostility. He had allowed Day to shine on “Partyup,” and had also called Sueann Carwell to the stage to take a brief vocal solo on “Still Waiting.” But he had also flaunted his authority one way or another throughout the night, creating an undercurrent of unease.

  As the tour resumed for its final dates, four nights in a row in the South and Midwest, the competitive resentments between Prince and the Time began to boil over beyond the stage. After one show, a Time member hurled a nasty comment at Bobby Z.; another night, Jesse Johnson said something that Prince interpreted as an insult to his mother.

  The hostility burst to the surface during the last show of the tour at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. During their opening set, the Time found themselves being pelted by eggs from offstage. Gradually, they realized that Prince and some of his band members were the culprits. Towards the end of the set, Prince and his accomplices abducted dancer Jerome Benton from the stage and poured honey over him. Then they pelted him with garbage. “They tarred and feathered him, basically,” recalled Fink, who did not participate and insisted to the band members that he wanted no part of the battle.

  Then, as the Time’s set ended, Chick Huntsberry grabbed Jesse Johnson and hauled him to Prince's dressing room. There, Huntsberry handcuffed Johnson to a horizontal coat rack bolted into a brick wall. Prince came in and began taunting Johnson and tossing Doritos chips and other pieces of food at him.

  The various members of Prince’s band and crew in the room looked on with horror as the episode continued. “It was a cruel thing to do,” observed Roy Bennett. Fink recalled, “I just sat there and said to myself, this is getting out of hand.”

  Johnson writhed furiously in his cuffs. Finally, to the amazement of the onlookers, he managed to rip the entire twelve-foot-long coat rack out of the wall. His hands were still cuffed to the rack, which he began swinging wildly. “Jesse was uncontrollable,” Fink said. “He just lost it. Chick had to contain the situation before someone got hurt.”

 
Huntsberry restrained Johnson and then released him. A furious Johnson fled the dressing room and breathlessly told the rest of the Time what had happened. They immediately began gathering food to use in retaliation. Prince’s managers, upon learning what was afoot, issued the Time a stern admonition: nothing must be thrown during Prince’s set. The Time interpreted this as narrowly as possible, and as Prince and the band left the stage at the end of their set, the Time hurled eggs at them. Prince’s team responded by throwing yet more food as the fight spilled into the backstage area.

  The road managers, foreseeing possible trouble and wanting to forestall actual violence, sought to preserve some element of playfulness by ordering dozens of cream pies to be used by the combatants. The Time now had the advantage, having donned plastic bags to avoid having their clothes ruined. “They turned into warriors, literally,” remembered Fink. The battle continued back at the hotel, where the ensembles threw whatever edibles they could find at each other.

  In the end, there was significant damage to hotel rooms; Prince insisted that Morris Day pay for most of it, arguing falsely that the Time had initiated the fight. Thus, what might have produced a catharsis instead generated another grievance for the Time to nurse. And Johnson, in particular, remained bitter both about the dressing room incident and Prince’s stifling domination over the Time. “Jesse's hostility toward Prince was really bad, it was scary,” said Fink. “Jesse had a major ego problem, and issues occur when people with an ego problem are in a subordinate position.”

  For Day, as the Time’s leader, the situation presented myriad dilemmas. He had achieved a measure of personal notoriety, but was financially broke. The Time had the talent to succeed on its own, but without the support of Warner Bros. and Prince’s management, this momentum could disappear overnight. As for Prince, he saw the group as entirely his creation; he had written the songs, developed the concept, and provided the necessary resources. The group was a tangible expression of part of his psyche, and its independence was something that he could not help seeing as a threat.

  As a result of these dynamics, the Time’s survival turned on the extent to which its members were willing to remain subservient, and how much Prince could loosen even slightly his desire for control.

  18. Smorgasbord of Attitude and Vibe

  Denise Matthews, aka Vanity, on the 1999 Tour

  Withdrawing to his hotel room in Cincinnati on March 14, 1982 following the epic food fight, Prince telephoned Los Angeles-based Jill Jones, with whom he had stayed in touch following the Dirty Mind tour. He told her that he intended to record much of his fifth album in Los Angeles, and invited her to contribute backing vocals and to work on a potential Jones solo project. Now 18 years old, Jones imagined that all signs were pointing towards a serious romance. What Jones didn’t know was that a very similar set of invitations had been proffered to Denise Matthews in January in Los Angeles, thus setting up a potential conflict between side projects and lovers.

  With these multiple wheels in motion, Prince prepared to work on three simultaneous projects: his fifth album, the Time’s second, and the debut effort of the all-female group he was planning to build around Matthews. Prince proposed a stage name to Matthews: she would be called “Vagina,” a name that would certainly draw all sorts of attention, wanted or unwanted. Understandably, Matthews rejected the idea, and they compromised on “Vanity.” A new entry in the growing constellation of Prince-authored personas was thus born.

  As he juggled these multiple projects, Prince’s pace in the studio became more rapid than ever before. His efficiency was improved by pervasive use of the Linn LM-1 drum machine, which he had explored first on Controversy’s “Private Joy.” He began using a feature relatively unexplored by the LM-1’s early adopters: each of its sound samples had a dedicated output, allowing them to be individually routed through external effects. Prince started running the samples through his Boss guitar pedals, allowing for an unusual palette of sounds. Although Roger Linn’s original intent had been to create a more naturalistic drum machine, in Prince’s hands the tool became almost another kind of instrument altogether. “He always wanted to keep people guessing,” noted engineer Don Batts. “Clavets were tuned to the point where they sounded like tin cans.”

  Prince also used the innovative technique of overdubbing synthesizer parts repeatedly to create a thick slather. Among the new tracks using these methods was “Nasty Girl,” recorded for the Vanity project, which used a complex Linn pattern and many layers of Oberheim synth.

  Between recording sessions, Prince corralled members of his entourage for yet another project: a film to be based on concert footage shot during the Controversy tour interspersed with dramatic vignettes. Dubbed The Second Coming, the film’s director was Chuck Statler, a music video veteran who had previously shot a clip for the Time song “Cool.”[212]

  The dramatic scenes, such as they were, were shot in Prince’s purple-painted home and focused around Prince’s interactions with several women in lingerie, including Susan Moonsie. Little about the production went according to plan; among other things, the heavy use of film equipment in a residential neighborhood blew out a transformer on a utility pole. Prince insisted on countless takes of each scene, an exercise that soon became excruciating.[213]

  Between shoots, Statler began to edit together concert footage with the dramatic sequences, which were largely incoherent. Eventually Prince stopped by to see the results. Without warning or explanation, he told Statler the project was being abandoned. None of it would be formally released during Prince’s career.[214]

  Soon thereafter, Prince left Minnesota for Los Angeles and began a series of studio sessions at Sunset Sound over the late spring and early summer of 1982. He began living in Studio City, a community in the San Fernando Valley, and his primary love interest became Jill Jones. “We were together 24-7,” she recalled.[215] Much of their time was spent at recording studios, followed by occasional visits to obscure Los Angeles eateries in the early morning hours.

  Peggy McCreary, a staff engineer at Sunset Sound assigned to Prince’s project, felt a sense of dread when she learned of his impending arrival. A former waitress and gofer at Hollywood’s legendary Roxy club, McCreary had landed her coveted slot at Sunset after taking night classes in engineering. Knowing little about Prince other than that he sang about fellatio and incest, she envisioned him as boorish and inappropriate, perhaps a crasser version of Barry White, the soul singer known for his vivid evocations of sex.

  When Prince entered the studio, her first surprise was his size; he was slight and delicate, more china doll than prowling wolf. He was also shy and hardly spoke. When McCreary asked a question, Prince mumbled unintelligibly while avoiding eye contact.

  “Look,” she said bluntly as the session continued, “I’m not going to be able to do this unless you talk to me.”

  Seemingly appreciating her directness, he began to open up. Soon enough, between recording tasks, Prince was chatting amiably about girlfriends, plans for the future, and even his childhood.

  During this first session Prince and McCreary worked on “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” which was based around a descending, minor-key line floating over another keyboard riff that chugged away like a freight train. The vocal melody followed the same melody as the lead synth line, and an LM-1 pattern anchored the groove.

  The song was haunting and disconcerting, with its lyrics alternating between humor and profanity. In asking his partner whether or not she is busy for “the next seven years,” Prince makes oblique reference to the Marilyn Monroe film The Seven Year Itch, about the point where marital monogamy supposedly becomes a bore.

  In the control booth between takes, Prince’s behavior remained nothing but respectful towards McCreary. But in weeks to come, although she continued to see occasional flashes of Prince’s sociable side, his workaholic tendencies dominated. Often alone with him in the studio, the demands on McCreary became brutal, with sessions often dragging on for as l
ong as twenty-four hours. Basic needs were seen as distractions; when McCreary would suggest getting something to eat, Prince responded that food made him sleepy and that he preferred to go hungry. When he saw her yawning, Prince would offer a brief respite, telling her to step outside while he recorded a vocal. Even after sessions, McCreary was expected to remain and create rough mixes of the songs he had finished. “He had no tolerance for human weakness,” she remembered.

  Prince was also unpredictable and arbitrary in his scheduling. Not infrequently, McCreary was awakened by late-night or early-morning phone calls ordering her to the studio. Other times he would fail to show up for previously booked sessions, leaving her waiting anxiously. She would knit sweaters to pass the time, only to learn, late in the day, that Prince had packed his things and returned to Minneapolis. On yet other occasions, he would show up at the studio in a stretch limousine, insisting that they drive to nearby Santa Monica and catch an obscure art film.

  The pace of recording was just as rapid during return stints to Minnesota, where he continued to work with Don Batts. In very short order, Prince had recorded dozens of songs for the new projects.

  After Prince completed tracking for the Vanity record, he reshuffled the band’s line-up. Jamie Shoop – who was more interested in the business side of the music industry and continued to work with Prince’s management team – bowed out, leaving a trio of Matthews, Moonsie, and Bennett. Prince dubbed the group Vanity 6, a reference to the number of breasts in the ensemble.

  Meanwhile, the romance between Prince and Matthews, which began amid a glow of sexual chemistry, soon became combustible. As usual, Prince continued to see other women, including Jill Jones and Vanity bandmate Susan Moonsie, and Matthews’ fits of jealousy left him, in turn, feeling cornered. “His relationship with Vanity wasn’t as close as with Susan,” said Roy Bennett. “There was no way to have a close relationship with her; she wasn’t that kind of person.” Indeed, as Prince got to know Matthews, he enjoyed her company less; he found her abrasive and insufficiently demure. But he became outraged whenever Matthews showed signs of independence, either romantically or professionally. Because her family background of abuse and alcoholism left her at risk for similar behaviors, these volatile circumstances were fraught with peril.