PRINCE—just Prince, because his real name is too hard to re- member was born in South Minneapolis on June 7, 1959, the son of a swing band leader. His mother was the lead singer of the band. At seven, Prince took up the piano. While in the seventh grade at Bryant Junior High, Prince joined a local dance band. At the age of 13, he picked up the guitar. A year later, he was practicing daily on a drum kit. The bass followed, along with an assortment of keyboard instruments and finally, synthesizers.
In 1976, Chris Moon, the proprietor of a local recording studio hired Prince, then 16, as he needed a piano player to sweeten up a demo tape. One who would play for little money. Not only did Prince lay down a perfect keyboard track, but a bass line, an elec-tric guitar, some drums and finally, multiple tracks as a backup singer.
Moon, taken aback by the display, brought the tape to the attention of manager-friend Owen Husney, who was just as shocked after finding it was not a whole band, as he had thought, but the work of one 17-year-old kid. He quickly signed Prince, recorded another demo, and upon a trip to the West Coast, garnered the interest of Warner Bros., A&M and Columbia Records.
He opted for Warner Bros., who, it had been said, offered the 18- year-old a six-figure contract, and a three-record deal, allowing him to produce his own debut LP. He is in fact, the youngest person ever to have produced a Warner Bros. album. The LP, Prince For You, featured his smash debut single Soft & Wet. His second LP, simply titled Prince has gone gold.
Offering suggestions of punk rock, high-gloss bubble-gum-funk, and somehow Sylvester’s plaintive and outrageous appeal, his own style is becoming more and more clear. His current release I Want To Be Your Lover is topping the national record charts.
In performance, the 19-year-old who is fashioning a colorful persona for himself, cranks up to an ear-shattering roar apt to leave one tone-deaf, yet sit him down for an interview and he is not an easy person to elicit answers from, instead given to one-word replies. Even when you wait him out, he is content to remain silent. Aside from these pauses, he would often give the impression of being almost uninterested or rebellious. He often tends to say things—designed to shock it seems, yet most often just undercutting—to elicit a certain reaction, while his own demeanor remains unruffled. This BLACK STARS interview took place while Prince was in Los Angeles for his premiere performance at the Roxy Theatre and to co-produce another artist.
Q. How much of you is in your music?
PRINCE: “All of me.”
Q. Do you like the way your current release is going?
PRINCE: “I don’t follow it,” he shrugs his shoulders.
Q. Why not?
PRINCE: “I’ve got better things to do.”
Q. Like what?
PRINCE: “Write.”
Q. Do you write all of your own material?
PRINCE: “Uh... huh.”
Q. And what kinds of things do you write about?
PRINCE: “Personal experience, fantasy, and surrealistic things.”
Q. What on today’s music scene impresses and or influences you?
PRINCE: “Nothing influences me.”
Q. Can you honestly say that?”
PRINCE: “Yes, because there’s not much out there. Then too, living in Minneapolis you miss a lot in everything and if you were to go out and steal somebody’s stuff, you’d be behind in it, so I don’t bother myself about it.”
Q. Tell me then what makes you unique?
PRINCE: “I’m a lot filthier.”
(Actually, he neither looks nor acts it.)
Q. You mean musically?
PRINCE: “Yes, but.. (he pauses for a moment), “I don’t think I’m unique. I don’t think anyone is really unique. We all derive something from one another whether it be consciously or whatever. So I wouldn’t say I’m different than anyone else. Music has be-come so commercialized recently that everyone’s copying each other—whereas, before, people used to strive to be different and I kind of wish I could have come up in that time. I think more people would probably pay attention to what I’m doing—more than they do now. I would only have to make one album and then go someplace for a year or so.”
Q. Are you projecting an image to your audience or do you care about that sort of thing?
PRINCE: “I care a lot about my public, but I don’t concentrate a lot on my image. I think that the public’s going to draw whatever conclusion they want to anyway.”
Q. What conclusion would you like them to draw?
PRINCE: “I don’t know.”
Q. Do you want to be singled out as a certain type of artist—whether it be “efficient” or “classy”?
PRINCE: “I don’t like those two words. Scandalous, rambunctious, obscene...”
Q. But you don’t appear to be any of those things—sitting here?
PRINCE: “Well, I like those—they’re more exciting than the other ones.”
Q. But are you that?
He shrugs his shoulders.
Q. How about on stage?
PRINCE: “All of that. All of that,” he agrees emphatically.
Q. Why did it take so long for you to follow up your first LP?
PRINCE: “I changed management.”
Q. Were there difficulties?
PRINCE: “I guess you could say that. It was mostly my management changes that took me so long,” he deliberately evaded the issue. “Then, also I was debating on whether or not to go on tour and getting the band together.”
Q. Were you skeptical about that?
PRINCE: “No, and when I decided to go back in the studios, the record company said fine.
Q. What are some of the difficulties in being so young in the record industry?
PRINCE: “I find it hard to make people listen to me. They say I talk too much. I don’t think so, it’s just that they don’t like to listen to younger people.”
Q. So how do you deal with that?
PRINCE: “I cry a lot.”
Q. What did you look for in a contract?
PRINCE: “I have a lot of creative control. They let me produce my records, write my own songs, pick the arrangements and all that. They’re really open,” he thinks about it. “I just do the album, give it to them and they put it out.”
Q. What were some of the earlier influences that made you put such an effort forth—schoolmates?
PRINCE: “No, I didn’t have a lot of friends at school.”
Q. You’re quoted in the Minneapolis Tribune as saying that you were a poor student...
PRINCE: “Oh, I was a poor student in as much as I didn’t like the work and I wouldn’t give anything to my teachers. I did everything I was told, but I never gave extra, which they said was being a poor student. If you had a little extra to give and didn’t give it, they said you were being a rebellious brat.”
Q. What did you take from your parents that has helped to sustain you in this industry?
PRINCE: “Nothing really because they weren’t around... I lived in a lot of foster homes, growing up. Incorrigible—that’s what they’d say.”
Q. Why-what did you do to deserve the title?
PRINCE: He shrugs.
Q. At what age?
PRINCE: “Around 12.”
Q. What in your background, other than the fact that your pa-rents were involved with it, motivated you—or was it just that?
PRINCE: “I don’t know, it just happened. Although my dad is a musician and my mom’s a musician, they weren’t around. Plus, their musical careers weren’t so good so I don’t think they wanted any of their kids to get into it.” (He has four sisters and four brothers.)
Q. Do you have any goals insofar as the music industry?
PRINCE: “No, I just take things as they come.”
Q. What then does success mean to you—a new car, peace of mind, a chart topper…?
PRINCE: “Success to me means that people believe in what you’re doing and they give back the love which I give to them through my music.”
Q. The picture on the album-what prompted it?
PRINCE: “It was just an idea. I don’t know. It’s not symbolic of anything,—just a pretty picture, I think.”
Q. Are things going for you the way you’d like them to go?
PRINCE: “Not exactly. I don’t like so many people watching over me, but I guess it’s all right.”
Q. Do you worry about anything?
PRINCE: “Pimples—that’s my biggest fear.”
Q. Are you becoming more and more business-oriented?
PRINCE: “Yeah.”
Q. Are you skeptical about being ripped off?
PRINCE: “If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen, but I make sure I can get the right people.”
Q. And how about the people you chose to be close to?
PRINCE: “I haven’t had much of a problem with that. With ‘yes’ people. Instead people usually tell me what they think because I’m so young. When you’re older people start to say yes to you because they know that you’re old enough and wise enough to fire them when you get ready. Now, I’m treated like a kid, which is sometimes discouraging, but....”
Q. What are your 24-hours like?
PRINCE: “Well, besides music, the rest is unprintable,” he smiles.
Q. Do you have much of a social life in Minneapolis?
PRINCE: “Not really.”
Q. Do you practice a lot?
PRINCE: “Yeah.”
Q. How disciplined are you?
PRINCE: “Not very. I do it as enjoyment.”
Q. What’s a priority right now?
PRINCE: “Sleep.”
Q. And in life?
PRINCE: “To be fat. I’d like to see what it would be like.”
Q. Is there anything you haven’t already done in music that you’d like to do?
PRINCE: “I want to learn how to play grass. The lawn.”
Q. What would the Prince you were over me, ten years ago, think of you now?
PRINCE: “I’m the same. I’m always the same.”
Q. He wouldn’t be surprised by your accomplishments?
PRINCE: “I don’t really look at it as being such a big achievement. I suppose anybody could do it.”
But anybody didn’t do it, Prince did.