They’re calling him the next Stevie Wonder, and perhaps with a good reason. The singer-composer known simply as Prince appears to be on his way to becoming the biggest solo solo artist in years.
And “solo” definitely is an apt way to describe his talents because Prince does everything on his records except press and sell them.
The credits on his current hot selling self titled second LP tell the story. It was produced, arranged, composed and performed by one person—Prince, Who says he doesn’t want his real name known “because it’s too hard to remember.“ The album already has yielded one big pop single, “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” which reached No. 11 on the charts. And a second single, “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad,” Is bulleting up the charts and could go higher than the first hit.
All this and Prince has yet to reach his 20th birthday. In fact, the multi talented artist received a six figure contract to sign with Warner Bros. when he was 18 and then became the youngest person ever in the labels history to produce his own album.
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THAT LP, “PRINCE–FOR YOU” Included the disco oriented hit single “Soft And Wet,” which gave Prince his first musical recognition when it reached the soul top 20. But prince can’t be considered simply a disco artist. This music is a fusion of blues, jazz, rock, pop and funk that defies categorization. And that’s just the way he wants it.
“I don’t like categories at all,” said the young entertainer who open for Rick James at the Tarrant County Convention Center, Friday night. “I’m not soul and I’m not jazz, but everyone wants to put one of those labels on me.
“They don’t call the Bee Gees soul. They are either pop or something else. It’s hard to classify Earth, Wind and Fire, but you always know it’s them when your hear them.“
And that’s the type of musical recognition prince is seeking. He wants to develop his own sound and identity.
“There’s just not one category that all of my tracks fit into,” he pointed out. “Some are funk, some hard rock and roll and others like ‘For You’ could be classical.“
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BORN AND RAISED IN Minneapolis, Prince was introduced to music in a hurry because his father was a jazz band leader and his mother sang in the band. At the age of seven, prince begin picking out themes from his favorite television shows on the piano.
“I had one piano lesson and two guitar lessons as a kid,” recalled the singer who was heading up his own rock band by the time he was 12.
That band initially called Grand Central and then named Champagne went to when the group members entered high school, began playing hotels and high school dances, and about half of the groups material was original songs written by Prince.
After mastering the guitar by the age of 13, prince learned the drums at 14 and then moved onto the bass, saxophone and an assortment of keyboards.
Finally, by the time he was 16, Prince had his eyes set on signing with a major record company. He needed some sort of break, though, and he got it in the summer of '76 when he hooked up with Chris Moon, the proprietor of a Minneapolis recording studio who earlier had recorded some tapes by Champagne.
Hoping to sell some of his own original material, Moon had made a demonstration deep of his songs back to only buy his own acoustic guitar.
Realizing that he needed some more music on the tape to sweeten the sound, Moon called on Prince to add some backing piano tracks. Prince then ask the producer if he wanted bass on the tapes. Moon excepted the offer. And before he was through, Prince also laid down some drums, an electric guitar lead and some multiple tracks as a back up singer.
Amazed by the youth’s first eternity, moon took the tape to his musician-manager friend, Owen Husney, a 12 year veteran of the music scene.
“Not bad. Who are they?” Husney asked Moon after listening to the tape.
When told it was just one teenager, Husney immediately offered to be Prince’s manager. In the winter of 1977 he produced a professional demo tape of the young singer and then took the tape to the West Coast, played it for a few of the major record companies and watched the tape sell itself. The tape immediately netted Prince two big contract offers,But he turned them down.
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“I DIDN'T TAKE EITHER one of them because they wouldn’t let me produce myself. They had a lot of strange ideas… tubas and cellos and such. I knew I’d have to do it myself if it was going to come out right.”
Warners afforded him that opportunity and sign him up.
He’s already achieved a certain amount of success with his health records, and that Stevie Wonder-style stardom many are predicting for him may not be that far away. However, princess taking it all in stride.
“I just don’t think about it,“ he says, “it’s all just part of the dream factory. If it happens, it happens. It’s best not to worry about it, though, because if you strive for it and then don’t get it, you end up disappointing and feeling like a failure.“
But many record people are betting that won’t happen. They feel that Prince could be a king before it’s all over.