A musical omnivore, Prince learned to play a dozen instruments by ear. Chris Moon, an aspiring songwriter who discovered the prodigy, recalls that Prince spent long nights holed up in Moon's small recording studio, patiently teaching himself to make his own demo tapes. He and Moon agreed to collaborate on a tune, and when the time came to record, Prince laid down guitar vocals, then offered to play keyboards. "This little kid with a huge Afro, he was pretty good," Moon recalls. He was ready to call in a rhythm section when Prince asked, "Can I give it a shot?" Whereupon, says Moon, "He put down the bass guitar and I said, 'Go for it, Prince.' So he ran over to the drums." And Moon thought, "I've found the next Stevie Wonder."
But the question was how to break a 5'3", black, 18-year-old musical dynamo. Prince's first manager, Owen Husney, with his adman instincts, stoked the star-maker machinery by fudging Prince's age and then dropping his last name to add to the mystery. Moon fueled the fires by writing lyrics full of sexy innuendo. "I thought, 'What's the audience? Young girls.' " So the two wrote Soft and Wet. "The lines were pretty vague. But I thought the title would catch people's ears."
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Prince's first two LPs, with their sexy soul, established him with black audiences as a poetic prince of the libido. His third, Dirty Mind, at first seemed doomed to failure, with its X-rated lyrics and a cover of Prince stripped down to his bikini, and even Owen Husney complained that Prince had "taken a good marketing gimmick too far."
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But Prince's bold sexuality touched a nerve in the hip pop culture, and white critics praised him for music that fused Jimi Hendrix-style guitar, disco thump and roboty synthesizers. Rolling Stone proclaimed him artist of the year in 1982, and on the strength of 1999's three Top 10 hits, he was launched toward stardom.
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In Purple Rain, Prince played the Kid—a name he is often called by his Minneapolis circle—a selfish, tormented, unreachable soul who fights to survive an unhappy home life and turns inward, refusing to share his emotional or creative life. Prince has described the film as an "emotional autobiography." Says his keyboardist Matt Fink: "For the first two years that I worked with him, Prince never talked to any of us. Once he started talking about his life with his parents. He mentioned something about having a tough time. Then he suddenly realized what he was doing and clammed up. That was two and a half years ago. We never heard about his personal life again."
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Revolution guitarist(keyboardist it should read) Lisa Coleman calls Prince a "genius," but others haven't been so generous. Some people who have worked with Prince call him Ayatollah or Napoleon. Others says he is simply a perfectionist who demands only what he asks of himself. He drives his musicians hard, even fining them for showing up late to rehearsals. He dictates what they wear during his show and refuses to let them give interviews without his permission.
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As an outlet for his other musical interests, he has created pop protégé bands like the Time and Vanity 6 (re-christened Apollonia 6). Like the title character in The Idolmaker, one of his favorite films, he taught his charges how to dress and move onstage and also provided them with royal treatment in the studio. He produces albums other than his own under the pseudonym the Starr Company.
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But there are signs that his empire may be crumbling. Morris Day, the Time's dapper front man, whose braggadocio performance in Purple Rain won kudos from critics, left to pursue a solo career. So did Prince's former girlfriend, Vanity, a loss that friends say "left him brokenhearted." Bernadette Anderson, whose son André is another defector from Prince's band, says, "You either go along with Prince or not at all."
"Friendship, real friendship, that's all that counts," Prince once said wistfully, admitting, "I would like to be a more loving person." Keyboard player Wendy Melvoin of the Revolution believes that Prince is changing: "There's a willingness to accept new things." The title of his film, Purple Rain, may have symbolized what she calls "a new beginning. Purple, the sky at dawn; rain, the cleansing factor." The song itself grew in a late-night jam session, with each band member contributing a lick, the first time Prince had let them share in creating his music. "I think the most important lesson he has learned is that people care about him," says Lisa Coleman. "He did start out alone."
Perhaps the quest was not just for stardom but also to belong. That would explain why the Kid continues to live in Minneapolis, where he has devised a social world with other like-minded rebels. Explains Lisa: "I grew up in my own room, making music and having philosophies I thought no one would ever share. That's exactly the way Prince grew up, so we find solace in each other."
With no special woman in his life ("He's married to his music," says Vanity), Prince roams his hometown haunts with friends like Sheila E. A typical evening consists of supper at Rudolf's, a barbecue house where you find the kind of fan who still remembers the autograph Prince signed for her six years ago. "Love, God, Prince," it said. He still turns to religion for guidance, and current protégée Apollonia remembers finding a Bible in her motel room "opened to a scripture that he wanted me to read." (How he got into her room remains a mystery. "Maybe he picked the lock," she jokes.)
At heart, he's a homebody, and he returns from evenings at the now famous First Avenue Club—usually alone—to his purple house with its pots of flowers and Marilyn Monroe posters. Late into the night he writes music and short stories with a purple pen on a purple pad that he carries about "like Walt Whitman," says Wendy. Sometimes the Kid needs more. At least once he has slipped out of bed, jumped onto his bicycle and pedaled off—naked—into the Minneapolis dawn.
That prankish spirit reigns onstage, where His Royal Badness is at his hot, erotic best. "Do you want to take a bath with me?" he taunted the crowd last week during his concert's show-stopper, stripping to his waist and climbing into an oversized elevated purple bathtub. Prince has tamed his sexual shtik; there's no more necking with his female musicians. Gone too are the bikini briefs and his trademark, the pervert's trench coat. What remains is enough to satisfy the most demanding fan: stiletto-heeled splits and leaps, wicked sonic screams and suggestive pelvic thrusts. After nearly two hours he gave his thanks with a melting grin that seemed to say that if the Kid had his way, he'd keep dancing until 1999. We'd ask him, but we know he wouldn't talk.
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