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Source: Star Tribune

Prince The Early Days

Chapter 1

Prince Roger Nelson was born June 7, 1958, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis to Mattie Shaw and John Nelson. They had been in a jazz ensemble called the Prince Roger Trio. Since Mattie called her husband Prince, she dubbed her son Skipper 'because he was small in size and he was just real cute -- he was a darling baby.'

HIS MOTHER (Star Tribune interview, 1984): He could hear music even from a very early age. When he was 3 or 4, we'd go to the department store and he'd jump on the radio, the organ, any type of instrument there was. Mostly the piano and organ. I'd have to hunt for him, and that's where he'd be -- in the music department.

• PRINCE (Star Tribune interview, 1978): Around the time I was 8, I had a pretty good idea what the piano was all about. I had one piano lesson and two guitar lessons as a kid. I was a poor student, because when a teacher would be trying to teach me how to play junky stuff, I would start playing my own songs. I'd usually get ridiculed for it, but I ended up doing my own thing. I can't read music. It hasn't gotten in the way yet. Maybe it will later, but I doubt it.

• MICHAEL KOPPELMAN (recording engineer): At Plymouth and Penn [Avs.] there was a McDonald's. He used to say he would stand outside that McDonald's sniffing the air, wishing he had enough money to buy a cheeseburger.

• JIMMY JAM: We were at Bryant Junior High. I was a year younger than him. We were in a band to back up the choir at school. I was gonna play drums, and I knew Prince played keyboards. He showed up at practice and picks up a guitar and plays, note for note, the intricate solo from Chicago's 'Make Me Smile.' I made the mistake of getting up from the drums, and he sat there and he killed 'em. He had the biggest Afro in the world -- that wasn't fair, either.

• PRINCE (on 'Larry King Live,' 1999): [Minnesota] was interesting because I grew up getting a wider array of music. I grew up with Santana and Larry Graham and Fleetwood Mac, all kinds of different things.

In 1976 Chris Moon, a south Minneapolis studio proprietor and aspiring lyricist, hired Prince and other musicians to record music for a slide show.

• BOBBY Z (drummer): Prince was playing the piano. It was an upright or spinet -- a small thing. It was moving, waving like a cartoon, responding to his fingertips. The music was rich and full. I never heard anything like that. I'd never seen anyone play the piano like that. I was taken immediately.

Moon gave Prince a key to the studio so he could work at night. They unsuccessfully pitched a demo tape to record labels, then turned to Owen Husney, a concert promoter who also owned an ad agency. Husney raised $50,000 from investors to support Prince until he could land a record contract. To record a second demo, he enlisted Bobby Z's brother, Minneapolis recording engineer David Rivkin (later David Z), who had recorded Prince's band Grand Central in 1975.

• DAVID Z: He did all the instruments. He had a little cassette machine into which he'd hummed each part. The horn part, the guitar part -- he had it all separated. It was really evolved. He was 16, 17 years old. When anyone came in the studio while he was singing, he wanted me to turn the light off because he didn't want anybody to look at him. [My wife] came in while he was singing 'Soft and Wet,' and he was a little embarrassed. He got over that shyness, that's for sure.

• BOBBY Z: My day job was a runner for Owen's ad company, but my job became basically to take care of Prince. He didn't drive. I took him to get his license eventually. We found an apartment. We bought musical gear. We'd hang out in my Pinto station wagon. We went to a Santana concert at Northrop. We would move the furniture around at [Husney's] office, and we'd jam until dawn almost every night. It was Andre [Anderson, later Cymone], me and Prince most of the time.

• OWEN HUSNEY: We put together 15 press kits and sent out seven or eight to the major labels. The first marketing move was I put his age back a year. I knew if he was worth so much at 18, he was worth that much more at 17. I knew that he was shy, so the second marketing move was that less is more. I didn't want any press clippings or 8 million pictures. I just wanted one line [of copy]. The music would speak for itself. We also wanted to be different. L.A. at that time was jeans; open, untucked shirts, and cowboy boots. We were all wearing three-piece suits; we had one made for Prince, too. And we sent the tape on a silver reel -- it was reel-to-reel, not cassette.