Prince : in the Studio (1975-1995): Volume One

By Jake Brown

Offering an inside look into the multigenerational career of a funk-pop superstar, this definitive, exciting study of Prince s musical catalog grants behind-the-scenes access to the writing and recording details behind such massively successful albums as Diamonds and Pearls, and Purple Rain. From the Purple One s preteen mastery of the piano and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amber Communications Group, Inc
• Release date: Jan 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781937269630

Jake Brown

Award-winning Music biographer Jake Brown has written 50 published books since 2001, featuring many authorized collaborations with some of rock’s biggest artists, including 2013 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees Heart (with Ann and Nancy Wilson), living guitar legend Joe Satriani, blues legend Willie Dixon (authorized w/the Estate), country music legends Merle Haggard/Freddy Powers, heavy metal pioneers Motorhead (with Lemmy Kilmister), country rap superstar Big Smo, late hip hop icon Tupac Shakur (with the estate), celebrated Rock drummer Kenny Aronoff, legendary R&B/Hip Hop Producer Teddy Riley, late Funk pioneer Rick James, and Mopreme Shakur.  Brown is also author of a variety of anthology series including the superstar country music anthology ‘Nashville Songwriter’ Vol I and II; the all-star rock producers anthology ‘Behind the Boards’ Vol. 1 and 2; all-star Rock & Roll drummers’ anthology ‘Beyond the Beats,’ and the ‘Hip Hop Hits’ producers’ series among many others. Brown recently released the audio books BEYODN THE BEATS and DOCTORS OF RHYTHM under a long-term deal with Blackstone Audio, and has also appeared as the featured biographer of record on Fuse TV’s Live Through This series and Bloomberg TV’s Game Changers series, in all 6-parts of the BET “The Death Row Chronicles” docu-series.  His books have received national press in CBS News, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone Magazine, USA Today, MTV.com, Guitar World Magazine, Billboard, Parade Magazine, Country Weekly, Fox News, Yahoo News, etc and writes for regularly for Tape Op Magazine (including the 2015 cover story feature with Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan). In 2012, Brown won the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards in the category of Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.  Visit him online at www.jakebrownbooks.com

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Introduction:

‘Purple Genius—The Revolution of Prince’

Originating his very own funk-pop musical genre that produced over 100 million albums sold world-wide; six Grammy Awards among tens of dozens of award nominations over the past 30 years; induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 and a world-tour the same year which grossed $87 million—making it the #1 most profitable tour of the year, Prince proved he was as relevant in the millennium as he’d been since the late 1970s when he first introduced what Rolling Stone Magazine describes in sound and impact as a taut, keyboard-dominated...hybrid of rock, pop, and funk, with blatantly sexual lyrics...(that) influenced much of 1980s dance-pop music...Madonna...Michael... and Janet Jackson were comparable to Prince only in terms of star power. None could match the formidable breadth of his talents, which included not just singing and dancing but also composing, producing, and playing instruments.

Taking the foundational fusion of funk and new wave that predecessors like Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone and Rick James had first introduced to the pop mainstream to its next musical level, Prince invented a new style of music that the record making/buying world simply hadn’t been acquainted with prior thereto. This was so much the case that Rolling Stone Magazine further concluded that while James Brown may have been the hardest-working man in show business, but no one in the history of rock & roll has covered more ground than Prince… Anyone partial to great creators should own (his records)… Like Jimi and Sly, Prince is an original; but apart from that, he’s like no one else. Channeling another worldly musical talent that has inarguably gone unmatched in the entire history of Rock & Roll, Prince’s self-taught command of 31 musical instruments inspired Rock & Roll’s biggest magazine to more broadly credit Prince as the most influential record producer and arranger of the ‘80s. The Philadelphia Enquirer, for its own part, has concluded that Prince earned his reputation by taking songs that were already a cut above ordinary and transforming them into invigorating, provocative statements. Even before his 1984 breakthrough with Purple Rain, his albums predicted trends in pop the way Davis’ did in jazz. His deft use of dissonance, symphonic orchestration, polytonality and jarringly syncopated rhythms instantly separated him from everyone else on the charts.

Longtime engineer Eddie Miller, in offering his own eye-witness assessment of Prince’s influence, further reasoned that Prince is such a great culmination of music history to this point in time. It’s as if he took all the best of the great ideas of the last century, and figured out a way to put it all together. And as if that weren’t enough, he mastered the art of performance on top of all this. The thing I really admired was that I realized it didn’t just happen. Prince essentially gave his life to get to this level, and that’s the definition of a musical hero. Others who have worked closest with Prince don’t pretend to begin to fully understand the depths of his talent, with Revolution keyboardist Lisa Coleman for one, pointing as a reason why to the fact that his mind is out there, not just on another planet, it’s in another galaxy while longtime engineer Chuck Zwicky explained that Prince has such a deep connection with melody, harmony, and rhythm, and an unbelievable ability to express and communicate it. I can’t really think of anyone you could compare him to—maybe Stevie Wonder.

In the pages of ‘Prince ‘in the Studio’ that sum is broken down into the individual parts, i.e. albums—a staggering 27 albums over the past 3 decades—that compose Prince’s living legend. Focusing on his most prolific, popular and prized—among fans—recording period, spanning 1975-1995, ‘Prince: In the Studio’ reveals the prodigal childhood roots of Prince’s genius growing up in working-class inner-city Minneapolis in multiple homes. Finding his refuge in an even greater number of instruments, Prince signed to Warner Bros. Records, while still a teenager. Becoming the first newly-signed artist in the label’s history to produce his own debut LP—simply because no other producer could have translated his musical genius to tape as authentically.

Over the next 10 years, Prince would reinvent the sonic boundaries of pop music, in a flurry of 13 albums in 13 years that Billboard Magazine summarized to include highlights such as "1980’s Dirty Mind. He recorded his first masterpiece, a one-man tour de force of sex and music; it was hard funk, catchy Beatlesque melodies, sweet soul ballads, and rocking guitar pop, all at once. The follow-up, Controversy, was more of the same, but 1999 was brilliant. The album was a monster hit, selling over three million copies, but it was nothing compared to 1984’s Purple Rain. Purple Rain made Prince a superstar; it eventually sold over ten million copies in the U.S. and spent 24 weeks at number one… In 1986, he released the even stranger Parade, which was in its own way as ambitious and intricate as any art rock of the ‘60s; however, no art rock was ever grounded with a hit as brilliant as the spare funk of ‘Kiss.’ By 1987 Prince’s ambitions were growing by leaps and bounds, resulting in the sprawling masterpiece Sign ‘O’ the Times."

By the late 1980s, Prince had become such a powerhouse that he attracted fellow living legends like Miles Davis and George Clinton to his WEA-distributed Paisley Park label, where in his own right, he continued to churn out stylistically ground-breaking classics, including 1988’s legendary bootleg LP ‘Black Album’, which Rolling Stone praised for its James Brown horn licks, assorted grunts and groans… (and) guitar leads that burned into your skull, and its commercial replacement studio release, ‘LoveSexy’, which Rolling Stone also hailed in its 4-Star review as "complex…as the black album was locomotive and sexual…(revealing) how intricate and complex Prince’s concept of funk has grown since 1980’s Dirty Mind." Heading into the 1990’s with the hugely popular Motion Picture Soundtracks to ‘Batman’ and ‘Graffiti Bridge’ respectively, producing hits like ‘Batdance’ and ‘Thieves in the Temple,’ Prince was tiding fans over for his next pop tidal wave, which came in 1991 with the release of the 12x platinum ‘Diamonds and Pearls,’ with which Billboard Magazine pointed out he skillfully reinvented himself as an urban soulman without sacrificing his musical innovation. Within the first half of that decade, he would also release two other hit albums under the ‘Prince’ moniker with 1992’s ‘LoveSymbol’ LP, and 1994’s ‘The Gold Experience.’ Now, for the first time, in the pages of ‘Prince: in the Studio—1975-1995’, we will explore the first two decades and fifteen studio albums of a legacy that seems to be ever-expanding as the Millennium—and Prince’s prolific studio catalog—do in the same time…

Chapter 1:

Prince ‘Skipper’ Roger Nelson—1958-1968

John Nelson, leader of the Prince Rogers jazz trio, knew Mattie Shaw from North Side community dances. A singer sixteen years John’s junior, Mattie bore traces of Billie Holiday in her pipes and more than a trace of Indian and Caucasian in her blood. She joined the Prince Rogers trio, sang for a few years around town, married John Nelson and dropped out of the group. She nicknamed her husband after the band; the son who came in 1958 got the nickname on his birth certificate. At home and on the street, the kid was ‘Skipper.’

—Rolling Stone Magazine

One of Rock & Roll’s greatest stars—Prince Roger Nelson—was born to father John T. Nelson, (who was bi-racial) and mother Mattie Shaw (who was Italian) on June 7th, 1958 at Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with Prince’s mother Mattie recalling that her first child from the union, whom she nicknamed ‘Skipper’, was so small in size and he was just real cute, he was a darling baby. Prince’s father, meanwhile, explained that I named my son Prince because I wanted him to do everything I wanted to do. John Nelson’s grand ambitions for his son stemmed in part from his day job as a Plastic Moulder at the Honeywell Electronics plant by day, while working as a struggling musician by night, having met Prince’s mother—Mattie Shaw—while singing back-up in his jazz band. Much to both his parents’ delight, during the future superstar’s early childhood, his gift for music was obvious, so much so that Prince’s mother Mattie recalled that he could hear music even from a very early age…When he was three or four, we’d go to the department store and he’d jump on the piano, the organ, any kind of instrument there was. Mostly the piano and organ. And I’d have to hunt for him, and that’s where he’d be, in the music department. Prince’s father John further recalled that when he was five, he would play the piano…He would copy me, but he could also do things I couldn’t do.

Prince’s only sibling, Tika ‘Tyka’ Evene, was born 2 years later in 1960, to John and Mattie, joining an extended family of siblings from his parents’ previous marriages—including two half-sisters Lorna and Sharon and half-brother John Jr. his father’s prior relationships, as well as a half-brother Alfred, from previous relationship. Recalling just how unusual a duo Prince and sister Tyka were during their formative years, Tyka recalled that it began with the fact that my name was very different, and with Prince at the school as well, we got teased about our names all the time. I mean, back in the 60s, no one was called Tyka and Prince. Prince’s musical ambitions grew in real time with his own development as a musical prodigy, coupled with his discovery of the live component of performance, which the future superstar recalled began when his father John T. Nelson took him along to his live gigs, with Prince recalling years later that it was great, I couldn’t believe it, people were screaming. From then on, I think I wanted to be a musician.

Prince’s ability to connect with his father via their shared love of music was key to any closeness the pair shared during Prince’s younger years, mainly because outside of that realm of musical commonality, the musician explained years later that "my mom’s the wild side of me; she’s like that all the time. My dad’s real serene; it takes the music to get him going. My father and me, we’re one and the same…It’s real hard for my father to show emotion…He never says, ‘I love you,’ and when we hug or something, we bang our heads together like in some Charlie Chaplin movie. But a while ago, he was telling me how I always had to be careful.

My father told me, ‘If anything happens to you, I’m gone.’ All I thought at first was that it was a real nice thing to say. But then I thought about it for a while and realized something. That was my father’s way of saying ‘I love you.’ For his own part, John Nelson explained that much of his introversion grew out of the fact that I spend a lot of time by myself, writing and composing music. That’s the most important thing to me. I don’t care to meet strangers. I express myself through my music and my son does too. That’s how we communicate our feelings. A lot of his talent comes from God, maybe some from me."

Prince’s musical evolution was further encouraged during his grade-school years attending John Hay Elementary School when he befriended Andre ‘Cymone’ Anderson, who would become his best friend and musical sidekick for the remainder of their adolescence. Upon meeting and realizing their fathers had once played in the same band, Prince’s father on piano and Andre’s on bass, Andre recalled that I couldn’t believe it, because Prince and I immediately got on so well, and here we had something else in common. It was deep. Little did Prince know it at the time, but not only would his friendship with Andre be key to his musical development as the years went on, it would also provide a solid foundation for him domestically as his own had begun to crumble, such that by his 7th birthday, his parents had divorced. In a Rolling Stone Magazine profile years later, the publication reported that "John Nelson moved out of the family home when Prince was seven. But he left behind his piano, and it became the first instrument Prince learned to play. The songs he practiced were TV themes—Batman and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. ‘My first drum set was a box full of newspapers,’ he has said, explaining how he came to play a whole range of instruments."

Chapter 2:

Broken Home, Broken Hearts—1969-1972

The product of a broken home, Prince found refuge in music.

—Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Leaving Mattie, Prince and Tyka to live in the house on 915 Logan Avenue in Northern Minneapolis, the impact of father John T. Nelson’s departure upon Prince was enormous, with sister Tyka recalling that I can vividly remember the day my father left…I just stood in the front room with this little guy and I looked up at him and said ‘Now what? Elaborating on the personal fall-out post-Prince’s father leaving the family, Prince’s sister further recalled that to support her two children, newly-single mother Mattie was forced to work the kind of long hours that sadly left them latchkey kids, such that, as Tyka recalled, I was brought up by Prince and the television…I quite often think I’m a character from Little House on the Prairie. And neither of us can watch it without bursting into tears. Prince taught me everything I know. We grew up spending a lot of time on our own. That made us creative. He taught me how to draw and write stories. When my mother and father divorced, he was the only person living in the house with me, so he took on the father role. My mother was working three jobs, keeping everything together. Elaborating on the affects his family’s sudden financial instability had on him, Prince later recalled that we used to go to…McDonald’s (and)…I didn’t have any money, so I’d just stand outside there and smell stuff. Poverty makes people angry, brings out their worst side. I was very bitter when I was young. I was insecure and I’d attack anybody. Prince’s sister Tyka further observed that as a result of the combination of responsibility and instability placed on him in the same time, (Prince) was forced to grow up too soon…So in some ways he never did at all.

Not surprisingly, Prince filled the absence of his father with a musical therapy that the superstar years later explained was a catalyst of sorts to communicate what I was feeling. I spent a lot of time alone and I turned to music. I played all the time. The music sort of filled a void. The promise of domestic normalcy returned briefly to Prince’s world when his mother remarried his stepfather, Haywood Baker, who Prince recalled took him to a James Brown concert as a sort of bonding experience, such that when I was about 10 years old, my step-dad (took me to a James Brown concert and)…put me on stage with him, and I danced a little bit until the bodyguard took me off. The reason I liked James Brown so much is that, on my way out, I saw some of the finest dancing girls I had ever seen in my life. And I think, in that respect, he influenced me by his control over his group.

Sadly, for Prince, once his father John left home, it seemed permanently broken, such that the singer recalled the summary impact as one wherein I ran away from home when I was twelve…I’ve changed my address in Minneapolis thirty-two times, and there was a great deal of loneliness…I was constantly running from family to family. It was nice on one hand, because I had a new family, but I didn’t like being shuffled around. I was bitter for a while, but I adjusted. Rolling Stone Magazine further substantiated this reality years later in a cover story when it reported that once Mattie and John broke up…Prince began his domestic shuttle. For a brief time during this period, Prince was reunited with his father when he went to live with John T. Nelson and his new family. Attending Bryant Junior High School with best friend Andre as well as some of his step-siblings, Prince initially had a rough reception, such that he recalled years later that I went through a lot when I was a boy…They called me sissy, punk, freak and faggot. See, the girls loved you, but the boys hated you. Half-sister Lorna, who also attended Bryant Junior High, recalled that her brother was always bullied…Every day the bigger kids would wait for him. He dreaded walking up those steps. They used to jeer him because he was so short and had a black-Italian background. What really hurt him were the taunts he used to get at basketball practice.

Things weren’t much easier during this time for Prince at home with his father, who threw him out after catching his son home alone with a girlfriend after school one day. Describing the fallout that followed, Prince recalled that I called my dad and begged him to take me back after he kicked me out…He said ‘no’, so I called my sister and asked her to ask him. So she did, and afterward told me that all I had to do was call him back, tell him I was sorry, and he’d take me back. So I did, and he still said ‘no’. I sat crying at that phone booth for two hours. That’s the last time I cried. For Prince, being bounced around so constantly had only one silver living, and not surprisingly, it was a musical one, wherein after I went to live with my aunt, she didn’t have room for a piano, so my father bought me an electric guitar, and I learned how to play.

After a bit more of the domestic musical chairs, Prince was taken in by his best friend Andre’s family, a move that would prove to be a key catalyst to the birth of what Rolling Stone Magazine, years later, would deem the first notes of the Minneapolis sound… heard in a big brick house in North Minneapolis, an aging, primarily black section of town that draws outsiders only to the Terrace Theater, a movie house designed to look like a suburban backyard patio, and the Riverview Supper Club, the nightspot a black act turns to after it has polished its performance on the local chittlin circuit. North Minneapolis is a poor area by local standards, but a family with not too much money can still afford the rent on a whole house. It was there that Bernadette Anderson, who was already raising six kids of her own by herself; decided to take in a doe-eyed kid named Prince, a pal of her youngest son, Andre. The thirteenyear-old Prince had landed on the Anderson doorstep after having been passed from his stepfather’s and mother’s home to his dad’s apartment to his aunt’s house.

The transition proved a calming one for Prince in the context of establishing a sense of domestic stability. Still Bernadette Anderson recalled that generally during that period in his life, due to all he’d been through, Prince never said much, but he was an emotional volcano that could erupt at any moment. The fury showed itself when school friends teased him about his height. They were very cruel. Best friend Andre Cymone further recalled that he came and lived with us and I think actually my mother adopted him and he lived with our family for a while. Elaborating on the latter, Prince explained years later that I took a lot of heat all the time (in school)…People would say something about our clothes or the way we looked or who we were with, and we’d end up fighting. I was a very good fighter…I never lost. I don’t know if I fight fair, but I go for it. Prince would live with the Andersons for the duration of his teenage years, with 2nd cousin/future bandmate Charles recalling that Andre’s mother, Bernadette, became the closest thing Prince had thereafter to an authority figure, describing her as an absolutely amazing part of his life…She was mom to everybody. You didn’t get out of line. You helped with the chores. As soon as the car came with all the groceries, she shared everything with everybody. Bandmate and best friend Andre Cymone remembered feeling that Prince dug the atmosphere. It was freedom for him.

After setting up a bedroom/rehearsal space in Bernadette’s basement, Prince and Andre formed their first band together, with Prince handling guitar/piano, Andre bass, and Cousin Charles drums. Initially called Phoenix before being changed to Grand Central, which bandmate Andre Cymone recalled was something I think Prince came up with ‘cause he was really into Grand Funk Railroad. Prince’s drummer/cousin Charles recalled that at first the band tried to imitate the Jackson 5. Prince was singing ‘I Want You Back’…(and at first) we thought it was a girl singing that. The Jackson 5 was a big inspiration because they were our age and we thought we could beat them. We said ‘We’re just as talented, and we’ve got the same kind of vibe and everything…(Prince) was more into Sly Stone and heavier stuff. Stevie Wonder was Prince’s main person; he loved Stevie’s work, but he said ‘Man, I could do that!’ And the same with Sly, except for the fact that he knew Sly was always blasted, and missing his concerts and stuff. Prince would go, ‘I’m not going to be like Sly, I’m going to practice my behind off like James Brown’s band, and I’m going to have everything so tight that you’re not going to be able to say anything about it.’ We were always very competitive. Andre Cymone added that we rehearsed in my mom’s basement and we got a chance to develop and learn through that whole situation. Reciting some of the musical influences he brought to Grand Central, Prince recalled Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, and James Brown, of course. On piano, I was influenced by my father, who was influenced by Duke Ellington and Thelonius Monk. I like to say I took from the best.

Recalling that once Grand Central got started, they never truly stopped playing. Bernadette Anderson explained