Just as Long as We’re Together

(Featured Image removed at request of rights holder.)

In early April, 1977, Owen Husney and Gary Levinson flew with Prince to Los Angeles, armed with their new press kits and a fully-formed persona for their artist. Most dramatically–and, for future biographers, confoundingly–the managers fudged the date of Prince’s birth, passing him off as a year younger than he really was. “I knew if he was worth so much at 18, he was worth that much more at 17,” Husney later explained to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In all aspects of their presentation, Husney and Levinson took pains to set themselves apart from the competition: “L.A. at that time was jeans; open, untucked shirts, and cowboy boots,” Husney recalled. “We were all wearing three-piece suits; we had one made for Prince, too. And we sent the tape on a silver reel” (Star Tribune 2004).

Much as Chris Moon had done for Prince in New York, Husney also engaged in a little subterfuge to get their foot in the door. “I lied my way in everywhere,” he told biographer Per Nilsen. He started with Russ Thyret, Vice President and Director of Promotion at Warner Bros., with whom he’d had a previous business association: “I said to Russ, ‘Listen, CBS is flying us out for a presentation on this kid that can play all the instruments. He’s 17 years of age. Do you want to take a meeting with him?’ And he said, ‘Sure!’” Only then did he get an appointment with CBS–by informing them that he was being flown out by Warner. “And then I called A&M Records, ‘Listen, CBS and Warner Bros. are flying us out. Would you like to be part of this presentation?’ They were like, ‘Yeah, well, call us when you get here’” (Nilsen 1999 32).

In the end, Prince and American Artists met with five labels in L.A.: Warner, CBS, A&M, RSO (home of the Bee Gees), and ABC/Dunhill. Of those five, the first three put in serious bids–but all were taken aback, to varying degrees, by the extravagant terms proposed by this semi-professional Midwestern management team and their teenage client. As Husney put it to biographer Dave Hill, “We wanted three albums, because it was gonna take that long for him to develop. We wanted him to be his own producer, and to play all the instruments.” A&M, Hill wrote, “stalled on the three-album commitment” (Hill 41). For the others, Prince’s demand to produce his own work was the sticking point. “Not one of the labels wanted him to be his own producer,” Husney said to Nilsen. “They felt that he was just a young kid who had to learn. And I kept saying that I wanted him to be his own producer, and everybody said, ‘Gosh, you’re crazy’” (Nilsen 1999 32).

Loring Park Sessions

(Featured Image: Prince in his first press kit, 1977; photo stolen from Nate D. Sanders Auctions.)

Last time, we talked about some of the ways in which Prince’s new management, “American Artists, Inc.” (a.k.a., Owen Husney and Gary Levinson), helped to foster his artistic growth in late 1976 and early 1977. Another one of those ways was to set up a makeshift rehearsal space in the company’s Loring Park offices: a kind of surrogate for Prince’s former home in the Andersons’ basement, giving him the space to write and demo new songs outside of the formal studio environment.

The majority of the songs recorded at the Loring Park space are not, to my knowledge, currently in circulation; as with the uncirculating Moonsound demos, however, we know at least some of the basic information. There was the aforementioned “I Like What You’re Doing,” as well as a sister song of sorts, “Hello, My Love,” written for an attractive secretary who worked in Husney’s office. According to Per Nilsen’s The Vault, Prince left a cassette of the song on her desk after completing it, but “she didn’t seem overly impressed” (Nilsen 2004 16); Prince, it seems, needed to work on his game in 1977. There was also another, presumably more experimental track, the promisingly-titled “Neurotic Lover’s Baby’s Bedroom,” which Prince wrote after Husney and Levinson bought him his first drum machine. Interestingly, despite this early dabbling, he would continue to use primarily live drums in his music until the release of Controversy in 1981.

Today, the Loring Park sessions are known mostly for, well, the “Loring Park Sessions”: a series of eight jazz-funk instrumentals recorded by Prince, André Anderson (remember him?), and Bobby “Z.” Rivkin sometime in early 1977. These songs, if indeed we can call them that, weren’t really intended for release; they aren’t even named in the circulating bootlegs, just numbered. But they offer a compelling glimpse at Prince’s musicianship and versatility in the months leading up to the his first album–not to mention the musicianship and versatility of two notable future sidemen.

Make It Through the Storm

(Featured Image: Prince in Owen Husney’s home, 1977; photo by Robert Whitman.)

When last we left our intrepid hero, he was in New York City, shopping the demo he’d recorded at Moonsound over the summer. But Prince turned out to be a harder sell than he’d expected. “He thought the first person who heard him would sign him,” his then-collaborator Chris Moon told biographer Matt Thorne. “And it didn’t happen, and neither did the second guy or the third guy” (Thorne 2016).

Eventually, Prince came to Moon once again for help. “He called me up and said, ‘Oh, man. I called up all these record companies and they won’t have anything to do with me. I can’t even get in to see them,’” Moon told another biographer, Dave Hill. “He says, ‘I need your help. I want you to get me an appointment with one.’ I hung up and thought, ‘Jesus Christ’” (Hill 32). A few unsuccessful cold calls later, the legend goes, Moon hit upon a ballsy gambit: he told the secretary for Atlantic Records that he was representing Stevie Wonder. “Two minutes later, the boss is talking to me on the phone,” Moon recalled to Per Nilsen of Uptown magazine. “I said, ‘This is Chris Moon and I’m representing Prince. If you like Stevie Wonder, you’re gonna love my artist. He’s only 18, he plays all instruments, and he’s not blind!’” (Nilsen 1999 29)

Moon’s subterfuge got Prince in the door at Atlantic, but to no avail: “the next Stevie Wonder”’s sound was cryptically deemed “too Midwestern” by the label’s representatives (Hendricksson 1977). So in a way it’s fitting that the most important connection Prince made in the fall of 1976 was located back in the Midwest: all the way home in Minneapolis.