studio space. In 2018 Moon attempted to sell his cowriting credit on “Soft and Wet” for around half a million dollars. (Photo by Femke Niehof)"/>
Early collaborator Chris Moon recorded Prince and other local Minneapolis artists at his home-based Moonsound Recording Studios before moving to a dedicated studio space. In 2018 Moon attempted to sell his cowriting credit on “Soft and Wet” for around half a million dollars. (Photo by Femke Niehof)
Owen Husney
Moon viewed himself as a music creator, not a talent manager. He played the demo tape for acquaintances in the Minneapolis entertainment industry, attracting the interest of marketer Owen Husney. Moon sold Husney on Prince, who had his first solo manager when he signed with Husney’s American Artists in December. He also had $50,000 to support his work, an apartment, new instruments, a weekly allowance, and his first handler, Bobby Rivkin (aka Bobby Z.), who helped Prince get his driver’s license and find the apartment.
The same month, on December 29, 1976, Husney put Prince in his first real recording studio, Minneapolis’s Sound 80. Bobby Z.’s brother, David Rivkin, Husney’s former bandmate in a mid-1960s band High Spirits, was behind the mixing board, as he was at the earlier ASI sessions. The better-equipped studio gave Prince access to Polymoogs, further refining the Prince sound. These sessions lasted until the summer of 1977 and produced alternate versions of five earlier songs and new For You songs: “In Love” and “Just as Long as We’re Together.” Prince also recorded an untitled instrumental and the unreleased songs “Love in the Morning” and “You Really Get to Me.”
In the spring, while Moon was assembling press kits for an assault on Los Angeles record labels, Prince took some session work. At Sound 80, he worked with Pepe Willie on 94 East’s “Fortune Teller” and “10:15,” both unreleased until 2002. He also played guitar and sang background vocals on “Got to Be Something Here,” a Sonny T. composition recorded by The Lewis Connection. With Cymone and drummer Bobby Z., he recorded an eight-track instrumental session at Husney’s Loring Park rehearsal studio. He also recorded solo songs at Loring Park, including “Neurotic Lover’s Baby’s Bedroom,” “Hello, My Love,” and “I Like What You’re Doing,” all of which remain unreleased.
Emboldened by a classy homemade press kit, Husney began calling labels, telling them that CBS was flying Prince to Los Angeles for a meeting. He got a “yes” from Russ Thyret at Warner Bros. and then told the story in reverse to CBS. Prince and Husney, accompanied by attorney Gary Levenson, set up April meetings with CBS, Warner Bros., A&M, RSO, and ABC-Dunhill. Without telling the labels, the trio left Minnesota with three nonnegotiable demands. First, they needed a three-record deal. Second, Prince had to play all the instruments. Third, Prince would produce himself. The trio eventually left Los Angeles with their first two demands met.
Prince went through a dog and pony show for the labels, although he kept his mouth shut. CBS doubted that he produced the music on the demo by himself, so executives watched as Prince assembled “Just as Long as We’re Together” from scratch. ABC and RSO passed out of hand. This type of executive decision-making led to ABC closing in 1979 and RSO shutting its doors in 1983. A&M would give only a two-album deal, and CBS insisted that Verdine White of Earth, Wind & Fire produce. Both Warner’s Thyret and A&R man Lenny Waronker urged Warner Bros. label head Mo Ostin to sign Prince. Prince signed a three-album, $180,000 contract on June 25, 1977. The one compromise was that Prince would coproduce the albums. To celebrate, Prince recorded “We Can Work It Out” at Sound 80 with Bobby Z. on drums. The sentiment would eventually prove overly optimistic.
Even though he had already signed a contract, in July, Warner Bros. put Prince through the same paces as CBS but this time without telling him. Although they were impressed with what they saw, the label still pushed for a big-name producer, such as Earth, Wind, & Fire leader Maurice White. Warner Bros. relented but installed Tommy Vicari as executive producer. It was, at best, a nominal title.
Prince rounded out 1977 by recording For You at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, from October 1 to December 22 after an aborted start at Sound 80. During the sessions, he recorded six tracks with Cymone on bass and For You assistant engineer Steve Fontano on drums. The still-unreleased sessions include an untitled instrumental, plus full songs “Life Is So Neat,” “E-Pluribus Funk,” “Shine Your Light/Red Zone,” “Bump This,” and “Waiting for You.” Fontano would go on to win two Grammys for engineering Santana’s Supernatural LP in 1999.
By the time Prince was on to Owen Husney, he was all but done with Chris Moon beyond legal entanglements and financial settlements. By the end of the year, after a disagreement about a space heater and Husney being treated more like a gopher than a manager, Husney quit. He was reportedly followed by a settlement in the range of $50,000.
3
Remember When I Met U First Four Albums, 1978–1982
For You (1978)
For You is the best debut album ever released by a horny but sentimental multi-instrumentalist on his twentieth birthday. After that, the superlatives are a bit tougher to muster, and the most surprising aspect of the disc is that it wasn’t titled 4U. While there’s musical variety and some virtuosity, it’s hard to believe that anyone but Prince believed this was the first step to music immortality.
Legend says that Prince did everything on For You. He’s credited as producer, arranger, engineer, and cover designer and with playing more than 5,000 instruments. The last part is an exaggeration, but he lists twenty-seven instrument credits. Do three different synthesizers really count as three different instruments? And he did receive studio help, with keyboardist Patrice Rushen and her boyfriend Charles Veal contributing to “Baby” and Warner Bros. mole Tommy Vicari acting as executive producer. But it is true that Prince spent $170,000 of the $180,000 budget for his first three albums while learning to record an album.
For You is brief, nine tunes clocking in at just over half an hour. The songs are a mix of reworked 1976 Minneapolis songs and new songs, pulled together at plush California studios from late 1977 to early 1978. While a variety of musical styles and instruments are on offer, the album exhibits a tame similarity: it’s nine love songs written by a writer who knows love through other love songs encased in generic disco-era production. Prince is in charge, but he’s not yet in control.
But tea leaves are here to be read, as the two best songs hint at the major musical styles and risqué lyrical pathways Prince would soon reinvent. The first single, “Soft and Wet,” is three minutes of naughty synthesizer-based funk-pop heaven (his stock-in-trade), and album closer “I’m Yours” cranks the guitars to eleven, presaging guitar-god status. The a cappella title song teases at future choral wonders. And while there are a few other memorable melodies, the second single, “Just as Long as We’re Together,” still sounds like it couldn’t get past the velvet rope at Studio 54, and “Baby” probably shouldn’t have made it out of the high school notebook, where it would feel comfortable among sketches of unicorns and rainbows.
The album was released on Prince’s twentieth birthday, June 7, 1978. It barely dented the Billboard 200, hanging around five weeks and peaking at 163, but fared better on the R&B chart, hitting number twenty-one. The debut single “Soft and Wet” likewise broke the top 100 only at ninety-two but made it to number twelve on the R&B chart. The second single, an edit of “Just as Long as We’re Together,” hit number ninety-one on the R&B chart. No non-LP B-sides were offered, but promo mono and disco mixes of each song exist.
There was no For You tour. All songs, except “In Love” and “My Love Is Forever,” were performed live, and those might have been performed at the January 1979 Warner Bros. executive showcases. Two songs have interesting live histories. Prince first played “I’m Yours” on March 28, 2009, at the Conga Room in Los Angeles, more than thirty-one years after its release. This release-to-performance lapse was bested by the