Life in the Basement

Prince started in his first group as a way to compete with his older stepbrother, Duane. Prince and Duane were both in the same grade at school. My older brother was the basketball and football star, Prince told Robert Hillburn of the Los Angeles Times. He always had all the girls around him and stuff like that. I think I must have been on a jealousy trip, because I got out of sports . . . I wasnt bad at basketball, but my brother was better and he wouldnt let me forget it. There were other guys like that too.

I just wanted to do something else and when I did get a band, the first thing you did was bring it to school and play the homecoming dance and say, Look at that. It was something they couldnt do.

Prince formed his first band, Grand Central, with his best friend Andr Anderson. The two had met in junior high school and had become best friends. They did not know it then, but as small children they had played together. By a rather strange coincidence, their fathers had been in the same music group years earlier. They discovered the fact one day when Andr came over to visit Prince and saw a picture of John Nelsons old band. That looks like my dad! shouted Andre when he spotted the picture.

Andr had been a bit of a troublemaker and Princes mother and stepfather had not liked him. Princes parents did not want me around him, admits Andr. They would ground him just so he would stay away from me.

Prince ended up on Andrs doorstep when he became too much for his aunt to handle. Andrs mother Bernadette took him in, letting him share Andrs room.

When we were little, about thirteen, Andre told Rock and Soul, we had this room with really small beds. We were really separate people, and wanted to divide the room to prove it. So I took a piece of tape and put it in the center of the room and up the walls. My side was packed with junk. . . . Princes side was immaculate. His clothes were always hung up or folded. He even made his bed every day!

Eventually Prince decided it would be easier if he moved into the basement of the house, which would give him some privacy. Finally he had his own space, away from parental interference and discipline, a private world of his own. Prince felt more at home than he ever had. My brain was free of everything, he said years later, I didnt have anything to worry about. I knew it was okay to explore whatever I wanted down there in the basement because things werent forbidden anymore. Thats when I realized that music could express what you were feeling, and it started coming out in my songs. . . .”

The Anderson basement became Princes laboratory. There he could explore and create in the world of music with complete freedom and abandon. It was there that he and Andr put together their first band, Grand Central. Prince played lead guitar, Andr played bass, Andrs sister played keyboards, and Princes cousin Charles Smith was the drummer. At different periods in the bands development, Terry Jackson and William Daughty played percussion.

Even though they were very young, the band was considered to be quite good. Andrs mother did not even mind all the pounding and raucous noises that vibrated through the floorboards. The way she looked at it was, as long as the kids stayed in school and got good grades they could do whatever they wanted to in their spare time. If things got a little noisy around the house, at least she knew where her kids werekeeping the band going would keep her kids out of trouble.

On Saturdays the band would set up on the Anderson front lawn and perform for the neighborhood until the police came to make them stop. They played anywhere and everywhere they could. One of their biggest fans was John Nelson, Princes dad, who would come and photograph the band. Despite their difficulties in communicating with each other in words, his father showed support in his own special way.

Grand Central was a Top 40 band. They played songs by Sly and the Family Stone, Larry Graham, and even some Michael Jackson. They played black music but they were listening to music by white artists as well. Because the black population of Minneapolis is small, Prince and his band had to play all sorts of music to make their audiences dance. The frustrating thing was that it was not his own music.

I hated Top 40, Prince said years later. Everybody in the band hated it. It was what was holding us back. And we were trying to escape it. But we had to do it to make enough money to make demo tapes.

Demo tapes, short for demonstration tapes, are recordings an artist makes in a studio to audition for record companies. Record companies have scouts called A & R men or women (A & R stands for artists and repertoire). Their job is to find new artists and new songs that they think will be hits. They do this by listening to many demo tapes.

Before Grand Central recorded any demo material, they changed their name to Champagne and got a new drummer, Morris Day. Morris sat in with the band one day and it was obvious that he was a better drummer than Princes cousin Charles. Morris was in, Charles was out, and the band had a new manager: Morris Days mother.

When Prince graduated from high school he suddenly felt alone and adrift. The band was not making lots of money and he certainly did not want to work in a non-musical, ordinary job. Prince retreated deep into his basement and started writing furiously. He wanted to make it and he knew the only way to do that was to come up with hit songs. Songs that he wrote himself.

I was writing like three or four songs a day. And they were all really long, remembers Prince.

Armed with Princes new original material, Champagne marched into Moon Sound studio to do the demos they hoped would land them a recording contract. The sessions were recorded by the owner of the studio, Chris Moon. He was not very impressed with the band or the songs, but he was impressed with Prince.

Moon suggested the two try to collaborate on some songwriting. Moon had written lyrics for a song he wanted to call Soft and Wet. He thought Prince would be the right person to set them to music. In exchange for helping him write the song, Moon let Prince have free run of the studio. Hed stay the weekend, sleep on the studio floor, Moon told Debbie Miller of Rolling Stone. I wrote down directions on how to operate the equipment, so hed just follow the little chartyou know, press this button to record and this button to play back. Thats when he learned to operate studio equipment. Pretty soon I could sit back and do the listening.

Because he had learned to play so many instruments over the years, Prince was able to play all the parts himself, recording track by track until he had a finished demo tape. He was proud of his work but his band was a little put out that he recorded without them. Already Prince was proving to be his own man, willing and able to do things himself.

Anxious to have something happen with his career, he decided he should go to New York City where many large record companies had their headquarters. Prince tried to convince the rest of the band that they should move there, but they were opposed to taking such a giant step; even his best buddy Andr was not ready to take the plunge.

I dont think they liked the idea of me manipulating the band so much. I was trying to get us to do something different. . . it was always me against them.

So once again Prince was alone and packing his bags to move on. Hurt and disappointed that Andr and the rest of the band would not follow his lead, Prince vowed to make it on his own. He was going to New York City.