At just eighteen years of age, Prince self-produced his debut album, 1978’s FOR YOU, writing all the music and playing every instrument himself. Two years prior, Prince, already a multi-instrumentalist wunderkind, met studio owner/engineer Chris Moon, who would change his life by teaching him the ins and outs of recording while also helping him to find his voice and style. With a demo in hand, Moon delivered him to Owen Husney, who would manage the young artist and score a record deal with Warner Bros., setting into motion a historic musical career from a creative force of nature.
THE MASTER by Chris Williams
When and where did you first meet Prince?
the drums. I looked up again and he was over there playing the bass. [ laughs ] And I said, “That’s interesting. It looks like he can play all the instruments.” It finally occurred to me, I was spending all this time giving time away to artists and recording other musicians. I needed to record some of my own material. I’d been a songwriter since I was thirteen or something, so I had a lot of songs put together. I wanted to produce my music, but I realized working with bands was one of the nightmares in life. One of the…things I’d become acutely aware of with a recording studio was the incredible difficulty involved in getting a band to all show up at the same time at the same place, and then do that on a regular basis. So I was sitting there thinking, “Okay, I want to record some of my own material, and I don’t really want to work with a band, but what other options do I have?” And then I see Prince at the studio running around playing different instruments and I’m thinking, “There may be the solution to my problem. Now, all I got to do is to get one guy to show up. If he played all the instruments, wouldn’t that be great.” So after the session that day, I walked right up to him. He and I had probably not said more than two sentences to one another. He was incredibly shy. I mean, he just didn’t speak. I walked up to him and said, “Look, I’m looking to produce some original material. I would like to make you the artist. I will build a demo tape around you. I will package you up and write some songs for you, and I will teach you how to record and produce in the studio and see if I can make you famous. What do you think?” He looked up to me and said, “Yeah!” I reached in my pocket, and I handed him the keys to my recording studio, which was everything I owned in my life because I was only nineteen. I handed him the keys and he looked at me, and I said to myself, “You have just handed the keys to this small kid from the North Side of town that you don’t even know.” I said to him, “Meet
Chris Moon: I had a recording studio in South Minneapolis in the 1970s. The name of the studio was Moon Sound Studios. It would be fair to say it was the only studio in town that was really doing mostly Black music and R&B. The reason I was doing mostly R&B was because it was the kind of music I liked. I am an Englishman from England, originally, but I was always drawn by the joy that R&B and Black-rooted music brought more than anything else. Sixty percent of my time was given away to local bands. So if I found somebody I liked, I’d just bring them into the studio and record them, produce them, and put it all together. There was never any charges for the artists. I did that because one of the reasons I had a recording studio is because I liked music. Most people start recording studios because they are trying to make money and like music. [ laughs ] I was fairly known in Minneapolis. If you were a Black artist, it was the studio to go to. There were a couple other studios, but they were doing mostly rock and country and things like that. A band called Champagne booked some time at my studio to put together a demo tape. It was actually a paying gig. One of the band members’ mothers was managing the band because it was all young kids who were fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen years old. She booked some time with me to do a demo tape. So they were recording in the studio. Each day at lunchtime, the band would break and go across the street to Baskin-Robbins to get an ice cream cone, and I would sit in the control room eating my lunch. One day while I was sitting there eating my lunch, I looked out into the studio and one of the artists stayed behind. The one that stayed behind was Prince. He started playing on the piano. I kept eating my sandwich, and a bit later I looked up and he was over there playing the guitar. A bit longer I looked up and he was over there playing
Photograph by Joe Giannetti from the original photo shoot for 1978’s For You , originally intended as the cover and to include flying birds. © Joe Giannetti. All rights reserved.
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