Can you delve more into your first interaction with Prince? Did you guys just talk about music?
How did you begin working with Prince?
Owen Husney: The first time I met him actually was when Chris Moon brought him over to my house. I had already heard the demo by that point. I was quite enamored with what I heard, but I still didn’t know what he looked like or anything. Chris already told me that it wasn’t a band. It was one kid playing everything, which was pretty unusual in those days, except for maybe Stevie Wonder. The fact that he was so young and he was doing it was cool. Actually, he didn’t really want to meet at my office. We met over at my house; I was living in Minneapolis with my wife at that time. I was sort of thrilled to see that he was also cute. [ laughs ] I was in showbiz, so I was trying to figure out every aspect of it. I said to myself, “Please don’t be that gifted and ugly or 475 pounds.” [ laughs ] I was just praying, and I listened to the demo tape like six hundred times. So, I was very prepared when he came over. I could tell that he was a very bright human being, even though he was that young. He was grasping a lot of different concepts. I was probably ten years older at that time. But I could tell that he was very bright, aside from the music, which was important to me. I could just tell by the way he was conducting himself, and by some of the questions that he was asking me, that there wasn’t some bullshit going on there. He was grasping a lot of the things that I was throwing out at the time. I was asking him some questions. I was asking him about his influences. Because I was a musician myself, I had a lot of instruments around the house. He gravitated to the instruments and was still talking, which really made it nice because it broke the ice. I listened to his demo a thousand times, and I was watching him, like I’m sure he was probably watching me at the time, and trying to figure each other out. I think there were some things that I threw out that he got right away, and we formed this little friendship. I’ve worked with many, many artists in my lifetime. Everybody is always leery when they meet a manager. I could see that he was leery and checking me out, but what he did or did not know that I was checking him out to see, “Hey, can I work with this dude? Is it a workable situation?” I had a saying that there are no superstars who are still living in their mother’s basement who should have made it. You have to have talent and drive, and that’s the most important thing. I knew he had the talent. I was checking him out to see, “Okay, is this going to be a drug situation?” Because I had been through that. “Is this going to be a kind of attitude situation?” Because I had been through that too. All these things were sabotage and killers to the artists, especially in the beginning. He didn’t seem to have any of that. He seemed to be very directed and focused. When I said something, he was listening. He wasn’t, like, off in the corner looking at flowers or anything. He was there, he wanted know, and because of that, in that first meeting, I was very enthused to go to work with him and see what I could do. Again, you have to understand, at the beginning of an artist’s career, it’s fifty percent management and fifty percent artist. Once the artist starts to make it, they’re generating money, and they’re doing it, obviously, it becomes all about the artist at that point. And because he was so young, he needed me. I can tell that he needed me because I was a little bit older than him, and I had been around the block. He needed my information and my experience. We all know that Prince, at some point, became entirely his own boss, but it was not that way in the beginning; I knew this young vulnerable kid who came into my house. When I mourned his death, I mourned that kid that came to my house. There was a very young, vulnerable kid living in André Cymone’s basement at that time.
Husney: Yes. We talked about a lot of things, and I kind of have this sense of humor that some people just don’t get and some people get, and he got it. Because I will just all of a sudden say something out of the blue that other people would be like, “Huh, what?” I know Chris [Moon] was doing that, because he was at the first meeting. There was a reason I did that. I could tell Chris was kind of like, “Huh?” But Prince got it, and he would laugh his ass off. I thought, okay, he has a sense of humor. He gets it. He gets what’s going on. I had met a lot of people from other record labels at the time, and I had some near misses in management. I had an act that Columbia Records wanted to sign. But I met an attorney who I became friends with, until he was killed about two years ago [in a cycling accident]. He was a very famous attorney named Milt Olin, and he just looked at me one day, and he said, “You know what, Husney, you’re one of us.” And when I met Prince, that was the same feeling I had. It was like, “Hey, man, you’re one of us. You get it. You get the bullshit, you understand this stuff.” And that was very appealing to me. I could tell that he was pretty driven.
Take me back to the first time you heard his demo, and what songs were on that demo that you heard?
Husney: The demo was some stuff that he and Chris had done at Chris’s Moon Sound Studios. Prince could come over to Chris’s studio anytime he wanted to. So a lot of what I heard were very long songs, longer than you would want on a demo tape. But I could hear that there was some serious talent. I actually asked Chris what was the name of the band. He just looked at me and said, “Hey, it’s one kid. He just turned eighteen, and he is singing and playing everything.” I was like, “Okay. Let’s go to the next stuff. Let’s listen to that one too.” I think one of the first things I heard was a song they had cowritten called “Soft and Wet,” which was the first single. I didn’t know where the impetus came from, because “Soft and Wet” was very suggestive at the time. I didn’t know who came up with this layer and what was going on, but they had pretty much cowritten that song. [The other songs] were good, but they were almost jam songs. They were very long. I was listening with a commercial ear all the time back then. I’d been through the mill, so I understood how some of those A&R guys thought. The whole time I was thinking, “Boy, if I ever get to manage this guy, these songs are going to have to be two minutes in length,” which I knew wasn’t going to make him happy, but I had to do it. Later on, I just started listening to everything that he was writing. We would sit and listen and get everything that he was writing. He trusted me at that time, because he was a kid, and I was the dude in town; but I think he respected the fact that I had come from the basis of being a musician, and I had my own little hit record myself [“(Turn on Your) Love Light” by the High Spirits]. I think that gave him a lot of confidence. I didn’t think anybody else had all of that going for them, and he was smart enough to recognize that.
Now, when he started working with you, was he still living with André, or did he move in with you?
Husney: Yes, he was still living with André, but he was spending a lot of time in my house at that point and with André. These guys were like glue. They were always jamming together. They could sort of read each other’s mind. André was a very gifted guy. I was over at his house and saw the famous basement. I began to gather that André
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