is why I was heartbroken when Warner Bros. wanted someone who had more gold and platinum than David did on the wall. Ironically, when we went to record the first album, David went into the studio with another group, [Lipps, Inc., whose leader Steven Greenberg] was literally playing bar mitzvahs and weddings. This guy had an idea for a song and he brought it to David, and David completely retooled that song and brought in every snare sound and every sound and it became a number one hit. This was while we were doing the first album. Every free country in the world knows the song called “Funkytown.” So David was very instrumental in helping us from a recording and sound point of view to get that deal. Obviously, Prince had his own mind. He knew the direction, and David knew how to work with him in that direction in the studio. During the recording process of making the demo with Mr. Rivkin and Prince, where would they be positioned in the studio? Husney: I have pictures of them, but I can’t share them with you. I have pictures of our very first night. David would be at the console and Prince would be next to him. It was really the same with Chris Moon and Prince. They were sitting right there side by side.
was a very integral part of it. Both of them hung out over at my house all the time, because I had an office and I had an ad agency; I was gone during the day. So Prince was free to come into my house. I had a tape recorder that you could bounce tracks internally on. He used that as he would record and hang out. Then we began to have countless dinners together. It was really funny, because when we went to do the first album in Sausalito at the Record Plant [in 1977], André was there. He was telling my son this at the First Avenue [club] last August; I overheard him. André told him when he and Prince met me and [my son’s] mom, who’s now my ex-wife, it was the first sense of family that either of them ever had. And André said, “And it was White people.” [ laughs ] It was the first time they ever ate salad before dinner. André said, “The brothers on the North Side weren’t eating salad.” It was interesting to hear André’s take on it, but I guess it was true that we were kind of a family. We had become kind of a family. Prince trusted my wife and me, and we really loved him. He was a very cool guy. We just wanted to make sure that he made it.
Please talk about your move out to the West Coast to record?
Husney: Yes, that was very interesting because I did the demo tapes. I knew I couldn’t make a deal on the Moon Sound demos. They were just eight-track recordings. The quality wasn’t good enough, and the songs were way too long. I had another bandmate of mine, David Rivkin. David Z is what he goes by today. He got into engineering and recording acts. As a matter of fact, David is probably really one of the forefathers, because he staked his claim recording the young, Black musicians and bands in Minneapolis, well before Prince. David and I were in competing bands in our youths. Then he joined my band, and we toured for a long time. In my mind, there was only one person who could do the demos and that was David. We recorded in Minneapolis at Sound 80 [Studios]. I only wanted three, really well done demos. Then, I left to go out to California. I was lying my way into the record labels and pitching them. Eventually, I got a deal with Warner Bros. We wanted to always record in Minneapolis, so I cut a deal with the studio because it was a state-of-the-art room. Minneapolis was a real hotbed of music. People didn’t even know that. We definitely had talent there for a long time. It was a big commercial area, too, for ad agencies. This was an up-to-the-minute, contemporary, state-of-the- art studio.
What was his typical studio routine? Would Prince come in and work with him at a certain time?
Husney: Yes, because I had set up so many hours that would be enough time for them. It was nonstop even back then. I mean, that’s what Prince was put on Earth to do. That was it. And so I would be recording him at my office. I eventually got a studio together there, but I had an office with twenty employees because I owned an ad agency. They would leave at six o’clock, and then they’d come back to the studio. We’d push the desks off to the side, and then we would just jam until all hours in the morning. So even though the studio might have been a little bit more structured at that time because we didn’t own it, the music did not stop.
Why wasn’t the debut album recorded there?
Two things happened: Warner Bros. thought that David was too new, which I thought was a mistake. I had to represent Prince and tell the chairman of Warner Bros. that an eighteen-year-old kid that had never made an album before was also going to produce his own album. So we negotiated a deal, and Warner Bros. said, “Okay, we’ll give it to Prince, but we’ll need an engineer who’s already got gold and platinum on his walls. You can either do it in L.A., or we will fly that engineer into Minneapolis.” I was heartbroken because I wanted David Z to do it. Because I knew how talented he was, and I knew that he really got along, in a musical sense, with Prince. There was just no doubt about it. But they insisted—Prince knew that we couldn’t push the envelope. We got him to become his own producer. We couldn’t push it too far, so we agreed to have an engineer come in, [Tommy Vicari], and he had [a lot of ] experience. The original plan was to begin recording…at Sound 80 Studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Vicari and Prince were going to work at that studio for two months on his debut album. Vicari was going to fly in for two months and serve as executive producer, because the deal that was made with Warner Bros. was that Prince would serve as main producer, but the execs at Warner Bros. wanted a seasoned, veteran producer to serve as the executive producer on the album. The studio got so excited that they decided to put in a new recording console.
Were you in those sessions with David Z?
Husney: Yes. I was there all the time. I put them together. I put everybody there. I brought everybody and put them together.
When they were working on those tracks, what was their interaction like in the studio?
Husney: David was a consummate musician, and he really knew his way around recording. David also had perfect pitch. So I knew that Prince had no problems with David. David worked with Prince all the way through Purple Rain and…afterward. Prince really liked him. I don’t ever remember Prince coming to me and saying, “Whoa, this David guy, get him out of here.” Never. I don’t remember them having a problem. I think they were the perfect match. When it came to vocals, David had perfect pitch, but he also knew that when harmonies are off, and especially when one person’s doing all of the harmony parts like Prince was doing, when they’re just a little bit off, that’s where you get a richness of sound. When harmonies are dead on, it’s sterile. David understood that. They were the perfect match, which
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