1977-1978: "For You" And Early Days With Warner Bros
In April of 1978, Prince’s first album was released, and while it did reasonably well, it probably didn’t have the impact Prince (and his label, Warner Bros) had hoped for.
In what would be an omen of things to come, Prince’s demands made getting a recording contract somewhat complicated and his priorities made the recording of the first album far more expensive than his label would have preferred.
Prince’s first demand was to retain his publishing rights. By the late 70's major labels were becoming more accustomed to this, and I haven't read anything that leads me to believe he had any trouble getting this from Warner Bros, although the finer points of that arrangement did eventually become a point of contention later on.
Prince's second demand was for artistic control over his output. This is not something an 18-year-old normally wants, and it is almost unheard of for them to get it, but Prince managed to wring it out of Warner Bros after failing to do so from at least one other label.
Some Historical Context
In the 1970’s, a sea change was beginning in the music industry. Back then, there were still “The Charts” and “The Black Charts.” It should go without saying that this was terribly racist and incredibly stupid. Essentially, music was segregated. The audience, however, was increasingly integrated. Prince always saw himself and his hometown (Minneapolis) as examples of how to happily put different kinds of people into a diverse whole that was able to celebrate “difference.” One of the hallmarks of his work was an occasionally aggressive refusal to abide by conventions that separated people. His egotism made that impulse problematic from time to time, but his distaste for labels and boxes imposed by others was generally a positive thing, as well as it motivated his need for control. Unfortunately, record labels are not known for freely giving control to their artists.
Stevie Wonder. He's way cooler than mere mortals.
The artist to which Prince was most often compared at the very beginning of his career was Stevie Wonder. Like Prince, Stevie was a prolific multi-instrumentalist. Like Prince, Stevie was signed to a record deal at a very young age. Prince was aware of this, and in the future would highlight the comparison at awards shows.
Stevie Wonder dressed like a cowboy. Still cooler than us.
Stevie Wonder was not just an inspiration to Prince’s generation of artists, he was also a cautionary tale. Stevie Wonder’s struggle to produce the work he wanted to produce as opposed to that which Motown thought would sell, is well known. This struggle had its beginnings when an 11-year-old Stevie was signed to a recording contract by Motown which gave Motown most of the final say in what Stevie Wonder recorded and released. Getting out of that situation was difficult and put his career at risk. Prince definitely knew this story. By the late 70’s it was obvious that in order to have control over your work, it was best to start out as you meant to go on. Prince wanted to be the one making decisions for his work.
Sign The Name They Gave You
To get that decision-making authority, Warner did make him jump through a few hoops to prove himself. For starters, they made him come to Hollywood, gave him studio space and instruments, and watched him while he recorded a song by himself. “Just As Long As We’re Together” was recorded many times in the late 70’s. It seems to be the song that Prince used to teach himself how to use a studio. He recorded it at least five times. Twice at two different studios in Minneapolis, once for CBS records (who chose not to sign him), once for Warner Bros (who did sign him), and again for the version that was released on “For You.”
The other major hurdle was they made Prince bring along an executive producer named Tommy Vicari. This was Warner’s insurance that Prince would deliver his record as he said he would. Just in case he did not live up to his own hype, someone was there to represent the label’s interests. That sounds pretty cold-blooded, and the decision probably was exactly that, but Vicari was and is very well-regarded in the industry. He had worked with Barbara Streisand, Cat Stevens and (probably most impressive to Prince) Joni Mitchell. So yeah, they sent Prince into the studio with a chaperone, but he was probably the best person to polish up Prince’s own production skills.
All Of This
“For You” is a strange album to talk about in the context of Prince’s career as a whole. On the one hand, it is definitely a hint of things to come. On the other hand, it’s a complete oddity. I think it’s fair to say nobody’s first album is their best, no matter how good the album is or who recorded it. Nobody really believes “Please Please Me” is the Beatles’ magnum opus. “Led Zeppelin I” is an example of a fantastic first album, but given a choice, very few people would take it to the desert island and leave “Led Zeppelin IV” or “Physical Graffitti” behind. It’s debatable which album actually counts as Stevie Wonder’s first, but none of the contenders measure up to “Talking Book” let alone “Songs In The Key Of Life.”
My point is, “For You” is not really representative of the body of work taken as a whole. It really is just a first effort by a very young artist trying to find his voice and carve out a place for himself in the musical landscape. He doesn’t quite succeed in either endeavor, but there are plenty of good things to say about this record. More than anything else, this is Prince showing off, making sure people know he can do these things. So much of his early career is about proving himself, and nowhere is he trying for that more explicitly than on "For You." Speaking of which...
The title track opens the album, and more than any other piece of music on the album it probably best represents the idea that this album is simultaneously a hint of what Prince would become and an anomaly. It’s a short, nearly a capella piece. In fact, in an effort to find some more information about the vocal arrangement, I noticed that there was one instrument in the song. Wind chimes. So it’s Prince’s voice…and wind chimes.
Under the “hint of the future” column, there is the vocal arrangement. Prince loved chords that would make any orchestral conductor have an aneurism just to look at them. Sometimes it’s very easy to remember Prince could not write music on paper because just a second or two of stuff like this would drive you crazy trying to write it down. I have heard there are forty-seven individual vocal tracks (!) in this single minute of music. The arrangement and production are very much as Prince would continue to write for the rest of his life. Lots of tight harmonies with gospel, R & B and blues voicings, often all at once, and also lots of doubling of notes.
"Music? No. There are not enough notes to call this "music." I see an empty wall."
In music production, any time you want a single voice singing a note but it doesn’t feel quite “full” enough in the mix, you do a thing called double tracking. That means you take the single voice, make a copy of that track, then play both the original and the copy at once, making it have a bit more weight in the mix. An easy place to hear this effect is in the Beatles single “Revolution.” John Lennon’s voice is double tracked, but it is done slightly out of sync, almost like someone did a sloppy job of double tracking. This makes it almost have an echo. Often the technique is more or less invisible to the ear.
Prince tended to do something different, and a lot more labor intensive. Let’s say Prince wanted to hear the same note sung by four voices at once. Did he quadruple track? Nope, he did what he did in “For You,” which is to simply sing the same note four times, in four different takes, and stack them up in the mix that way. This does usually sound a little better, because it sounds more organic. The reason it’s not done more often is that in the studio time is money, and doing things Prince’s way took longer. In this case at least four times longer. Which is why this album cost so much to make. According to princevault, Warner Bros gave Prince $180,000 for his first three albums. “For You” cost $170,000. …Oops.
On the oddity side, it’s very short and a capella stuff is just not what Prince did. I can think of only one other track released in his lifetime that was a capella, and that is a song called “An Honest Man,” recorded for “Parade” but not released until the late 90’s on “Crystal Ball.”
And More
The rest of the album does not follow through on the weirdness of the first track. A lot of it is catchy as hell, but most of it sounds like either late-stage disco or ballads by a kid with a lot of Joni Mitchell records (which Prince did).
“Soft and Wet” was the first single from the album, and credit where it’s due, it is the most like Prince’s later work on this record. The elastic bass line, the rhythmic sensibility, the vocal descants are all present and correct. There is a reason this track is the one from this record that appears on greatest hits collections.
“In Love” is a song that sounds like it was written for people to dance to on “Soul Train,” and I mean that in the best way possible. It’s catchy, danceable, and for almost anyone else I would say it should have been a single…but it just lacks that spark of genius and commitment to the material that Prince gave to even some of his most mediocre songs.
“Just as Long as We’re Together” is a good song. I like the almost frantic up-tempo beat, the drum fills are exactly what they need to be, but again there is just something missing.
There are a few ballads on the record too, but I’d rather just lump them together and move right along at this point. The most interesting thing for me about these songs is that there is a Latin feel to them often missing from Prince’s work unless he was definitely going for that style. Also, it features a lot of acoustic guitar way up in the mix. Usually acoustic guitar in a Prince song has to be listened for very carefully. To have it up front in these songs is a treat.
And More And More
There really isn’t much in the way of rarities and nothing in the way of B-Sides from this time. Lots of stuff was recorded and never released. There were a couple of other configurations of the album with different songs on them, including a cover of “Send In The Clowns,” which…sheesh, we all dodged a bullet there, I think.
There was a 12 inch single put out of “Just As Long As We’re Together” backed with “Soft And Wet,” both of which were given a very light remix for that release. These “Disco” versions are so like the album versions I’m surprised anyone bothered. This is a remix in the purest sense: All the same tracks, with some volume differences and a light EQ massage, nothing more.
Interestingly, there was no tour for this album. A couple of shows were done in Minneapolis attended by Warner executives who decided that Prince and his band were not yet ready for touring. The thing is, if there’s no tour, that’s a problem for a recording artist at this time, because the tour is where you make your money. So no tour, no recouping most of that 170 thousand dollars Prince spent on the production of just under 34 minutes of music…
Next week: The Album Known As Prince
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