Biography

Uptown: Early years
Prince Rogers Nelson was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota at Mount Sinai Hospital on Saturday June 7, 1958, to John L. Nelson and Mattie Shaw. John was a pianist and songwriter. Mattie was a singer. He is named after the Prince Rogers Trio, his father's jazz band. As a boy, he was called Skipper. There are a number of myths regarding Prince's ethnicity, some spread by Prince himself. In fact, according to an April 28, 1983, Rolling Stone article, Prince's father is African-American and his mother is herself multiracial, with Egyptian, African-American and Italian-American ancestry. After the birth of his sister Tyka, in 1960, Prince's parents gradually drifted apart. After they formally separated, he had a troubled relationship with his stepfather, causing him to run away from home. He lived briefly with his father, who bought him his first guitar. Later, Prince moved in with a neighborhood family, the Andersons, and became friends with their son, Andre Anderson (later called Andr? Cymone).

Prince and Anderson joined Prince's cousin Charles Smith in a band called Grand Central, formed in junior high school. Initially his involvement was just part of a mainly instrumental band, that played clubs and parties in the Minneapolis area. As time went by and Prince's musical knowledge broadened he found himself dictating the arrangements to the rest of the band. Before long he had become the band's front man. By the time Prince had entered high school, Grand Central evolved into Champagne and started playing original music already drawing on a range of influences including Sly Stone, James Brown, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix. At some point Prince was a student at the Minnesota Dance Theatre.

In 1976, he started working on a demo tape with producer Chris Moon in a Minneapolis studio. He also had the patronage of Owen Husney, to whom Moon introduced him, allowing him to produce a quality demo. Husney started contacting major labels and ran a campaign promoting Prince as a star of the future, resulting in a bidding war eventually won by Warner Bros. Records. They were the only label to give Prince creative control of his songs and offered him a contract.