Two years before Prince released his first album For You and before he began his ascent into the funk-rock-pop pan­theon, he was a very tal­ent­ed, very ambi­tious, and occa­sion­al­ly frus­trat­ed high school senior at Cen­tral High in Min­neapo­lis. That’s where the school news­pa­per got him to sit for an inter­view, more of a char­ac­ter sketch, to talk about his hopes for a musi­cal career. You can read it below.

If Prince was charis­mat­ic enough to be picked up on the high school paper’s radar, he doesn’t let it show in the arti­cle.

Most­ly, he rues the loca­tion of his home town.

“I think it is very hard for a band to make it in this state, even if they’re good. Main­ly because there aren’t any big record com­pa­nies or stu­dios in this state. I real­ly feel that if we would have lived in Los Ange­les or New York or some oth­er big city, we would have got­ten over by now.”

By the ‘80s, of course, he had made Min­neapo­lis the cen­ter of his own musi­cal empire, and Pais­ley Park became his home, com­pound, and music stu­dio, the place where he would even­tu­al­ly pass away.

But he did like high school, accord­ing to him, because the music teach­ers let him do his own thing. Already a mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist, the arti­cle finds Prince just start­ing to explore singing. This might be the most sur­pris­ing part of the piece. Prince’s range and the amount of char­ac­ter (and lit­er­al­ly char­ac­ters, male, female, or a mix) in his songs would lead you to believe that his voice came first.

Maybe some of the humil­i­ty came from his sta­tus in the high school band. The name Grand Cen­tral was inspired by Prince’s obses­sion with Gra­ham Cen­tral Sta­tion, whose bass play­er Lar­ry Gra­ham would lat­er join Prince’s ‘90s band and also con­vert him to become a Jehovah’s Wit­ness. Com­pet­ing for atten­tion was Mor­ris Day and André Cymone, who Prince would write for and pro­duce after he got his record con­tract. It was friend­ly but seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion.

To round out the arti­cle, Prince—who plays by ear—gets asked if he has any advice for fel­low stu­dents: “I advise any­one who wants to learn gui­tar to get a teacher unless they are very musi­cal­ly inclined. One should learn all their scales too. That is very impor­tant.”

You can read the full arti­cle below:

Nel­son Finds It “Hard To Become Known”

“I play with Grand Cen­tral Cor­po­ra­tion. I’ve been play­ing with them for two years,” Prince Nel­son, senior at Cen­tral, said. Prince start­ed play­ing piano at age sev­en and gui­tar when he got out of eighth grade.

Prince was born in Min­neapo­lis. When asked, he said, “I was born here, unfor­tu­nate­ly.” Why? “I think it is very hard for a band to make it in this state, even if they’re good. Main­ly because there aren’t any big record com­pa­nies or stu­dios in this state. I real­ly feel that if we would have lived in Los Ange­les or New York or some oth­er big city, we would have got­ten over by now.”

He likes Cen­tral a great deal, because his music teach­ers let him work on his own. He now is work­ing with Mr. Bick­ham, a music teacher at Cen­tral, but has been work­ing with Mrs. Doep­kes.

He plays sev­er­al instru­ments, such as gui­tar, bass, all key­boards, and drums. He also sings some­times, which he picked up recent­ly. He played sax­o­phone in sev­enth grade but gave it up. He regrets he did. He quit play­ing sax when school end­ed one sum­mer. He nev­er had time to prac­tice sax any­more when he went back to school. He does not play in the school band. Why? “I real­ly don’t have time to make the con­certs.”

Prince has a broth­er that goes to Cen­tral whose name is Duane Nel­son, who is more ath­let­i­cal­ly enthu­si­as­tic. He plays on the bas­ket­ball team and played on the foot­ball team. Duane is also a senior.

Prince plays by ear. “I’ve had about two lessons, but they didn’t help much. I think you’ll always be able to do what your ear tells you, so just think how great you’d be with lessons also,” he said.

“I advise any­one who wants to learn gui­tar to get a teacher unless they are very musi­cal­ly inclined. One should learn all their scales too. That is very impor­tant,” he con­tin­ued.

Prince would also like to say that his band is in the process of record­ing an album con­tain­ing songs they have com­posed. It should be released dur­ing the ear­ly part of the sum­mer.

“Even­tu­al­ly I would like to go to col­lege and start lessons again when I’m much old­er.”

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Prince and Miles Davis’ Rarely-Heard Musi­cal Col­lab­o­ra­tions

Prince Plays Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solos On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” and “Amer­i­can Woman”

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Sure­ly you’ve heard of Dis­co Demo­li­tion Night, when Chica­go DJ Steve Dahl invit­ed lis­ten­ers to the 1979 White Sox dou­ble head­er against the Tigers at Comiskey Park, offer­ing tick­ets for .98 cents if they brought a dis­co record he could blow up between games. The event drew thou­sands more than Dahl expect­ed, turned into a riot on the field, and has since passed into his­to­ry for its ral­ly­ing cry of “Dis­co sucks!” and its herald­ing of the end of disco’s reign.

Dis­co died at the end of the 70s, the sto­ry goes. But many music fans know dif­fer­ent­ly. Dis­co didn’t die. It mutat­ed, became House music, New Wave, and oth­er hybrid gen­res. It made its way into the music of the Clash, Blondie, Michael Jack­son, Madon­na, and oth­ers. Nonethe­less, Dis­co Demo­li­tion Night rep­re­sent­ed a wide­spread back­lash that drove dis­co off the pop charts and back where it came from—the most­ly black, Lati­no, and gay clubs in New York, Chica­go, Detroit, and oth­er cities.

Many peo­ple who have writ­ten his­to­ries of Dis­co Demo­li­tion have come to see it “as a not-so-sub­tle attack” against those groups of peo­ple, writes NPR, against “disco’s ear­ly adopters.” Dahl, who has co-authored his own book about the night, dis­agrees, but he admits that images of the event look “like a book burn­ing.” Dis­co “obvi­ous­ly threat­ened a lot of rock­ers,” he con­cedes. Anoth­er wit­ness to the event, an African-Amer­i­can ush­er named Vince Lawrence, saw evi­dence first­hand.

Lawrence—a dis­co fan and aspir­ing musician—tells the pod­cast Undone that he was actu­al­ly look­ing for­ward to the event. He liked Dahl and “had strict inten­tion of keep­ing records that were good that I didn’t have.” How­ev­er, as he col­lect­ed the records at the gate, he noticed among them Mar­vin Gaye and Ste­vie Won­der albums, “records that were black records,” he says, but not dis­co. He tells NPR, he saw “Cur­tis May­field records and Otis Clay records.… Records that were clear­ly not dis­co.” He balked, but was told he had to take them and issue tick­ets.

After Dahl rolled onto the field in a Jeep and blew up the dump­ster full of records, chaos ensued, and the stunt turned into “this zany, real life slap­stick rou­tine,” says Undone’s host Pat Wal­ters, “until all the sud­den, it’s just not.” Riot­ers set a bon­fire, stole the bases (lit­er­al­ly), and became a rag­ing mob. On his way out of the park, Lawrence was attacked by fans yelling “Dis­co Sucks!” and break­ing records in his face.

Colum­nist Renee Gra­ham, a gay woman of col­or who was a teenag­er at the time, recalls see­ing pho­tos of the event and being remind­ed of White Cit­i­zens Coun­cils smash­ing rock and roll records because they brought white and black kids togeth­er. “This wasn’t just ‘We don’t like this music,’” she says, “this was ‘We don’t like these peo­ple who lis­ten to this music.’” By 1979, how­ev­er, “those peo­ple” includ­ed many of the same kids’ class­mates, sib­lings, par­ents.… Dis­co had gone main­stream after Sat­ur­day Night Fever and the Bee Gees’ break­out. “It was almost like musi­cal gen­tri­fi­ca­tion,” says Gra­ham.

The Rolling Stones, Rod Stew­art, Led Zep­pelin, KISS—all of them appro­pri­at­ed dis­co. And the rock kids were furi­ous. After the riot at Comiskey, “dis­co became a four-let­ter word.” Careers col­lapsed, radio sta­tions changed for­mat, record stores reordered, almost overnight. Had none of this hap­pened, it’s pos­si­ble dis­co would have fiz­zled out. Dri­ven under­ground, back to its roots, it instead found new expres­sion in the hands of pio­neers like Chica­go DJ Frankie Knuck­les, the “God­fa­ther of House,” and New York’s “Lit­tle” Louie Vega and Ken­ny “Dope” Ramirez.

Knuck­les DJ’ed at Chica­go club the Ware­house, which lent its name to the music—predominantly dis­co or dis­co inspired—he played. As house music evolved, “you could hear it fill in the space that dis­co had occu­pied,” says Wal­ters. Vince Lawrence, too young to get into the Ware­house, began stag­ing his own house par­ties, and these spread to cities all over the coun­try, and even­tu­al­ly to Europe, where the music influ­enced bands like the Eury­th­mics and New Order, who dis­cov­ered house on the Span­ish island of Ibiza. Undone makes the case that Dis­co Demo­li­tion Night saved dis­co, in a way, so that it could emerge and influ­ence many more appre­cia­tive crossover fans in the decades to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­co Saves Lives: Give CPR to the The Beat of Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive”

Rita Hay­worth, 1940s Hol­ly­wood Icon, Dances Dis­co to the Tune of The Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive: A Mashup

Sat­ur­day Night Fever: The (Fake) Mag­a­zine Sto­ry That Start­ed it All

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness