Owen Husney - Famous People Whove Met Me: A Memoir By the Man Who Discovered Prince

Famous people whove met me

Famous people whove met me

by Owen Husney
The Man Who Discovered Prince

Rothco Press Los Angeles, California

Published by
Rothco Press
8033 West Sunset Blvd., Suite 1022
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Copyright 2018 by Owen Husney
First trade edition.

COVER DESIGN: NICOLE GINELLI
COVER CONCEPT: EVAN HUSNEY

All rights reserved.

Photos credit info: All photos Owen Husney unless otherwise noted.
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Rothco Press, Attention: Permissions Department, 8033 West Sunset Blvd., Suite 1022, Los Angeles, California 90046.

Rothco Press is a division of Over Easy Media Inc.

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-945436-20-8

FOR:

Lauren Schneider

Jordan and Evan

Irving and Georgette

Norton

Lauren Siegel

Thank You

Chris Moon for your foresight and persistence

Shirley Rivkin for being my other mother and giving the world:

David Z Rivkin

Stephen Rivkin

Bobby Z Rivkin

Britt for being the away from home mother to Prince and Andre
and turning Prince on to Joni Mitchell

Peter Himmelman for being the original BIG MUSE

Rob and Christine for your encouragement and telling me:
Its ready when its ready.

John Skipp for putting my book in order and jamming to
Spoonful of Love while doing it

Fred Rubin for pointing out my run-on sentences and teaching me how one word can change the flavor of an entire chapter

All the people, famous and otherwise, whove met me

Special thank you to my wife, Lauren Schneider, for your unending encouragement, spell checks, and grammar suggestions and especially for minimal complaints at seeing the back of my head for over three years as I typed away. This is your book too.

Kitcat: (1999-2017) my daytime companion and creative muse (mews)

Thank you to Prince for being the most intelligent, creative, and compelling person I have ever allowed into my life.

Ive relied on memory for what Ive written going back sixty plus years. In a few instances Ive combined events for expediency. What you are about to read is 98% true. If Ive made an error, and you are in the 2%, please notify me immediately. Ill make the correction in the next printing. Ive changed a few names to protect the guilty.

Introduction

I was sitting near the front row of Prince and The Revolutions first public performance in the fall of 1979, at the Capri Theater in North Minneapolis. I was 17, an up and coming musician, and in my estimation, a pretty damn good one. While I thought I was getting some altitude with my own music career flying, maybe, twenty or thirty feet straight into the air, what I saw that night was Prince, ascending twenty or thirty thousand feet and then some. I had been schooled... no, make that humbled, by his astounding musicianship.

That was the second time Id seen Prince perform. The first time, I was playing rhythm guitar with Alexander ONeal & The Black Market Band, which featured R&B great, Alexander ONeal on vocals. We were the ostensible headliners at legendary KMOJ DJ, Pharaoh Blacks, Soul To Sunday New Years Eve Party at the Holiday Inn, in downtown Minneapolis. In fact, however, The Black Market Band was only last on the bill. Unfortunately for us, (and only a music-biz insider would know this) when you go on stage last, at say, 2:00 AM on New Years Eve, when nearly every person has left the venue, youre not headlining any show at all. The band that goes on just before the stroke of midnight is the real headliner. That night, that coveted position belonged to Champagne, a local band featuring none other than the kings of the North side: Morris Day, Andre Simone, and this little dude with a huge afro who called himself Prince.

I watched these guys with a mix of awe and envy. Andre Cymone had a device at his feet called a Mutron Funk Box that made his bass sound as if each note were being processed through some insanely good Wah-Wah pedal. His playing had a degree of finesses and rhythmic sophistication that I could only marvel at. Morris Day was kickin it on the drums; tight, crisp, unlike anything Id ever heard live. Soon Alexander ONeal was motioning to me, pointing towards Prince. You see how hes choppin out that rhythm with his right hand? You see the way his rhythm dont stop? His name is Prince. They say hes got a record deal on Warner Brothers.

Warner Bothers? Record deal? Hold up! This was Minneapolis, not New York or LA. This was the sticks, the prairie the frozen boondocks for gods sake. Whod ever even dreamed of scoring a major recording deal from outta this place? Well, a guy named Owen Husney did. Soon, I started hearing his name all around Minneapolis. People didnt dare speak it too loud; Husney was a name uttered in hushed, reverential tones: Look. Over there! Thats Owen Husney. Hes the one that went out to LA and got Prince a massive recording deal!

Two years out of high school, Sussman Lawrence, the new wave rock band Id formed with four of my friends, won first place in a contest sponsored by KQRS, Minneapoliss classic rock station. The prize was the opportunity to record one of our songs at Owens, American Artists Studios. I spotted him there, coming out of the bathroom and heading for the coffee machine. I was rarely at a loss for words, but there was so much mystery (at least in my mind) surrounding Owen I was completely tongue-tied.

Owen is, in some sense, even more of a mystery today than he was back then. But its a different kind of mystery, a more potent, more spiritual sort than youd expect from someone whod accomplished so much in the often, callous (and sometimes depraved) business of music. Owens great gift, as youll soon read in these pages, is his unfettered ability to love. He loves people first and foremost; he loves nurturing them, loves seeing their dreams grow to fruition. He is at heart a teacher a first rate facilitator who spots possibilities that others fail to see. But dont get me wrong; hes no monk. He has at times, throughout his long career, been exceedingly, if not ruthlessly, tenacious in his pursuit of those possibilities; and hes not a bit shy about depicting that tenacity with self-effacing humor and great lan in the stories youre about to encounter.

I ascribe at least some of Owens tenacity to his Syrian, Sephardic Jewish ancestry. His father is Syrian, a dyed-in-the-wool Aleppine; his grandfather, Eli Husney, the patriarch of the Husney clan, was a noted Rabbi and scholar. The Syrian Jews are well known in the diaspora, and in particular, the American diaspora, for being stubbornly attached to their cultural roots, whether its their food, their language, or their spiritual values. There is, within that ancient community, a strong sense that they are carrying something of great value through time and space. Owens anecdotes all seem to pulse with that same urgency.

Whether youre a baby boomer, a gen-xer, or a millennial, prepare to laugh your ass off as you get a true insiders perspective on the sheer insanity of the music business. You will learn much from this mysterious, tenacious, raconteur just as I have. Perhaps most of all, youll learn that dreams are best achieved when the desire to make them real is commensurate with the nerve it takes to make them so. And let me tell you, Owen Husney rarely fails on either count.