Prince’s Pop Life
By Michael A. Gonzales
Birthdays were made for reminiscing, and the 52nd anniversary of Prince’s arrival on planet earth has got me strolling down the Blackadelic Pop Memory Lane. In the years before the internet was able to microwave instant celebrities daily, and glossy magazines like VIBE examined Black pop in a more adult fashion, the only solace for kids who wanted to know more about their music idols were the teen magazines.
Yet, while much has been written about the now-defunct 16 magazine and its maverick editor Gloria Stavers, who Bruce Springsteen biographer Dave Marsh claims, “basically invented rock and pop culture journalism as we know it today,” not much has been done to document the sepia-toned Right On! magazine and its underrated journalist/editor Cynthia Horner.
While many mainstream pop journalists, as well as urban writers at VIBE, XXL and The Source often poke fun at fanzine writers as well as the magazines themselves, there is no denying Cynthia Horner’s contributions to the canon of Black pop journalism.
Indeed, in the years before BET/VH1 reality shows introduced us to crackhead mothers and dysfunctional family drama, the “cozy ghetto exclusivity of the black teen slicks,” as cultural critic Carol Cooper once described them, was all we had.
As a child of the ’70s, I started buying the magazine for its many features on the Jackson 5, which showed the fans behind-the-scenes shots of the brothers lounging at home or standing beside Bill Cosby on the set of their latest television special. However, as the Jackson boys got older and their popularity began to wane, Right On! began focusing on other artists to fill its pages including the Sylvers, Switch, and Prince.
While I credit my cousin Marie for turning me on to the little man from Minneapolis in 1979 when she played me the bugged track “Bambi” from Prince’s self-titled second album, it was Cynthia Horner’s early interviews and exclusive photo shoots that fueled my Black pop culture curiosity.
Years before Rolling Stone and other mass media outlets were knocking on his Purple door, it was Right On! magazine, complete with cool pull-out posters, that schooled us on Prince’s favorite color, musical influences, and pet peeves. “As the first black teenager to command a six-figure sum and almost complete artistic control, Prince, the boy wonder, was the automatic object of attention, curiosity and esteem,” writer Dave Hill pointed out in Prince: A Pop Life (Harmony Books, 1989), the fanzines were there from the beginning of his career, making him “an ideal teeny heartthrob.” Much like his soon-to-be rival Michael Jackson, Prince was not overly articulate early in his career—and both artists were often described in the fanzine pages as “shy.”
Living in Baltimore at the time, I remember seeing Cynthia Horner interviewed on a cheesy local dance show called the Moon Man Connection. Broadcasting from Washington D.C., MMC was an extremely low-brow bite off Soul Train featuring the same dancers on every program while the set looked like it was shot in somebody’s basement.
In the fall of 1980, during the same period Prince Rogers Nelson transformed himself from an R&B waif flying on a Pegasus to a Black punk rock sexpot with the release of his landmark album Dirty Mind, vid-host Moon Man (who was also a DJ on the James Brown–owned radio station WEBB in Baltimore) decided to dedicate an entire show to the man.
Since Prince was probably too busy hanging in Detroit with The Electrifying Mojo, Cynthia Horner was invited to be the guest star. Between songs, bargain basement video effects and airing the raunchy “Dirty Mind” video clip, Horner talked about the first she met Prince.
Although it has been over thirty years now, if I’m not mistaken the story began something like this: “Prince rode up on a bicycle licking an ice cream cone.” For obvious reasons, that bizarre image has stuck inside my mind.
Years later, in 1994, I thought of that interview when Prince’s then-publicist Karen Lee introduced me to him at the erstwhile NYC nightclub The Palladium moments after he’d finished playing “Mary, Don’t you Weep” with fellow electric guitar gods Vernon Reid and Lenny Kravitz. Shaking my hand more firmly than I anticipated, the Man himself was sucking on a red lollipop. Oral fixations are forever, I suppose.
One of the first, and perhaps only times I ever camped out all night long for concert tickets was in 1988 when Prince was bringing his “Lovesexy” show to Madison Square Garden. Perhaps the most fun was meeting the legions of fellow Prince fans that had been down with his sound years before Purple Rain made him into a megastar.
One cool dude on line was Simon, who had driven from Connecticut. With a cooler full of sodas and sandwiches, which he was happy to share, he was prepared to queue up for days if necessary. Standing next to a big boombox blasting Prince b-sides, bootlegs, and other aural delights, he and I became fast friends.
Somehow we got on the subject of Prince refusing to talk to the press. “It’s not like the Right On! days when it seemed like they had a Prince had a new interview in each issue,” Simon joked, revealing himself to be as much of a fanzine aficionado as myself.
Eleven years later, as I got out of the taxi in front of Paisley Park studios in Minneapolis to interview Prince for Code magazine, I thought about my brief friendship with Simon and all the young Black pop fans like myself who would’ve been lost in the cultural sauce if it hadn’t been for Right On! magazine.
So this week, as we lift a toast in honor of Prince’s 52nd birthday (June, 7th), let’s pour out a little liquor for Cynthia Horner as well. It’s only Right!
Meanwhile, Feast Your Eyes On Prince and Sheila E Doing What They Do Best:
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