Rob "Cubby" Colby believes his job is to support the artist, but he also knows it's important to stand up for himself. The seven years he spent with Prince could sometimes be challenging, but that never dampened his enthusiasm for the music or the musician. "I wasn't intimidated by Prince, and he's a very intimidating guy. I say that only in defense of the fact that he knows what he wants and he can figure out whether you do or do not know what to do."

On the closing nights of Love/Sexy, his last Prince tour, Cubby met Phil Collins. "We were playing the Egg Dome in Tokyo which holds almost 35,000 people. I had an Electro-Voice manifold sound system and not very much of it. Bruce Judd, the systems engineer, and I were drawing pictures on the train ride to Tokyo of how we were going to stack the PA."

Cubby stayed up all night putting up the PA and when Prince arrived in the morning, he was in a bad mood. "Brad Marsh, the drum tech, was playing the drums. It sounded really big and powerful. Our plan worked. We even moved stuff around the night before to make it better. The whole band was out by me at the console listening to the drums. Everybody was happy. Two shows left. It sounded good. We were sold out.

Then Prince walked in, looked at me and said, "I've heard a Japanese band sound better through a television speaker. We're gonna spend all day tomorrow in here and get this to finally sound good."

I had been up all night getting it perfect and it was the best that I was going to make it and I said, "Is that right? Well, here's the chair, here's the console. I've had enough. I've been working my ass off to make this right for you." He turned to his bodyguards and said, "Oh and he's got an attitude too." And I said, "Yep, I guess I got an attitude. You go ahead and make it the way you want it. If you want, I'll just watch what you're doing,." So he proceeded to go in and do what he wanted to do and then I rebuilt my mix back to the way I thought it needed to be to get the right gain structure."

Collins happened to be in Tokyo and sat in to hear the opening performance. He was so impressed with what he heard he got Cubby's name and number. "Prince found out and called me up, "You don't need to come in tomorrow. I heard it sounded really good." "Well, thanks," I said, "but I still think it's time to part ways. Maybe it's time for you to have someone else taking care of this position."

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