Viv Prince's first professional work as a musician was with the traditional jazz band Lennie Baldwin's Dauphin Street Six in 1961, with whom he toured in Denmark and made his first recordings in 1962.

He joined Carter-Lewis and the Southerners in June 1963, with whom he recorded three singles, including the hit "Your Momma's Out of Town" alongside Jimmy Page.

As a skilled professional with an extrovert, unorthodox drumming style and considerable entertainment value, Viv Prince was repeatedly approached by young British rock bands - such as the Kinks - to become their drummer.

The mayhem culminated in a tour of New Zealand in August 1965, during which he paraded around in a leopard-skin pillbox hat, carrying around a dead crayfish on a string[3] and started plotting pranks and setting fires onstage, which resulted in big amount of bad publicity.

Over time, he would miss recording sessions more and more often, and the band had to call upon other drummers to replace him, including Bobby Graham, Mitch Mitchell and Twink.

For some time, he ran the Knuckles club in Soho, London that as he claimed, served as the first rehearsal base for Jimi Hendrix in England.

During the second half of the 1960s, he contributed to LPs by Chris Barber (at the session led by Paul McCartney), Twink and McGough & McGear (also joined by Jimi Hendrix), as well as released a few singles as a member of the bands, such as VAMP (with Pete Sears and members of Hutchinson Clark), Kate, and a solo single "Light of the Charge Brigade".