Prince and Jack White; mavericks, auteurs and two of our favourite guitar players. The former White Stripes man is helping to fulfil the long held wishes of The Purple One's diehard fans with the release of the 'lost' 1986 album Camille sometime this year via his Third Man Records. And in an interview earlier this month on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert above, a jovial White revealed a little more about the album and the only time that the two musician's met in person.
"It was a record that he made under a feminine sort of avatar," explained White of the Camille album. "He had sped his voice up on a tape machine using vari-speed tape and he sped his voice up to sort of sound feminine and then he was going to release this whole album out of this guise of Camille."
But in fairly typical Prince fashion, he changed his mind about a release very late in the day.
"It got on the presses, it was already done and it had labels, it was going to be sleeved and then at the last second he changed his mind and pulled it off," said White. "And told Warner Brothers to cancel [the release]."
As the musician notes, recordings from the late legend's cancelled 8-song release have surfaced in bootleg circles and box sets over the years but an official album release has never materialised until now.
"Slowly the songs have been released over time, but the actual album as a whole, as a piece together, has not been released," notes White.
After Colbert asked if he had ever met Prince, White recounted an exchange the two had at an afterparty. And it suggests Prince appreciated White's work as a blues firebrand.
"He was incredibly nice," reflected White. And Prince also offered some advice, from one trailblazer to another: "'Don't let anyone tell you how to play your guitar' were the actual words," revealed White.
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