Prince Shows Off a Different Side for '21 Nights'

Sept. 28, 2008— -- Downstairs in a dimly lighted screening room crowded with sofas, Prince leafs through the first authorized book of his career.

"I wanted to document something that was never done before," he says, pausing at a photo of himself immersed in fog onstage. "I don't expect that record to be broken unless I break it."

Just over a year ago, he performed an unprecedented 21 sell-outs in London's 24,000-seat O2 arena, the year's highest-grossing engagement at $22 million.

The residency is chronicled in "21 Nights" (Atria Books, $50), a coffee-table tome of Prince's lyrics and poetry and 124 previously unreleased photographs by Randee St. Nicholas, who shadowed His Purple Highness onstage, backstage, on the streets and in his hotel suite at The Dorchester.

Billed as an inner-sanctum invitation, "21 Nights," in stores next week, is hardly a slide show of an unshowered Prince watching pay-per-view in sneakers and beer-stained T-shirts. The style never stops as Prince, his band and his leggy twin dancers are snapped sporting impeccable designer garb in GQ-ready spreads. The shoots were "casual and spontaneous," he says, "but everyone had to be dressed up."

He writes in the book:

Eye'd rather dress 2 make a woman stare

Eye'm puttin' on somethin' that another won't dare

It's a freezer burn compared 2 cool

The "Vogue Italia" persona is no pose, says Nicholas, director of 150 music videos, the first being Prince's "Gett Off" in 1991.

"It may be glamorous to others, but that's his comfort zone," she says. "It's not like he changes to go out and be Prince. The guy looks amazing 24 hours a day."

When Prince suggested collaborating on a book, she proposed a fashion-centric chronicle of his London run.

"I knew I'd have him in one city, so he'd show up for photo shoots; he's a very elusive guy," says St. Nicholas, who has photographed music icons Bob Dylan, Diana Ross and Whitney Houston, as well as such Hollywood luminaries as Charlize Theron and Tom Cruise.

Because she shot primarily after hours, "there's a certain mood of isolation," she says. "You get a very intimate look at him by himself. His mystery is not something he works at. It's who he is."

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