A Minneapolis news station has discovered archival footage of 11-year-old Prince.
The video was discovered in the archives of WCCO and features Prince voicing his support for better pay for teachers. “I think they should get a better education too, ’cause, um, and I think they should get some more money ’cause they work, they be working extra hours for us and all that stuff,” you can hear the young guitarist saying.
WCCO says the newly unearthed video is from 1970 footage. Production manager Matt Liddy found the old footage while searching for material to contextualize a teacher’s strike that is ongoing. Liddy suspected the young man was none other than Prince Rogers Nelson, so he showed it to his colleagues.
“[Liddy] immediately just went out to the newsroom and started showing people and saying, ‘I’m not going to tell you who I think it is, but who do you think it is?'” There’s no name attached to the news report, so the production crew had to verify and confirm with others on location.
The news station reached out to another child who was named in the footage. But after contacting several people with the same name and following addresses to dead ends, the news producers had nothing. So they contacted historian Kristen Zscholmer to help them on their search. Zscholmer noted the clip was most likely taken at Lincoln Junior High School, which Prince attended.
When shown the video, Zscholmer says, “I think that’s him, definitely. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I think that’s definitely Prince.” Zscholmer notes that videos of Prince as a pre-teen are almost non-existent. Eventually, one of Prince’s childhood friends, Terrance Jackson, was able to verify that the video does feature Prince.
“That is Prince! Standing right there with the hat on, right? That’s Skipper!” Jackson exclaims. Skipper was the nickname Prince had growing up. “He was already playing guitar and keys by then, phenomenally,” Jackson adds. “Music became our sport. Because he was athletic, I was athletic, but we wanted to compete musically.”