Months after Fleetwood Mac finished touring around their 1982 album Mirage, Stevie Nicks started working on her second solo album, The Wild Heart. Inspired by Nicks’ friend Robin Anderson, who died from Leukemia in 1982, the opening “Wild Heart” was a song Tom Petty called “Epic.” Petty and the Heartbreakers also join Nicks on “I Will Run to You,” which he wrote, and Nicks hit No. 5 with the lead single “Stand Back.”
The Wild Heart closes on a more orchestrated ballad, inspired by one of Nicks’ favorite movies, Jean Cocteau’s 1946 French film La Belle et la Bête, and adaptation of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s 1757 fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. Nicks wrote the song for Mick Fleetwood.
Produced by Jimmy Iovine and recorded live in New York City, the orchestral track was backed by musicians Roy Bittan on grand piano and Paul Buckmaster, who was conducting the orchestra, along with Nicks and backing vocalists Sharon Celani and Lori Perry.
“It began as a piano demo done in Lori’s husband, Gordon Perry’s studio in Dallas,” recalled Nicks. “The room is just magical, a church. Lori later sent me a tape with beautiful voices on it, and Sharon and I tried to duplicate it but we couldn’t. So we got all the original vocalists together in New York and recorded it live.”
Within three hours, “Beauty and the Beast” was recorded with a full house in the studio. Ceremoniously dressed in all black, Nicks walked in and served champagne to her band during the sessions. “I wanted them to feel like they were the most special orchestra that ever existed, for that night,” said Nicks. “They walked in, played, and left, and it’s like they don’t even have any idea what they gave me, how precious it is.”
Nicks added, “It was like we had gone back in time. We all wore long black dresses, served champagne, and recorded it all in one room. When it was over, I walked out with this elderly gentleman who played violin, and the generation gap ceased to exist.”
[RELATED: The Meaning Behind the ‘Other’ Song Tom Petty Wrote for Stevie Nicks]
‘Who is the Beauty, Who is the Beast?’
Written entirely by Nicks, “Beauty and the Beast” talks about a love unlike anyone else, who lives in a world that is not mine. The lyrics ultimately question who is the beauty and who is the beast.
You’re not a stranger to me
And you are something to see
You don’t even know how to please
You say a lot but you’re unaware how to leave
My darling lives in a world that is not mine
An old child misunderstood out of time
Timeless is the creature who is wise
And timeless is the prisoner in disguise
Oh who is the beauty who the beast
Would you die of grieving when I leave
Two children too blind to see
I would fall in your shadow I believe
Though written for Fleetwood, Nicks also dedicated the song to Vincent and Catherine, characters from the late 1980s TV series Beauty and the Beast, starring Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton.
My love is a man who’s not been tamed
Oh my love lives in a world of false pleasure and pain
We come from different worlds we are the same my love
I never doubted your beauty I’ve changed
I never doubted your beauty I’ve changed
Changed who is the beauty
Where is my beast (my love)
There is no beauty
Without my beast (my love)
Who is the beauty
Who my love
Ah
Oh la bete la bete
Where is my beast
[RELATED: The Ballad Stevie Nicks Wrote for Joe Walsh After an Unforgettable Car Ride With Him, “Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You”]
“Beauty and the Beast” was later released on Nicks’ 1991 compilation Timespace – The Best of Stevie Nicks, along with her Enchanted box set from 1998 and The Soundstage Sessions in 2009.
“I remember Mick [Fleetwood] and I years later at the Red Rocks ‘Rock A Little’ video,” said Nicks. “He had come by himself to play, and he stayed there with me all night (in the rain) to do close-ups; everyone else had left. ‘Who is the beauty, and who is the beast? Which one of you? Have you ever really been able to answer that?’ I have, it took a long time, but I did finally find the answer.”
Photo: Mick Fleetwood (r) and Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac in concert, Wembley, London, UK, June 1980 by Andre Csillag/Shutterstock
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