Love Is Demo
 

Does anyone know who's playing piano on the demo for "Love Is"? I downloaded this one a long time ago and am just now getting around to listening to it. It's so beautiful. I think I prefer it to the album version.

PM me with your email addy and I'll send it to you. :)

I always thought it was La Nicks. But - I have no way of proving that just as no one has any way I know of of proving it is not :laugh: :cool:

I always figured it was Stevie. I adore the demo version...it is gorgeous. I was thinking about her piano playing while listening to this song last night and if it is her playing, she has gotten much better. Her playing on her earlier demos is pretty stinky at best but on Love Is..she sounds much improved.

I love the demo, it would be awesome to see Stevie play it live that way in the next tour (I'm already saving ;) )

By the way, I also like the album version, Sara McLachlan fits very well in the mood of the song, IMO.

Romy

Much better than the album version, blows it to pieces. I have a burned copy of TISL with it instead of the awful album version. :nod:

I really don't think that it's Stevie playing piano on the demo. It's way too good to be Stevie.

It's Sarah, who happens to be a good pianist. I don't mean to be rude, but I'm absolutely bewildered hearing several fans think that could be Stevie. Don't you guys listen to the piano stuff Stevie does play? You don't hear a difference in musical ability between all that stuff & "Love Is"?

The whole world's gone mad.

It would have to be heavily sequenced, to put it mildly. . . .

Sarah was not playing on the demo. was she, which is what we are talking about. If she was - please tell me how you know this because the demo. was cut I believe in 95? ? :cool: I am not being a jerk, I am just being curious because Stevie has said she had Love Is completed in around 1995 or when she finished the 1994 SA tour, which was around then. Then she said she later asked SM to be on it and her husband to produce it. Also, the voice on the demo. sounds like prior to The Dance and alot like the SA voice. I could be wrong, so I am just being curious :cool:

How do you know this demo we're talking about was cut in 1995? Maybe it was cut in 1996 or 1998 or 1999. What happens a lot is that fans "hear" that a demo was cut in a particular year, & then they assume that what they have a tape of IS that demo. For example, a lot of people thought they had the "Rhiannon" piano demo from 1974, when in reality they had a demo of it Stevie recorded in 1978. Do you think she just demos a song once at the moment of its inception & then never again touches it until she goes formally into a studio with twenty-five professional musicians? That's a vivid assumption, to be sure.

As for Stevie & Sarah, we know they knew each other at least as far back as 1995 because Sarah interviewed Stevie for a print magazine. And Stevie told the Boston Globe critic that Pierre, Sarah & Sarah's husband helped with tracks for "Love Is," but how do you know what year that was? Maybe it was 2000, maybe it was 1999. Years are a mishmash when rock stars talk to the press.

My point is that Stevie Nicks is not playing the piano on that demo of "Love Is." She is nowhere near that level of ability. That piano work features trills, mordants, arpeggios & other rhetorical figures that resemble Sarah's style. For all I know, Stevie sent Sarah the chord progression & Sarah sent back a tape of her piano transcription, & Stevie sang to that. I don't know. A million different things could have happened. I'll admit, maybe it isn't Sarah -- but I'm damned sure it isn't Stevie.

Hey, I'm an optimist :D

I agree about the uncertainty of dates, and I don't have any clue about who's playing the piano (I tend to believe it's her though) but her voice seems also to me much more likely around SA years.

Romy

It's a beautiful, beautiful demo -- maybe her shining moment from the Third Great Age.

I was going by the quotes available during the TISL period. For example, on the Rosie show she said she had Love Is finished (presumably the demo.) before the writing block that Tom Petty's conversation at the Ritz. And - the voice on that demo, is not the same voice of the other TISL demos like the brilliant Space Needle - it is higher a la the SA period. So, it is possible SM played, etc. You just asserted it was a fact and I had never heard that :shrug: that is all.

As for Stevie's piano playing - I agree I have never heard her play like that, but who knows because I have never had the pleasure of hearing her play this - have you :cool :wavey: :laugh: If so - ya better spill the beans!!!!!!! :]

To my ears, the "Love Is" demo doesn't sound like it could be Stevie's playing.
If it had been more simplistic, then I could see it... but, as David says, there's quite a bit of sophistication to the playing, and, as much as I love her, Stevie just is not a sophisticated pianist.

As for the demo itself... I know I'm in the minority, but I vastly prefer the album version. The demo is kind of sloppy, and the vocal melody comes across as tenuous.
On the album version, Stevie's vocal is more committed and the melody of the vocal lines is stronger. I also prefer the ethereal touches in Marchand's production.

I tend to prefer polished to rough... I always have. :shrug: