The Ledge - Wild Heart (backstage version) on new Mix

KCRW blog, September 26, 2011
http://blogs.kcrw.com/musicnews/2011...ild-heart-demo

Well done, Internets! : Stevie Nicks’ Dressing Room “Wild Heart” Demo

You know what’s great? (Hint: It starts with an IN and ends with a NET.) That’s right! THE INTERNET!

You can find all these amazing things that you would otherwise never have been aware of, or had maybe forgotten about, or better yet wouldn’t have even imagined existed in the infinite stretches of data in the first place!

Take for example…this grainy (probably VHS) video of Stevie Nicks getting her make-up done and getting into character for either a concert or a Rolling Stone photo shoot in 1981, details are sketchy.

However, what is not even remotely sketchy is the totally awesome way that she spontaneously breaks into a super stripped-down, completely harmonic early (probably even pre-demo) version of Wild Heart (off her 1983 album of the same name.)

Mind you, the video quality is a bit murky, but she’s really belting it out so you don’t miss a thing. And watching her hair gently blowing in the breeze, the pure contentment in her smile, and the absolutely sincere excitement in her eyes as the guitarist starts playing is damn near the sweetest, truest thing I’ve ever seen on YouTube. I think you can even hear her say to her make-up artist, “This is the one!” And at the end, although a bit muffled, it sounds like she tells a guy that she was working on it and some other songs, “…in the car.” Like…on the way there?! (Stevie! Stevie…did you seriously write that song just a little while ago? I’m literally all like WHAAAAT?!) Sooooo soooo good.

The video’s been posted and re-posted a zillion times since it (apparently) surfaced back in 2008, but it’s just too beautiful and moving to not share again. So…here you go friends.

Well done, Internets! Well done.

-Mario Cotto