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Stevie saw a bit of romance to it. I remember her galloping in on horseback one day, in a velvet gown – I can’t remember why.
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Because Madame Nicks wanted to re-create Josette Day’s scenes in
La Belle et la Bête, the Cocteau movie she had somehow discovered in 1978 or thereabouts. Day/Belle rides through the enchanted forest to Beast’s castle on a white horse. She’s dressed in a flowing cape and hood. When Stevie talked to Timothy White in 1981 for her cover story for
Rolling Stone, she kept referring to this movie and what it meant to her.
I just finished reading Ray Lindsey’s completely disappointing book on his years as a gear tech for the band, and he devotes all of two or three sentences to recording
Mirage. He reports that the band didn’t give a damn about anything at that time. Everybody in the band was no longer interested
in the band. It’s amazing that Lindsey and Richard gave any engineering craft to the sessions — without even that,
Mirage would have been a total dud as far as leaving any sort of impression. Robert Hilburn (
LA Times) thought the album was appropriately named because it “practically disappears while you’re listening to it.” For us fans, the album has isolated little sweet spots, like “That’s Alright,” “Can’t Go Back,” and “Hold Me.” Maybe it should have been an EP.