The Wild Heart liner notes weirdness

[mikebise]

For the last 28 years, I have been wondering some things about the liner notes/lyrics sheet of the vinyl and cassette versions of The Wild Heart. First off, on the original release-date vinyl The Wild Heart, the lyrics sheet has the order of "Enchanted" and "Nightbird" reversed. I used to wonder if that was because of the lengths of the printed lyrics, but they are of about the same length in lines.

In the cassette release, they were also reversed, but in later releases they were the right order of lyrics.

Next, in the lyrics to "Beauty And The Beast", the ending vamp lyrics have "le bete" printed, which is masculine in French. However, in the cassette, the lyrics say "la bete", which is feminine. I always wondered if that was Stevie's way of saying that she was the Beast in the song, much too blind to see. But then in later cassette releases, the spelling goes back to "le bete".

When Stevie wrote the liner notes for TimeSpace in 1991, she was furious at Mick at the time, and she says she finally realizes who truly is the Beauty and who is the Beast. Like, maybe, she used to think she was the wrong one, the "Beast", but then in 1991, she "realized" that Mick really was the Beast after all.

I thought maybe that was the hidden meaning behind "la bete" in the lyrics sheet.

I just always thought it was weird how the lyrics sheet changed a few times (and back!), and that would have had to be a deliberate thing. I'd understand if "la bete" was in the original release, and then someone told Stevie it was the wrong identifier. But "le bete" is in the title of her favourite movie, so she surely knew how it is spelled, so "la bete" was there on purpose in the later releases. And then changed back again even later (I have LOTS of copies of The Wild Heart in various formats!)

Yes, I find minute details like this very interesting.