Stand Back according to Prince

[CADreaming]

Stand Back - Prince's version

Just in case you don't want to listen to the entire interview or bother with skipping, here's what he said:


"Back in the day Stevie Nicks came to see us perform at Solid Gold... and we played Little Red Corvette and she became enamored of the song and eventually called us and said I've written a song that sounds similar would you come down and check it out and when i got there her and Jimmy Iovine couldn't figure out how to work the drum machine. People were using live drums at that point - me and a couple of others maybe from germany were the only ones who had drum machines, so I went down there and programmed it for them and pretty much played most of the song there in about 20-30 minutes and split - and next thing you know it was on the radio."

[vermicious knid]

I found this that says he taped that song on Solid Gold on April 4th, 1983. That is just two months before The Wild Heart was released. Would they still have been recording that late? I thought Stevie's marriage on January 29th happened in the middle of recording. Maybe recording was all done by the time she visited him at Solid Gold, and Prince has it out of order.

[louielouie2000]

Originally Posted by vermicious knid

I found this that says he taped that song on Solid Gold on April 4th, 1983. That is just two months before The Wild Heart was released. Would they still have been recording that late? I thought Stevie's marriage on January 29th happened in the middle of recording. Maybe recording was all done by the time she visited him at Solid Gold, and Prince has it out of order.

It's possible the lyrics were written earlier, but the instrumental part of the song itself didn't take full shape until Prince swept in. He did say in the above article that he helped record it, and it was on the radio almost immediately after... so it all makes sense to me.

[Sanne2]

It was probably not Solid Gold but some other show that was earlier.
I have a clipping from february '83 that reports her wedding plus the fact that she's working with Prince for her new album.

[Christopher]

I think the truth lies somewhere between both Stevie and Prince's recollection. I also remember reading that clip in Rolling Stone's random notes about Stevie's surprise nuptials and that she was working w. the purple one in Feb 83'.

I like how the DJ's surmise that Prince wrote the whole song along with Manic Monday and others, and Prince went along and didn't give Stevie her credit. It's clear that Stevie wrote the words and her own melody on top of the same chords, and had a track recorded before Prince arrived in the studio to add his synthesizer part and drum machine programming assistance.

[mikebise]

The Scarlett version of the "Stand Back" video was conceived with "If Anyone Falls" as the song for it, since it was the original lead single for The Wild Heart.

Lots of sources mentioned Stevie working with Prince in February 1983.

[Meowi]

I read that the idea for Stan Back cam directly after the wedding - whilst driving home. So, if that's true - Stevie started writing the song after the wedding.