Velvet Gypsys Underground

Beauty and the Beast

A VHS tape of the 1938 film Beauty and the Beast, a Jean Cocteau film, was loaned to Stevie. She decided to view the movie one night while Tom Petty was there. They had been recording the album The Wild Heart at her home studio in Phoenix. The following is taken from the demo recording Stevie made during those sessions :: "This is a song I wrote after the 2nd screening of Beauty & the Beast. Of which I'm going to buy a copy if it costs me a $1000.00 because it is ... so fabulous." One of the musicians asks her, "Did you see the one with George C. Scott in it?" Stevie replies "No I saw the one with, who was it, we don't even know it is French, it's all in French sub-titles, it's incredible, it couldn't possibly be ... I mean there's something in it that is just so real that it's kinda scary but the story of the Beauty & the Beast is so incredible because he's so ugly but he's so good & he's so kind & he has her to pay back a dept from her father. But when she goes back to all her
gay fun friends, ya know, and she keeps, she'll look in the mirror and she'll see his face, & he's just like, I'll grieve if you don't come back I'll die. You just, in your own life you think, Boy you can have all the riches & this and that & the world but if you don't have the look of that in someone else's eyes ... forget it it's not happening. And she rushes home to get him and she's going my babe my babe where are you, ya know, & she's searching & she's searching and he's laying on the ground dying. And he said a beast can only die, a man could fight but the poor beast can only die." "It killed me ... anyway .. I'll get it up here again and when I do I'll call ya. So I saw it once & I was knocked out with the photography ... the candle holdings that were real hands that would point ... Oh it was so weird the fireplace with the two heads on each side where the guys were like, were real and they'd g o" (there is silence and you can hear someone in the background gasp. {I have this movie and what she's showing them is how the eyes of the actors playing the fireplace will open real wide & look around}) "Oh it's incredible. Isn't it Tom. Tom replies, "Yea it was pretty good" Stevie "It's so strange. The only part we didn't like, the end we thought it fell apart a little bit. But all of it until the last 3 minutes were just ... incredible. I mean the fairy tale of all fairy tales. I didn't even remember the story. So I was totally blitzed out cause I expected some, dumb unpleasant show. So this is a story and in this song both people are switching back and forth in the roles of Beauty and the Beast because in true life, ya know, if your going with someone weather your the man or the woman you are the Beauty and you are the Beast sometimes ... because, you just are ya know. ~ At this part she begins to play the song.