In an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Stevie Nicks recalled her surprise at Prince’s appearance in the studio after she’d told him about how he’d inspired her song “Stand Back.”
The track, which was released in 1983, was a direct result of Nicks listening to Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” while she was on the freeway just after her marriage to Kim Anderson, as she told Uncle Joe Benson on the Ultimate Classic Rock Nights radio show.
“All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I’m singing along, going, ‘Stand back!’” she said. “I’m like, ’Kim, pull over! We need to buy a tape recorder because I need to record this.’ And so we do – we careen off the freeway to find a radio, record shop or something, and we go in and we buy a little tape recorder.”
Instead of celebrating their nuptials, the couple stayed up “all night long” working on what would become “Stand Back.” Nicks said, “We get the song, and I’m basically using Prince’s instrumental melody. What I’m singing along is very, very different from what he’s singing. I’m singing in and out of all of the holes.”
On hearing the track, Prince went over to a keyboard and began playing new parts, to Nicks’ astonishment. “That was the coolest thing we’ve ever heard,” she remembered thinking. She added, “Takes him an hour; he gives me a little ‘I don’t really know you’ hug, and, uh, he’s gone. Like a little spirit.” The results appeared on her second solo album, The Wild Heart.
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