Songfacts®:

• As a member of both The Hollies and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Graham Nash had heard plenty of wild tales. For the title track of his second solo album, he put some of them into a song. Sound engineer Don Gooch explained: "'Wild Tales' is based on a couple of real stories, in particular the milkman part ('Cause you caught the milkman with double cream, he was delivering down your halls') was part of a story that someone Graham had met had related and it was so bizarre he wrote the song around it. A lot of the other songs are based on his personal experiences and may be too personal to divulge." >>

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• Released on January 2, 1974, the Wild Tales album stalled at #34 in the US and didn't produce any hits. Nash blamed Atlantic Records for not promoting it enough. He left the label shortly after and signed on to ABC Records with David Crosby. It was clear, though, that there was a lot more demand for Crosby, Stills & Nash (with our without Young) than there was for their solo albums or any other configurations of their members. Later in 1974, all four members set their differences aside and toured for the first time since 1970. But they squabbled in the studio and couldn't get an album together. Another one didn't appear until 1977 when they issued CSN.
• The album's darker tone is often attributed to the murder of Nash's girlfriend, Amy Gossage, but that didn't occur until over a year after it was released. It was actually his breakups with Rita Coolidge (who'd previously left his CSN&Y bandmate Stephen Stills to be with him) and Joni Mitchell (who'd had a love affair with bandmate David Crosby) that put him in a somber mood. Mitchell contributed vocals on another of the album's tracks, "Another Sleep Song."
• Nash borrowed the song/album title for his 2013 memoir, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life.