STEVIE NICKS INFO

Category: Bella Donna (1981)

  • Fleetwood Mac: Stevie Nicks, Macramé Goddess

    Fleetwood Mac: Stevie Nicks, Macramé Goddess

    Bella Donna (1981)
    Bella Donna (1981)

    To steal from Groucho Marx (after all we’re talking nicks), the trouble with doing interviews is having to sit down next to someone you don’t like. See, I’m the leather type myself; don’t go for chiffon unless it’s on a slice of bread with a bit of dead animal on top. Don’t go for spirits, unless they come in a bottle marked “Smirnoff.” Don’t go for cosmic airbrushed cake decoration types whose albums come in scratch and sniff roses and kitties and sea spray; leather, now that smells good. Don’t go for platform boots unless Gene Simmons is wearing them. Don’t go for much about Fleetwood Mac really except ‘Albatross’ (adolescent romance memories) and Christine McVie (subtle, sensible, excellent songwriter) and (for the same reasons I like Adam Ant) Lindsey B.

    There’s a lot to be said for Stevie Nicks, surely. My old man’s brother wants to “protect her”; my old man wants to; we won’t go into that. A kid called me up and asked me for any old press photos of the lady, told me he thought she was “ladylike” and the girl he’s been trying to date likes her a lot. There’s a few million more fans out there I didn’t have time to get to with the deadline Creem gave me. But they definitely seem to like her. Me and Groucho were having our doubts.

    I approached her apartment — left turn past the male models on roller skates, swerve past the little bundles of suntan oil and stop before you hit the lifeguard tower at the beach where the white, chopping waves are whipped by the storm’s dark passion…sorry, she sort of does that to me — as I was saying, I approached her apartment by the seaside with all the joyous anticipation of going to the dentist. And there weren’t any magazines in the waiting room; just a maid ironing those miles and miles and miles of wispy chiffon. Wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they’d turned on a fog machine.

    They didn’t. Instead they offered me a glass of wine. I’m beginning to warm to the lady — who wafts in, in those boots and that outfit, after a visit with her hairdressing girlfriend. You’ve got to hand it to Stevie. At least her life and her image/vision are one and the same. Yes, the apartment’s filled with satin and cushions and plants and fairy-tale books and there’s even a collection of stuffed horses (not the Roy Rogers’ Trigger kind, these are little booboos collected from all over the world) whose photos she takes and whose lashes she mascaras. And yes, she says things like “I feel that there are spirits everywhere when I’m writing my songs” and means it. And yet, in spite of my better judgment I’m turning my back on Groucho and actually liking the lady. Okay, one of the reasons is the wine. But another is her realization of her dove-in-Jell-O image and her self-deprecating humor about some of it. Another — and believe me I’m not easily hyped; I’ve done enough interviews now that I know when I’m getting a line — is that, whatever else she is, Stevie Nicks strikes me as being very honest. And in rock ‘n’ roll — especially up there in uranium-album type rock ‘n’ roll — that makes up for a lot of things (except maybe the leather; never liked the stuff, she says). Anyway, you lot enter the conversation as she’s talking about doing her solo stuff and balancing it with her Fleetwood Mac work (Bella Donna and Mirage respectively).

    “I’m the baby of Fleetwood Mac — ha! I’m 33 years old, a very old baby, but it’s hard for them to watch me walk away and do anything. Because everybody in Fleetwood Mac is possessive — including me. Everybody in Fleetwood Mac is jealous. That’s why it’s so passionate and always will be, because we never achieve boredom and there’s always some fiery thing going on. It causes us a lot of grief, but at the same time it’s never something that you don’t find interesting. I can’t really figure us out. It’s a strange grouping of people.”

    You can say that again. Bit like a grown-up’s version of the Monkees or something. You know, the cute one, the kooky one, etc. etc. If you’re stuck for party games anytime, try doing the Guess Which One Of Your Friends Likes Which Member Of The Mac. It tells you as much about your friends’ personalities as any self-help paperback.

    “John’s always going to the beach, Mick’s always going to the Renaissance Faire, Lindsey’s always going to visit his tailor, I’m always going to a Halloween party and Christine is like Christine always looks in her kind of cool clothes,” Stevie chuckles.

    “It’s funny to see us before we go onstage, standing in a circle. We look ridiculous! Totally absolutely ridiculous! John’s got his crew socks and his cut-offs and his T-shirt and his baseball hat. Mick’s got his velvet knickers and the same tights and the same shoes he’s worn for a hundred years — you wouldn’t want to be within 50 feet of him in that outfit, especially the next night when he’s put it back on after it’s been in the bus all day and never dried! Lindsey wears the same two Armani suits, one white and one gray, every night,” and Stevie’s got her cosmic tablecloths. Hey, give her a break; she lived in San Francisco at a time when macramé making and pottery pottering were de rigeur and at a very impressionable age. And — she’s not so daft — “I realized if I wanted to be in Fleetwood Mac I was going to really have to figure out a gimmick — like toe-dancing or something nobody else could do.”

    It’s hard to think (harder still for young folk) of Fleetwood Mac having existed without Stevie Nicks. Harder still to think she reckoned they didn’t even want her to join and that she had to resort to wearing fairy outfits.

    “It’s true. At first they didn’t need another girl singer. Why should they? They needed a guitarist, not a girl singer who didn’t really play piano or guitar or anything. It’s human nature. They’re not going to say, ‘you stand out there and be the star and we’ll just play, right.’ I know for a fact that I was simply being hired as extra baggage. They couldn’t get Lindsey without me.”

    Fleetwood Mac wanted Lindsey (don’t we all!) but Stevie had had him for a long time. This goes back to San Francisco, 1966. “I was a senior, he was a junior.” Fairy princess met matinee idol in college, they “sang one song together and I never saw or heard from him again for two years.” That bad? No, he loved her singing and remembered her when he was forming a rock band called Fritz. Stevie had been in a couple of high school bands before, Mamas and Papas type of things, but had settled as a solo artists of sorts plunking an acoustic guitar and singing self-penned songs in the coffee houses around Acidland.

    When she was young, Stevie had a cool grandfather. Aaron Jess Nicks, a failed country singer, harmonica tooter and general eccentric, lived in a trailer in the desert. He bought little Stevie “a little outfit with guns and boots and vest — I was a happening cowgirl” at the age of four, and took her and the ubiquitous tambourine with him on tours of the Arizona ginhouses. Until daddy Nicks —a one-time brewery president; what a man to have for a father — put a stop to her early career and moved the family to Texas, Mexico, Utah, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

    “We moved every two years. All I remember about Phoenix is cactus — and meeting Tex Ritter,” and a few of the tunes, which she warbled to herself when she wasn’t singing along “to the radio, to the Ronettes, to the Beach Boys, to Janis Joplin, to anybody that I listened to until I moved to San Francisco and basically did my own music.” Everybody in San Francisco did, remember? Not that the Nicks Senior thought this was any career for their little peach-blossom, so she went to college for five years.

    “I wanted to go to hairdressing school,” pouts Stevie. It is she who trims her poodles’ hair, not to mention the band’s crew. “But they didn’t go for that idea at all, so I went to college. I should have gone to hairdressing school because that would really have benefited me more. I was singing with Lindsey the whole time and found it real difficult to study.”

    I can understand the problem. So could Lindsey. They threw in their lot together, packed up the macramé plant holders and headed down south to L.A. in search of fame and fortune, or at least a Polygram record contract. It was, to quote a song of the day, a long time coming.

    “It was two years of solid depression. It was hard when you practice that hard and you sound that good and everybody tells you that you should be doing something else. You want to say, ‘Well obviously we’re not from the same planet, because I didn’t sit with this guy for five years and sing like this for you to tell me that nothing we do is commercial. You’re crazy.’ It was a terrible time. Because Lindsey and I just couldn’t understand how we could sit down and sing a beautiful song to you and nobody liked it — and it was so pretty it made me cry. It was like, we don’t belong here, nobody understands us.”

    They’re not the first people who thought L.A. recordbiz types are from another planet. They’re not the first people who came in search of money and earned it working as waiters. That’s where Fleetwood Mac found them, “pretty desperate and pretty green.” The latter could have something to do with Stevie working in a Beverly Hills vegetarian restaurant. A year earlier and they’d have found her desperate and greasy — she was a french fry server at a Burger King.

    “It was straight out of obscurity — heavy obscurity. I was a member of Fleetwood Mac and still working at the restaurant for two weeks because I’d given them notice. It was strange. It would have taken me weeks to make what I was making on one week with Fleetwood Mac, but I didn’t want to walk in there and say ‘well now I’m going to be famous rock ‘n’ roll star so I quit! And I never liked your food anyway.’ That makes you feel bad later. I like tying up loose ends [cf. macramé].

    So I quit my job, three weeks later we were recording, we finished the album in three and a half months, and four months later we went straight on the road. And boy was it a big shock!

    They made me feel wonderful. I fell madly in love with all of them immediately, and even though I knew in my heart that they didn’t really need me, I would try to be really good and maybe I would find a way to be needed there. I didn’t know what else to do. I liked them so much that I was willing to realize that logically I was lucky to get asked to join the band at all, so I would have to be so helpful in everything, right? At least I could be a secretary or something, anything, because I wanted to be part of it.

    And they knew it. They understood I felt this way. And they were real careful and never made me feel unwanted. Christine very willingly gave me the stage, which I thought was very cool of a woman to say, ‘oh she’s five years younger than me, and I’ve worked for 10 years on the road, killed myself, and her she is, our new frontwoman!’ It was incredibly big of Christine to just move out of the way because I do tend to kind of animate around. I drive Chris nuts. Crazy!

    Chris will tell you that there were times in the last six or seven years when she was a little jealous. And I swear to God I never knew. She never let me know. Never one comment to the effect of ‘I could really have done without you’.

    And I’m sure there were times when I’m flying around the stage in my gossamer chiffon where she had to think to herself, ‘wow, what’s this? Fairy school?’ And never once did she make me feel like that. Because she knew from the beginning that I was real sensitive and that I love her so much that nothing she’d say to me would cut like a knife. So she was always very careful.”

    People are around Stevie. Naturally there’s a few in this rock ‘n’ roll world who want to stick the knife in, but most of the people who come across her want to be nice. When she was doing her solo album, the record company president — President — called up, and instead of discussing units told her to take is easy, “This is the best moment of your life, Stevie, and I want you to be happy.”

    “They all know that I’m real vulnerable and that I can break real easily if I don’t get back a little bit of the love that I try to put out. If I feel that I’m putting out and I’m alone somewhere on an island by myself, then I start to die a little. And for some reason the business people seem to understand that.

    I’ve had 50 people call me today and say, ‘if it’s too tough Stevie, stop. It doesn’t matter.’ With most artists they say, ‘look we need this interview, too bad if you’re tired.’ It’s strange. It wouldn’t be so amazing if it was my Mom, but it is amazing when it’s the president of Atlantic or the president of Modern Records or Irving (Azoff, manager).”

    The vulnerability showed up on the last mammoth Fleetwood Mac tour when the last mammoth Fleetwood Mac album was released. Stevie’s voice was shot and her vocal chords didn’t look like healing. Endless trips to doctors and specialists led to nightmares about never singing again.

    “My voice is alright now. I worked a long time on it. But a year is too long. I could probably tour six months a year solid, but I cannot tour for 12. I’m not 18, you know. It gets harder and harder to be wonderful every night in front of all those kids that you’re 15 years older than. I’d like to tour for two months on and two months off. Three weeks off doesn’t cut it.

    I can’t even get all my clothes unpacked and cleaned and packed again in three weeks.

    Otherwise it’s not fair to the people you’re playing for. I don’t want a tired Stevie walking out onstage and trying to do ‘Rhiannon’ when I’m dead. You can never call in sick. You can be on the side of the stage with terrible cramps and all of a sudden you’ve got 30 seconds to try not to even let that come into your head. I’ve seen a lot of concerts that because of extreme exhaustion aren’t special. For me there’s nothing I’d rather do than go to a great rock concert. But there’s nothing I’d rather not do than go to a rock concert by a great band that isn’t good.”

    Choosing the odd date here and there rather than a major tour to plug the solo album, Stevie was planning a film/musical of Bella Donna, “so we could really do it like the Othello of the ‘80s.”

    Talking of film, time to catch up on the various Stevie Nicks projects that don’t involve lifeguard watching. A ballet of ‘Rhiannon’, possibly a film with Stevie as heroine, “though whether or not there’s ever going to be the time for it is another question. Bella Donna was hard enough to get together, to pull two and a half months out of a hat. To make a movie is a lot longer and I can’t see that kind of space coming up anywhere.” A series of children’s fairy stories, including her The Golden Fox of the Last Fox Hunt, her tales have the pain and suffering removed, she says. Stevie loves dreamlike stuff — stating the obvious here. “I feel there are good spirits everywhere when I’m writing my songs, helping me. I just feel them and feel good. And it’s not stupid or mystical or weird. I just get a good feeling from — I don’t know — the air”. She believes her dreams (designed album covers from the things) but doesn’t get them analyzed because “I like a little mystery in things.” She’d like to live in a pyramid. She believes in reincarnation — she used to be a monk. But she doesn’t want to talk too much about it because “I think that side of your consciousness is sort of its own thing, and I don’t want to bring that too much into this life. It’s like a quiet inspiration.”

    Where were we? Oh, books. She’s also writing an autobiography full of “the love affairs, the heartaches, the tragedies, the incredible happiness” of life with Mac. “It didn’t start out to be anything but my journal — I keep a very formal diary and have been for almost seven years now — but as I became a better typist it became more of a book.

    “It’s real intense. It’s a story Taylor Caldwell (author of her favorite romantic novel, Ceremony of the Innocent) should sit down and I should tell it to her and she ought to write it, because it’s that kind of thing. The story itself is as incredible as any story you’ve ever seen in a movie. And you wouldn’t have to make up one thing. It tells exactly what it is.”

    And what’s that?

    “There’s the wild side to me and the free side. As I get a little older and a little wiser, there’s still the wild side that doesn’t want any discipline whatsoever in her life, and the part of me that knows the only way I can get to people is not to be so terribly out of control, to balance the two.” Hard when you’re in a band like Fleetwood Mac where everything you touch turns platinum.

    “But it didn’t! I’ve seen the tides change. I’ve seen the people turn away. I’ve seen people get the wrong impression of five people I love, myself included — because it doesn’t work every time, especially if you’re so confident that it will work.

    Once you’ve decided you’ve done the best thing you’ll ever do, you’ll never do something else. It’s truly better to stay at number two because there will always be the hope of doing something more creative and better. When you’re number one, everything goes to the wind and there’s no place to go except down.”

    And talking of down, how did it feel to be the Soap Opera of rock (when Heart’s Wilson sisters weren’t trying to grab the titles), what with all the divorces and the like?

    “It was like, here we go again. It’s hard to be in a band with somebody and work with them and be in love with them and not get angry at them and go home and not remember that they screamed at you onstage. It’s a rare group of people that can get through that, blissfully in love. Rare. At least Fleetwood Mac stayed together completely, where Heart kind of changed it.

    But then you could never fire John. It would be like Fleetwood —,” Stevie pauses. “You can’t fire the Mac!”

    And finally, since this is a mag about women in rock, what about it, Stevie?

    “Fleetwood Mac couldn’t go onstage without me or Chris. We’ve fought hard to be anything but background singers. I think we would rather quit and do something else than be a background singer. I go back to Janis Joplin — too far back. There aren’t too many women in the rock business I feel any kind of respect for at all. See, people like the Eagles have made me terribly critical too. There’s nothing I’d rather see than a great woman singer come along, one that I could listen to. But there’s not too many.”

    Sylvie Simmons / Creem / 1982

  • 20 Questions: Stevie Nicks

    20 Questions: Stevie Nicks

    Stevie Ladies and gentlemen, the reigning queen of rock — on recklessness, relationships and reincarnation

    Contributing Editor David Rensin met with Stevie Nicks (whose album Bella Donna has sold more than 1,000,000 copies) just after the last show of her successful solo tour. Rensin reports: “We talked in the bathroom of her West Los Angeles hotel suite while her make-up was being applied for a television appearance. She looked great before. She looked great afterward. And she does her own lipstick.”

    PLAYBOY: You’re part of the hugely popular Fleetwood Mac, as well as the proud mother of a number-one solo album. Do you still find you’ve had to work twice as hard because you’re a women trying to win at a man’s game?

    NICKS: I never tried to beat men; that’s why I managed to do it. I tried to learn from them and be their friend and stuff. I didn’t want to be too pushy — no one likes pushy people, least of all guys who are in famous bands. It’s much easier to worm your way in with kindness.

    PLAYBOY: Magazine articles have mentioned your belief in ghosts and reincarnation; your being in a “magic kingdom” — the whole Rhiannon Welsh witch thing. Have people had difficulty taking you seriously?

    NICKS: At this point, people believe it’s me. I just couldn’t go on making this trip up if it weren’t true. I love Halloween and fairy tales. I get wonderful letters: Kids say they love the songs and “Go right ahead and live in your fairy princess castle, because we need somebody to live there and make us happy, to take away some of the everyday horribleness that goes on.”

    PLAYBOY: What were some of your past lives?

    NICKS: I think I spent a lot of time in old churches, like a monk. I’m very comfortable around that kind of music, with that kind of creeping around, with being very quiet. My ballet teacher believes that my head was cut off in another life, too. I totally give with my body except for my neck. Even if I go to the beauty salon, I can’t put my head back. They have to hold it or it will drop. The same thing happens when I dance or get a massage. It’s very weird.

    PLAYBOY: How do you maintain your cosmic connection considering the pressures of fame and wealth? And how do you handle the abusive lifestyle-the drugs, the drinking, the long hours of being the reigning queen of rock ‘n’ roll?

    NICKS: It’s not easy. But I can’t do what I do if I don’t retain some innocence and spirituality. You’d see a definite change in my lyrics if I became hardened. I’m not interested in existing on that critical level most people live on.

    As I get older, the abusive side is coming to a close. I’m slowing down. Besides, I have bronchial, spasmodic asthma now. And everything that I do is wrapped up in my lungs. I’m scared now. This sure is the fast lane, but I don’t particularly want to die in the fast lane. I want to get there gracefully.

    I need rest real bad. I also need some exercise. I don’t want to be this romantically fragile character everyone thinks I am. The image is fine for an image, but it’s not too fine if you have to go to the hospital for it. For my asthma, I have to take these miserable pills that make you feel like someone put something weird in your Perrier.

    PLAYBOY: Do you want to marry eventually and have a family?

    NICKS: If I had a family, I’d probably love it. Right now, I have my dog Sarah, two cats and a baby Doberman. But I wish I had a little girl. Even a little boy. Getting married would, of course, depend on the man; also on whether I cared enough. If I fell that deeply in love with someone, I’d have no idea of what to do. But I’d be willing to make whatever compromises were necessary.

    PLAYBOY: What compromises?

    NICKS: My interest in the music and everything else would have to drop off a little bit. But I don’t fall in love that often, because it’s sad when you fall in love and it doesn’t work out. I know it’s better to have loved, because otherwise I wouldn’t have anything to write about. And there are different kinds of love. But if it were the bib love, I’d drop everything. I’d still have my job, of course, but I’d get in my car and drive across town in the middle of the night — which I will not do under other circumstances, because I don’t have a license. I’d go crazy, I suppose. It’s probably the most wonderful feeling in the world.

    PLAYBOY: It sounds as if your job would get in the way.

    NICKS: It invades it. You can call up your boyfriend and say, “I’m sick; I can’t go to dinner.” But you cannot call in sick to Fleetwood Mac. So a certain number of my relationships are ruined, not because of the people involved but because of my other commitments. And so, every time, I’m just a little less interested in starting something up, because what has happened before is probably going to happen again. It’s not a lack of interest on my part; it’s a lack of time to be interested.

    So maybe it’s good that I haven’t fallen deeply enough in love to give up a good half of what I do. I wouldn’t want to be a bad mother. And how could I be a good one when I don’t even have time to go to the dentist? So forget the child. And forget the boyfriend. I have so many commitments that he would have to come fourth — and I don’t like making anybody feel he’s fourth.

    PLAYBOY: Yet love obviously means a lot to you. In Sara, you wrote, “Drowning in the sea of love, where everyone would love to drown.”

    NICKS: Yeah, but I’m at the point where I realize that if my job is what I want to be doing, I’d just better stay out of the sea. I’ve been going with someone since I was 18 years old. I think I had a month between Lindsey [Buckingham] and Don [Henley, of The Eagles]. There has always been someone in my life. And I want my freedom at this point, because I really need to get to know Stevie again. I need to be able to paint all night without making someone feel horrible because he’s waiting for me to come to bed.

    Yet I know intimacy is something we all need. When you want to get back to the fireplace with someone you care about or watch a little TV, it’s important that you like the person a lot, that he makes you laugh and that he’s fun. I’m as envious of that as can be.

    PLAYBOY: What kind of man would make you happy?

    NICKS: [Laughs] You were thinking maybe a nice doctor or something, Maybe an eye-ear-nose-and-throat specialist? Maybe an analyst? A musical artist? I’ve certainly had that experience. It wouldn’t be easy for me to deal with a guy who was as busy as I am. When I’m home one night, I definitely don’t want to be alone. I’m not amused if he’s busy. I’m no different, you know. If I met a guy who was able to put up with it, he’d have to be just as famous, have more money and be terribly secure within himself. Frankly, I have contemplated being single the rest of my life. But I said that in a radio interview once, and when I heard it back, it really freaked me out.

    PLAYBOY: Do you ever encounter fans more spiritual or spaced out than you?

    NICKS: Yes. I came out the stage door the other night and a girl was crying, hysterically. I can never walk away from someone in tears, so I asked what was wrong. She said, “Will you sign my arm?” I did. The next night, she was back — with her other arm tattooed with my name! I grabbed her and told her, “Don’t ever do that again. Don’t ever have someone take a knife and cut into your arm with my name. It’s not funny. It’s stupid and I’m not happy about it.” Her reaction was more tears.

    Another night, one of her friends asked me to sign her arm. I said, “I did that the other day and the girl went out and had her arm tattooed.”

    “Oh, she’s my best friend,” the girl said. So I told her, “I’m not touching your arm. And if I ever find out that you got my name tattooed on you anyway, I’ll sue. Don’t put that on me. That’s pain. I’m not here to bring pain. I’m here to bring you out of pain.” It bummed me out. I felt like I should have gone back inside, like I’d come out the wrong door.

    PLAYBOY: What else upsets you?

    NICKS: Waiting. [Long pause and a smile] And I’m always late. It’s the Gemini in me. Otherwise, just wrong things said at the wrong time. Like, “Oh, you gained a little weight around the chin.” You know, right before a photo session. Some people have incredible tact and an intuitive feel for your feelings. Others don’t. Some people can wake me up in the morning — they know how. Others, if I had a BB gun, they’d be on the wall.

    PLAYBOY: Were you nervous going on the road as a solo act?

    NICKS: Are you kidding? Terribly. I hadn’t been on-stage alone before. It’s a whole different can of beans to realize that if you’re not out there — if you have to run to the wings for some powder or to get your hair brushed or because you’re dripping wet — there is no one on-stage who’ll talk to the audience. But we had some truly spectacular moments, when the band and I were blown away at the response. At the last Los Angeles show, I must have looked like the bag lady of Bella Donna: I was bent over, because I had so many roses to carry. I was crying. Another great thing is that no one in the audience ever yelled out, “Where’s Don? Where’s Tom Petty? Where’s Lindsey? Where’s Fleetwood Mac?”

    PLAYBOY: Were you offended by reviewers of Bella Donna who questioned your intelligence or who argued that the album was not a significant departure from your work with Fleetwood Mac?

    NICKS: You mean when reviewers asked, “Is she incredibly hip or incredibly silly,” It didn’t bother me. They said a couple of rhymes were stupid, but I know those words aren’t stupid, so it doesn’t hurt me. I think the bit about not being a departure from Fleetwood Mac is also ridiculous. Bella Donna is in no way like Fleetwood Mac records. They didn’t even play on the record. On Bella Donna, Jimmy Iovine, the producer left the songs as close to the demos as possible, so it was really just me — which is what I’ve always wanted. Sometimes I don’t mind my songs being changed around; sometimes it makes them better. But often, I would rather they stayed real simple, like “Leather and Lace.”

    PLAYBOY: Do you think you’re sexy?

    NICKS: I can be. I do not normally try to be. In fact, there have been some reviews — which I’ve loved — that said I didn’t try to sell my show on sex, that I sang my show.

    On the other hand, I know I’m cute. I can dance. I don’t have a bad figure. I know exactly what I am. I’m certainly no great beauty. I know exactly how far I can go.

    PLAYBOY: Have you ever considered acting, as many of your rock-‘n’-roll peers have done?

    NICKS: I wouldn’t like to be in movies. Movie people are strange. They live a different life than musicians do. They get up early and work in the day. And I really think they’re much wilder than we are. One time, four movie guys walked up to me at a party after a show. I was looking good. And they took me apart with their eyes. I was so completely insulted that I never forgot it. They were so slick and smooth and suited up — it looked like they all had had face lifts with perfectly tanned faces. I’m just a hippie. I wouldn’t fit very well into that world. Those guys gave me the creeps. The hair on my arms stood up.

    PLAYBOY: Do you support activist musicians who give anti-nuke concerts or participate in demonstrations?

    NICKS: That’s why I write. We need music very badly. The world is in pretty bad shape and it scares me. But I’m not one of those people, like Jackson Browne, who went up to the Diablo Canyon nuclear protest. I said to him, “But they could have broken your fingers — your beautiful fingers that write all those beautiful songs. Are you crazy? We need you to write songs. We don’t need you to be in jail.” He said it “had occurred” to him. I said it should have. I think it scared him. I’m not a martyr. I would much rather be around to write the story than die for it and leave nothing behind. I believe you should put your talent where your talent is and stay out of the rest of it.

    PLAYBOY: You are very close to your father. What has he taught you that you’ve applied to your career?

    NICKS: My dad said, “If you’re going to do it, be the best, write the best, sing the best and believe in it and yourself.” And as long as I didn’t give up on that, it would be OK. It was great to have supportive parents, though I’m sure they really would have been much happier at one point if I’d done something else, because they didn’t think I was strong enough. I was always sick and Lindsey and I had no money and whenever they’d see me, I’d be really down. My relationship with Lindsey was tumultuous and passionate and wild and we were always fighting, so I was never happy.

    But my parents would hear me go into my room and sit there for eight hours with two little cassette players and sing and write and leave papers everywhere. I think they realized that I might not have been strong, but it was the only thing I wanted. My dad knew me well enough to know that I was just like him. So he told me that I should be what I want to be and not complain about it.

    PLAYBOY: What should men know about women that they don’t?

    NICKS: That we are stronger than they know. And maybe if they fed that a little bit, all of this women’s liberation would go away and everybody would be happy. If men gave us just a little more credit and an extra hug and said, “Good job,” that would solve a lot of it. Women want to be beautiful, sweet, feminine and loving. But they also want to be thought of as intelligent and necessary. And even if your woman is not all those things, you should want her to feel good about herself, to believe in herself.

    PLAYBOY: Your immediate entourage all seem to be beautiful young women. Do you and the girls ever go out together?

    NICKS: We can’t go anywhere. It’s fine for all the guys, but if we go, like, down to Le Dome for a drink or to the Rainbow for spaghetti, we’re immediately going to be classified as loose, roaming women. Me and some of the other female singing stars, like Ann and Nancy Wilson and Pat Benatar, can’t just go out boogying with our girlfriends. Anyway, I wouldn’t be allowed out. I’d have to sneak out. I’m way too recognizable. I’ve been securitied up to my neck for the past seven years, so I’d also be severely scared. I once tried to sneak out to a disco in Chicago with my girlfriend Christie, but we got caught. So the guys went with us. It was a bummer. Nobody in the disco would even come up to us. But people say it’s for my safety. Women are getting raped all the time. And I don’t need to get raped, because I’d never get over it. That’s when my songs would stop. That’s when my belief in the world would die. I know it happens, but it happening to me is another story. It tends to take away one’s spontaneity.

    PLAYBOY: Do you often think about death — especially since you believe in reincarnation?

    NICKS: I’m not afraid of it at all. But I try to get as much done as I can, because you don’t know how long you’re going to be here. That’s why it’s important that I type a page or two every night — even if that’s at 11 A.M. See, I think you live on earth a certain number of times until you finish what it is that you were meant to do here. And then you go on. I don’t think I’ll be back. I think I’m done.

    David Rensin / Playboy (Vol. 29, No. 7) / July, 1982

  • Stevie Nicks: Going solo

    Stevie Nicks: Going solo

    Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks tries on a new hat

    When Stevie Nicks was cutting her first solo album, the just-released Bella Donna, she recalls, “I promised myself I wasn’t going to get crazy over it. I didn’t want to be devastated in case it didn’t work.” But after more than six years with the supergroup Fleetwood Mac, says Nicks, “I had all these tunes stored up. I really needed to know that I could do something on my own.”

    She can. In just a month, Bella Donna jumped over Journey and raced past Rickie Lee Jones into the No. 1 slot, going platinum with sales exceeding 1.3 million. The single off the LP, the driving duet “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” with Tom Petty, is Top Five and climbing. Obviously, Stevie’s solo career is hardly nix. But should she ever need job security, one of rock’s silkier safety nets awaits her: Fleetwood Mac has moved some 20 million albums since 1975, and Nicks has chipped in with soft-rocking gems like “Rhiannon,” “Landslide” and “Sara.”

    It was Mac’s grueling globe-conquering itineraries that helped inspire her solo flight. Her vocal cords were scorched; the group didn’t record often enough to use all her compositions; and it had taken a siegelike 13 months to finish Mac’s 1979 LP, Tusk. “We had to grow up and stop being so self-indulgent,” she says. “That life can turn you into a desert. Rock stars never know where the hell they’ve been. I just got tireder and tireder, sort of spaced-out and cloistered. I was determined to find musicians who hadn’t been in a famous band for a thousand years, not stay up all night, and take better care of myself.” That, she knew, meant discipline, and her Bella Donna producer, Jimmy lovine, obliged: “He said, `We’re not paying good musicians to hang around waiting for you. This is no longer Fleetwood Mac–this is serious.’”

    Nicks has never taken music lightly. Born to a Phoenix executive, she was attending San Jose State when she met guitar whiz Lindsey Buckingham. The romantic duo tried to team professionally too, but by the time they fell in with Mick Fleetwood and Christine and John McVie (since divorced), Stevie was hacking it as a waitress.

    Fleetwood Mac’s staggering success led to a personal split with Buckingham in 1976. But Nicks’ romantic “poker game,” as she puts it, inspired some superb lyricism on the theme of love at the speed of rock. “I would hope I never fall in love with a big-time happening rock `n’ roll guy,” she says now. “I’d have my spies everywhere with all those gorgeous blondes around. It’s like dangling candy in front of them.” At the same time she’s found “being someone’s girlfriend on the road is worse than being a maid.” Having a nonrock boyfriend tagging along is also out: “You can’t even put them to work, like cleaning up, because they have room service for that.”

    At the moment, Stevie’s friends tend to be sisterly confidantes. She lives in a modest two-bedroom condo in Marina del Rey. “I don’t need jillions more dollars,” she explains. “I’ve got enough wonderful clothes and boots, two Yorkies, a baby Doberman, two cars and a terrific family. I just need to have some fun.” Nicks says she may move to Manhattan to find it. “I’m perfect for the city. My fancy clothes just hang in L.A. I’d love to dress up, go out to the ballet and museums and meet some other kinds of people.”

    Until Nicks comes East, she has ample time to make voluminous entries in her journal, the one sure anchor in her peripatetic life. The best, Stevie says, are written well past midnight, in the solitude of a hotel room: “I’ve written it all down–the very interesting, the boring, the wonderfully romantic, the terribly sad and the heartbreaking.” She found out just how much it meant one night on tour when a fire broke out in her hotel. “You know what I grabbed? My cashmere blanket and the duffel bag I keep all my writing in. Believe me, there was a lot in there, an awful lot for me to carry down 14 flights of stairs.”

    Jim Jerome / People (Vol. 16 Issue 14, p117. 1p) / October 5, 1982

  • Stevie Nicks soars with Bella Donna

    Stevie Nicks soars with Bella Donna

    A fearsome Kabuki doll grimaces malevolently from atop an antique upright piano into a pastel pink room, where porcelain flamingos stand in fixed motion next to a beige satin-covered bed littered with pillows. Jungle plants complement a lush green velvet sofa. Black- and white-striped chairs stand next to a large wooden organ alive with colorful buttons. A light scent of gardenia filters through the rooms, and windows frame a perfect view of the white California beach and blue sea.

    It seems the ideal setting for a fairy tale, and indeed it is — in a way. For here lives Stevie Nicks, who, after seven years with Fleetwood Mac, is being hailed as “Queen of Rock and Roll.” Nicks appears from the far reaches of the bedroom. Black sweater, black ruffled taffeta skirt, boots. The Queen doesn’t take long to show her humanity.

    “What are you doing there, shorthand? I always got grounded for shorthand,” she says. “I’d get Ds, then work them up to Cs by the end of the semester, but still…”

    The singer-songwriter’s mission today is promoting her first solo LP, Bella Donna — but after bulleting up the charts from the day of its release, the album doesn’t need much help. Nicks, 33, considers it the beginning of an important part of her career, an outlet for some of the things she’s wanted to do, but as a Fleetwood Mac member couldn’t. “In a group of five people, you can’t just be you — you have to be a part of them. This was a chance for me to really get into my feelings and my fairy tales — the things I really love — that I couldn’t impose on them.”

    Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty image
    Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty perform onstage, 1981 (Lynn Goldsmith)

    Working with Tom Petty

    Bella Donna also gave her the chance to work with singer Tom Petty, who’s featured on the track that has become the hit single, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” Nicks has been making surprise appearances at various Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concerts around the country to sing the duet live.

    She talks of Petty’s group in reverent tones, bringing to mind a little sister thrilled to be admitted into the realm of the boys. “They make me feel like a true Heartbreaker,” she says, “which is really something, because I know the Heartbreakers never planned to have a girl hanging around.”

    When she had to miss a concert in Providence, R.I., she says, “Tom called and told me, ‘It was an incredible concert, but it just wasn’t the same without you. “That’s the nicest thing Torn Petty has ever said to me. It was just a simple thing, but it knocked me out.

    “I’ve really become attached to them, because they’re all like my brothers and they’re all proud of me in their own little kind of male-type way. I go through a sort of ‘post Heartbreaker depression blues’ after I do a couple of dates with them and wake up the next morning and they’re gone and I have to go on all by myself,” She admits that at such times she calls the group to ask if the guys miss her, 

    The Heartbreaker experience

    She’s written a song out of her Heartbreaker experience which will be featured on the next Fleetwood Mac LP. It’s called, “If You Were My Love.” Nicks says, “It’s like a love song, but it’s not. It’s about going outside your own life and getting attached to something that isn’t yours.

    “It’s been kind of like falling in love with another band — for a minute. It has nothing to do with — and truly, clarify this — there is absolutely nothing going on between me and anybody in that band. They’re all married. They’re all expecting babies. That’s what makes it very easy for me to be with them and be their friend, and almost be one of the guys.”

    Why does she make a point of clarifying her relationship with Petty and the Heartbreakers? Has someone implied it’s more than platonic?

    “Well, not really,” she says, “but you know, you kind of wait for someone to start talking and I just don’t want anyone to start talking.”

    Actually, the recent Rolling Stone cover story on Nicks made clear her relationship with record producer Jimmy lovine, who went from work on Petty’s Hard Promises LP to Bella Donna. She frowns at the reminder. “I don’t like people to know about that either. I just don’t want people talking about that part of my life,” she says.

    The same celebrity status that’s made her a subject of the rumor mill has brought numerous acting offers. “I never wanted to be an actress and I don’t want to be an actress now,” she says. “I don’t like getting up early. I dislike being unspontaneous.

    I’m not your person who’s going to sit around all day — I get real nervous and restless. So unless somebody brought me a story that just KILLED me, I wouldn’t do it. I don’t think it’s in the stars.” 

    Fleetwood MacNo conflict with ‘Mac’

    Nicks is adamant about her solo career not interfering with her Fleetwood Mac work, “I don’t see why I can’t do both — unless everyone gets crazy. But if Fleetwood Mac doesn’t believe in my loyalty by now, I’ve made a big mistake,” she says. “I will be there for them ‘til the end. It’s just that I have to have time to do my music. I waited six years to put out the 10 songs on Bella Donna. Five of those songs were written before 1976. That’s a long time to wait. And those songs were all available to Fleetwood Mac.”

    That there has been friction within the ranks of the group is hardly a secret. Nicks acknowledges the fact with a nod. “It’s like a family though. We can get mad at each other and yell, then not see each other for a few days or weeks, and when we get together again we look at each other and it’s like, ‘Were we mad?’ There’s such a feeling. You can’t replace seven years of solid togetherness.

    “Outside people talking — that’s what corrodes a band. Someone could say something and by the time it goes through 15 people, it’s entirely different. You’ll tell the rest you didn’t, and they’ll say, ‘I believe you’ — but it’ll leave a mark. Sometimes those things take time to get over.”

    Another irritant is the image people have of her. “Through the last seven years, I have wished people would consider me a songwriter instead of a girl singer in the pile with the rest, or a rock star who dances around a stage,” she says. “What I really want to hear is, ‘Did she really write all those songs?’ What I’ve done with Fleetwood Mac hasn’t been enough to convince anyone of my ability as a writer.”

    But Bella Donna, she hopes, has opened a new door.

    Marilyn Beck / Chicago Tribune-New York News / September 1981

    The Charts

    Pop

    1. ENDLESS LOVE — Diana Ross and Lionel Richie
    2. QUEEN OF HEARTS — Juice Newton
    3. SLOW HAND — Pointer Sisters
    4. STOP DRAGGIN’ MY HEART AROUND — Stevie Nicks with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
    5. URGENT — Foreigner
    6. WHO’S CRYING NOW — Journey
    7. ARTHUR’S THEME (BESTTHAT YOU CAN DO) — Christopher Cross
    8. THE BEACH BOYS MEDLEY — Beach Boys
    9. NO GETTIN’OVER ME — Ronnie Mllsap
    10. HOLD ON TIGHT — Elo
  • Stevie Nicks solos

    Stevie Nicks solos

    This article is not available.

    S. Simels / Stereo Review (Oct 1981, Vol. 46, p94)

  • Fleetwood Mac’s siren soars with her first solo album Bella Donna

    Fleetwood Mac’s siren soars with her first solo album Bella Donna

    The view from the living room of Stevie Nicks’ Marina del Rey condominium is spectacular. As far as the eye can see there is nothing but an endless expanse of sand, ocean and sky. It is probably as close to a truly peaceful place as can be found in the Los Angeles area. Inside, the golden rays of a late afternoon sun cast a glow on the warm pinks and beiges that dominate the room. Two rooms away is the bustling nerve center of the household, where workers have been handling phone calls and a stream of interviewers awaiting an audience with the hottest-selling artist in rock and roll.

    Actually, the word “audience” is terribly unfair, because it implies pretension, and Stevie Nicks doesn’t have a pretentious bone in her body. Though she has been a platinum-selling artist for six years as a member of Fleetwood Mac, and her face has been steadily gracing the covers of magazines as long, the Stevie Nicks I interviewed for two and one-half hours recently seemed remarkably unaffected by success and candid almost to a fault.

    Her first solo album, Bella Donna, is already a smash hit–it is sitting at Number One on Billboard’s chart as this is being written, and it looks like it will only be a week or two before “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” the gutsy, rock single that she sings as a duet with the song’s author, Tom Petty, also hits Number One. A new Fleetwood Mac album is due this fall, too, so it looks as though the airwaves will belong to Stevie Nicks for the next several months.

    Nicks’ rise to fame was a relatively quick one. She and Lindsey Buckingham moved to Los Angeles in the early ’70s after several years as members of the once-popular Bay Area band Fritz. They cut an album as a duo (still available on Polygram) and then were asked to join Fleetwood Mac, which was struggling following the departure of Bob Welch. The first album the new five-piece Mac made, Fleetwood Mac, was an enormous hit, thanks largely to the presence of Nicks and Buckingham, whose songwriting and singing totally dominated the LP. “Rhiannon,” a swirling Nicks tune about a Welsh witch, immediately established Nicks as one of the top women singer-songwriters in rock.

    The follow-up to that album, Rumours, remains the best-selling rock album of time, as well as one of the best. With the front-line songwriting the talents of Buckingham, Nicks and Christine McVie, and the always powerful and inventive rhythm section of bassist John McVie and Mick Fleetwood (who were founding members of the one-time British blues band) Fleetwood Mac was invincible on the record charts. They had one hit after another–Nicks’ “Dreams,” Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way,” and “Second Hand News,” McVie’s “Don’t Stop.” They seemed to capture a spirit that had been virtually absent to pop bands since The Beatles. And then, of course, there was the personal side of the band, which made Fleetwood Mac so fascinating to the media. During the sessions for Rumours, John and Christine McVie were breaking up, as were longtime lovers Nicks and Buckingham. The songs on the LP “tell all,” as the National Enquirer would probably put it. America has always loved soap operas.

    Two years later, the group emerged from thirteen months of recording with Tusk, a double LP that enjoyed relatively moderate success (about four million copies sold worldwide, a fourth of Rumours‘ sales) but which showed that the band was not going to be complacent and simply churn out same-sounding hits forever. It is a dark, moody album, filled with songs that are at once dense and accessible. The band followed the album with a year-long world tour that found them playing with more fire than ever before. A live record culled from the tour, Fleetwood Mac Live, was released at the beginning of the year.

    When the tour ended last fall, the members of the band went their separate ways for the first time in several years. Mick Fleetwood went to Ghana and made his first solo LP, The Visitor. Christine McVie produced an album by Robbie Patton. John McVie sailed around the world. Lindsey Buckingham recorded a solo album which should be out in October. And Stevie Nicks made Bella Donna, using top studio players like Waddy Wachtel and Russ Kunkel, “Professor” Roy Bittan of Bruce Springsteen’s band, and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

    Bella Donna covers broad territory stylistically. “Edge of Seventeen” is a driving rocker; “After the Glitter Fades” has a country feel; “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” and “Outside the Rain,” two tracks featuring the Heartbreakers, sound like songs from a Petty album with a different singer; “Leather and Lace” is a beautiful ballad duet featuring Don Henley of the Eagles, and old friend of Nicks’. The album shows more facets of Nicks’ personality than anything she’s been involved with before. Certainly it proves her to be more than just the spacey siren in gossamer that she sometimes appeared to be during Fleetwood Mac.

    As we sat together on a soft section couch in one corner of her massive living room (which is filled with stereo equipment, a piano, an organ and a large screen TV on which she watches cassettes of Greta Garbo movies, Roadrunner cartoons and The Muppet Show) the light of the afternoon sun cut through a glass of white wine she sipped from and cast a glow on her radiant face. Our discussions began with Bella Donna and covered various aspects of her career and songwriting craft. For the spacey side of Stevie Nicks — a side she makes no effort to hide, incidentally–I suggest you read Rolling Stone‘s recent cover story, “Out There With Stevie Nicks,” by Timothy White. What follows is Stevie Nicks, singer and songwriter.

    BAM: Did it scare you at all to finally take the plunge to record Bella Donna?

    Stevie Nicks: I’m always nervous about doing something new. I was particularly nervous about making this album because I knew I wouldn’t have four other people to blame if it didn’t do well. In Fleetwood Mac, if I fail I fail with four other people. Here, if I fail, I fail alone. It’s always scarier to be alone. Fortunately, I had great people to work with who encouraged me constantly. The vibe I got from everybody was so positive that it made me feel strong.

    BAM: From what I can gather by the number of different players you used, it seems not too much was pre planned, that you recorded whenever you could get the players.

    Stevie Nicks: That’s exactly right. It was very, very spontaneous. We did it in sort of a piecemeal way because we’d only get people in for a few days at a time. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers don’t exactly sit around waiting for the phone to ring for session work. Russ [Kunkel] and Waddy [Wachtel] have impossible schedules. So we did the album around them. We’d get them for a couple of days and work fast.

    BAM: Who worked out the arrangements for the songs? I know that in Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey would do almost all the arranging for you, putting on layers of different guitars and, in a sense, orchestrating your tunes.

    Stevie Nicks: That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see if I could do it myself. When you work with somebody who is that much in control, and who has always been that much in control–from, like, 1970 on–you forget that you’re even capable of doing something yourself. I’d write my song and then Lindsey would take it, fix it, change it around, chop it up and then put it back together. Doing that is second nature to Lindsey, especially on my songs. He does better work on my songs than on anybody’s because he knows that I always give them to him freely. It’s a matter of trust.

    So it was interesting to work without him, because my songs pretty much stayed the same; the only difference was what happened after I’d written them. When I write a song I sit down at the piano and play it front to back. For Bella Donna I would do that, or have a demo like that, and the other musicians would just listen to it, getting their own ideas of how to fill in the rest. Usually, by a couple of times through the song they had a good idea of what they could do with it. My songs aren’t complicated, to say the least. The sessions went very quickly, really.

    BAM: You said you’d felt dependent on Lindsey in Fleetwood Mac. Was it difficult for you to think for yourself during the sessions for Bella Donna?

    Stevie Nicks: No, it was exhilarating! Instead of just sitting around hour after hour, I got to be a part of it. Working with Lindsey, it’s so easy to just let him take it. On this album I didn’t have to fight to do my songs the way I wanted to. The other players just did them they way I wrote them and they came out great. We didn’t do a ton of overdubs. We didn’t put on 50,000 guitars because we didn’t have Waddy around long enough to do 50,000 guitar overdubs. We were lucky to get him to do one guitar part.

    BAM: Stylistically the album seems very eclectic to me. There’s a little country, some gospel feel, rock and roll….

    Stevie Nicks: Well, it represents ten years worth of songs. In Fleetwood Mac I usually get two or three songs on an album, but here I got to do ten. The album is sort of a chronology of my life. “After the Glitter Fades” was written in ’72, making it the oldest song on the record. “Highway Man,” “Leather and Lace” and “Think About It” were written in ’75. The most recent is “Edge of Seventeen,” which is also my favorite song on the record.

    BAM: Did you change the lyrics to “After the Glitter Fades”? It seems moderately prophetic.

    Stevie Nicks: Moderately? It’s very prophetic! [Laughs] No, the lyrics are the same. Believe me, I’d seen a lot of glitter fade by the time I wrote that song, which was two years before Lindsey and I joined Fleetwood Mac. That was a tough period for us professionally, because we were very serious about wanting to be professional musicians. And we’d done well in the Bay Area with Fritz, but moving to Los Angeles was a big step and it seemed that we were suddenly back at point “A” again. Also, our lives were so different from each other then. I didn’t have friends in LA and he made lots of musician friends — Warren Zevon, Waddy, Jorge Calderon. And while he was making friends and playing music, I had to work.

    BAM: You sound a little bitter.

    Stevie Nicks: No, I’m not really. It was the only way we could do it. Lindsey couldn’t be a waitress. He didn’t know how to do anything but play the guitar and I did, so it was obvious I was going to be the one to do the work if we were going to live. And he didn’t want us to play at places like Chuck’s Steak House or Charlie Brown’s. I would have gone for that in a big way, personally, because singing in horrible places like those four hours a night is a helluva lot better than being a cleaning lady. That was the only real rift we had then. He won. But I loved him. I loved our music, and I was willing to do anything I could to get us to point B from point A. It’s hard to keep the sparkly going when you face so many closed doors. But somewhere in my heart I knew that it would work out and that if I kept making enough money to pay the rent, that Lindsey would hang in there and get better and better on guitar and keep learning about the business.

    BAM: You mentioned that Bella Donna is sort of a chronological portrait of your life. Do you have any sense of what sort of picture of you listeners will get from it?

    Stevie Nicks: Not really. I’m too close to it to know. Things that I know are in a song some people might not see. And then I never know how others are going to interpret my songs based on things in their own lives. I just hope people like it and it makes them feel good. My songs talk about problems everyone in the world has. They’re not unique to me.

    My songs don’t change much over the years. I write much the same way I did when I was 16. I’m no better on guitar or piano. I do exactly what I always did: I just write about what’s happening to me at the moment. I didn’t pick out the songs on Bella Donna because I wanted to document my life. I picked them because I liked them. It just sort of worked out that way. At the same time, though, I like the way “After the Glitter Fades” was premonitory. And “Edge of Seventeen” closes it — chronologically, anyway — with the loss of John Lennon and an uncle at the same time. That song is sort of about how no amount of money or power could save them. I was angry, helpless, hurt, sad.

    I recorded sixteen songs for the album and I wanted all of them to get on. I agonized about it. If I had put them all on, though, there wouldn’t have been room for a label. [Laughs]

    BAM: Well you managed to get “Blue Lamp” on the Heavy Metal soundtrack.

    Stevie Nicks: It was very important that it found a place for itself. I love that song. It was really the beginning of Bella Donna because it was the first thing I’d ever recorded with other musicians, and it was the first time I’d ever recorded by standing in a room singing at the same time that five guys were playing. Fleetwood Mac doesn’t record that way. They record from a more technical standpoint. When I’m recording, I like to imagine that I’m at a concert singing in front of thousands of people. i record for feeling. I’m not good at the technical stuff. I don’t like standing there in a room, after the tracks have been done, and singing the same song fifty times in a row. I hate it. I want to sing a song once, maybe twice, and if it isn’t working, maybe go on to another song. Fleetwood Mac is the opposite. They labor over every detail. I care about the final feeling when you hear it on a car radio or at home on your stereo.

    BAM: In fairness to Fleetwood Mac, Stevie, even though you know what a long process recording is, the group’s records don’t sound cold or detached. There’s plenty of feeling on every record Fleetwood Mac has done.

    Stevie Nicks: That’s true. Don’t misunderstand me. I love the way Fleetwood Mac sounds. I wouldn’t be in it if I didn’t. I’m just saying that on Bella Donna we managed to make a really good record a different way. We went in and we just did it. Tusk took us thirteen months to make, which is ridiculous. I was there in the studio every day — or almost every day — but I probably only worked for two months. The other eleven months, I did nothing, and you start to lose it after a while if you’re inactive. You see, Lindsey, Chris, John and Mick all play, and I don’t. So most of the time I’d be looking at them through the window in the control room. After four or five hours, they’d forget I was even there, they’d be so wrapped up in little details. It was very frustrating.

    BAM: There seems to be a bit of revisionism about Tusk going around. When the record came out, all of you said you were delighted with it. When it didn’t do so well commercially as it was expected to, the opinions within the band about the project seemed to turn more negative.

    Stevie Nicks: I never felt any differently about it. I was always up-front about it. I loved the songs for the most part. I even liked almost all of Lindsey’s tunes, which were the most heavily criticized. I did not love sitting around for thirteen months and I never said I did. If Tusk had been terribly successful I wouldn’t have taken the credit for it because I was not that much a part of it. It was out of my hands. I didn’t want it to be called Tusk. I didn’t like the artwork. I’m being totally truthful — I had very little to do with that record.

    BAM: How does it sound to you now?

    Stevie Nicks: I love individual songs. Of my songs, I like “Sara” and “Angel” the best. I liked most of Chris’ stuff. Of Lindsey’s songs, I guess I like “Save Me A Place” and “Walk a Thin Line” the most. Those are beautiful songs.

    I love Lindsey’s work. I didn’t hang around with him for seven years for nothing, listening to him play guitar every single night, watching him fall asleep with his electric guitar across his chest. There were nights I had to pry the guitar off of him so he could sleep in a normal position.

    My main complaint with Tusk isn’t musical. It just went on too long. I think it could have been done in half the time. But again, I’m not a player. I’m the dancer and singer. I just want to get up there and dance and twirl my baton.

    BAM: According to nearly everyone I’ve talked to, you are an amazingly prolific writer. Do you have a regular writing regimen?

    Stevie Nicks: No. I just write when I feel like it, which is a lot of the time. Sometimes I write every day, sometimes a few days will go by when I don’t write anything. I get nervous that I’m drying up if I don’t write often.

    I have entire filing cabinets filled with stuff I’ve written. It’s songs plus I’ve been keeping a journal for the past six or seven years, so I’ve got the history of Fleetwood Mac completely written. It could be an incredible book, but it would be a massive project to pull it all together. There are books within books within books, the making of all of the albums, the tours, the relationships; John and Chris trying to work together, Lindsey and Stevie trying to work together. It’s all there…

    BAM: “Soon to be a five-part mini-series on ABC starring Morgan Fairchild as Stevie Nicks….”

    Stevie Nicks: [Laughs] It really could be, and they wouldn’t have to sensationalize a thing! You have no idea of all the stuff that’s gone on. It’s been fascinating.

    Getting back to songwriting, though, anytime I think a part of a song might be coming out, I’ll try to write it. Like I wrote a song in the middle of the night last night, which makes me very happy because whenever I write a new song I feel great for a few days. This new tune’s about how the house shakes when the waves hit the beach. I’ve got a whole cassette of me sitting at the organ singing lines over and over again. Writing is fun for me. I’ve got a wealth of things to write about.

    BAM: I’ve always thought your songs presented an interesting view of womanhood. It’s not quite a “sisterhood is powerful” feeling, but some of your compositions seem to emphasize the bond you feel with other women in an almost spiritual way.

    Stevie Nicks: I think that’s probably true. I’m surrounded by men in this business so I need a little feminine comfort, and one way to find that is to write about how I exist in this world of men, how I deal with them and how they deal with me. And I tend to talk about it as “we” instead of “I.” I’m no great women’s liberationist, though. I found out a long time ago that that doesn’t work, so–

    BAM: That’s rather cynical.

    Stevie Nicks: It’s true. I get a lot further with the men in this business by being feminine and sweet and not aggressive and quiet. They let me in. They don’t let in aggressive, pushy women. Say one word too much and you’re out. Well, I didn’t want to be out. I wanted to be friends with them. They’re my peers and contemporaries. They’re people I have to work with and I damn well am going to be part of them. It took me a long time to be anything to them besides just a “girl.”

    BAM: How do you make the jump in men’s minds from being just another “chick singer,” as it is degradingly put so often, to being respected for your songwriting, which is obviously what you would like?

    Stevie Nicks: I just keep writing, playing and telling people how important writing is. I tell writers that it’s not important to me to be a sex symbol. I tell them it’s not important to me what people think of me dancing around in gossamer clothing onstage. I happen to like wearing clothing like that. It’s fine for Gelsey Kirkland [a top ballerina] but it’s not fine for me. If I was a ballerina, nobody would say one word about what I wore, and they wouldn’t talk about my sex life — which writers don’t know anything about anyway. But put on a pair of platform boots and walk out on a rock and roll stage and — WOW! All people see is an image.

    I’m not going to change because I get criticized for what I wear or because, as you said some people see only a “chick singer.” I keep persevering and doing what I do with the hope that someday people won’t care about any of that and instead they’ll look up and say, “You know, she really is a pretty good writer.” It’s starting to happen, actually. It’s taken six or seven years, but it is happening. You can’t give up for a second.

    BAM: I can’t spot many specific influences in your songwriting. Who were you listening to when you started writing a lot?

    Stevie Nicks: Well, I’ve written for years and been influenced by lots of people, but I guess the stuff that really got me was Joni Mitchell’s early songs. I learned so much from listening to her. In fact, I probably wouldn’t be doing this if it hadn’t been for her. It was her music that showed me I could say everything I wanted to and push it into one sentence and sing it well. Ladies of the Canyon taught me a lot. I remember lying on the floor, listening to Joni’s records, studying every single word. When she came out with a new album I’d go crazy — “Don’t bother me this week. I’m listening to Joni Mitchell.”

    BAM: The inspiration was more attitudinal than actual?

    Stevie Nicks: Right. I didn’t want to play music like her. I couldn’t if I’d wanted to — I can’t play the guitar worth shit, and Joni’s a great player. I just loved the way she was a very personal writer yet easy to relate to. She was doing what I wanted to do. I also loved all of Jackson Browne’s records. Again, the could make the most intimate, personal things universal. This might surprise you, but I loved Jimi Hendrix as a writer — he put words together in really amazing ways. I loved Janis Joplin — the way she sang, the way she performed. I saw her one time and was completely riveted. I never forgot it. I have so many influences, but I can’t really tell where they come in.

    My writing style is very, very simple. I play so simply that I have to kill with my voice, especially in the beginning of a song or nobody gets it. The instrumental parts of my songs are not going to see them. And because the structure and chords and all are so simply, it forces me — and the players –to really experiment with phrasings and ways of bringing out the melody.

    BAM: Some people believe that writers — artists in general– work best when they have inner turmoil: that happiness isn’t inspiring, but pain is. Do you agree with that?

    Stevie Nicks: I think a little turmoil probably helps. I don’t go looking for it so I can write [laughs], but then I never sit down and write a happy song. I think there is something to that theory, because the person who is searching and never quite finding what he wants, who is constantly challenged, is going to write better songs than somebody who is blissfully happy. If you’re blissfully happy, what else is there to say? And how many people are blissfully happy enough that they can relate to what you’re writing?

    As close as I get to writing happy songs are ones that aren’t un-happy. I’ve written my share of miserable songs, but I haven’t recorded many of them.

    BAM: There definitely is an overriding optimism in most of your songs.

    Stevie Nicks: People don’t mind a little misery, but they also like happy endings. It’s nice to leave some hope at the end that things will work out. See, Lindsey won’t do that. He’ll say, “Go your own way,” I wouldn’t, most likely.

    Lindsey hates to write lyrics, though. Maybe that’s why some of his songs are so negative. [Laughs] He’ll have all these beautiful songs that are instrumentals for months. They have gorgeous melodies, layer upon layer of guitars. I exercise to his tapes, practice ballet to them. Then he’ll write lyrics for this beautiful song and it’ll have a different feeling than the music.

    BAM: I’m surprised the two of you haven’t collaborated on songs since you’ve been in Fleetwood Mac. You love to write words and he’s a nut for melodies.

    Stevie Nicks: I’m surprised, too. I always wanted to. It’s strange. You would think he would ask me, but I think he really doesn’t like my lyrics very much. They’re too spacey for him. We think differently, I guess.

    BAM: You and Petty obviously have a good rapport. Can you see yourself writing with him?

    Stevie Nicks: I think we will write together eventually. You see, Tom and I aren’t going out. Tom and I aren’t in love with each other, or haven’t been in love and out of love. We’re really just good friends so we probably could write together. Lindsey and I have so much behind us that it would be difficult to sit down and intensely get into lyrics. As it is he asks me, “Who’s that one about? What are you talking about in that line? What does that mean?” [Laughs]

    BAM: What did you contribute to the next Fleetwood Mac album?

    Stevie Nicks: I have three songs as it stands now, but I think we may replace one of them with another song. I wrote one of the songs a long, long time ago, even before Lindsey and I moved to LA. It’s called “It’s Alright.” It’s very simple: Lindsey just plays some really nice guitar behind me. There’s another song called “If You Were My Love” that I wrote about a year ago after I’d recorded “Outside the Rain” with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. I spent a week recording with them and I had so much fun that I was really bummed out when it was over. That’s when I wrote that song.

    There was also a song called “Smile at You” that I don’t think we’ll put on. I think Lindsey wants me to record another one and so do I. It’s kind of a bitter song and that’s really not where any of us are at right now, even thought it’s a wonderful song. My songs don’t take long to record, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

    BAM: Did the sessions for this album have a different tone than past Fleetwood Mac sessions?

    Stevie Nicks: It went smoothly. It didn’t take us as long. I think right now everyone is into making a good album that doesn’t take a long time to make.

    BAM: Is there any danger of Fleetwood Mac staying together beyond its natural lifespan? You wouldn’t stay together for business reasons, would you?

    Stevie Nicks: Fleetwood Mac couldn’t stay together if we didn’t want to, because we’re all far too volatile and passionate that it would be unbearable if we didn’t want to be together. Fleetwood Mac is never boring. If it ever becomes boring, we would stop it.

    BAM: It’s not like any of you would starve if Fleetwood Mac didn’t exist.

    Stevie Nicks: That’s right. We keep it going because we want to, because we obviously feel there’s more good music to come out of us as a group. If that changes we’ll be the first ones to recognize it.

    BAM: It must be an awfully good feeling for you, though, to know you’ve done so well on your first project outside of Fleetwood Mac.

    Stevie Nicks: It feels wonderful. Now the trick is to keep my life going in a way where I can continue to do things outside of the group. I’d like to make more albums on my own. I’d love to do a record of songs aimed at children. I’d like to record songs by my grandfather, A.J. Nicks, who was a country singer. There’s so much to do. Bella Donna is just the first step, but it was an important first step.

    I just decided when I came off the year-long Tusk tour that I wasn’t going to give up my life and die a lonely, overdone, overused rock star. That has no glamour. I didn’t want to be written up in 50 years as a miserable old woman who never got to do anything but tour and be famous for ten years and then everything was over.

    I’m far too intelligent to not know that there will be a time when I won’t be 33 anymore, when I won’t be that pretty anymore. I won’t be sparkly anymore, and I’ll be tired. I want to be able to know that I can still have fun and be part of the world, and that I didn’t give it all away for Fleetwood Mac. That’s what Bella Donna is all about. It’s the beginning of my life.

    Blair Jackson / BAM / September 11, 1981

  • Diversity marks Stevie Nicks’ solo

    Diversity marks Stevie Nicks’ solo

    Stevie Nicks Bella Donna (1981)

    Fleetwood Mac singer borrows some hard-edged help from Petty.

    Pop Album Reviews:
    STEVIE NICKS, Bella Donna, Modern Records. MR38-139.

    What’s particularly attractive about Stevie Nicks’ solo plunge is the musical and stylistic diversity she has layered Bella Donna with. In the past, Nicks has cloaked herself exclusively in the simplistic sort of “June/moon/spoon” romanticized mysticism one might expect from someone who publishes her songs under the trade name of “Welsh Witch” music.

    The first time one heard “Rhiannon” in 1976, it was an interesting touch. But after creamy cuts like “Sisters of The Moon” and “Gold Dust Woman,” it was easy to grow tired of hearing Nicks cheapen D.H. Lawrence to a sulky pop beat.

    Here she comes off as a more accomplished, wide-ranging writer and singer. Much of the improvement comes from her hooking up with the rock-oriented producer/engineer team of Jimmy lovine and Shelly Yakus. In addition, Tom Petty and his band have provided the instrumentation and the result is a harder, punchier sound than the gooey pudding whipped up on the past couple Fleetwood Mac LPs.

    The centerpiece cut, “Edge of Seventeen,” might have been an effort to listen to on Rumours or Tusk, but here all the lines like “just like the white winged dove” and “but the sea changes colours” (note the affected spelling of that last word — Welsh witch indeed!) are buoyed up by the punchy arrangements.

    The Petty connection is interesting and made slightly more intriguing by the fact that Nicks seems to have unintentionally one-upped Petty. She sang on the relatively weak “Insider” that showed up on his recent Hard Promises LP and in return got one of the better new Petty songs, “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around.” The passion of the piece suits Nicks well, and it’s a bit of a relief to hear her sing it in her husky voice rather than have to listen to the whiny version Petty might have turned out.

    Besides Petty and the Heartbreakers, Nicks gets good use out of other familiar names. Eagle Don Henley adds some nice vocals to a pretty version of Waylon Jennings’ and Jessie Colter’s “Leather and Lace” while another Eagle, Don Felder, joins Nicks and Henley on the final piece on the record, the 1975 Nicks composition “The Highwayman.” E Street pianist Roy Bittan plays on “Edge of Seventeen,” “After the Glitter Fades” and “Leather and Lace,” and he also gets a writing credit for some very distinctive opening chords added to “Think about It.”

    Past all the outside input, however, Bella Donna is Stevie Nicks’ record and it’s surprising how attractive she and it are. In addition to the previously mentioned doubts, it’s an acknowledged fact that Nicks’ voice is a delicate instrument that is beginning to fail. Overlooking the benefits of pacing one’s self in the studio (as opposed to the nightly strain of concerts), Nicks is in very full voice here. She belts out the country-style “After the Glitter Fades” without hesitation and only on “Kind of Woman” does her voice start to crack or fade.

    Unlike Rickie Lee Jones, another singer who steeps herself in romanticism on a new solo album, Nicks is not as demanding or penetrating a writer. On the other hand, Nicks hasn’t fallen into the trap of self-absorption that alienates the listener from Jones’ Pirates — Nicks the writer is easily understood and enjoyed. The title track is slightly obscured by the foggy passions that are Nicks’ preoccupation, but other numbers like “How Still My Love” and “Outside the Rain” are effective pieces of mood and affection.

    The only letdown in Bella Donna stems from this accessibility. In truth, these generally appealing songs don’t have a lot of impact when added up as an album. Nicks is not a Chrissie Hynde or even a Pat Benatar when it comes to generating vocal excitement — obviously, she’s not a fullblown rocker like those two, yet as a stylist she doesn’t quite generate the energy that other stylists like Linda Ronstadt or Joan Armatrading can turn out. There are points during some of the cuts, like “The Highwayman” or “Kind of Woman,” that are emotionally flat and unaffecting.

    Still, one has to give Nicks credit for shaping a much fuller and better LP than her work with Fleetwood Mac might have indicated she was capable of. Her name alone and the tie-in with Petty virtually assure Bella Donna sales. It’s nice that there are actually some songs here worthy of that status.

    C.P. Smith / Santa Ana Orange County Register / August 9, 1981
    (This article was transcribed by Stevie Nicks Info)

  • REVIEW: Bella Donna

    REVIEW: Bella Donna

    Rickie Lee Jones’ Pirates and Stevie Nicks’ Bella Donna are both such long-awaited albums that you could all but hear the amens when they arrived in the stores.

    It has been nearly two years since the release of Jones’ enchanting debut LP, which rode the success of “Chuck E.’s in Love” into the Top 10 and earned the singer a Grammy as the year’s best new artist.

    It has been even longer since Nicks’ ethereal “Rhiannon” in 1976 helped make Fleetwood Mac one of the most commercially successful bands in recording history–a contribution that suggested Nicks would eventually attempt a solo album.

    Now that the wait for the albums is over, the questions are: Does Jones live up to expectations? Will Nicks do OK on her own? The answers depend on whether you’re more interested in chart performance or music. Bella Donna (Modern Records) is a careful, respectable work that will chalk up sales, but it mostly repeats what we already know about Nicks’ music from her recordings with Fleetwood Mac. The album’s high points are the few times she steps into new territory.

    [Editor’s note: The rest of the Rickie Lee Jones’ Pirates album review has been omitted from this article.]

    The strange thing about Stevie Nicks’ Bella Donna is that someone who presumably has been looking forward for years to recording away from the shadow of one band steps in the LP’s key track into the shadow of another: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

    Not only did Petty write and co-produce “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” but he also sings on it with nicks, and the Heartbreakers bands plays on the track. The arrangement–from Benmont Tench’s sinuous keyboard touches to Michael Campbell’s cymbal-like guitar licks– summarizes the feel of Petty’s moody, midtempo rockers so fully that it’s almost a caricature.

    Still, the Nicks-Petty teaming is a classic pairing of two of rock’s heart-throbs and the single will be smash, adding even more to the audience for this album. The problem aesthetically is the song adds nothing to Nicks’ musical identity. Unfortunately, the same things can be said about the rest of the LP.

    That’s not going to necessarily be a disappointment for hard-core Nicks fans, but I’ve always felt quivering, trance-like vocals are most effective in small doses.

    One of Fleetwood Mac’s strengths is the flexibility that results from three singer-songwriters in the band. Just when Nicks’ initially seductive approach wears thin, the group shifts to one of the velvety Christine McVie ballads or rollicking Lindsey Buckingham numbers.

    Using guitarist Waddy Wachtel and other musicians who have worked with Linda Ronstadt, producer Jimmy Iovine gives Nicks’ music a harder edge than it usually receives on the Mac recordings. Still, most of the songs on Bella Donna are built around the same swirling rhythms and frequent mystical allusions of such familiar Nicks tunes as “Sisters of the Moon,” “Rhiannon,” and “Dreams.”

    Some of the songs–notably the upbeat “Think About It”–work especially well. Others, however, are ponderous. Among them: the title track, which is yet another reflection on pop stardom (“No speed limit…this is the fast lane”), and “Edge of Seventeen,” an over-wrought romantic flashback.

    The high points in the album are the times she steps farthest form the Mac mold. Besides the Petty track, there’s “After the Glitter Fades,” a marvelous country ballad, and “Leather and Lace,” a folkish song with much of the delicate emotion of Tim Hardin’s best tunes. On both numbers, Nicks, who is joined on “Leather and Lace” by Eagles’ Don Henley, seems far more approachable and genuine vocally.

    “After the Glitter Fades” is such an evocative account of loneliness amid the glamour of Hollywood rock ‘n’ roll that it’s surprising to note on the album’s lyric sheet that it was written before Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac and became a star herself. Sample lyric: “The dreams keep coming when you forget to feel.”

    If Nicks could have broken awa a few more times from the relatively conversative shackles of her Fleetwood Mac image, Bella Donna would have been a lot easier to toast as it goes up the sales chart.

    Robert Hilburn / Los Angeles Times / August 2, 1981

  • The Highwayman

    The Highwayman

    “The Highwayman” is Track 10 and the last track on Bella Donna (1981), Stevie Nicks’ first solo album. It follows “Outside the Rain” in the album track order.

    About the Song

    “‘The Highwayman’ I wrote probably in 1975, probably. I basically wrote it with the idea of the old (1947) poem ‘The Highwayman‘ (by Alfred Noyes). The Highwayman comes riding, riding and Bess, the lady at the inn is waiting, and she’s set up with a rifle that’s gonna go off as soon as he comes through the door, and she can hear the hoofbeats.

    I mean, The Highwayman was like the wonderful person that stole from the rich and gave to the poor, right? He was the romantic figure on the horse with the cape. Well, I paralleled that to today’s male rock and roll musician, which they’re all highwaymen. No other way to look at it. They steal from the rich and give to the poor sometimes. And they are that romantic on-the-road figure, you know? They could just as well be in coaches with seven black horses leading them.

    Basically, Don Henley is The Highwayman. I used him as my idea, The Eagles, you know, on the road because this was before I was, you know, I could only look in awe at all these men because I’m a songwriter and what I really wanted to do was I wanted to be accepted by these people as a lady songwriter and not as just a girl. And I never really got accepted as anything else but a girl by any of them, right? But I wrote this song and Don sang it with me. We did a demo of it. And I call him the old Highwayman himself.

    So it’s a story, you know? It’s basically about a girl who sort of has a dream that’s a premonition, and she’s like a asleep in a rocking chair and she wakes up and she realizes at the end of the song, it says ‘A dream as the thunder wakes her / And the highwayman disappears / Or a life already lived before in eyes wet with tears / Today and still today they ride / Will they ever win? / He the glory she the love / Still They try again’ — and that’s Don and I. I mean, we just try again, you know, over and over. And it is very much like the old, elegant, sort of… It’s very romantic. I’d love to do a video to this song because it’s a perfect… I mean, it says, ‘She in the distance sees him against the sky / A pale and violent rider / A dream began in wine.’ And I see him riding against the moon on his horse just a black charger, you know, going away.”

    Recording

    “Don played drums, and we have this videoed. We videoed the whole thing with just a kind of a cool home-video camera. So I have Don Felder playing bottleneck slide, and Don playing the drums, and Davey Johnstone playing the acoustic guitar, Benmont playing organ, and all these wonderful people. It was like staring out and looking at The Eagles standing in front of me ’cause if you see Don Henley and Don Felder, that’s enough of The Eagles to look like The Eagles. A lot of these recording sessions were very romantic because I would just be standing there in the middle of this room singing and looking at these incredibly famous people, who I had sung along with for years before I had ever achieved any success. So I was unknown completely when I was really, really involved with their music.

    “So to be sharing my first album with them was like I can’t even tell you. It was like being homecoming queen. I mean, it was just the neatest thing that ever happened to me. And Don Felder played wonderful guitar on it — he knows it too. He knows he was wonderful. They all know they were wonderful because they felt it, you know. They walked out of the room, I mean, grinning, all of them.”

    Lyrics

    Alas he was the highwayman
    The one that comes and goes
    And only the highway-woman
    Keeps up with the likes of those
    And she in all her magic
    With hands as quick as light
    Took him to be a challenge
    And went into the night

    And he in all his glory
    Was far ahead of her
    But she was never sorry
    For wishes that would burn
    Enter competition
    She chases beneath the moon
    Her horse is like a dragonfly
    She is just a fool

    And she wonders is this real
    Or does she just want to be Queen
    And he fights the way he feels
    Is this the end of the dream

    And then he sees her coming
    Heartbeats on the wind
    Considers slowing down
    But then, he could never win
    And she, out in the distance
    Sees him against the sky
    A pale and violent rider
    A dream begun in wine

    And she wonders is this real
    Or does she just want to be Queen
    And he fights the way he feels
    Is this the end of the dream

    A dream as the thunder wakes her
    And her highwayman disappears
    On a life already lived before
    In eyes welled with tears

    Today and still today they ride
    Will they ever win
    He the glory
    She the love
    Still they try again
    He the glory
    She the love
    Still they try again
    He the glory
    She the love
    And still they try again

    (Stevie Nicks) © 1975 Welsh Witch Music (BMI) admin. by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

    Reference

    Nicks, S. (1981). Stevie Nicks Interview.  Denis McNamara, interviewer, WLIR 92.7 FM.

    Nicks, S. (1981). Breaking the chain.

  • Outside the Rain

    Outside the Rain

    “Outside the Rain” is Track 9 on Bella Donna, Stevie Nicks’ first solo album. It follows “Leather and Lace” and preceding “The Highwayman” in the album track order.

    About the Song

    Stevie has never publicly shared the story behind “Outside the Rain,” but it appears to be about her relationship with drummer Mick Fleetwood. The strongest clue of this came from her concert performances of the song, during which she modified the lyric “Well, it’s just one more link in the chain” to “Well, Mick said, ‘Stevie, it’s just one more link in the chain. Baby, don’t break it.”

    Stevie wrote several songs about her romantic relationship with Mick Fleetwood around this time. These songs include “Angel,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Storms,” and “Watch Chain.”

    Considered a deep-cut in Stevie’s vast catalog, “Outside the Rain,” has started Stevie’s live shows on several concert tours. It has often segued into the Rumours track “Dreams.”

    Lyrics

    Outside the rain
    And the heart skips a beat
    So you’re lonely
    Creature of the night
    It’s been almost a week
    Can you love me only

    Look at me, for a very long time
    Long enough to know
    Love is a word – I’ve been trying to find
    Words don’t matter
    They don’t matter at all

    Maybe it’s only a dream
    I don’t want to feel that
    Well it’s one more link – in the chain
    I don’t believe that

    So you’re still lonely
    You say that it’s been forever
    Maybe you never knew me
    Maybe you thought that
    I’d never change but
    You know I’m changing
    You’re wrong

    And it’s been like dying
    No love’s that hard to find
    And I’m tired of
    I’m tired of trying
    Outside the rain
    And the heart skips a beat
    So you’re lonely

    Look in my eyes
    Touch my face
    Baby, there’s no one
    That can take my place

    Look in my eyes, touch my face
    Baby there’s no one that
    Can ever replace that heartache
    Take away that heartache

    Love is a word that some entertain
    If you find it
    You have won the game

    Somebody said
    “Outside the rain”

    (Stevie Nicks) © Welsh Witch Music (BMI) admin. by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

    < Leather and Lace | BELLA DONNA | The Highwayman >