The 2014 track that made Stevie Nicks feel the most alone: “I lived that song so many times”
The relationships of Stevie Nicks, while highly publicised due to the high-profile nature of the people involved, are perhaps some of the most influential things on the overall themes of her songwriting.
Large portions of the lyrics on her contributions to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours are about the dissolution of her relationship with bandmate Lindsey Buckingham, and are perhaps some of the most devastating moments on the album.
Take, for example, a song like ‘Dreams’, and its struggle to keep its emotions hidden within the close quarters of the band dynamic, or ‘I Don’t Want to Know’, which when interpreted in the context of the album’s creation becomes an instance of her having to try and reconcile with the breakup; both stand out as crushing examples of her relationships informing her lyricism, and how they massively influenced some of her best work.
She didn’t shy away from writing songs about her other whirlwind romances either, whether that was with Eagles’ Don Henley, or with the bandmates of her two previous lovers who she had brief relationships, having moved onto relationships with both Mick Fleetwood and Joe Walsh afterwards. However, not all of her finest moments were strictly about the relationships she did have, but about the relationships she didn’t have.
While written around 1978, ‘Belle Fleur’ never saw an official release until its inclusion on 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault, an album of re-recorded rarities that was released in 2014, but Nicks has always stated that the song is about her struggle to maintain any serious relationships due to the fact that she was constantly on the road. Singing from the perspective of herself, her future sister-in-law, Lori Perry, and various other female friends she made at the peak of Fleetwood Mac’s popularity, the track laments how hard it is to want to love, but not be able to because of constant travelling.
“The lyric ‘When you come to the door of the long black car,’ that’s the limousine that’s coming to take you away,” Nicks later explained in a 2015 interview with Canadian magazine, Maclean’s. “Then your boyfriend is standing on the porch waving at you, like, ‘When are you going to be back?’ And you’re like, ‘I don’t know, maybe three months?’”
She continued, stating that there would be times when shows would be added to tours, which meant that Nicks was often away from home for six months a year. “It was difficult for the men in my life,” she added. “I lived that song so many times.”
Of course, quite often, she was in relationships with other men who were living the same lifestyle as her, and so the likelihood of them being on the road at the same time was high, making it just as complicated for them at the same time.
On the other hand, it truly underlines the loneliness of being a touring musician, and how, despite being able to perform in front of thousands of fans, you still crave to be truly close to someone. For Nicks, around the time she was arguably at her most popular, she was experiencing the most heartbreak through not being able to be present in her relationships.
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