“I didn’t give it all away”: the album Stevie Nicks called the beginning of her life
There’s a good chance that no artist is prepared for fame the moment that they hit the big time. They may have certainly had experiences working off of other people onstage or playing to massive crowds, but the idea of people following them around wherever they go or treating them like musical gods isn’t something that everyone realises when reading the fine print of those recording contracts. Stevie Nicks was always bound to be that kind of star before she started her career, but she had a lot of growing up to do before she felt she had finally arrived.
Then again, the fact that Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham managed to get the gig with Fleetwood Mac was purely by happenstance. Buckingham had already been working in the studio that the band were working in when they heard him play guitar, but the minute that he insisted Nicks be brought into the group, there was a different temperature in the room when she came to the forefront with tunes like ‘Rhiannon’.
Even when working on Rumours, Nicks took a far different approach than her peers when singing her breakup tunes. Many people would have easily wanted to lash out in anger at someone who broke their heart into a million pieces, but since this was going to be set in stone forever, Nicks made sure to make tunes that would last for generations, talking about the loss of love as natural as the changing of the seasons.
It’s one thing to talk about romance in songs, but Nicks had far greater plans in mind than silly love songs. She wanted the opportunity to stretch, but since everyone in the band needed some exposure on the album, being only limited to a handful of tunes on a double album like Tusk was never going to satisfy her. She needed a far better outlet, and Jimmy Iovine built the perfect home for her material on Bella Donna.
“That’s what Bella Donna is all about. It’s the beginning of my life.”
Stevie Nicks
While the album does have a token song by Tom Petty, it really is the full statement that Nicks wanted to make. There are still pieces of Fleetwood Mac sprinkled throughout every tune, but ‘After The Glitter Fades’ showed that she had an awareness of the kind of artist she wanted to be now that she didn’t have to listen to what Buckingham wanted or be confined to how Mick Fleetwood played the drums.
In many ways, Nicks saw the entire album as a way of becoming reborn, saying, “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.”
And listening to the record, it’s easy to see the kind of love and care that she put into everything. There are certain pieces that she kept from her time with her old band, but there are pieces of the record that show her to be on the same artistic level as professional songwriters that came before her, like Carole King.
If anything, Bella Donna felt like getting acquainted with the true version of Stevie Nicks rather than the ‘Gold Dust Woman’ that turned up at every Fleetwood Mac concert. She was always about making something more than smoke and mirrors, and if all the production were stripped away, we would still be talking about Bella Donna if it was being played by one person with an acoustic guitar.
