The first song Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks ever wrote: “My first love affair”
Long before the opportunity presented itself for Stevie Nicks to join Fleetwood Mac, which made people take notice of her talent, she was honing her skills as a songwriter. Those years that Nicks spent writing songs that she expected nobody would hear helped her significantly when she finally gained attention.
Artistic expression is in Nicks’ DNA. The Fleetwood Mac singer was born into a musical family, with her grandfather teaching her to sing shortly after Nicks had learned to walk and talk. Music was all around her, and from an early age, the radio was a close friend that she could rely on for company.
The mix of natural talent that Nicks possessed, combined with her exposure to music, was always destined to be a recipe for success. Therefore, when she finally made the step up to write after being gifted a guitar for her 16th birthday, Nicks already had the wherewithal to conquer the art of songwriting.
Most believe songwriters need bundles of life experience before becoming truly masterful lyricists. However, the rules are there to be broken, and sometimes, pure gold can be struck from the unlikeliest places. When Nicks first attempted the craft, she was only 16 and poured her heart into ‘I’ve Loved, and I’ve Lost, and I’m Sad but not Blue’, which most artists twice her age wouldn’t be able to deliver as eloquently.
Instantly, as soon as she had written the song, Nicks knew she had a talent for songwriting, giving her the confidence to continue improving as the years progressed. Following the success of ‘I’ve Loved, and I’ve Lost, and I’m Sad but not Blue’, she soon began to write more often, and it became her crutch whenever dealing with complex emotions.
“On my birthday, I wrote a song about my first love affair,” she later recalled of her first songwriting experience. “It was a relationship at 15-and-a-half where I was absolutely crazy about this guy. Thank God he broke up with me because if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been spurred on to write that song. Because when that song was done, I knew I was going to be a songwriter. I realised right away that I could write songs because I could have experiences without even having them, by just singing about them.”
Vitally, her first taste of heartbreak taught Nicks that she could write songs, but it also reminded her that everything happens for a reason. If things had panned out differently, Nicks would never have sought comfort in songwriting at such an early age. During an interview with The Huffington Post in 2012, she looked back upon her lifelong artistic flair and said: “I have been a little performer since I was four years old, and you’re going to see that in this film,” she said. “I was just nuts for the stage. I came into the world dancing and singing, and my mom and dad, I think, knew from the very beginning. My grandfather was a country-western singer and a fiddle player and guitarist, and he wrote songs and travelled all over the United States and played gigs in the ’40s”
Nicks added: “My parents were very supportive of my love of music, and my focus was very strong from when I was in grade school. They knew I didn’t want to be an actress, I didn’t want to take drama, I didn’t really want to take musical drama. I just wanted to listen to rockabilly and rock ‘n’ roll and R&B, and I just was in my own little musical world. I had it planned out. In sixth grade, I was wearing a black outfit with a top hat. I had it all planned out.”
Even when her career was flailing following the commercial failure of her debut album with Lindsey Buckingham, Nicks remained committed to following her passion. Quitting was never on the agenda for the singer, who needed artistic fulfilment for the sanctity of her own mental well-being. It didn’t matter if her songs were hit records like ‘Dreams‘ or ‘The Chain’ or for personal pleasure; Nicks has always had an essential desire to create.
