The Fleetwood Mac song Stevie Nicks called “a real mind tripper”
Taken from a novel she read around Halloween, Fleetwood Mac‘s Stevie Nicks confirms her folklorist nature and deep spirituality as she explores the story behind the cult-classic ‘Rhiannon’, remembering it as a “real mind tripper” that she wrote in ten minutes. Maybe it’s her favourite name? Or perhaps she thought it was simply “beautiful”; whatever the case, the muse in question definitely wasn’t shy when her alter-personality of an old Welsh witch came out to dance. When written for their fundamental self-titled album in 1975, the track would prove what we all now know too well, and that’s the bewildering depth of Nicks’ imagination and ability to turn anything into tune.
‘Rihannon’, as Nicks described as a “heavy-duty song to sing every night”, was dreamt from one of a tetralogy of books titled The Song of Rhiannon by American writer Evangeline Walton. The fantasy novel appears right up the street from the ‘Dreams’ singer as the tale follows “a modern-day lady” from Wales who seeks a supernatural mystique and finds it “very hard to be tied down”.
“There’s something to that song that touches people,” Nicks infers in a Crawdaddy interview, 1976, “I don’t know what it is, but I’m really glad it happened”.
“On stage, it’s really a mind tripper”, and anybody who’s been lucky enough to see it knows that to be true, “everybody, including me, is just blitzed by the end of it”, she furthers. In a separate interview from the 1970s, Nicks reveals that she envisions her protagonist as a “Queen” whose “memory became a myth”, though I think we can agree it’s more of a legacy, much like her own, being a double Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, and all.
When introducing the song on the Fleetwood Mac Live album 1980, there’s a gentle shaping to the track that revels in vulnerability and honesty. It’s a refreshing ode to the era, I think, to hear about how much of ‘Rhiannon’ is carried with her five years later and possibly how much of herself she sees within this character she formed.
As Nicks speaks, she details “birds that take pain away” and the need to “relieve suffering” with her melody, which is revealed more intensely through her own version, away from the band. It’s stripped back, personable and just straight-up relatable, “that’s what music is to me”.
“I definitely feel that there’s a presence,” and that’s an apt way to encapsulate ‘Rhiannon’. We all have that one song that grips you and refuses to let go, lingering in your mind like an enchanting spell. It pulls you into the creator’s vision, remaining unchanged yet only intensifying with each listen. This is that song.
This track would become one of Fleetwood Mac’s most iconic hits, quite literally “like a bell through the night”. The song masterfully intertwines deeply mournful lyrics with sultry guitar lines, effortlessly flooding four minutes with emotion, all while standing strong amidst the grunge-fueled rock and roll landscape of the ’70s. ‘Rhiannon’ is unapologetically a woman’s world and a woman’s song, proving that she didn’t need the clichés of sex and drugs to make her mark—just a book, a dash of romanticism, and a cadre of visionary innovators.
