The one guitarist that left Stevie Nicks “totally flattered”
Over the course of a career spanning five decades, the wonderfully witchy Stevie Nicks has worked with some of the biggest names in the business. Aside from her Fleetwood Mac bandmates, who are each greats in their own right, Nicks has dabbled in duets and collaborations aplenty, working with classic icons and relative newcomers.
The Fleetwood Mac frontwoman has amassed an impressive list of collaborators, from harmonising with Tom Petty to jumping on a remix with Miley Cyrus to featuring on a Gorillaz track. However, there is one musician that Nicks found herself particularly flattered by while working with him: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell.
By the end of the 1980s, Nicks was well and truly into the swing of her solo career. She had three records to her name, and she was working on a fourth, 1989’s The Other Side of the Mirror. Though Nicks may have been releasing under her own name rather than working with her Fleetwood Mac bandmates, she still incorporated collaboration into her creative process.
She worked with a range of musicians on the record, including Waddy Watchell and Kenny G on the record, as well as Campbell, who provided his guitar skills to four tracks. Perhaps the most notable contribution from the Heartbreakers guitar player was to ‘Whole Lotta Trouble’, which formed the final single for the record.
Nicks had initially recorded the song without Petty, as she recalled in the liner notes for TimeSpace, though she did use his four-track. “I actually played guitar,” she explained, but that would soon change. “Almost a year later,” Nicks remembered, “Michael had worked up a track right along with what I had played in Australia.” Campbell penned a bridge for Nicks and requested that the Fleetwood Mac singer sang alongside it.
“He insisted I come up and sing it exactly as I had played it that night,” she remembered, “And he could play his track right along with me playing rock and roll guitar”. Nicks’ reaction could have gone either way – she could have been insulted that Campbell wanted to change her creative vision, that he thought he could pen a better guitar part than her, but, actually, she was “totally flattered”.
Together, they had created one of the best songs to feature on The Other Side of the Mirror. ‘Whole Lotta Trouble’ was a dramatic collection of rocking guitars, powerful vocals and the occasional saxophone. It was a gorgeous blend of instrumentation, each choice serving to enhance Nicks’ delivery and lyrics.
“This could be a whole lotta trouble, whole lotta trouble,” Nicks taunted in the chorus, “Whole lotta trouble for you.” Her layered vocals worked alongside the potent drums and softly rocking guitars, fitting together seamlessly. It was a fine example of the creative synergy that clearly existed between Nicks and Campbell.
In fact, Nicks went on to suggest that he was the “only person in [her] whole life who has EVER done one of [her] songs exactly as [she] had written it.” It’s a subtle blow to all of her previous collaborators, to her Fleetwood Mac bandmates who played on countless songs she had penned, but it’s high praise for Campbell.Decades later, ‘Whole Lotta Trouble’ remains one of the most refined offerings in her solo catalogue, testament to Campbell’s flattering presence.
