The musician Stevie Nicks said was “everything I wanted to be”
It’s tough to imagine Stevie Nicks wanting to be anyone but herself. For decades, countless people have looked up to her with awe as the Fleetwood Mac singer established herself as one of the most respected and beloved musicians in rock history. However, on her track ‘If Anyone Falls’, she chronicled the moment her love for another artist fell into that complex zone between admiration, adoration, and envy.
Love is tricky, no matter what. But when love merges with art and is shared between artists, it becomes even harder. There’s always a fine line between the glorious, joyous feelings of desire and admiration and the darker, murkier worlds of jealousy or spite. It’s easy for the sickly sweet feelings of admiration to become sour and bitter.
The love between two musicians especially feels like a minefield. For two people in the same industry, there is always bound to be a level of comparison or competition over who is doing better, who is getting the most gigs or who is getting better or more beloved. Even if that love isn’t romantic but is solely platonic or creative, all the feelings surrounding admiration sit so close to jealousy that it’s difficult to keep in check. It often comes from not knowing if you want to be with somebody or if you want to be them.
It’s a complex state to articulate but one that bubbles away in the pits of hearts and stomachs everywhere. When it comes to love between creatives, it’s tough to know whether a person is content to be next to someone, watching and supporting their success, or whether they wish they were them. Even on the level that Nicks is at, as one of the most famous women in rock, she’s still not immune from that delicate tightrope walk between the two.
On ‘If Anyone Falls’, she articulated it perfectly as she sings about an all-encompassing love that blurred the lines between infatuation and envy. “There was a time when I was falling out of one love and into another when nothing else seemed to matter except this person. I adored him,” she said of the song. But her love for the musician also dipped into her self-image and the kind of life she’d always wanted for herself as she spent her youth obsessed with music and the people who make it.
“He was everything I wanted to be; a real rock and roller and a lover of the Stones, small and frail sometimes, but in many ways the strongest person I had ever known,” she continued, “His word was law. I became him. He became me, and no one dared intrude upon this union.”
The man in question was Waddy Wachtel, a musician who worked with many of Nicks’ peers and idols. He’d been a session musician for the likes of The Rolling Stones, James Taylor, Randy Newman, Warren Zevon and plenty more. He also worked with Nicks, first playing on the Buckingham Nicks album in 1973, then on the 1974 self-titled Fleetwood Mac album and later on The Wild Heart. He actually plays on ‘If Anyone Falls’ as Nicks sings of her love for him amidst their complex affair that merged personal, romantic and creative kinship.
It seems like that’s something Nicks never could escape though. Her romantic history is utterly tied to her creative one, regularly finding herself falling for collaborators or bandmates as her musical admiration for someone turned to lust or love.
