The musicians Stevie Nicks said make any song better: “Even the worst vocal is going to be great”
Even an artist as iconic as Stevie Nicks is going to have her off days every now and again.
No one in the world can start making the same classics that they did in their 20s every single time they walk into the studio, but when you capture those magic moments whenever you’re onstage or behind the glass, it’s like a piece of musical heaven suddenly appears in the room out of nowhere. Although Nicks was always a firm believer in that approach to rock and roll, she knew that it took a little bit of help to get her to that kind of musician status.
But it’s not like Nicks was ever incapable of making tunes on her own. Although Lindsey Buckingham might play all those moody stabs in the middle of ‘Dreams’, the fact that she could create that entire mood with only two chords is one of the greatest examples of emotional restraint in music. Not everyone needs to be a genius musician to be a great artist, but when working on Bella Donna, Nicks wasn’t going to rely on only her wits to get across the finish line.
She wanted to make sure everything sounded pristine, which probably explains why Jimmy Iovine got behind the board. He had already masterminded everything from Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run to sessions for John Lennon’s solo albums, but Nicks was much more focused on the other bands that he was working with out of California.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were the kind of band that she always wanted to be in, and getting Petty to write a song for her, and Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench playing on the record, was a match made in heaven. It didn’t sound like Fleetwood Mac at all, but you could still see that ‘Gold Dust Woman’ persona was in there somewhere. But aside from heartland rock, the Eagles weren’t too far behind the Heartbreakers when Nicks put her tunes together.
And while Don Henley sang a duet with her and she would go on to call Joe Walsh one of her greatest loves, bringing Don Felder in to play on ‘The Highwayman’ was the perfect counterbalance to the rest of the record. Walsh may have been the rockstar, but the chops Felder had were beyond compare whenever he took a lead, and whether he was playing tasty blues bends or the subtle rock and roll lead breaks, everything sounded right coming out of his amplifier.
‘The Mac’ had already been a glorified supergroup, but Nicks felt that nothing could go wrong with Petty and Felder by her side, saying, “With Tom Petty and Don Felder out there, you’re certainly not going to stand up there and be terrible. You’re going to do the very best you can from the first time you sing. Even the worst vocal is going to be great. Also, you’re so proud that you don’t want to look like a jerk in front of all these guys!”
Although Felder would come and go as a session musician, Petty was practically the older brother to Nicks for the next few years. They may have had their sparring sessions now and again, but whenever Nicks talked about her relationship with the Heartbreakers leader, she seemed to have the utmost reverence for him for helping her realise the kind of artist she could be on her own.
The sound of Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac wasn’t too far away from the Eagles and the Heartbreakers, but whereas most people would have seen them as competition, Nicks saw an opportunity when she struck out on her own. There was no bad blood there, so why not trade in the traditional Buckingham-style lead breaks for something a little bit more flashy?
