The one singer Stevie Nicks will never get over: “Broken my heart”
Every single emotion that Stevie Nicks ever felt can be found in her songs.
Even though there are several artists who try to put their emotions on the shelf every single time they perform their tunes, Nicks was determined to sit within every one of her songs whenever she sang and open herself up to the audience whenever she could. Her songs were practically pieces of her life that happened to be captured on vinyl for the world to hear, but that doesn’t mean that all of them are fun to go back to after years of experience.
The Rumours tunes are practically written in rock and roll legend at this point, but chances are that Nicks doesn’t have the same type of vitriol towards Lindsey Buckingham as she did back then. Their relationship has always been a little bit tricky to figure out every single time they played together, but when you look at the way that they work off each other, it’s clear that they have always been musical soulmates to some degree.
That said, it’s not like Buckingham was always going to want to make the decisions that Nicks was going along with. He had a certain idea for how he wanted some of their songs to sound, and while that was all well and good, Nicks had other plans whenever she made her tunes. She wanted to capture a feeling rather than playing every note until it sounded perfect, and you can definitely feel that tension a lot more when they were working on Tusk.
The songs are great, but the band practically had the same kind of attitude that The Beatles had when making The White Album. Everything sounded fine, but it was also a goddamn mess whenever you heard all of the tunes one after another. There was more than enough for a great record, but Nicks wasn’t going to go along with what the rest of the band wanted all the time. She needed another outlet, and Tom Petty helped give her that outlet when working on her first solo album.
While Petty always maintained the fact that Nicks was her own entity, ‘The Gold Dust Woman’ always saw him like a supportive older brother. He knew exactly what she was going for before she even did half the time, and while there were more than a few times where they could read each other’s minds, Nicks felt that she couldn’t truly feel that friendship until it was eventually gone forever.
Petty’s death was bound to send shockwaves throughout the music world, but Nicks felt like this was the body blow that she couldn’t handle, saying, “The loss of Tom Petty has just about broken my heart. He was not only a good man to go down the river with, as Johnny Cash said, he was a great father and he was a great friend. He was one of my best friends. My heart will never get over this.” Which probably explains why she kept so many of his bandmates close to the chest as well.
Mike Campbell was the perfect person to help replace Buckingham in Fleetwood Mac, and whenever you hear them playing off each other, it’s easy to hear what made the Heartbreakers such a powerhouse. They could do anything with the right song in their hands, but Nicks felt that it was about more than Petty’s songs. It was the way he carried himself, and every single one of his records was a testament to the kind of person that he was at all times.
He didn’t always have the best tunes, and there were more than a few times where he could admit that some records didn’t work out, but none of that mattered to Nicks. She was interested in living her life the same way that Petty did, and while not everything she did may have been approved by her friend, there’s more than enough shared musical DNA to make her an honorary Heartbreaker.
