The one song that always makes Stevie Nicks want to writer her own: “I just have to sit down”
I sometimes feel as though Stevie Nicks’ life is the ultimate display of artistic martyrdom. Perhaps she pissed someone off in her previous life of spirituality and is therefore rendered to endless suffering in the name of music.
Sure, she has experienced more success than your average person could ever dream of achieving, but none of it has come without pain. After years of toiling away, her big musical break came at the expense of her own personal relationship. For better or worse, she was forever bound to her toxic partner Lindsey Buckingham, where details of her personal relationship would play out for all of our enjoyment.
It has always felt as though Nicks’ pain has been necessary for the enjoyment of her art and sometimes, I find myself at odds with that idea. The older I get, the more I understand the sacrifice she has made to be a faithfully true musician.
Her romantic involvement with Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh, felt like at least some sort of respite from the artistic drama Nicks was forever entangled in. Importantly, his art existed separately from their relationship but more crucially, he was a similar broken soul, someone whom Nicks could take some element of comfort from.
Nicks could emphasise and understand Walsh’s own personal trauma that largely stemmed from the passing of his daughter. It was a painful memory the two bonded over, and one Nicks used to inspire her song, ‘Has Anyone Ever Written Anything For You’.
But the pair comforting kinship soon turned into a sense of enabling. Like many artists of that era, both Nicks and Walsh endured the murky depths of drug addiction and while it was largely used to benefit their creativity, their relationship soon made it untenable. Together the pair enabled one another, and while they largely considered each other the undoubted loves of their lives, knew that to separate was the only way to achieve survival.
It was a sad end to what could have been a saving grace in Nicks’ life and to this day remains a chapter she looks back on with both pain and fondness. But like the music she has written for fans all over, it takes the opening chord of one song to take her back to that time when Walsh was an everpresent figure in her life.
“If what inspires you right now is that song ‘Missing You’ by John Waite because you just happened to hear it on the radio, then so be it,” she said, speaking about music’s power to ignite memories.
She continued, “That was my song back when I was with Joe Walsh and whenever it comes on I just have to sit down. My mind races back to that time in my life and if I let myself I could run right to the piano and write another song. I don’t always let myself do that anymore, but that’s what it inspires.”
Nicks has never shied away from pain and tragedy, throughout the entire course of her artistic career. That is what has made her one of the greats, and what has led her to coining her most important piece of advice for future generations: “When people ask me about songwriting, that’s what I tell them. Pay attention to your feelings. It can be anything.”
