The “personal” album that helped make Stevie Nicks a star: “A lot of my soul”
Stevie Nicks never tried to hide any piece of herself in any of her songs.
She was born to sing her music onstage, and even though many people like to write about specific characters, Nicks found her songs to be one of the few places where she could talk about some of the most personal things on her mind. And while most of what she had today was fascinating for everyone that was listening, some of the biggest steps in her career didn’t necessarily have to be one of the biggest commercial successes by any stretch.
When Nicks first started, it was never about her having multi-platinum singles and trying to score points with the critics. She was writing for herself, and with someone like Lindsey Buckingham by her side, she was ready to take on just about any song subject that she had. But it gets a little bit harder to do that when you have relationship troubles with your writing partner half the time you’re playing.
Rumours was one of the biggest records that Nicks would ever make, but it wasn’t easy for her to make by any stretch. The fact that ‘Silver Springs’ got left off the track listing was already a tragedy in her eyes, and the idea of her talking about her relationships falling apart wasn’t going to be easy for anyone to process, especially when her ex was busy writing songs all about her on every other song.
There was so much tension at that point that it’s easy to forget about the kind of naivete that Buckingham Nicks had when making their debut album. The record was never going to blow everyone away when she first performed tunes like ‘Crying in the Night’, but Nicks felt that it was the first time that she got to truly open up on record and make the songs that would turn into her own sound.
She already had her reservations about taking the cover photo, but Nicks felt that half of what her music was all about could be found in that album, saying, “A lot of me and Lindsey’s soul is in that album. All the songs on that album are very special. Very personal. When that record first came out, my best friend called me and said ‘Why didn’t you just release your diary?’. It’s so personal to people who know me and know Lindsey.”
But the real magic was to come later. The album sank without a trace the minute that it hit shelves, but it was at least enough to catch the eyes and ears of Mick Fleetwood when he heard it in Sound City. Everyone had been paying attention to Buckingham’s guitar work, but by the time that Fleetwood asked the guitarist to join the band, Buckingham knew that he wasn’t going to be able to rest if he didn’t have Nicks by his side.
And when you look at the way that the duo blended into Fleetwood Mac, they were already honing their signature sound based on that first album. That’s partly due to the fact that some of their songs were reworked for the band’s self-titled record, but a lot of the overlapping harmonies and the way that their voice connected with Christine McVie’s was what made tunes like ‘Say You Love Me’ sound so beautiful when they came out.
So while the album wasn’t going to be an overnight success, Buckingham Nicks is responsible for turning Nicks into ‘The Gold Dust Woman’ in many respects. She had all of that musical magic inside her already, now it was only a matter of trying to make the best songs that she could once she entered the big leagues.
