“An exorcism”: the song that defined Stevie Nicks’ performance style
As mad as it may sound now, Stevie Nicks was never targeted as a prospective Fleetwood Mac member when leader Mick Fleetwood was looking to recruit.
After Peter Green exited the band, the drummer was left scanning the music industry in search of a new frontman. Knowing that he could never quite match the brilliance of British blues legend Green, he jumped over the pond and recruited Lindsey Buckingham, who was down to join, on one condition: his girlfriend and songwriting partner, Stevie Nicks, would join with him.
But Nicks didn’t join the band, happy to just be a deal sweetener. No, she was an artist of her own, coming to the studio armed with a chest of ideas that would completely transform the sound and success of the band.
She wasted absolutely no time and delivered the two standout songs on the band’s 1975 self-titled album, which served as the debut record for this new iconic lineup. ‘Landslide’ and ‘Rhiannon’ showed both sides of Nicks’ songwriting, with the former being one of the band’s most heartfelt ballads, proving her acute ability to narrate the transient experiences of life.
While the latter was a stirring rock track, it allowed her new bandmates to support her songwriting style that celebrated all of the weird and wonderful of her mythical ideas. “It was all about this girl who becomes possessed by a spirit named Rhiannon,” the Fleetwood Mac vocalist explained. “I read the book. But I was so taken with that name that I thought, ‘I’ve got to write something about this. So, I sat down at the piano and started singing this song about a woman who was all involved with these birds and magic.”
These tales weren’t lightly picked from the netherworld and then introduced into Nicks’ songwriting for fun, she deeply felt the sentiment of what they represented. And so whenever she stepped foot on stage to perform ‘Rhiannon’, Nicks ensured she left nothing out there, in honour of the possessed girl.
“‘Rhiannon’ is a heavy-duty song to sing every night,” Nicks said in a 1976 interview, adding. “On stage, it’s really a mind-tripper. Everybody, including me, is just blitzed by the end of it. And I put out so much in that.”
It made Mick Fleetwood stand back in awe of his new bandmate. The artist he once viewed as an add-on had now captured the attention of the world and staked a claim as their most important vocalist. And it was during her performances of ‘Rhiannon’ that he felt that most, marvelling at her ability to go where no other artist dared.
“She’s not a person who half-cooks anything,” Fleetwood said in a Behind the Music feature on his long-time bandmate. “So, her ‘Rhiannon’ in those days was like an exorcism.”
That commitment was arguably taken advantage of in the following years of Fleetwood Mac, where Nicks’ trauma was almost mined for songwriting purposes. Battling crippling heartbreak and an unrelenting cocaine addiction, Nicks spent long, gruelling months in the studio, performing with the same sort of intensity as Fleetwood remarks. But while it came at the benefit of the band, it certainly had an effect on Nicks.
