‘After the Glitter Fades’: The song Stevie Nicks calls “very prophetic” of her relationship with Lindsey Buckingham
Long before the rumours and romances of Fleetwood Mac, long before the creation of countless soft-rock all-timers, and long before she became a witchy fashion icon, Stevie Nicks was a struggling musician like any other. An encounter with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham in school had set her on the path to rock stardom, but it was to be a rocky one.
Before Mick Fleetwood recruited the pair, Nicks and Buckingham made music as a duo under the name Buckingham Nicks. Their music wasn’t worlds away from the stylings of Fleetwood Mac, already showing off their songwriting prowess. The future of Buckingham Nicks looked bright when Polydor took an interest in the band, but much to the duo’s disappointment, their debut album would flop upon release.
From there, Nicks became the breadwinner in their relationship. As she juggled jobs to pay their rent, Buckingham focused on honing his musical skill and knowledge. “He didn’t know how to do anything but play the guitar and I did,” Nicks once explained during a conversation with BAM Magazine, “so it was obvious I was going to be the one to do the work if we were going to live.”
While Nicks grafted and Buckingham played guitar at home, the couple had no idea that fame and fortune were just around the corner. But Nicks was striving for it even in her songwriting, making some of her lyrics sound like prophecies in hindsight. ‘After the Glitter Fades’ was penned just a couple of years before Buckingham and Nicks lent their talents to Fleetwood Mac, but its lyrics seemed to preempt what was to come.
The song was never released under the Buckingham Nicks name, nor did it find its place on a Fleetwood Mac project. Nicks released it as a solo artist in the early 1980s, when she had firmly settled into the turbulence of fame. Over country-style swirls and swaying percussion, the track finds Nicks willing her success into existence. “What I seem to touch these days has turned to gold,” she sings in the first verse, “what I seem to want, well, you know I’ll find a way.”
Even as the glitter of ambition fades with each failure, Nicks maintains that the dream always remains. The song seemed to chart the difficulties she had faced in those early years of her career, the failed releases and dead-end jobs that left her feeling hopeless and constrained, but also the ambition that endured through it all. Every hour she worked to sustain their music careers was motivated by an unflinching desire to “make it,” which they would.
Nicks herself deemed the track “very prophetic,” divulging that she had already witnessed the fading of glitter that early into her career. Still, she knew deep down that their efforts and endurance would be worth it, that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. She couldn’t have been more correct.
Not long after she wrote ‘After the Glitter Fades’, Buckingham was recruited by Fleetwood to join his band of soft-rockers. The guitarist brought his partner-in-songwriting along for the ride, and their luck quickly turned around. They swapped poor sales and long hours for sold-out shows and a lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock and roll. The glitter seemed to have regained its sparkle.
