The song Stevie Nicks says Don Henley “wishes” was about him: “Full of shit”
To reduce the incredible work of Stevie Nicks to the songs she wrote about men is to really miss the point of her artistry.
Of course, she is a woman who loved and lost. That is clear. And her ability to share those experiences with heartfelt emotion certainly enriched her work as a songwriter. But it feels criminal that so many of her songs must be attached to a male rock star to give them the gravitas they seemingly require. The truth is, despite her love interests, Nicks wrote about more than just her boyfriends.
A double Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Nicks’ inspirations were extremely varied. Writing about her friends, Welsh witches and just about everything in between, Nicks established herself as a consummate artist capable of a range of emotions. But it is hard to ignore or avoid being intrigued by the veracity with which she wrote about her love life.
The love affair between Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks and Eagles singer Don Henley was relatively brief. After Nicks broke up with Lindsey Buckingham, Henley was the next rock star in line for her to connect with. Their relationship lasted roughly two years, not all of which was exclusive, but Henley had some wild claims about the affair.
Namely, Henley believed that Nicks channelled an alleged pregnancy and subsequent abortion into the 1979 Fleetwood Mac track ‘Sara’. “I believe, to the best of my knowledge, she became pregnant by me. And she named the kid Sara, and she had an abortion and then wrote the song of the same name to the spirit of the aborted baby,” Henley claimed in a GQ interview in 1991. “I was building my house at the time, and there’s a line in the song that says, ‘And when you build your house, call me.'”
Nicks confirmed on her own accord that she had gotten pregnant and would have named the baby Sara had she kept it, but she denied the rest of Henley’s account. To set the record straight on the matter, Nicks told the full story of ‘Sara’ and the real inspirations behind it in later years, dispelling other rumours about the song as well.
“It’s not about Mick’s Fleetwood’s ex-wife, who was also one of my best friends, even though everybody thinks it is,” Nicks told Leah Greenblatt in 2009. “I used her name because I love the name so much, but it was really about what was going on with all of us at that time. It was about Mick’s and my relationship, and it was about one I went into after Mick.”
This offers a great insight into Nicks’ songwriting. She often collates events in her life to form an emotive narrative and then lets her mystique do the rest of the work. This makes her music both moving and universal but also often strangely inscrutable. There was always so much going on in her life that it was a mood she was capturing rather than a specific moment.
As she explains herself: “Some songs are about a lot of things, some songs only have one or two lines that are that main thing, and then the rest of it, you’re just making a movie, writing a story around this one paragraph, that little kernel of life.” She continued: “‘When you build your house’ was about when you get your act together, then let me know because until you get your act together, I really can’t be around you.”
Greenblatt subsequently asked whether there was any merit to Henley’s claims that he inspired the track. “He wishes! If Don wants to think the ‘house’ was one of the 90 houses he built—and he did build house after beautiful house, and once they were done, he would move because he wasn’t interested in them anymore [laughs],” Nicks added. “No. He is one of my best friends in the world. If anything happened to me, he would be there, always. But if someone said that, they’re so full of shit!”
Check out ‘Sara’ down below.
