Stevie Nicks, the muse: Recounting all the songs men wrote for the Fleetwood Mac singer
Stevie Nicks is a double Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, and that alone shows why her talent is unquestionable. Songwriters gravitated towards the Fleetwood Mac icon, and although Nicks is much more than just a muse, we can’t deny the fact that several classic tracks were penned with her in mind.
Nicks’ career began alongside Lindsay Buckingham with Buckingham-Nicks after they first crossed paths at college. Later, they formed a duo together and also became romantically involved. Buckingham, it is safe to say, is the person she most famously inspired to write, and the two will always be intrinsically linked.
“I loved him before he was a millionaire. We were two kids out of Menlo-Atherton High School,” she once said in a television interview. “I loved him for all the right reasons. We did have a great relationship at first. I loved taking care of him and the house.”
However, their relationship imploded after the pair joined Fleetwood Mac, and Buckingham wasn’t the last man to use her as a muse. However, not every artist that wrote songs about her was romantically linked to the singer, some features on this list were born out of platonic love, and others were purposely written for Nicks because of her towering artistic ability.
Songs written about Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks:
‘Leather and Lace’
Stevie Nicks and The Eagles’ Don Henley were only together for a short period, but it’s a time she looks back on with fondness. Nicks fell pregnant during their brief spell together, which inspired ‘Sara’ that appeared on 1979’s Tusk, and they also later duetted together on ‘Leather and Lace’.
However, the song widely attributed to Nicks from Henley’s canon is ‘Life In The Fast Lane’, written around the time they got together in 1976. The Eagles track tackles a relationship coming to an end because of the fast-paced nature of Los Angeles and the lifestyle that comes with living in the chaotic Californian hub, which people believe is about Buckingham and Nicks.
Nicks later reflected on her relationship with Henley: “It was 1976, this was right after the beginning of when Fleetwood Mac really made it, and The Eagles had been big for a long time. So, he found a very different kind of girl in me than in most of the women that he was used to hanging out with, and we had a very special relationship because of that.”
‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’
Stevie Nicks’ love of Tom Petty incentivised her to recruit his producer, Jimmy Iovine, which led to Petty writing a song for her. After they became friends, Petty handed her the song, ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’. However, that wasn’t the song he initially planned to give the singer.
At first, he planned to give her ‘Insider’, a number that he wrote specifically for Nicks, but, in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to give it away. “It’s one of those things in a relationship that really is the stinger,” he later recalled to Melody Maker about the track in 1981. “You know, you didn’t trust me, you couldn’t trust me… that’s the way it always come out. Trust.”
He added: “When I wrote that song, I wrote it very quickly, I mean maybe in ten, 15 minutes. I just wrote it all down on paper and then I just picked up the guitar and tried to sing each line out. It took me maybe an hour to do that – it don’t happen every day, fans! But the lyrics were real quick”.
‘Go Your Own Way’
The break-up between Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks played out in the public eye for all to see. Buckingham had his say on the events on the scathing ‘Go Your Own Way’, which left his opinion on Nicks in no uncertain terms, and it was a bitter pill for her to swallow. She later said, “It was certainly a message within a song. And not a very nice one at that.”
Nicks waited to respond on ‘Dreams’, and while she didn’t find the message behind ‘Go Your Own Way’ pleasant, she bit her tongue and replied the only way she knew. Remarkably, the Fleetwood Mac vocalist also contributed to the song by adding backing vocals to the track and poured heartfelt emotion into her delivery, enhancing it immeasurably.
‘What Makes You Think You’re the One?’
Following their split, tensions worsened even further between the duo, and Buckingham took another dig at Nicks on Tusk’s ‘What Makes You Think You’re the One?’. Even though their split wasn’t fresh in the memory when they recorded the 1979 album, clearly, they had not moved on, and their relationship had dissipated further.
On the bitter track, he sings: “What makes you think I’m the one who will love you forever? Everything you do has been done and it won’t last forever.” Buckingham wanted nothing to do with her, but their work in Fleetwood Mac meant they couldn’t avoid one another, and the guitarist let out his feelings on the fiery ‘What Makes You Think You’re The One?’.
‘Say Goodbye’
In 1987, Buckingham left the group and went on to seek pastures new. Of course, his departure would only be temporary, and in 2003, the songwriter addressed his exit on ‘Say Goodbye’. It was about him moving on to the next chapter in his life, which included leaving Nicks behind.
He explained: “[Say Goodbye is] kind of a torch song, sort of an Edit Piaf meets Leo Kottke, is the way I think of it. Actually that song was written…about Stevie, and for Stevie, quite a while ago. It was written about the time that I had departed the band in ‘87.
“And it had been…Fleetwood Mac had been an exercise in denial for many years, and I finally felt at that time that I was going to be able to kind of move on an emotional level in some ways, and get some closure that I hadn’t been able to get, you know. As far as the production goes, it really is just a single guitar part. It’s just a very intricate guitar part.”
‘Sometimes It’s A Bitch’
In 1991, Jon Bon Jovi jumped at the opportunity to write a song for Stevie Nicks, and the final result was ‘Sometimes It’s A Bitch’, which was penned from her perspective. “When I first heard this song, I really did not quite understand what Jon was trying to say, but over the two weeks that we sang it together (at my mic), I started to realise that Jon, without knowing it, had sort of taken a time machine back 18 years and watched my life, the good parts and the bad,” Nicks once said.
She continued: “It was not a love song, which of course, I had expected it to be; it was much more than that to me. Bon Jovi had picked up on the fact, before meeting me, that there was no way he could know what I had lived through without having lived through it with me, so he dreamed.
“He dreamed about what the notorious Stevie Nicks had been like and what it had all done to her… the indulgences, the lifestyle. I felt that if he knew nothing else about me, he knew I had a strong instinct to survive. Someday, maybe all the people who did not go through this with us will understand; that considering the generation we come from, we are very lucky to be alive.”
‘Love’s a Hard Game to Play’
Not only did Bon Jovi’s contribution appear on Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks, but Poison’s Bret Michaels also assisted Nicks on ‘Love’s a Hard Game to Play’. In the liner notes to the album, Nicks explained how the song was created and called Michaels “most extraordinary young man.”
Detailing further, she continued: “One of these men who has everything – beauty, sensitivity, warmth, and a love for life that I had not seen in a long time. I recorded his song, singing it for him to the best of my ability, hoping that the people would love the song as much as we loved doing it.”
