Revisit Stevie Nicks’ cover of Johnny Cash song ‘I Still Miss Someone’
The Arizona-born singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks and her former partner Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in the mid-1970s to help establish the blues-rock group as a pop sensation. The iconic pair first met during Nicks’ senior year at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California. She had been out one night at the Young Life Club, where she beheld Buckingham playing a cover of Barry McGuire’s ‘California Dreamin”, and she decided to join him in vocal harmony.
The love-locked pair soon left home to study at San José State University, but both subsequently dropped out to follow their overriding passion for music with humble beginnings in the psychedelic rock band Fritz. When Fritz disbanded in 1972, Buckingham and Nicks rolled the dice as a duo, releasing Buckingham Nicks, an album that received less commercial attention and praise than it perhaps deserved.
In late 1972, Buckingham joined the Everly Brothers on tour to play the guitar. Meanwhile, Nicks took to her notepad and penned two of her most enduring classics, ‘Rhiannon’ and ‘Landslide’. The latter was written about her relationship with Buckingham, which was, at the time, descending into the first of many latter troughs.
In 1974, producer Keith Olsen introduced the pair to drummer Mick Fleetwood, who initially invited just Buckingham to join the band, as they required a versatile guitarist. A loyal Buckingham stalled the recruitment process, insisting he would only come in a package deal with Nicks. Mick duly accepted, agreeing that another singer-songwriter wouldn’t hurt. As it transpired, Mick couldn’t have made a better decision. In 1975, the self-titled album Fleetwood Mac would become the band’s most commercially successful to date, bolstered by Nick’s songs’ Landslide’ and ‘Rhiannon’. The rest is history, or Rumours, so to speak.
Alongside her own magnificent songwriting, Nicks has given prolific nods to her most cherished influences throughout her career. Some of her greatest cover moments include those of Bob Dylan’s ‘Just Like A Woman’, Led Zeppelin’s ‘Rock and Roll’ and Tom Petty’s ‘Free Fallin” but today, we revisit a wonderful studio rendition of Johnny Cash’s ‘I Still Miss Someone’.
Cash co-wrote the mournful classic with his nephew Roy Cash and released it as the B-side for the 1958 single ‘Don’t Take Your Guns To Town’. It was later released on his second studio LP, The Fabulous Johnny Cash.
Nicks covered the country classic in 1988 for her fourth studio album, 1989’s The Other Side of the Mirror. For her updated version, Nicks stamped her DNA into proceedings with a poignant juxtaposition between her brooding vocals and the more upbeat synth-laden instrumentals. Listen below.
