The moment Stevie Nicks stopped being a “selfish” songwriter
Every songwriter is different. Some like to work collaboratively; others are more solitary, preferring to hone their songs in private. Despite being a key member of the hit machine that was Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks always preferred to write solo. That is until she formed a rejuvenating collaboration with The Eurythmics’s Dave Stewart.
Back in 2011, Nicks sat down to discuss the experience of writing In Your Dreams with Stewart. Though songwriting had always been a “selfish” process for her, she found the collaboration incredibly creatively stimulating. “It was a blast, the best year of my life,” she said of transforming her house into a studio for herself and Dave.
That the process of writing with someone else for the first time was so “easy” came as something of a shock. “The songwriting process for me, I’ve always kept to myself,” she said. “I really was very selfish about it; I never really wanted to write with anyone. And Dave, differently, right when I first called him in January, I sent him a book of poetry – of about 40 pages of poetry – and then I’m thinking later, what did I think I was just going to send him this book of poetry, and he was going to read it? Then what did I think he was going to do? Just make some musical tracks and bring them over and leave?”
To Nicks’ surprise, writing with Dave was a walk in the park. “He said to me, ‘Well, you sent me the poetry, so I like this poem,’ and, just in a situation like you and I are right now, ‘I like this poem, let’s start here.’ I’m like to myself, ‘He doesn’t really think that we’re going to actually write a song here, in this room, in the same room together.’ He just starts playing guitar, and we have microphones, and in five minutes we had written the second to last song on the record that’s called ‘You May Be the One,’ and this was a serious heavy-duty song. This was not just a fun little dumb song; this was a serious song”
Perhaps Nicks was worried that Dave would have a stricter routine than she did. In a 2011 interview with Thirteen, she said: “People who schedule writing dates and say, ‘Okay I’m going to sit down and write with this person from 2 to 3 and then 4 to 6, and then I’ll have dinner and work from 9 until…’ Well, I just could never do that. I probably wouldn’t be inspired under pressure. I would just sit there and stare at people and say, ‘This isn’t really working for me.’”
So what was it about Dave that made him so easy for Nicks to collaborate with? “He and I sat down and wrote songs together, which is something I have never done,” she confessed. “Not with Lindsey, not with anybody. I think it’s because Dave is the kind of guy that has no ego and could read a face. So when we would start working on something, and if I didn’t like something, he could see it in my eyes before I even realized it. And we would say, ‘OK, let’s start again!’ So the first day, he came up here, and we wrote a song, and my world changed.”
The project really was that transformative. According to Nicks, working with another songwriter helped her understand “why Lennon and McCartney wrote together when they really didn’t have to or why Roger and Hammerstein wrote together… You bring something to the table, they bring something to the table.”
You can listen to one of Stevie and Dave’s In Your Your Dreams tracks below.
