“It was perfect”: The song where Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s special connection became clear
For Stevie Nicks, there’s always been a certain mystical magic to songwriting.
Despite never knowing how to play more than a handful of chords on any instrument, her most powerful form of expression has always been her lyrics, as if people are getting an intimate look at her life every time she opens her mouth.
She humbly asserts that everyone is capable of this. “There is always magic to be summoned at any point. I love to live in a world of magic, but not a fake world of magic. We all really basically have a lot of magic,” she explained.
“It’s only those of us who choose to accept it, that really understand it. It’s there for everyone. That’s the only thing that I feel I am able to give to people and that’s why I know that they respond to me because I try to give them only their own magic… not mine, but theirs,” she added.
While she has lived through the tales of ‘Landslide’ and inhabited the spirit of the witch in ‘Rhiannon’, when it comes to liberating her audience’s own sense of feeling, Nicks considered ‘Soldier’s Angel’ one of the most important moments of her career – a “perfect” song that she never dreamed of altering.
Then again, if we’re talking about any of Nicks’s emotional high points, there’s normally one character looming in the background: Lindsey Buckingham. After cutting off their relationship before some of their fans were even born, Nicks’s greatest tracks have taken the high road whenever talking about the gory details.
Whereas Buckingham was known to be less diplomatic when it came to writing tunes like ‘Go Your Own Way,’ Nicks was interested in putting together stories that were far more delicate. When listening to ‘Dreams,’ you can tell that she’s still hurting, but she never once wants to be biting or harmful. If anything, she just wants peace for both her and Buckingham going forward.
Even when she is being deeply personal, her view is that poetry should offer some obfuscation. As she explained in a more general sense, “Little girls think it’s necessary to put all their business on MySpace and Facebook, and I think it’s a shame… I’m all about mystery.”
Throughout her solo career, though, her exploration of her own state of mind was a lot more intimate than most fans even knew. ‘Stand Back’ gave us a look at her guarded personality, and ‘Has Anyone Written Anything For You’ is one of the most subtly heartbreaking tunes in her songbook, written for Joe Walsh after his dissolution following the loss of his daughter.
Buckingham would always be one of her many musical soulmates, though, and ‘Soldier’s Angel’ seemed to indirectly tell their story. Despite being well into her solo career and almost a decade removed from Fleetwood Mac’s reunion album, Say You Will, this track from In Your Dreams felt like everything was coming full circle for them.
Featuring Buckingham on guitar, this was a chance for Nicks to build subtle lyrical bridges, saying, “[It] is truly my most sacred and revered song. We recorded it live and did some harmonies, and then he did some little lead guitar things and it was perfect. There’s no other players, just me and him. Not only did we create something that’s probably as Buckingham Nicks as we have been since 1973, but… I think that song really brought Lindsey and I back together.”
Outside of the comparisons to Buckingham Nicks, this feels like an unintended sequel to ‘Landslide’ based on the arrangement. The lyrics don’t have the same resonating power as Nicks’ masterpiece, but listening to her talk about spirits that are lost on their own and in need of some type of help, it’s hard not to think of their two disparate souls trying to find solace in their lives.
While Nicks eventually chose Fleetwood Mac over Buckingham when he was forced out of the group in the 2010s, ‘Soldier’s Angel’ is a good look at what their relationship was all about. It wasn’t always pleasant, and it was bound to get ugly in some places, but when everything worked, there was nothing else in music that could compare.
