The 1985 recording session Stevie Nicks will never forget: “Forevermore”
Every song Stevie Nicks ever wrote is practically a memory of her life.
She didn’t want to go into the studio and crank out filler whenever she went into the studio, and since her songs were always like poetry set to music, it’s easy to see a picture of the kind of person that she wanted to become across every single one of her records. And while some Fleetwood Mac records were more than a little bit frustrating for her to make, she knew that she could spread her wings a lot further once she had a stable solo career.
Bella Donna was always going to be a gamble given how much she had already put into ‘The Mac’, but she never made a solo record looking to become a star in her own right. She made a point not to be the one who broke up the band, and even when working on some of the band’s later records like Mirage, you could always count on one or two classic Nicks songs to be sprinkled into the record alongside Lindsey Buckingham.
But by the time of Rock A Little, things had started to become more than a little bit tense. Aside from the fights that she would have among her bandmates, her third record seemed to be the moment the bubble burst a little bit. She was still making great music, but there were more than a few times where she could look back and see the damage that she was putting on herself every time she played.
She was a drug addict dabbling in music a lot of the time, but that didn’t mean that tunes like ‘Talk to Me’ couldn’t find a way to squeak through. For all of the damage she put on herself, her artistry never failed her, and even when reminiscing on the recording process, Nicks knew that she was in good hands when working with John Waite and Jim Keltner behind the scenes when laying down her final vocal.
Keltner was already a legend of the session scene, but he was also there for moral support when Nicks laid down her vocals. Anyone else would have gone home and waited to see how the record turned out, but Nicks remembered Keltner being one of the greatest cheerleaders that she ever had as she worked herself up to create the best vocal that she could for the tune.
And while Nicks could sing the song as much as she wanted to live, she knew that those moments in the studio were what she would cherish forever, saying, “It took a long time to finish it though because I couldn’t quite get the right feeling on it…until one night. Jim Keltner came in to do some drum overdubs, and then he stayed to be an audience to push me a little, to make me get a great vocal. So I had someone to sing to, and I got the vocal. I put some tambourine on it, and it was finished, forevermore. That was one of my unforgettable moments.”
What’s even crazier is the fact that it’s not even the most heartwrenching tune on the record. Nicks already was having issues with Joe Walsh around this tim, and when she heard about his troubled past, the tune ‘Has Anyone Ever Written a Song For You’ is still one of the most beautiful works that Nicks ever made for the love of her life.
But even if Nicks wasn’t in the best frame of mind throughout the entire recording process, the story of ‘Talk To Me’ is something that everyone should bear in mind when looking at their heroes. Yes, they are some of the greatest artists of all time and might even seem untouchable, but when you break it down, a lot of them are still unsure of themselves and need someone to tell them that everything will work out.
