The artist Stevie Nicks always wanted to write with: “He can read your mind”
We’re constantly told we live in the worst generation. Pictures of Stevie Nicks and other classic rock icons, bathing in the hedonism of sex, drugs and rock and roll, are a constant visual reminder that any chosen year of the 1970s was the best time to live.
We look at grainy pictures of what seems to be a simpler time, less bogged down by social anxieties and regulations and more indulgent in the wilder tendencies of youth, and curse our luck for landing in a more stifled and self-conscious generation. All nonsense, of course, but hard to fully acknowledge when you listen to some of the music from the ‘70s, undoubtedly some of music history’s richest and most compelling.
But it’s important to remember that behind the soft focus images of late-night Hollywood parties were soap-opera-like storylines. Artists are struggling with many of the same issues present today, just without the tools or societal landscape in which to deal with them effectively. No artist typified that more than Stevie Nicks. Caught up in the whirlwind of Fleetwood Mac, her deeply personal trauma was leveraged at all angles in the name of artistic authenticity and her vulnerability was chewed up by the industry.
So, despite our blissful view of retrospect, idealising every minute of the ‘70s, Nicks was keen to leave its troubles behind. It wasn’t until much later, when wisdom and creative freedom bestowed themselves upon her simultaneously, that she found her creative happiness. And so oddly, in 2009, it was the introduction of a new and unexpected writing partner that lifted her artistic burden.
The unexpected collaboration that reignited Stevie Nicks’ creativity
“That’s probably one of the reasons it was the best year of my life,” Nicks said, speaking about her collaboration with Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart.
She continued, “I always wished that I could write with people. I do write, in a way, with Mike Campbell [a sideman for Tom Petty], who sends me tracks. But he’s not there. So when the thing with Dave happened it was so out of the blue.”
Together, the pair worked on the music for what would eventually make up Nicks’ 2011 record In Your Dreams, a body of work that saw her lean into her mythical sensibilities while creating an album that many regard as one of her most underrated vocal performances. Which to Nicks’ recollection, is most likely attributed to the creative freedom Stewart fostered within the studio, devoid of the sort of criticism she became so used to in the early parts of her career.
“We wrote seven songs in under three months, and recorded as we went, and my whole idea of songwriting changed. Dave Stewart doesn’t have an ego,” she added. “He can read your mind. He can read your eyes. If you look the slightest bit like, ‘Oh, no,’ he says, ‘Let’s go another way’. So you never have to have that pit in your stomach where you’re going, ‘OK, when he finishes playing this song I’m going to have to say I hate it’.”
Arguably the reception of Nicks’ 2011 record goes a long way to proving how her overall relationship with the music industry unfolded. An undoubtedly good album, but no way near her opus and so proves her legacy in the music world sadly coalesced with her own personal suffering. For when the chapters of her own life were at their darkest, the music was its greatest.
