The artist who convinced Stevie Nicks to start writing again
No artist can manage to keep the creative fire burning forever. Even though there might be massive albums in their repertoire that are still celebrated today, the amount of great music tends to run out on everybody after a few great years at the top. While many people may try to play the hits for the rest of their lives once that inspiration runs dry, Stevie Nicks wasn’t willing to count herself out, and, thanks to a rock legend, she got the spark she needed.
When first starting, Nicks was already coming up with amazing melodic songs out of thin air. While she may have been able to play the guitar reasonably well at the time, most of the ideas that would become classics would often get filtered through the rest of Fleetwood Mac, with Lindsey Buckingham or Christine McVie adding their flourishes into the mix.
Even though every member’s contributions usually made the song better, there came a point where Nicks needed to branch out. Working with Jimmy Iovine for her solo debut, Bella Donna, Nicks perfectly balanced her time between Fleetwood Mac and her solo outings, creating songs that would be equally celebrated in her solo career, like ‘Stand Back’ and ‘Edge of Seventeen’.
When she returned to Fleetwood Mac in the 1980s, though, there was a lot more tension left over from before. Seeing how much of a soap opera transpired to get the songs on Rumours finalised, all of that resentment began to boil over when making albums like Tango in the Night, which resulted in Nicks and Buckingham having a violent argument before going out on the road.
At the same time, Nicks had trouble keeping her drug intake in check. Leaving Fleetwood Mac for the next decade, she would spend the next few years working on herself, eventually going to rehab in the 1990s. While Nicks was able to reach the other side of sobriety, she admitted to feeling insecure about trying to write songs again while sober.
Considering the amount of drugs in her system when making classic songs like ‘Dreams’, Nicks was worried if she would even be able to write another classic song again. Even though Nicks was apprehensive about returning to the studio for another album, she got the pep talk of a lifetime from Tom Petty. While Petty worked with Nicks throughout her solo career, Nicks’s initial request to write songs with the heartland rocker after rehab was met with a firm rejection.
Rather than getting pissed off, Nicks explained how Petty reminded her of what she could as a songwriter, telling Rolling Stone, “[He said], You are one of the premiere songwriters in this business. Go home and turn off the radio. Don’t be influenced by anything. Just write some great songs – that’s what you do’. He reinforced that I was still Stevie Nicks”.
While Petty would stay in the realm of The Heartbreakers for the next few years, Nicks would still work with him off and on throughout the years, even appearing at shows with him to play tracks like ‘Insider’ and ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’. Although anyone would feel insecure getting back into music, Petty’s words of wisdom may be why Nicks can make beautiful songs to this day, whether with Fleetwood Mac, solo, or beyond.
