“A defining moment in the rock and roll world”: how Stevie Nicks fell in love with the Eagles
Every song that Stevie Nicks ever wrote could be filed under the genre ‘emotion’. While not everything she played needed to be internalised, hearing her wear her heart on her sleeve while tearing through Fleetwood Mac’s greatest hits feels less like a performance and more like a spirit hidden deep inside her that needs to be unleashed somehow. A lot of that energy may have come from her soul, but the lion’s share of her favourite music usually had a more rootsy take on rock and roll.
Listening back to Nicks’ favourite artists as a kid, many of them favoured keeping things simple. From Buddy Holly to The Everly Brothers, the entire goal of those first rock and roll songs was getting the audience to sing along to a tune about heartache or managing to get the dance floor moving, but Nicks had her eye on something more than traditional rock that Chuck Berry would have done.
She had studied under people like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, and that meant that every word was more than simply window dressing. Every song was a peek into the singer’s soul, and listening back to ‘Landslide,’ it’s easy to see the young woman looking to take on the world back in the 1970s before she and Lindsey Buckingham had been given a chance in Fleetwood Mac.
But steering one of Britain’s greatest blues bands into rootsy territory wasn’t unheard of, either. Bob Welch had already begun taking them into different song textures that weren’t the same I-IV-V rhythm, and since they were recording in sunny California once Nicks and Buckingham, it was impossible for anyone to outrun Eagles in terms of raw song power.
Instead of the confessional style that Nicks wrote in, much of Glenn Frey and Don Henley’s hooks had to do with the greater questions about society. Whether that was talking about the jaded nature of Hollywood or slice-of-life stories about people being unfaithful, each one of them felt tangible, as if every single one of the characters had a real name and would continue living after the song was over.
While Buckingham saw a lot of competition in what Eagles were doing, Nicks felt inspired to up her game the minute that she heard some of their singles, saying, “I think they were a defining moment in the rock and roll world that I love. You couldn’t really love the Eagles’ music and be an Eagles fan and not aspire to greatness yourself.”
In terms of raw sales, though, Fleetwood Mac did at least give the country rockers some stiff competition. Henley might be able to rest easy at night knowing that his name is one the biggest-selling records of the 20th century, but Rumours has seemed to only grow in stature in recent years, with generations to come picking up on the internal drama of the record and becoming infatuated with tracks like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Gold Dust Woman.’
Regardless of which artist had the most staying power, it was never about the raw sales for Nicks. It was about how to best exercise her creativity, and if Henley taught everyone that it was okay to make something breezy, Nicks managed to turn her songs into personal reminders about what beauty lies in the world whenever someone sings the right melody.
