The best singer Stevie Nicks ever sang with: “My favourite”
Stevie Nicks was never going to leave Fleetwood Mac the minute that she and Lindsey Buckingham were first asked to join.
The opportunity that they had was the kind that comes only once in a lifetime, and Nicks was going to make sure that she never did anything that would have hurt the name of the band even when she went solo. But even though she treated the band like her family most of the time, there was the odd group that would have made her think it wasn’t so bad to start looking for other work.
Granted, you have to really take into account where Nicks was during those times when she was doubting the group. Anyone who was able to keep a level head throughout the making of Rumours was clearly doing something right, but when looking through the making of Tusk, Nicks knew she couldn’t continue on without having another outlet. She didn’t like the idea of only having a handful of songs per record, and when she settled into her own groove, she finally had musicians that seemed to understand her.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were practically her musical older brothers when she first got the inkling to go solo, and when you look at the way that they worked, Nicks felt that kind of brotherhood is everything that she wanted. But she wasn’t about to make an entirely new band when she still had work to do. ‘The Mac’ was still her priority, but it looked like the band didn’t really need each other by the time that they finished Tango in the Night.
The entire record became a chore for the entire group, and even though Nicks stuck around to work on the record Behind the Mask, she already started searching for new sounds in her solo career. She may have full-blown admitted to sleepwalking through Street Angel due to her drug abuse, but when she started making her way out of the darkness, she felt that there was a lot more that the country world had to offer.
The 1990s had been a golden age for Nashville, and compared to the modern country scene, the women were the ones dominating the field. Shania Twain and Faith Hill were two of the biggest names in American music at the time, but Nicks always felt better listening to a band, and The Chicks were everything that she had envisioned herself being at that age. They were among the finest singers on Music Row, and compared to every other rock and roll band, Nicks felt much more at home playing with a group like that.
She was still willing to show the world what she could do on her own, but the way that The Chicks interacted was absolutely perfect for her brand of rock and roll, saying, “Natalie Maines is my [favorite] person to sing with, ever. I could happily be a part of the Chicks. Even though they’re billed as country artists, they’re very rock ‘n’ roll.” But Nicks had much bigger things to worry about than hopping on a duet version of ‘Cowboy Take Me Away’.
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Her golden days weren’t behind her by any stretch, and Tom Petty was theone that told her that she needed to turn off the radio and start writing amazing songs again. It did result in one of the greatest comeback records that she had ever made in Trouble in Shangrila, but that didn’t mean that she still couldn’t get Maines to sing backup on a few of the songs when their schedules lined up right.
The Chicks didn’t have the best shelf life when they eventually got blackballed from the industry following their comments about George W Bush, but that wasn’t enough for Nicks to leave them behind. These were practically her musical younger sisters in many respects, and if she was going to make something that would last, it was important to take a few cues from kids that really knew what they were doing.
