The brutal ultimatum that gave Fleetwood Mac a classic track: “You should give this six more months”
Being in any rock band can be like pulling teeth if things aren’t going well. While many people are doing it simply because they love playing music with their friends, it can get fairly dire if no one is making enough money to have a roof over their heads at the end of the night. It normally takes more than blind faith to get artists to the big leagues, and all Stevie Nicks needed was a bit more of a push to make her way into rock and roll history.
When Nicks first moved to California with Lindsey Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac was the last thing on their minds. The British blues act was still making waves with Peter Green and Bob Welch, and despite having some of the greatest blues jams under their belt, having someone like Buckingham in the group felt like a bit of a gamble since they were used to making tracks like ‘Rattlesnake Shake.’
And it’s not like Buckingham Nicks were setting the world on fire right out of the gate. While their self-titled debut album had loads of good ideas that would eventually find their way into Fleetwood Mac songs, the critical consensus was that it was far from perfect, leading to them fading into obscurity for a while.
This would have been a setback for any other band, but for Nicks, this was devastating, considering what was happening at home. She had left home without a care when she first moved to Los Angeles, and since she didn’t have any college credits, her parents were still playing devil’s advocate, constantly wondering what life would be like for their little girl if she managed to get a proper job.
But living a life of a nine-to-five job was never where Nicks wanted to be. She was already resorting to cleaning their producer’s house when scrounging for money for her debut, but when her father called her, he gave her one last chance to make it, saying, “I was home at my Dad and Mom’s house in Phoenix, and my father said, ‘you know, I think that maybe… you really put a lot of time into this [her singing career], maybe you should give this six more months, and if you want to go back to school.”
Most kids might be lucky to have those kinds of parents, but travelling through Colorado gave Nicks the perfect idea for a song. Since most of what her father said was true, ‘Landslide’ was a realistic look at the situation she was in, talking about the fact that she isn’t getting any younger and wondering how her world would have changed since she spent so much time chasing the right opportunity.
But listening to the track, this doesn’t seem to be about her father completely. Even though much has been made about Nicks’ relationship with Buckingham, it’s easy to look at this track as a love song to music itself, as she sings about building her entire life around this unknown force and how she will keep that love inside of her no matter where she goes.
While Nicks did get the chance to prove her father wrong, she hardly harboured any ill will towards her parents, either, even ad-libbing “This is for you daddy” when she performed the track during the band’s comeback concert, The Dance. If the first version of the tune was about someone embracing the unknown and not knowing where life will take them, this is the wiser older woman realising that time has made her much stronger and has shaped her for the better.
