The most authentic version of ‘Rhiannon’, according to Stevie Nicks
Not all artistry is rooted in the technical. Growing up, that was something not told to me enough. Not to say knowing that would have changed my life path into becoming a music megastar, but I thought my lack of natural ability to play Clair De Lune in secondary school music class meant my life would be consigned to the bins of mediocrity. But now I’m older, I’ve come to realise the greats merely make the best of their own authenticity. Stevie Nicks didn’t have to stand centre stage ripping into a two-minute solo to be considered one of the greats.
She is perhaps the truest example of harnessing your own authenticity to create a legacy. While she rode the wave of her partnership with Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac to great effect, drenching her lyricism and nuanced vocal melodies in the luscious soundscapes of their dream pop brand, it was always her voice and the stories it had to tell that were most captivating.
Take ‘Landslide’ for example. One of her finest songs in history for it’s stunning storytelling. Laid on top of a delicate finger picked melody, she tells the poignant story of time lost in the transition between youth and adulthood. It’s a song that defines simple complexity; arranged in a relatively rudimentary fashion yet harnessing a deep sense of artistic observation that mere mortals simply couldn’t access.
It was one of a handful of songs she kindly donated to Fleetwood Mac upon her arrival to the band, along with her standout hit ‘Rhiannon’. The latter was dressed up in Fleetwood Mac’s signature groove and given a twinkling melody for her lyrics of mythology to dance on top of. But its genesis had a very different picture in mind, one that would mirror the simplicity of ‘Landslide’ and foreground the simple idiosyncrasies of Nicks’s artistry.
Speaking of her 1998 album and its more stripped-back creative direction, Nicks referenced the iconic track, saying, “I’m going to stay very simple on this record. I want to play piano on a lot of it. Because when I play, it’s different than when anybody else plays. It’s not that I play that well – I don’t. But I have a certain timing thing that makes it different if I’m playing alone. The reason I want to do this is so my songs stay a little bit closer to the way I wrote them. If you listen to the version of ‘Rhiannon’ on Enchanted, that’s how I wrote it and first showed it to Lindsey.
She added, “I’m really proud of it. I held out to get it on this record because I felt it was really important for people to have ‘Rhiannon\ the way she was originally written.”
If you listen to the stripped-back version of ‘Rhiannon’ below, Nicks’ off-beat piano playing is easily identifiable. It’s the sort you would immediately be disciplined for in any classic teaching environment, and one in the wrong hands, sounds muddled. But under the fingertips of an artist who found beauty in the obscurity, it’s another stroke of genius.
