The musician who inspired Stevie Nicks to write Fleetwood Mac song ‘Say You Will’
With every Fleetwood Mac song, Stevie Nicks’ lyrics have been examined in immense detail. Typically, fans speculate about the men in her life and whether they subsequently inspired her biggest hits, such as ‘Say You Will’. With this song, the assumption is correct to a degree. However, a deeper meaning is attached to the track, and another musician worked as Nicks’s inspiration.
The single was the title track on Fleetwood Mac’s 2003 album of the same name, which came at a tricky time in their career. For the first time in over 40 years, they were without Christine McVie, who may not have stolen the headlines but contributed a crucial and understated role in the band. Although they tried to continue without her presence, ultimately, Fleetwood Mac failed to fill the void left behind by McVie and Say You Will underwhelmed.
Commercially, Say You Will was still successful but not on a comparable scale to hit records from their heyday, most notably Rumours and Tusk. Many of the songs Nicks brought to the table for the album were leftover ideas from other projects, and it showed. However, ‘Say You Will’ was a highlight, and it was unsurprisingly elected as a single.
Nicks sings in the chorus: “Say you will, say you will give me one more chance, At least give me time to change your mind, That always seems to heal the wounds, If I can get you to dance.” Due to its lyrical themes, fans interpreted it as Nicks reaching her hand out to Lindsey Buckingham in a bid to rekindle their relationship. However, it was actually the Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval who acted as her true muse.
Nicks told Songwriter Magazine in 2003: “Everybody’s experienced it – when you like somebody, it makes you a different person. It changes you, and it changes you in a minute. But that song is not just about Lindsey. It’s about a movie I saw about Arturo Sandoval, the trumpet player. I loved this movie, and I just loved the way that through all the pain and separation, they managed to do music and stay happy and keep love alive, and dancing and rhythm and music, how healing it was. That was really my inspiration for that song. The chorus was written first, then I went back to write the verses. It was initially inspired by that movie.”
As Nicks explained, For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story catalysed her to create ‘Say You Will’. Once the chorus was written, her mind began to wander, and she looked back at her previous failed relationships with rose-tinted glasses and it allowed for the rest of the creation to fall into place. However, if it wasn’t for Sandoval, there would be no ‘Say You Will’.
Nicks continued: “But then once you get part of the poem down, you can’t always write all of it about what inspired it initially. You have to go back. You have this great chorus that basically says, ‘If you dance with me, you won’t be mad at me anymore. We can be in a huge argument, but if we put on some music and start to dance, everything will be great.’ Then I had to think about what to make the verses about”.
She concluded: “So I went back over all my relationships with people and thought of different ways that I have felt when I wanted basically to burst into song and sing that chorus. Give me one more chance. That’s what came out of it.”
Listen below to ‘Say You Will’.
