“Even the worst is going to be great”: The musicians that pushed Stevie Nicks to be better
No one is going into a studio to record an album thinking that they are going to phone it in. Any member of the audience can tell within the first two seconds of any song when someone is being insincere, and once they are called out on their bullshit, it’s either time for them to go back to the drawing board or discard what they were making altogether. But Stevie Nicks always made music from the heart, and anything she did was going to need her seal of approval before it was ready to be unleashed upon the world.
Then again, some of her greatest moments tended to come from when she didn’t need to compromise as much in Fleetwood Mac. Half the time, any of her songs did have to go through the Lindsey Buckingham songwriting machine, but no matter how many times the band tried to chew up her song, tracks like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Landslide’ always had her spirit laced throughout from the minute she started to sing.
So when she finally got the chance to be on her own, fans could have expected the full version of what Nicks could do. Although she may not have played any instruments in the traditional sense, bringing in someone like Jimmy Iovine was a godsend for someone who was looking to make the jump towards being a solo artist.
After all, Iovine had already worked his magic for many other artists, and considering his work with everyone from John Lennon to Bruce Springsteen to Patti Smith turned into some of the greatest records of the 1970s, it was a no-brainer to get him behind the producer’s chair. Then again, the fact that he had turned in time working with Tom Petty was all that Nicks needed to know before she worked with him.
Despite having her own songs to work with, Nicks felt that having an all-star cast of musicians helped breathe new life into The Wild Heart. Bringing Petty back after ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ was a no-brainer with the song ‘I Will Run To You’, but outside of studio legends like Waddy Wachtel and Springsteen’s keyboardist Roy Bittan, Nicks felt that Don Felder’s work helped elevate the album the same way Petty did.
Since there was the titans of rootsy rock on the record, Nicks felt that she couldn’t lose on any track, saying, “With Tom Petty and Don Felder out there you’re certainly not going to stand up there and be terrible. You’re going to do the very best you can from the first time you sing. Even the worst vocal is going to be great. Also, you’re so proud, that you don’t want to look like a jerk in front of all these guys!”
If anything, the fact that Nicks saw the album as a way of competing on her friends’ level was the opposite of what she was dealing with in Fleetwood Mac. Everyone else had to rely on Buckingham adding his two cents and insisting that songs needed to be recorded a certain way, so bringing in musicians who saw eye-to-eye with Nicks on what she wanted was all she could have asked for.
While The Wild Heart is known more for its singles like ‘Stand Back’, tunes like ‘Nothing Ever Changes’ with Felder are a further indication of how Nicks was growing as a vocalist. She may not have been looking to compete with Felder’s guitar in the mix, but his touch on guitar was what pushed her to reach for that extra layer of emotion whenever she was singing her most personal lyrics.
