The one record Stevie Nicks thought she was written out of: “I can’t hear myself at all”
Stevie Nicks was always going to put her whole self into any product that had her name on it. Even in a band like Fleetwood Mac that thrived on being a democracy, it’s easy to tell when Nicks held the room, even when she was just singing the occasional vocal harmony for a song by Christine McVie or Lindsey Buckingham. Although every iteration of the band had its share of problems, Nicks felt the least connected to their seminal 1980s album, Tango In the Night.
In all fairness, the band had already been trying to balance everyone’s collective solo careers, so it was already going to be difficult getting everyone in the same room. Nicks had struck out on her own with some of the biggest songs of her career, while Buckingham was notching up similar numbers with a handful of his own hits.
Since no one had bothered to clean up their act, though, Nicks was in bad shape before the record had even begun, leading to her going into rehab shortly before the sessions were underway. While songs like ‘Welcome to the Room…Sara’ and ‘Seven Wonders’ are still some of the best songs that Fleetwood Mac ever made; the real star of the show is McVie.
Buckingham and Nicks had their fair share of highlights, but McVie had yet to write a bad song for Fleetwood Mac, and that streak didn’t stop here with the lyrics to songs like ‘Everywhere’ and ‘Little Lies’. When Nicks got back from rehab, she felt that a lot of the album was seeing her written out of most of the songs.
Compared to the old Fleetwood Mac projects where everything felt like a democracy, Nicks remembered telling the band that she needed more representation, telling Mick Fleetwood in Gold Dust Woman, “It’s not even like I’m on this fucking record. I can’t hear myself at all. Maybe I wasn’t in the studio that much. You know how sick I was. How is it going to look when the record comes out, and I might have to tell Rolling Stone that I didn’t work on the record?”
Nicks has a point. While she does appear many times on the record, her backing vocals on a song like ‘Everywhere’ are more felt than heard, almost sounding closer to McVie’s smokey voice than her trademark crooning. Then again, that just might be a symptom of this era of The Mac.
While Nicks did eventually have her vocals inserted back into ‘Everywhere’, she admitted that she was having trouble putting the final touches on a lot of the songs. If anything, though, the song ‘Little Lies’ does a great job at showcasing every member of the band in the chorus, almost like creating the illusion that everyone is at least on the same page. Since this was the same album that ultimately led to the band spiralling after Buckingham quit, it’s easy to see that all things were not well once they put down their instruments.
